day 11 (by Ian)

Wednesday 15 September 2010
Peter’s mobile telephone alarm goes off. It’s 6.30am. It sounds like an old horn, on/off, on/off; the type of alarm that you would expect to hear on a spaceship superimposed by a monotone voice; ‘Ten minutes before self-destruct.’ Calmly the heroine stalks a deadly alien species that intends to block her escape. Only I’m not Ripley and I’m not in some sort of spaceship. I’m in a floating shed somewhere on the Mississippi river.
Peter has managed to get dressed, fill the petrol tank and set off before I have crawled out of my nice snug and warm sleeping bag.
I hate mornings!
Peter looses my coffee mug overboard when washing up after breakfast.
I hate mornings!
Around 8.30am we stop for petrol and then went through lock eight. At 10.15am we had left Minnesota, and Wiscosin (left and right sides of the river) and were now in the state of Iowa.
It is difficult to tell what is river and what is lake on the Mississippi. The car registration number plates in Minneapolis boasted having ‘10,000 lakes’ – I didn’t doubt it. For instance, the river can be half a mile wide and then a mile further, a couple of miles across, but they call it a lake. Lake Pepin was 20 miles long but very much part of the Mississippi river. What look like islands are simply clusters of trees that have managed to take hold in the common mudflats. Although the river can be wide, the navigation channel is often just 200 meters wide, but to venture too far away can cause severe damage to the raft from underground dams or damage to the propeller from think mudflats containing rocks and other debris.
During the day, I lowered the table to a more respectable height of 2’ 5”, built a shelf for the cooker and generally made things to hold other things and stop them flying around when going through the wake of some sort of speed boat or other. On these occasions we need to close the front door before the water comes over the bow and into the cabin through the door!
When you are driving, life seems to be measured in chunks of 7 or 8 minutes. Let me explain… Peter started a log in a small book he brought along for the trip. Every time we stop or start, the time is entered into the log. Whenever we change petrol, buy provisions, enter a lock or fill up the main petrol tank with fuel, its time is entered into a log. And, every time we pass a mile indicator on the river bank (like those we find on the side of roads in Romania), we enter the time in the log – usually every 7 or 8 minutes. This is supposed to make driving a garden shed on the Mississippi exciting I supposed.
The clouds are very low and resemble rolls and rolls of wavy cotton wool dipped in black ink. It matches our moods exactly. They are so low that I swear if I stood on the roof of the cabin, my head would quite literally, be in the clouds. I wished it to be so – anything to escape this gloom, even for a few moments.
Around 3.20 pm we arrive at our next lock, number nine. Again we pretty well drove straight in, although my driving wasn’t gentle enough and I managed to scrape poor Joanne along the lock wall, cutting into the polythene lining that was our roof protection against the rain. In fact, it was not the only mistake I had made during the day and I was clearly upsetting Peter. An occasional look of despair from Peter was enough to goad me and we had had ‘words’ on a few occasions throughout the day. It was a great safety valve and we managed not to beat each other up although we did swear at one another. Within a few minutes, one or other of us would apologise and things would settle down again.
Again, to my dismay, we couldn’t get the iphone to share its internet connection with our computers, which it had done brilliantly in Minneapolis. I started to believe that there was a conspiracy to deny me access to the technology that would enable me to speak with my family and friends and check my emails. I was frustrated because we had told everyone that we would be posting daily blogs and that they could follow our progress online. Peter spent most of the day trying to get it up and running with no success.
At 4.50pm, we pulled into a small marina to repair a piece of the corrugated plastic sheet covering one row of the barrels. It meant Peter having to get into the water and swimming under the boat to get at the ratchet straps that held the plastic sheet in place. We managed to make the repairs in little under half an hour and set off again.
About 9.30pm, it is pitch black and we decide to stop for the night close to another lock. I’m driving and we can’t see too much. There is a small lake close to some dredgers and we decide to anchor up here for the night. To my horror we drive Joanne straight onto a mudflat and get stuck despite our best efforts. Peter is not pleased. We decide to stay the night here and see if we can get ourselves off in the morning. Ten minutes later and we suddenly feel Joanne move to one side. To our joy, she has come free from the flat and we slowly drift towards the main cannel where we drop anchor again.
It’s about 10pm when we finally moor up for the night. We have made our daily target of 70 miles and congratulate ourselves. After two beers we are too tired to stay awake and climb into our sleeping bags. I am so tired. Our days are so long. Every part of my body aches. The lack of an internet connection is really bothering me now. In a few minutes I’m sound asleep.


Ian