Paddling My Own Canoe

I have canoes on my mind. Maybe it's because I'm reading the book Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). We've owned a canoe for several years. It's a big old aluminum Grumman that we inherited when Mr. Ether's parents moved from their house to a condo. When we first acquired it we were very excited, and bought new PFDs and paddles for our anniversary. I envisioned sunset picnics and Sunday afternoon outings on Madison's 4 lakes.

Well, since we've had it, we've gone canoing exactly twice -- once when we loaded it on top of the car and drove across town to Lake Wingra, our smallest lake. It was lovely. We paddled across the lake to the University of Wisconsin Arboretum and visited haunts that we normally access by foot. The other time we took it up to Lake Michigan with us on our annual camping trip. It is definitely not designed for the bigger waves. I got scared, Mr. Ether got exasperated with me, and we had a little fight out on the water. Since then the canoe has held the concrete of our driveway down very nicely and that's all.

Recently I had been thinking of getting rid of it. It's monstrously heavy. We live, literally, two blocks from a gentle peaceful river that connects two of our lakes, and we never use the canoe. Last weekend I was talking with a friend about it, and she threw out the idea that some of us could go in on a nice lightweight canoe as a kind of time-share and rent space from the city parks department to store it.

*Lightbulb above my head* Why don't we -- DUH -- instead of buying a new canoe, just rent a spot for the canoe we already possess? I called the parks department today, and for $75/year I am leasing a berth on a canoe rack that is right next to the river three blocks from our house! I am psyched!

Trivial Pursuit #1

Sparkly has been tormenting us lately with pleas to play Lord of the Rings trivia. I don't know why. Mr. Ether plays with her and always beats her. I just refuse; there would be no way I could answer even a fraction of the questions. I got back at her though, by forcing her to play Trivial Pursuit with us. Once we started playing I soon realized that our "Genus Edition" of Trivial Pursuit is probably 25 years old.

Here's an example of how the game goes, played with Sparkly. I'm reading the question: "What Zigfield Follies dancing girl was portrayed in Funny Girl?" Sparkly says, "What's Funny Girl?" I answer, "It was a movie. It starred Barbra Streisand." Sparkly says, "Who's Barbra Streisand?" So we never even got to the real answer to the question, which was Fanny Bryce. ("Who's Fanny Bryce?")

I got to gloat over instantly knowing the answer to "Who was married to Oona O'Neill?" (Charlie Chaplin, DUH.) But we were all stumped by "What was the name of Sir Isaac Newton's Dog?" and the unspoken corollary question, "WHY on Earth would anyone know the name of Sir Isaac Newton's dog?" although I'm sure one of you dear readers is brainy enough to know the answer to that! (Diamond, by the way. Its name was Diamond.)

So in the spirit of fun, I will periodically choose a question from our vintage Trivial Pursuit game and post it here. Then I'll sit back and wait for the answers to come pouring in, before posting the correct answer. Whee! Won't we have fun?!

Question #1: What sport features small hops called pitty pats at the end of a run of plinkers?