Same old song / just a drop of water / in the endless see
all we do
crumbles to the ground /though we refuse to see
dust in the wind – kansas

I was out biking on the Military Ridge trail between Dodgeville & Madison, Wisconsin.  On this Day, 10-year-old in tow, we road as far as a small (below 700ppl) town of Ridgeway.  While everyone else went under the shelter to eat lunch, I wandered.  I came across this beat, white canoe leaned up behind an old concrete block building.  The canoe was part of a menagerie of toss-away items, like you seem to find behind every old brick building. (Why is that??)  In the small island strip of sickly grass and even sicker saplings caught between gravel and concrete, rested trail signs, pallets, windows, windblown garbage and of course the canoe..  

“I don’t want to ever become like that poor, forgotten canoe.” I thought.

As I waked around the corner my eyes set upon a bright splash of blue on the street beyond.  The old bus was emblazoned with sloppy yellow paint declaring, “OLDGUYS FUNTOURS”.   The fun tour apparently included a drive to Porky’s Pub.  Porky’s, I found out, is known in the area for their famous, “Trough”.  The “Trough” is served in a metal trough and drank with straws. It comes in three sizes-small (1-2 people), medium (3-5 people) and super (6 or more). According to their website they also have, “Meat Paddles” every Sunday at 2pm.  I don’t have any idea what meat paddles are exactly.

I thought, “I don’t want to find myself old and alone climbing off a blue bus to drink from a metal trough either.”

It’s a fine line isn’t it?  You don’t want to judge other people’s lives. Heck, at another time in my life I may have loved a night at “The Trough”.  We cannot guess what personalities or fates bring people to a place where their riding down a highway in a bouncy, blue bus happily being part of an “Old Guy” tour.  More power, and more joy to them.  Still, I can’t help but think of the old line, “Life is not a dress rehearsal”.. Not to mention that famous bit from Hamlet. The inner voice that keeps saying that life is something more than simply passing time, is one of the reasons I kayak. I’m not a type A. I don’t need to win a race or conquer a continent. If anything I’m driven to slow down and do my best to take in every moment, every sight, every sound and every subtle breeze.  Call it a daily quest to recognize every quiet and raucous sensuality created by the planet we were born upon, and a hope to be right in the middle of a few of them along the way.  None of us know where we’re going.. Well, I certainly don’t.  I just know I don’t want to take a squeaky old blue bus to get there.

As one of my favorite bloggers has the habit of saying, “Respectfully submitted,”

d