late july/early august

I've just been thinking about some of the practical issues surrounding the early part of the trip. I'm a bit concerned that the two-day event in Minneapolis is quite early (25th-26th July) and that it *might* be a push for me to get out there ready for paddling at that point. That's not to say you shouldn't do it, although I'd really like to spend some time on that stretch of river, especially around Fort Snelling, so hope you wouldn't be averse to passing along there again?

I was actually wondering what you thought about signing up for a short course on canoeing or kayaking at an outdoor centre in Minnesota - say a couple of days, if we can find one? I notice that the St Cloud State University can organise training:

http://www.stcloudstate.edu/campusrec/outdoorendeavors/canoeshuttle.asp

This might be a good opportunity to pick the brains of the instructors about the river - St Cloud being on the Mississippi they would presumably be able to give us lots of advice - and also about gear we might not have thought of. If we then headed up to Lake Itasca (I'm assuming you'd want to start from source?) we'd have a period of fairly easy paddling to get used to the canoe etc.

There seem to be quite a lot of 'outfitters' in northern Minnesota who will work out what you need for the trip etc. I don't know how much these cost but would it be a good idea to email a few of them, just to see what they say? If there are any near Lake Itasca (which I guess there must be), it might be worth starting with them.

Anyway, just a few thoughts. Very happy to do some emailing - what do you think?

video camera

I have a camcorder, a Sony DCR-SR52E, which has a hard disc. (Helpful when you're travelling because you don't need to carry lots of tapes.) I haven't used it much because I bought when I started doing multimedia project work with students but they've never really gone for video - lots of animation and hypertext but not much live filming. It's a public holiday here on Monday so we'll probably be going to the seaside or something: an opportunity to dig the camera out and take a bit of experimental footage of seagulls or whatever :o)

I might go and have a chat with Rob, the theatre technician in our department. He's often a source of good ideas, and, if I describe the project to him, he might come up with further interesting ways to document it. Will let you know what happens...

equipment...

regarding recording equipment, I have the Zoom H4, which is probably pretty similar to the edirol you're looking at. I also have a higher quality stereo mic, and on the other end of the scale, my iPhone works fine as a quick and dirty recorder for notes and so on. I have a relatively decent point and shoot digital camera, also. What I do not have at all is any video camera. I had thought it would be good to have one for the trip, so maybe that's a good use of your budget? something to think about...

recording equipment

I just wanted to ask your thoughts about recording equipment for the Mississippi trip - do you already have equipment that you would be planning to take along? I'm asking because the admin people at work have reminded me that I have some money (around £500) left over from a teaching and learning grant that I received a couple of years ago and that I have to spend it before the end of June or it will be reabsorbed into general university funds. Because the grant was specifically related to teaching and learning, I have to spend the money on something I could reasonably use with students. (I don't think they'd let me put it towards a canoe, for example.) So I was thinking of buying an edirol digital recorder, which I could use to document the journey through Minnesota and which the students could use for their own research projects afterwards (assuming i don't drop it in the Mississippi).

I gather that edirol digital recorders store about 16 hours of audio in 16bit wav format or 96 hours in mp3 format. Now, I'm assuming that you'd be using something mcuh more sophisticated than that for interviews and ambient sound but I thought that, as well as the recordings you make for the work itself, it might be interesting to keep an audio diary, and mp3s would be fine for that purpose - in fact, they'd be ideal for posting on a blog as an interesting alternative to text.

I wanted to run this past you before doing anything, though. If there's equipment that you need to buy, I could put the £500 towards that instead (bearing in mind that it would belong to Sheffield University afterwards, so it would be good to use it for some discrete item). Let me know what you think.

small canoes

I was very interested to read this:

The canoe worked out fine, but was larger than necessary from the headwaters down to Bemidji. Bemidji State University’s Outdoor Program Center rents smaller (pre-scratched) canoes that would have been more appropriate for that first stretch.

I agree that it might well be a good idea to hire one of these smaller canoes and then up-grade in Minneapolis. I've been jotting down a list of things that would need to be done before we set off and most of them can be done from a distance. This seems the ideal way to avoid having to do a lot of preparation in situ.

Incidentally, I followed the links you posted and was looking at some photos of the river in its very early stages - it made me very excited! (Have ordered a big map of Minnesota for my wall at work...)

canoe information

Jeff sounds like he might be an ideal source of advice and ideas, and if we can enlist him to join us, that'd be totally cool, too! right now, I'm feeling like the idea of inviting a whole array of different people to participate as they like might be a really wonderful thing. instead of the solo trip I originally envisioned, it becomes a sort of fragmentary ragged little caravan of assorted folks with a variety of perspectives and interests in doing the trip. I doubt it will get out of hand, because how many people are really crazy enough to drop everything and come along? but those who do will be self-selecting to be interesting companions, I think!

anyway, I'm trying to keep focused on a few things OTHER than this project, but I couldn't help doing a bit of googling about canoe travel after our conversation yesterday:

http://www.bucktrack.com/Mississippi_Canoe_Planning.html

http://sourcetosea.net/if-i-were-to-paddle-the-mississippi-again/

the latter had this little tidbit:

The canoe worked out fine, but was larger than necessary from the headwaters down to Bemidji. Bemidji State University’s Outdoor Program Center rents smaller (pre-scratched) canoes that would have been more appropriate for that first stretch.

so maybe we should rent a smaller canoe (or borrow kayaks) for the first part of the trip and then outfit an expedition canoe when we get to Minneapolis? this might mean no need to scope out MN in June, we could just show up in late July and get started...

jeff

Great to talk again last night! I was just telling Jess Dubow, one of the other Sheffield people involved in the project, about our plans. Her boyfriend (partner? significant other?), Jeff, is American and lives in Florida. He's ex-US army and is now an academic geographer working on climate (which, given the focus on flooding, might be useful in itself). He's also a lovely guy - I met him last time he was over here and I really like him.

Anyway, Jeff is a southerner (from Mississippi, I *think*, although don't quote me on that) and, because of his military training and his work in physical geography, has a lot of experience of expeditions like ours. Jess reckons that he knows some parts of the Mississippi pretty well too.

She suggested that, at the very least, we might talk to him about some of the practical (and, maybe, climatological) aspects of the trip, but she also suspects that, once he hears about it, he might well want to come along (which, because he's very practical and capable, might be quite a good thing?)

Anyway, Jess is out of town for a few days now, so I'll talk to her about it further on Friday.

transport

I hope you don't mind - I thought I'd post your message about modes of transport on the blog because it occurred to me that these practical decisions may well turn out to be important when we come to talk/write about the project later. They will have implications for the kinds of things we discover and what we do with them.

one thing to start thinking about is HOW we want to travel down the river. possibilities include

kayak
canoe
motorboat
houseboat

bicycle (there are bike trails along pretty much the whole river)

car

I do not own any boats, have some experience kayaking and canoeing, but not a lot. canoes are bigger than kayaks, so better if we are carrying all our stuff, but kayaks are more maneuverable. perhaps a 2-person kayak would have some decent storage space? something to look into.

if we have a series of intern/assistants, they could drive (I own a car) and meet us each day with tents, computers, etc. I could probably line up an intern or two for some chunk of the trip, which might be a good idea. they could function as research assistants, tech heads to update blogs as we go, etc.

we could start with self-powered and switch to a motorboat once the river gets bigger. although I have even less experience with a motorboat than with self-powered boats. (one can kayak for free in the hudson starting may 16, which I am planning to do to get some more experience...)

I have no idea what boats cost, especially now. there was an NYT article about people abandoning boats like crazy in these times, so we might be able to find a great deal on a boat and then sell or donate it at the end of the trip. also, snowbirds sometimes want people to bring their boats south for them in the winter, which might be something we could work out. trouble is, I don't like the SOUND of a
motor, of course. I have an idea that one of the things I'll want to do is record the sound of the river: industry and nature both, but a constant drone of OUR motor would make that pretty dull...

it'd be good to get an idea of your gut feelings about all this, since that's part of what I'm figuring the end of June trip is all about: scoping out the best approach to transportation...

just to mull over for now...

highway 61 is of course a reasonable thing to do in a car, as well, but this is the easy way out... hard to slow down enough to do it right????