Overture

A few years before we spent 66 days paddling 2300 miles through 10 states from Lake Itasca to New Orleans, before the vast marshes; class II rapids; beer-drinking, 4-wheeler riding locals; late night raids by paddling terrorists; sudden diarrhea; jumping carp; blistering sunburn; blind taste tests of potted meat products; oozing, seeping muck; suspected murders in the dead of night; anonymous, apocalyptic messengers; a dope-smoking, gravy-slinging, illustrated river rat; quests for poop cover; and Tom-Tom the Jackal Boy; before my transformation from a soft, bookish, bioinformatician into a lean, hard, hairy paddler; and before the euphoria, exhaustion, terror, love, tranquility, triumph, and defeat, Ingvar proposed spending a couple of months dodging barges while we canoed the entire Mississippi River, and I told him that I wasn't interested in such a long, dull, tedious trip.