Back on the river!

Captain's Log - Day 14

We saw off or guests today and got back underway around 5pm.

But before Nealy left, she gave me a haircut! This is the second haircut she's given me. The first was good, but she outdid herself this time. No longer can the cast of Second City call me "Sensible Haircut Sam!" Far from sensible, this is the haircut of a river rat!

Between the mohawk, the fro, and the braids, I'm not sure which I like better. It's too soon to tell yet - I still need to gather responses from the public at large. It's amazing how differently people treat me based on my haircut!

The fro drew a lot of looks. And a lot of laughs. The braids gained my acceptance into a strata of society, most people would call white trash. It'll be interesting to see where the mohawk takes me!

Mike left us today! We're down a man. Let me tell you a bit about Mike. The guy can grill a chicken breast to perfection! He can burn an entire tree, inch by inch, even if it takes all night! He's also the undefeated Risk champion of Huck Finn 2010. Pretty impressive right? We're gonna miss Mike and his always visible, yet somehow  un-tanned, crack.

After we left the marina, we had only boated about half a mile before we came up on Lock #26. We waited on the hook while a southbound barge went through. There was a queue (for Micah, that's "kway-way) of barges, but the lockmaster had pity on us and said he'd sneak us through.

He told us to pull up on the bull nose on the Illinois side and tie off to the pin. Neither of us had any idea what bull nose was. By trial and error, we've determined that bull noses are the walls extending upriver (or downriver) from either side of the lock and that're rounded at the end and painted yellow.

After we pulled in-between the two bull noses, the lockmaster radioed us and told us to tie off to the pin and put our life jackets on. This was a bit spooky. We hadn't worn our life jackets yet, and we wondered if he knew something we didn't. We (and by "we" I mean Simon, because I was driving) tied off and held on for dear life as a barge pulled into the lock behind us. It came within about 35 feet! If, for some reason, they hadn't been able to stop, we would've been crushed between the barge and the lock gates!

Or at least the boat would've been crushed - Simon was holding onto a ladder the entire time and we were planning a hasty escape if the need arose.

Fortunately, the barge stopped. The deckhands tied it off with ropes the size of your arm! It was crazy how loud those ropes squealed and popped as they were pulled tight! The rest of our lockage went off without a hitch.

Check out this crazy house looking thing we passed! It was just south of the McKinley Highway and Railway Bridge at mile 190.5. I'm going to look on craigslist and see if it's for sale!

We're on the hook just north of St. Louis. We had enough daylight to go a bit farther, but it was either anchor where we are now, or cover about 10 miles in the dark (since there are no places to drop anchor out of the channel in St. Louis). Boating in the dark is not awesome, so we're saving the the city for tomorrow morning.