here's some about quincy:

which was an interesting place.

breezed in, truly, and it was cold and breeze should say gusted,

and ungreatly got stuck in the muck off the tip of an island maybe 200 feet from our supposed dock, and had to have the fire department get us freed, and the tv came down cos they heard that call, and so we were on tv getting stuck and unstuck. and we went to a bar until midnight, where we were transformed temporarily into two englishmen.

And then it froze. The first time, and we woke in the morning thinking, my, it must not have frozen, because we were so warm. So our plants inside, our morning bright, we awoke to a new day unknowing of what is in store.

and then we got stuck again when the water went down that night, so that the next day when it was time to leave after getting sweet deals on necessities at the marine store up the hill, we couldn't budge.

but probably it was all predestined, and turned in many wonderful ways.

with robert on his canoe catching up to us just in time to coordinate our saviour john's dredging and pulling operation. and twelve at least very nice gentlemen and even one little boy with red hair pushed meanwhile. it was pretty amazing and worked and took at least 3 hours to do.

at which point the sun was going down, and so we docked just 100 feet away at the boat club, and drank and ate for a second night until midnight. complete with the englishmen, who stayed their own selves.

We awoke, with more and more discussions, politics, reflections, observations about this part of the country, the sometimes narrowsighted priveledge of community and values of achievement and success.

We are not trying to prove anything. We are on this trip for ourselves, and sucking up as much as we can it seems to reflect back onto us in peculiar ways. As should be expected. An assumption about freeloading or an assumption about needing.

We have been thinking about hosting dinners with all the food we have accumulated. Happily now some of it donated to the Hannibal food shelf where we heard on the news the need is larger than past years.

I wonder what of this has to do with flooding, with being helped so recently, losing livelihood to natural disaster (though we've heard not to national financial crisis yet). Feeling obliged to give back though skeptical that we are deserving.

And then we floated on again, making time to the lock, though finding our canoist friend waiting there as well. We find the lock anxiously waiting our speedy entry once we have finished our bacon basil and tomato sandwitches, and with rather little interest in conversation. There is a tug waiting to lock up. We share some picture taking with Robert and then see him off down the river.

Maybe we've already mentioned: his blog, his satellite tracker, is linked in our link section.