Remember the mayor?

I seem to be the only person in town who's embarrassed by this.

http://www.startribune.com/local/94262534.html


Back from the canoe trip with so many bald eagle sightings under my belt. Also so many bug bites. We also had an AlAnon meeting every night of the trip, because that's how Ely rolls. My food lasted, my wounds have finally stopped bleeding, the sun came out, and I got a sunburn so scorching that I'm virtually radioactive. I've so far had four strangers stop me in the grocery store or library to tell me that I have a sunburn. Thank you, Strangers. Were it not for your input I would have had no idea.

Out of office, somewhere in Canada.

Readers: I'm leaving tomorrow morning to go on my very first BWCAW canoe trip! Since the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is basically what Ely is famous ("famous") for, this is very exciting. My boss planned an eight day trip for me, her family, and two of their 50+ friends. We're going to paddle north across the Canadian border many, many, many miles and cross several portages. There will be no other humans and millions of mosquitoes. I will probably return seven pounds heavier because of my bug bites. Definitely not because of eating too much though, because I just laid out all the food I bought for myself for the trip and realized it's probably not enough. No teacher like experience, right? Also, snow is forecasted for the next three days.
Everyone else on the trip has acknowledged that I am woefully unprepared for it. I actually have a fair bit of camping experience, but in contrast to five people who live off the grid and cut ice out of frozen lakes with chainsaws for their refrigeration, I'm hopeless. I have no idea how to set up a camping stove, I had to be lent every single piece of equipment necessary (even Ziploc bags), I've never portaged a canoe, and I had to buy watershoes today because I haven't owned a pair in years. I will be the token City Girl on the trip, the girl who has never been seen without a hair ribbon and cardigan, the one who was naive enough to ask if I should bring toilet paper. (The answer is no.) Expectations are pretty low for me. But they are underestimating one thing about me, and that is how happy I will be not bathing or changing my clothes for eight days.
Wish me luck! I will be untraceable and probably hungry for the next week.

Also, this is completely unrelated, but I can't resist. Tonight I attended the graduation ceremony for the local community college. It was way longer and more arduous than it should have been, but one thing lightened my spirits. A very large male graduate sitting in the back row of chairs didn't notice that he had ripped an eighteen-inch hole in the butt of his graduation gown when he sat down, and whatever he was wearing underneath it was hiked down too far to be seen. So throughout the two hour ceremony there was a pasty pyramid of flesh smiling out at the crowd. I noticed that I wasn't the only one who took a close-up picture.

Classifieds Selections 5/5

--Meat Raffle Saturday, 5pm. Sponsored by Ely Igloo Club. Followed by Karaoke at 8pm.

--Twin Cities Man (70-ish) looking for a fishing partner, friendship etc in & around Ely. ---_---_----. Leave message.

--FOR SALE: Fresh Beaver Carcasses, call ---_----.

Monster Trucks

Spring has come to northern Minnesota. Flowers are starting to crawl out of the ground. The birds have come stumbling home. More than two restaurants are open. Most tellingly, the monster trucks are out. Now that spring is here the townies put away their snowmobiles and break out their spring line of transportation. I started seeing these babies around town once the ice on the roads had melted enough that it no longer took the trucks four blocks to come to a stop. (I encountered one this winter at a four-way stop, which was an eye-opener for sure. The truck bombed through the icy intersection, ninety degrees to the flow of traffic, as the driver laid on the horn to announce that he wouldn't be stopping.) I have five or six favorite trucks that I see around, all of which have cabs that start at eye level and wheels the size of bears. One of my favorites has a deer antler welded on above each window. I initially thought these trucks were charming, but I'm developing resentments. Now that it's spring I can indulge in one of my greatest joys, which is sleeping with my windows open. However, I live right on the main drag, and truck owners have lately been rejoicing in that quintessential small-town pastime of cruising around town without mufflers. But, Ely is a very small town. If someone's in the mood for cruising they're on a six to nine minute loop, depending if all three stoplights have started blinking. Guys, we recognize you. This is the seventh time in an hour you've roared past the grocery store. If the ladies didn't flock to your truck on the first pass, they're definitely not going to on the seventh.
So now it's sort of a love/hate relationship. I would rather the drivers find another nighttime hobby (maybe learning how to read? Too harsh?), but I still find the trucks spectacular when parked. I've been trying to surreptitiously take photos when nobody's around. I found this one right outside my apartment. That's my landlord's not-actually-tiny car in the background.