Tom,
Rockhead is one of my partners, my old boss, and still one of the best people on this earth. We don't consider our wilderness (mis)adventures together to be bad luck, but another interesting aspect of life in general -like our friendship of more than 15 years.

We laugh together, not at each other (usually - sometimes one or the other or both will do something that deserves it). Like the night we decided to minimally wash dishes. Last night out, tripped all day, tired and beat and dark and bugs. We didn't want to wash accompanied by the millions of bugs. So, we scraped and dry scoured the dishes, put them in a mesh bag and tried to sink them.

They floated.

In our current physical and mental state we stared at each other then burst into hysterial laughter. Decided that this wasn't really environmentally concious anyway, so hung them with the food pack.

As I recall, that was the same night he entertained us with shadow puppetry from inside his tent.

How Rockhead got his moniker (How I spent my summer vacation?).
Paddling across the west end of Saganagons (on a beautifully clear day), he and Troutman ran on a reef in the middle of the lake. The pointed top of a reef - no way to step out and push off. Don't want to rock the boat, 'cause while Rockhead is relatively small, Troutman isn't.
I don't recall how they finally got off - laughing too hard, I suspect. But, they did, and without incident.

Posted by Skip Guyer on March 04, 2000 at 09:11