Today is my good friend Bill Nicholson's birthday. He is the co-star of this column I wrote about ten years ago for SHORE MAGAZINE. I had a regular humor column in the magazine called 'A Fine Mess' and this is one of them. I'm reposting it today in honor of Billy's birthday. Hope you enjoy it...
On paper it sounded like a good idea; four old college buddies canoeing down the Wisconsin River. In reality, it was the worst vacation of my life.
We encountered our first problem the moment we got into the canoes. The two experienced camper/adventurer/outdoorsmen went in the first canoe to show the two inexperienced worthless indoorsmen how to do it. This was incredibly bad planning, because while the first canoe effortlessly made its way down the river, the second canoe was literally paddling itself in circles. Before we could yell out for help, the first canoe was long gone. They figured we would catch up with them soon enough.
They figured wrong.
It was a sweltering hot summer day, the kind of oppressive heat that led to warnings about checking on your elderly relatives. We thought we’d cool off because we were floating down a river, but didn’t factor in the fact that we were traveling in a metal canoe. The roasting sun turned our traveling device into a scorching heat machine. Any slight movement in the canoe was a potential third degree burn situation.
Forearm on metal. Yelp. Thigh on metal. Yelp.
The heat did something else. It dried up parts of the river. The current that was supposed to calmly carry us down the river was non-existent. After we eventually figured out how to paddle, we were exerting a great deal of effort just to keep moving. In some parts of the river we actually had to pick up our canoe and move it when it got stuck.
Hand on metal. Yelp.
After not seeing any other humans for hours, we thought we saw someone standing on the riverbank in the distance. We figured it had to be one of our buddies thoughtfully waiting for us to catch up so we could switch paddling partners. As we approached we could see it was something very different.
It was a man, but it wasn’t anyone we knew. He was standing there looking at us, and we didn’t want to look back because he was completely nude. He had his hands on his hips, and was thrusting his bottom half proudly into the sun.
“Oh my God!” my buddy Bill said.
“Come on, man, paddle!” I screamed.
“I am!” he said. “I am!”
We made it past him eventually, but with each additional paddle we encountered more people of all shapes and sizes waving to us. Each of them was wearing nothing but a friendly smile.
“Want a beer?” an elderly nude man screamed to us.
“Have you seen another canoe come by here?” Bill asked.
“Yeah, they were here about thirty minutes ago. Friends of yours?” the elderly nude man asked.
“Not anymore,” Bill replied.
We didn’t run into our ex-friends again until it was time to stop for the night. They had set up a campsite on a sandbar, and had started a fire.
“There they are,” one of them said when they spotted us. “It’s about time.”
“We didn’t know what we were doing!” I screamed.
“I can’t believe you’re making a fire,” Bill said. “It’s 1500 degrees outside.”
They helped us get the canoe ashore (Hand on metal. Yelp.) and asked us to help them set up the tent. When we spread out the tent we discovered another tiny little problem. The entire tent was covered with spiders. Hundreds and hundreds of spiders were crawling all over its hot canvas. My anacrophobic pal was not a happy camper.
“I’m sleeping outside,” Bill said after he saw the spiders.
“There are snakes out here,” one of the adventurers said.
Bill and I looked at each other and laughed. We were sunburned, tired, sore, miserable, and now we weren’t even going to be able sleep.
I extended my hand to him. “Last canoeing trip ever, right?”
“Last canoeing trip ever,” he replied.
That’s a promise that will be easy to keep.
