April 2 (Also April Fool's Day)
I'm sitting at my computer waiting for Marc Sotkin to call me for a BoomerAlley.com interview. We tried last week and they captured audio, but they failed to get the video. When I heard that news I was releived. You see, Marc is a comic...I mean a real comic...professional...actually makes a very good living being funny.

So when he set the interview up last week he emailed me to set the time. I emailed back "Clothes ON or OFF". And damn if he didn't think that was funny and told me to answer the web call naked. He's the professional, so I did...but I had a piece of mesh netting near by that my granddaughter plays with, so I pulled it over my head. The call comes in and Marc asks "Is that a veil?" Well he liked it as a set up to the interview and he wanted to do a funny piece up front and then take a more serious tact with the actual interview.

But I'm thinking, man, there are a lot of people who will think I'm pretty weird. And over the last week I've been worried about how Marc will treat the opening and scared that I'm going to look like a fool.

So this morning when I got a call from Marc and he told me that the video had failed and that we needed to redo the interview, I thinking "thank god". But damn, Marc wants me naked again. So here I sit waiting for the call...naked.

I know the Captain is going to want to post the piece on this site. More so if I look like an idiot. And I'm afraid you are all going to have the chance to judge for yourselves.

March 25
We have coffee! Lots of coffee. The good folks at Green Mountain Coffee in Vermont shipped us a BUNCH of coffee for the trip. We might not need to sleep the entire trip. I opened a bag and made a pot this morning and my wife Linda commented on how good the coffee was over breakfast. I'm pleased. I take great pride in my camp coffee.

We have changed our trip schedule. Russ Ryan, my brother-in-law, is driving us over to Pennsylvania to put us on the river. He has a conflict with our plan to leave Kentucky on Thursday April 8 to launch on April 9th. We are now leaving Kentucky on Friday and putting in at Brownsville on Saturday April 10.

Time is speeding up as we try to get our act together for the trip. Mac will be leaving Florida for Atlanta soon and then on to Louisville so we can organize for our departure to Pennsylvania. It's been a bit chilly and drizzling rain today, but spring is coming to Kentucky.

We've been hearing from more people who are learning about our trip. Scott Campbell has invited us to camp on his farm in Grindstone, PA. Scott has a sheep farm...which is wonderfully coincidental and a little of history repeating itself. My great, great, great grandfather, Joseph Stewart who originally undertook this trip to bring his family to Kentucky, also raised sheep. He was a weaver, and when he made the journey aboard that keelboat he brought his loom with him. I like the idea of camping on Scott's farm the night before we leave.

Last night I spent about a hour talking with Chris Haines who writes for the local newspaper that covers this area of Pennsylvania. She was delightful to talk with and she knows Scott. I invited her to come by camp the night before we leave for a cup of coffee...and that will be a cup of Green Mountain Coffee. "Coffee worthy of Camp...It'll open your eyes." (This entry has been brought to you by Green Mountain Coffee, a proud sponsor of 1790 Ohio River Run.)

March 11
Mac and I have been talking on the phone. We are both getting pretty excited...but we are both nervous too. I walked down to the Ohio River yesterday and I was surprised by how slow the current seemed. It's warmed up here in Kentucky and it's feeling like spring. The weather on the news has been reporting that the snow is melting in Pennsylvania and I'm thinking that maybe the spring flooding will be over before we put in at Ten Mile Creek on April 9th. So I expecting more current...instead a stick I saw on the edge of the channel seemed to be barely moving. Back at my office I went online and discovered that the Ohio River flow, from Pittsburgh all the way to Louisville was running between 1 and 2 miles per hour. Man I hope the river can give us more help than that.

Over the past few days we have been corresponding with John Powell in Pittsburgh. He belongs to a canoe club and is very familar with the river there. He warned us to watch out for the barge traffic, and pointed out that we can expect to have trouble finding a campsite near Pittsburgh. I had been worrying about where we could stay overnight near the city. Well in no time at all a fellow that knows John and had learned about our trip, wrote us an email and said he could help us with a campsite in Pittsburgh. Raymond Perr has solved our campsite problem.

We have also gotten offers of help from Craig Tatterson. He is with the Rotary Club in Gallipolis, Ohio. He offered the use of his camper across the river at Gallipolis Ferry WVA...running water and electricity. Sounds like heaven.

Captain Gary Morton has invited us to stop and camp at his marina...Rayland Marina at mile marker 81.3. A camping green, showers, and the good Captain offered transportation to get to stores if we need supplies. Captain Morton even gave me the phone number to his boat. His boat phone? I'm inspired...I have begun to refer to my cell phone as the canoe phone.

Tonight Maria Fetock is mentioning our trip to the Rotary Club in Brownsville, PA. Maria is the President of the club. I learned that the Rotary Clubs in her District are organizing a Polio Walk-a-thon on Sunday April 25th. I wrote Maria and Bill Johnson (Club Secretary) that we might be able to help them get press attention to publicize their event. We'll be putting in 2 weeks before their fund raiser and will pass through Brownsville the first day we start out. Maria planned to mention us at their Club meeting tonight. Brownsville is at the site of Redstone Old Fort...an ancient fortification that when the first white settlers ask the local Indians who had built it, they said it was built before even they arrived.

Redstone Old Fort was probably built by the earlier native inhabitants known as the Mississpian Mound Builders. I've seen their work at Cahokia IL which is beyond imagination, and at Fort Ancient and Serpent Mount in Ohio which are also impressive(though these last two sites were possibly built by the Ohio Hopewell Mound Builders). Unfortunately Redstone Old Fort no longer stands. But the town of Brownsville has additional historical significance. It was the site of Fort Burd, built by the British in 1759, under Colonel James Burd. In 1786 Jacob Bowman established a trading post at the old fort and this point on the Monongahela River was the western end of Chief Nemacolin's trail. My great, great grandfather, Joseph Stewart was born very near here that same year in 1786. Four years later his Dad, Mom and three sisters left for Kentucky taking the same route Mac and I are following 220 years later.

February 25
The tent arrived! Johnson Outdoors, the corporate parent of Eureka!, were kind enough to provide us with a Timberline 6 Outfitter Tent. Man, it's a high grade piece of shelter. Lynn Martin and Steve Van Dis of Johnson Outdoors learned about our trip and decided to help us out. I spent time on the phone with Steve who talked me out of my first impressions of tents we might use, and talked me into this Timberline beauty. What a good piece of advice...that's why you talk with experts. I'll post a picture of it set up on the river.

February 22
The sun is out and some of the snow is melting here in Kentucky. This lifts my hope that spring will arrive before we shove off from Tenmile Creek. I checked a Corp of Engineers web site two days ago and they were listing the amount of ice at each of the locks up around Pittsburgh. Some had an inch of ice on the river...and one listed four inches. I just shut the site and refused to think about that.

February 16
Holy smokes...50 days and counting down. Mac and I both freak out whenever we open this site and look at the countdown on the home page. Out my kitchen window I can see our canoe sitting upside down on sawhorses...a 16 foot Charles River model Old Town with about a foot of snow on it. And in 50 days we are putting in?

I got a call this morning from Bob James in Wheeling WV. He called to invite us to their club and let us know they will help us anyway we need. They are beginning to think of ways to leverage our trip through Wheeling on the Ohio River to generate local excitement for their Polio Plus project. Bob was a delight to talk with. He invited us to their local Rotary meeting at noon on Tuesdays at the Conevention Center...which he says is right on the river. He said they's put a hot meal on for us...and I said he may need to hose us off before they'll let us inside.

It is one of those wonderful serendipitous thing that happens. Last night I learned that my dear neice Lauren is marrying her true love, Stuard Lax on April 17th. Lauren and Stu live on the Stewart Family farm...you know, the "forty acres more or less on the waters of the Ohio" that my great great great grandfather settled after he made the trip from Pennsylvania to Kentucky that Mac and I are preparing to retrace. (Okay, let me see someone diagram that sentence.) I figure that we will have been on the river for one week by then...and probably near Wheeling (if things go right), and I'd been trying to imagine how we could find someone to secure our canoe, and gear, so Mac and I could go back to the wedding for two days. Low and behold, Bob James calls this morning. Problem solved.

February 10
Fifty seven days to launch and I'm looking at more snow than we've had in Kentucky in 12 years. Man, the weather better do a major shift in the next 57 days...and I can guess that we'll be seeing high water from the snow melt. The plot thickens.

January 27
Every morning I drive along the Ohio River. I come down Mockingbird Valley from Indian Hill to take River Road to my office in Butchertown. This morning I pulled into Cox's Park to look at the current. The river was running high and fast...much like I imagine we might experience when we find ourselves on this river in early April. I guess the current was running at about 5 to 6 miles per hour or maybe even faster...and I could imagine Mac and me canoeing with it about 50 yards off the bank. It looked like something we could handle.

There were some good size tree trunks riding the current. In the few minutes I stood there I saw several trunks about three feet in diameter and over twenty feet long, and I saw one big honker that must have been 60 feet long. The big one looked like the Lock Ness Monster swimming along near the middle of the river.

About thirty day ago I looked at the river to see how I felt about traveling the Ohio by canoe. On that day before Christmas the wind was blowing out of the west at about 30 miles per hour and the swells in the river current were three feet high and white capping. As I stood there I was apprehensive about our ability to handle the conditions. I wondered if we were skilled enough to even undertake a trip that would cover over 600 miles and might take 45 days or more.

This morning gave me more confidence in our chances of making our trip. In fact, the fast-running water looked very helpful. We could make 20 miles in four hours just riding the current...while dodging tree trunks. It occured to me that wind might be a bigger problem than high water. Any heavy weather we might encounter will be blowing out of the west right into our faces.