Minnesota Lakes

Aside from a short trip to see all the wigs stored in the Sunsphere in Knoxville, TN, I’ve spent most of the past month in Ely in upstate Minnesota not far from Lake Superior.  Ely is the gateway to the Boundary Waters and the area is just packed with all sorts of great lakes.  In fact, Ely is nestled on the shores of two lakes – Miner’s Lake, named after the men who worked the mine prior to its flooding, and Shagawa Lake, which I’m sure has a perfectly reasonable story behind its name.

But then people around here have a peculiar way of naming lakes.  For instance, Lake One, which is followed by Lake Two, Lake Three and Lake Four, is the most popular entry way to the Boundary Waters.  I guess that’s logical.  What better place to start than the beginning.  But there’s also an Elephant Lake, which is smaller than Duck Lake and a Big Lake that is somewhere between the two in size.  Then there’s Fourmile Lake, which is probably less than three (Ninemile is less than one) and T Lake which is more phallic-shaped than ‘T’-shaped.

On some long forgotten Thursday, somebody found a bay, so it was called Thursday Bay.  The next day, that person found another.  It was named Friday Bay.  And then Saturday Bay and Sunday Bay.  Lady Boot Bay does mark a fair resemblance to Italy and one Gun Lake looks more like a gun than the other Gun Lake.  I’m not sure which of the three Mud Lakes is more representative of its name.

There are any number of lakes named after bass and ducks and bears: Basswood, just Bass, Black Duck, just Duck, Bear Head, Bear Head Island, and just Bear.  Why not?

Still, these are mostly reasonable names for bodies of water.  There are a few that boggle the minds of traditionally-named lake enthusiasts:

Dislocation Lake.  Sure, I can imagine some poor guy telling the story of that fateful fall out on the lake that dislocated his shoulder, but I can see him exclaiming, “Damn you Dislocation Lake!  You’ve won again!”

Ball Club Lake.  Fag Lake.

Bologna Lake.  Hot bologna sandwiches are a popular dish around here.  On Thursdays both grocery stores advertise them as deli specials.  But, is it delicious enough to warrant a lake?  If it is, let’s at least change it to Hot Bologna Sandwich Lake.

Two separate Fungus Lakes.  And my personal favorite, Wooden Leg Lake.  I can only imagine.

The Old “Ride a Day, Skip Two Days”

My cross-country ride training, if it can be called that, has been a bit sporadic since, well, the beginning, which was about two weeks ago.  I rode 65 miles today.  Yesterday, I spent fishing on Fall Lake outside of Winton, Minnesota – population 169.  The day before that, I spent sharing pizza and pitchers of Schmidt beer with my parents at the Hideaway.  (They have an excellent myspace page in need of a long overdue update.  It boasts dirtball rides and live music from “Good Looking Corpse.”  Click the link.)  Then I went fishing.

Wednesday, I rode 44 miles to Hibbing, Minnesota, but did not find Bob Dylan.  I settled for a Nasty New-Yorker roast beef sandwich at Zimmy’s, which as you may guess is a restaurant taken after Dylan’s real last name.  After eating one of those babies, I’m heading back to New York City, I do believe I’ve had enough.

Needless to say, my distance is already up there, but my consistency is severely lacking.  I’ll try to improve this over the coming weeks,  but it’s hard to turn down an invitation to the lake or a cold Schmidt at Zaverl’s.  Besides, I’m no boy scout.  I’ve seen enough of them the past month to be sure of that.  I would never want to wear a sash anyway.  However  step-dad, Jim, wants me to carry a retractable asp baton with which to fend off mongrel dogs and would-be advantage-taking opportunists.  That would be a boy scout move.  The asp is a rather thin yet blunt expandable baton used to beat the ever-loving shit out of anything or anyone that attempts to impede the smoothness of my journey.  I’m still thinking about it, but lo and behold, all of my asp-kicking questions can be answered on the local firearms enthusiasts online forum.  Isn’t the internet great!

I think tomorrow I’ll hunker down and ride for a second day in a row.  Maybe I’ll ride down to the North American Bear Center to see if they have any bear-o-dactyls.

Mission: Southern Tier

Well if the map didn’t give it away, I’m going to ride my brand spanking new Surly Long Haul Trucker touring bike across this great land, from sea to shining sea,  and all that patriotic jazz with cymbal flurries, sparklers and red, white and blue coattails.  Setting out from the Whale’s Vagina (San Diego), I’ll backtrack along the old German settler’s route all the way to St. Augustine, Florida where scholars maintain the first Germans arrived at the New World on their U-boats sometime in the late 1930′s.

My Chariot - The Surly Long Haul Trucker

From the mountains, to the salt marshes, to the oceans white with foam, I’ll be riding one heck of a Conestoga wagon.  It’s a bit chunky, but I’m positive it will survive a crash careening down the New Mexican Rockies at 50 mph.

I’m not normally one for personifying inanimate objects, but if I did,

I'm not getting an eye patch

I’d name the LHT something like “Old Blue” or “Dollor,” after John Wayne’s steed in True Grit.  It will be carrying a hell of a load, so it would have to be aptly named.  Most of the time, guys give their rides some girly name like “Bessie” or “Sally,” but that’s not me.  Well, perhaps that’s not the LHT.  It doesn’t seem right that it be Surly Betty, the Long Haul Trucker.  I guess it could be Large Marge, she hauled quite a load, but that would mean I was riding a ghost.  “It was ten years ago, on a night just like tonight…”

The End of an Era

My days as an oil and gas expat have come to an end.  I’ve resigned from my post in Nigeria and left the company behind entirely.  So, sadly, no more Houston for the time being either.

Alas, I’m happy.

Now I don’t have to scrape and claw in hope of something interesting and worthwhile to happen in my life that I can spin into some terrific story to post on this blog.  Instead, I can just sit back, read all day, drink the occasional afternoon beer and fabricate fantastical situations with which to regale my very few readers.  Actually, I might not have to make anything up at all, as I’m planning an upcoming adventure.  Here’s a clue:

And People Complain about the American Welfare System?

It’s been roughly eight months since federal amnesty was granted to several thousand Niger Delta militants.  Under the agreement, the government agreed to pay repentant militants a monthly stipend as long as the militants underwent a societal reintegration and technical education process.  Unfortunately up to now, the federal government has been incapable of meeting the amnesty’s provisions, falling short on payments and causing the soon-to-be-ex-ex-militants to become increasingly restless.

Recently, the government decided to correct the stipend payment procedure by transferring funds directly to ex-militants’ personal bank accounts.  Previously, the government had paid stipends to the militant leaders for dispersal of funds to “their boys,” as the militant leaders and the Nigerian media so affectionately call these (former?) criminals.  However, this move has caused an outrage amongst former militant leaders.  The leaders claim that, unless funds are sent directly to ex-militant leaders for distribution, they will lose complete control of their boys, which will lead to protests, violence and general unrest.

There are so many flaws in this single provision of the amnesty agreement that it is almost as if the government set up the amnesty to fail.  To begin with, there is no clear directive within the agreement that states how funds will be distributed.  It only states that repentant militants will receive a monthly stipend pending cooperation with the plan.  Now, despite such a lack of unambiguous language, in many places it would be understood quite clearly that the militants themselves would receive agreed upon payments.  However, that is never the case in a place such as Nigeria and the amnesty plan is sure to produce a power struggle.  From the onset, former militant leaders demanded they be paid the stipends so that they could properly distribute the money, under the pretext that only the leaders themselves could distinguish between the truly repentant and those merely taking advantage of the system and claiming a false career of militancy.  Without surprise, the federal government obliged.

Almost immediately, there began a torrent of complaints from ex-militants claiming receipt of short and/or delinquent payments.  This led to protests ranging from peaceable gathering to riots that ended in extreme acts of violence including assault and even rape.  It was later found that in some cases, former leaders were at times keeping a portion of each militant’s rightful dues for, the leaders claimed, “community purposes.”  I am only imagining, but I suspect someone in the Federal Amnesty Committee had gotten wise to this and ceased payment to leaders because they were merely skimming from the amnesty funds.

The entire amnesty deal only complicates the already ruinous web of corruption.  The government cannot meet its promises, producing further uneasiness in an already delicate situation.  Ex-militant leaders are withholding funds from their constituents.  The ex-militants are creating havoc at the expense of the general public.  Basically, everybody is trying to screw everybody.  However, of the four groups with a stake in the amnesty – ex-militants, militant leaders, the government and the general public – it seems, once again, the general public is the only group really getting screwed here.  The amnesty deal indicates to me that everybody in this country has the myopic vision of progress – it’s a pay off.  Like somebody is saying, “If we can pay them just enough to abstain from all out warfare, then we can hold out until the end of our political terms.”

MBM Seeking SWF for Bearing Children and Good Jiggy-Jiggy

Being a white man in Nigeria, you want for nothing.  This is true of everything, no matter how big or small.  If you want a meat pie, you will be provided one in a matter of minutes.  If you want a woman, there will be one waiting for you at home by the end of the day.  But, being a Nigerian man in Nigeria has similar benefits.  If a Nigerian man wants a meat pie, he will have a meat pie.  If a Nigerian man wants a woman, he will have a woman.

On the subject of women, I haven’t quite figured out if the male’s view of the female is that women are objects to be collected, like a grandmother’s Hummel collection or an uncle’s set of presidential plates, or if women are commodities to be bartered with, like grain or yams, for status, power and connections.  I guess they are very often seen as both.  So, that being said, it’s no surprise that I have been asked to provide a “nice, white American girl” to be the second girlfriend and eventual wife and mother of a child for a Nigerian prince.  I have been tasked to seek out such a woman.

So, I present the advert:

Married Nigerian male seeks single white American female to be second wife.  She must be very beautiful but not too thin.  She must have a nice bust and nicer hips, the sort that look very good in a short skirt.  Three months accommodation is to be provided at the Wellington Hotel (Warri) and airfare is included.  Upon conception a house will be provided prior to or no later than upon birth of the child.

How can any woman resist that?  My client is very confident that once arriving in Nigerian, the lucky girl will never want to leave.

Stowaway

Finally something interesting around here; we found a monkey on a barge.

The little guy

Thanks to the brilliant conservationist mindset of the locals, it looks like he will become somebody’s pet, endure rapid hair loss from stress, live a shortened and miserable life and die of some preventable disease.

There it is, tied up and waiting for my above statement to become reality.