So, about that elephant shitting in the room...

No... I am not talking about my inability to be grammatically consistent with verb/noun temproal tense agreement...

I am talking about:

 The 2.5 horse Merc that is hanging off the back of The Mermaid. Mr. Charlton Heston.

Very few aspects of anything I have ever done have been so commented about than the fact that there is a gasoline motor hanging off my boat.  Texts, emails, comments... etc.

The name is Charlton Heston because at 2.5 horses... he is basically having a back up really good rower on board that doesn't eat all the oreo cookies.  The best rower I have ever heard of if Mr Heston in his prime... (I would have named it Koslik if only he had joined the Greek Navy instead of the US Air Force.) Again, very few popular references to row boats so Ben-Hur makes another appearance.

Also, at 2.5 horses, it hardly turns The Mermaid into a cigaret boat.  If anything it is like watching "The African Queen" at half speed. Sort of a really high dollar weed wacker easing your boat along! I have found that continuous rowing is about 2.5 knots through the water, and Heston takes the boat at a continuous 3 - 3.5.  Like I said a really good rower who doesn't eat the cookies!

When I had originally conceived of this trip, I imagined it as a modern convenience free endeavor.  A wooden ship, iron men, a continent untamed! Also, I didn't have an outboard motor to put on it and wasn't going to spend a thousand plus dollars when effectively I could save that money just by exercising. 

Earlier, I had implied that I put the Mr Heston the motor on there for my mother's pease of mind.  That is not really true.  She did imply that I was foolish for not having a way to speed to safety if something bad happened, but the real proponent of the motor was my dad.  No doubt because he was looking at a lot of maps and thinking about what it would be like to row that distance.

(I did NOT look at any maps... thus I was blissfully happy about the idea of a water born continent crossing exercise program. I figured just keep going down the river... who needs a map.)

Anyways... my dad, armed with the knowledge of the size of the continent, knowledge of life at 3 knots, and being already the happy owner of a reliable outboard motor convinced me to put it on the boat the day before we got on the river.  

That said... it is my boat, I drilled the holes to put the motor on there, I made The Mermaid into the partial motor boat she is today.  So, it was cheap of me to pretend anyone but I am the reason there is a motor on my boat.  

Thus, adding a 2.5 horse motor turned this continent crossing from an insane slog of physical exurtion into merely a crazy trudge of corporal discomfort.

I know it... I will just have to live with the shame of being the pussy that put a motor on my boat. Whatever, we can arm wrestle in St Louis.