t minus

pictures first and poem second, blogger so decreed. sorry for the delayed updates, we've been going at superzoom speed with no time to spare. but here:

the reason that god made a window (so beautiful so beautifuuul)

the nets on which we'll sleep

little plantlings, our ballasts, and junior pushcart rally II sitting pretty on the stern

the welded but paddleless paddlewheels to be

there's chas's boat on the left, and our vessel on the right. the tandem of the testdrive.

miracle plant.

beautiful babies

the official and freshly painted identification signs


and the charts from srs. james k. harris and gerald f. burstein

it's all going up with all the festoons, and even our motor junior pushcart rally II is happy. he vroomed away last night, took us on our maiden voyage, and lindsey's leg is still numb from the vibrations. now it's just a matter of counting down until monday. with a whole lot of love, c. bernadette able

rainbow country

we were blessed today, and most days lately. amen.

A launch toast from chas and wendy

upon waking up and looking outside, Hannah's initial reaction to our newly erected house structure was "swing set?"

backup

Rubber shocks just like ours. If nothing else, this impressed the importance of lightness and agility in the water. We did some redeisigning after visiting this man.



if all else fails. we might borrow this waterbike. it's pretty lightweight and sleek, and it's last trip made it from Minneapolis to St. Louis in 3 weeks! amazing.

we lost our canoe

if anyone has seen a light blue canoe floating down the st croix or mississippi rivers it is ours and it blew away. please mail it back to us. thankyou.

We launched. with the help of Nelson the truck, some pulleys and Rebecca. It's sitting really high, perfectly so in fact, a little down in the front but that's to balance all the extra weight we[re going to have in back.

And finally the pontoons were done. Stuffed with enough foam, about 4/5 full and set up with their barrel skin. Strong on the bottom for rocks and damage and tight on the top for the foam to stay in.




And then, after a million brilliant maneuvers with pulleys and trees, flipped the deck onto the pontoons. Success thanks greatly to Rebecca Pskowski.