16 June 2012

Farmington to Lesterville MO 44 miles (TransAm 1,310)

I am drinking a beer while writing this blog because it seems to be the fitting thing to do. It’s not a canned beer, which would have been most apropos. But now that I’m no longer twenty-something and poor, I don’t buy beer in a can. I have read recently, though, that aluminum is making a comeback, with canned craft beers on the rise, so maybe someday my stance will change but for now I’ll stick to my bottled crafts.

Budweiser would not be one of those, but if I was a Budweiser sales rep, I would ask to be placed in the Ozark region of southern Missouri, because down there, between the heat and a river full of country cousins, that beer is selling itself. There are as many coolers full of cold ones floating down the Black River this afternoon as there are tubes and rafts and tippy canoes full of backwater bellies wobbling over waistbands, oversized boobs hanging out of undersized bikini tops, and loose lips spouting off choice words about how they didn’t see the damn rock. Blast me a little Nitty Gritty Dirt Band from the eight dozen duallies parked up and down the riverbank and I will be complete, submerged deep between the stars and stripes of our great nation.

I’m sure this is what Gina was thinking as she floated downriver with her backwoods brethren, maybe even humming a bar or two from America the Beautiful. Or, she was thinking Holy Smokes, float one of those coolers my way, I’m about to melt from the humidity and crumple from the exhaustion of repeatedly standing up in the 6 inch shallows to push my tube down this so-called river after already having ridden 44 miles this morning and now as I settle back onto this here inner tube like a mama goose on her nest, pass me that pack of Lucky Strikes, wontchya Cletus?

But perhaps the best scenery of the day was that inside the rickety old school bus that served as our TransAmmers’ transport back to, and I quote directly from Gina as only Gina can declare, their “dumpy” campground. This would be the image of Rocky, their driver and the man who had them flying down the dirt-packed backroads at a speed that only a lead-foot German Grandma off her meds would attempt, spittin’ his tobacco juice directly into the front door-well. I sure hope this Missouri will start showing us something else.