The ECP…........

What I need is peace in my life.

I see old guys tying flies for fishing and they seem at peace. I see old guys whittling on pine sticks all day long and they seem at peace. The Mexicans next door tear apart their Chevys. Jigsaw puzzles to reading two thousand year old religious ghost stories seem to put some people at peace.

I envy these people, I really do.

So far in my 49 years of existence I haven’t found anything that really lets my mind drift off into a peaceful haze. Sailing gets close. It’s a bit of work and awfully expensive to charter a half million dollar yacht in the Caribbean, but it gets close. Chemical release just doesn’t seem to cut it for me. The days in college being narced out of my mind in the bottom of a swmming pool with scuba gear on are long past.

My fondest memories as a child were when we went to Aunt DeeDee’s cottage on Lake Pocotopaug in Connecticut. We would get up early in the morning and paddle the old Grumman aluminum canoe out to the sinking island and gather blueberries by the bucket full. Mom would do the blueberry pie thing and I got fat. Except for the summer thunderstorms there, those were the happiest and mot carefree days I can remember.

So a canoe it is.

A new Grumman 17 runs about $1,200.00 and weighs about 66 pounds

A new Kevlar 17 about $2,500.00 and weighs about 44 pounds.

I live in south Florida so I need something alligator proof. From what I am told, no canoe can stand up to a 17 foot long horny male alligator looking to mate or kill, or God forbid both! Florida (being the backwards ass state that it is) will not let you shoot a gator even in self defense.

I have thought about having Tabasco sauce mixed into the Kevlar epoxy resin for a light weight foul tasting craft. But bad taste would require the beast to strike first. That seems like a moot point to me.

So I need some sort of Star Trek like force field around my canoe. I have been toying with the idea of an electric field of some sort. Something like Captain Nemo shocked that giant octopus with. I’m still working out the details of a high powered current in the water while I am sitting in an aluminum boat. After all, the idea here is to repel dinosaurs and not become a human flashbulb.

I’m looking for peace, not the ultimate deep black sleep of death. I could get that by skipping my Plavix….