Yesterday I drove Antaeus and Yuuki to Denver. We stopped and played a round of miniature golf on the way. Yuuki is going home to Japan today. Antaeus was very sad after he said goodbye, and we left Yuuki at the Denver Sheraton with about one hundred other foreign exchange students from Japan. Antaeus has spent every waking hour with Yuuki for a month. I took Antaeus to the Denver Natural History Museum, and we saw the IMAX film about climbing Mt. Everest. Then we went to up to Boulder and walked on Pearl Street, listened to street performers, visited a few of my friends, and drove up Flagstaff Mountain to look at the lights of Boulder. It all seemed to take his mind off saying goodbye to his friend. His parents are still in New York, and I was glad that I could be here for him. My friend Jeff, who lives up at the yurt community said, "the Great Spirit is putting you exactly where you need to be." My Great Spirit is putting me exactly where I need to be.The past few days have been spent swinging off a rope swing into the river, floating down the river, and jumping off a railroad bridge into the river. I have been pretty much enjoying life the way any typical twelve-year-old boy would if he lived in a river town. Although I did go to the Job Service seeking temporary employment today. They told me that there was a waiting list of fifty people looking for day work, and they hadn't called any of them in over a month. The guy said, "No temp work in Canon. It's not that kind of town. Your best bet would be to go to all the restaurants in town and see if they need anybody." So I went out to the garden and picked zucchini and radishes with Caddy and the community service kids. I think that the only work I will find on this trip will fall into my lap when I need it. That's the way it seems to be going so far. Yesterday, I bought a raft for ten dollars at a garage sale. I have decided to float down the Arkansas River to Kansas (or until I am tired of floating, whichever comes first). Then, I plan to find some kids swimming in the river, give them a free raft, and walk on. I am excited about what has become the river expedition portion of my trip.I talked to my friend, Laural, from Arizona, on the phone the other day. She has been living in Portland this summer. She told me that she had quit her job and was very tired of the same old same ol'. I told her that things are pretty interesting here and suggested that she should float down the river with me for a while. Her reply was, "let me call Amtrak and call you back in fifteen minutes." I am picking her up in Colorado Springs on Friday, and she'll take Amtrak home from Lamar, Co (about 170 miles down the river) in a few weeks. I spent yesterday with a group of kids at an amusement park (Elich Gardens) in Denver. It had been a long time since I let man-made contraptions fling my body around in all sorts of unnatural ways. I loved it. I've been signed on as a volunteer mentor which includes no pay, but free trips to amusement parks and good, clean wholesome fun with kids who need good, clean wholesome fun in their lives. They are really at a point where they need to be shown that yes, you can have an extremely enjoyable day full of laughter and smiles without being drunk, smoking weed, sniffing meth, and stealing cars. Caddy's organization, More Mentoring, shows them it can be done.
Well, today we set off on the raft down the Arkansas River part of the trip. Caddy dropped us just past Florence. Antaeus was pretty sad to see me go. Last night he said, "You can't leave, man." I told him that I couldn't really live in his back yard my whole life. He understood, but was bummed none the less. He seemed sad when we said goodbye.The trip down the river is not as relaxing and easy as I thought it would be. It has turned out to be an aquatic obstacle course. The current always wants to take you into fallen trees in the river (sleepers, they call them.) When you are not trying to avoid the trees, you are busy trying to navigate sharp bends in the river that will propel you into the rocks that line the banks of the Arkansas. Many times we have "abandoned ship" to steer the raft on a safe course, or just to slow us down and allow more time to make thought-out decisions about which side of obstacles we want to be on. When we started out today, Laural and I sat comfortably in our raft while an inner tube, bungeed to the back, carried our backpacks. About five miles into the journey, we hit a sleeper, and it punctured the inner tube. We had constructed thick plastic bags for our packs, and miraculously the packs floated. We abandoned ship, swam the raft and our backpacks to the shore, and considered our next move.The most logical thing to do would be to put the packs in the raft, sit on top of them, and continue down the river. That's what we did, and it worked for probably about five more miles. We found a nice sand bar to camp on for the night, and this is where I am sitting right now. It's just good to be on the road again (even though it is a river.) The moon is almost full again, and it feels so wonderful to be sitting here next to the river.I'm not really sure where we are on the map, but I figure we are still about a ten-mile float from the Pueblo Reservior. I plan to camp there tomorrow night. After our crash that destroyed the cargo tube, we thought that we might have a safer journey if we named our raft. Her name is Mary Ann now.Today we docked Mary Ann under a bridge, stashed our heavier items in the trees, and walked the mile into Fowler. We needed food and water, and I needed a 44oz fountain soda with ice. I have learned to appreciate the luxury of having ice in your drink on this trip. I was also on a mission of getting my pants repaired because the other day, while climbing out of my tent, the entire crotch of my pants ripped open. I asked the lady working at the post office if she knew of anyone in town who might be willing to sew my pants today. She made a phone call and gave me directions to the home of a very nice lady who did the repair work as her good deed for the day.So everything is going good today, and I'm beginning to think that Fowler is a nice little community. We were walking back to the river through a residential section of town when a paperboy rode by on his bicycle, threw a paper at us, and called us street bums. Well then, I could be considered a bum, and I often look like one walking around with a 45-pound pack on my back, but I like to think of myself as a bum with a purpose and prefer the country to the streets. So we took the paper to the police station, and I asked the cop there to give this kid a hard time the next time he saw him, because the little punk shouldn't be doing things like that in a nice little town like Fowler. He told me that he knew the boy, but I don't know if he ever talked to himThe trip from Fowler was extremely slow and not very enjoyable. This portion of the Arkansas River is heavily irrigated for watermelons, cantaloupe, and onions, and the last few days I have watched the Arkansas slowly disappearing beneath me. Our raft, and my butt, keep scraping on the river bottom, and there have been so many check dams. Every irrigation ditch requires a dam to feed water into it. Whenever we would approach a dam, the river would slow down to a crawl, and I would have to paddle to get closer to it before having to portage through the trees to get around it. This happened too many times to count.The last dam of the river trip was about four miles west of Rocky Ford. It channeled the remaining trickle of the river all into the irrigation ditch. There wasn't a drop of water flowing over the top of the dam. It was time to walk again, but this time with my pack and a ten-pound raft bouncing on my head. It was not a good day for me.Floating down the irrigation ditch was very tempting, but I guess people tend to drown in those, and it is highly discouraged by the law enforcement community. One guy even told me that they can take you to jail on the spot if they catch you swimming in them. The heat was terrible, and the bugs were too, but jail didn't sound all that appealing either.We made it to Rocky Ford, and I sent the raft home to be put in storage under my parent's house in case I want to do it again at some point. Then we checked in at the police station and asked them if we could camp in the park. They ran our ID's, gave us a ride to the park and even offered us dinner. Nice cops in Rocky Ford. Laural has decided to go home, so she has hopped on a bus to the Amtrak station in Lamar. I've been in kind of a depression/funk the past few weeks, and haven't been pushing my pen much. You see, on Sept 13th I went into a public restroom at the park where I was camping in Rocky Ford, CO. When I returned to my campsite, my pack was gone. They took my pack, sleeping bag, tent, camera equipment, and much more. They took my way of life, my freedom, happiness, faith in humanity, and the natural high of walking across America---then left me sitting there in that park feeling raped, violated, and very homeless. I stayed in Rocky Ford that day to file a police report and leave descriptions of my equipment at the pawn shops. I slept under a picnic table that night, freezing. I usually claim to be the happiest, unemployed homeless man in America, but this night was different. This night I got a taste of what it is really like to be living outside, with nothing.The next day I just wandered around town, looking in garbage cans and dumpsters for anything that the thieves might have dumped, and stopping by the police station periodically for any good news. There was none. At the thought of sleeping outside another night with only a foam mat, I called Adrian and Caddy in Canon City. I needed a place to regroup, and I knew they would be happy to provide it. They were. The next two weeks were spent replacing my equipment. My father loaned me some money for survival gear and my mom loaned me some for cameras. Every store I went to gave me at least 15% off anything I needed. At a Patagonia store in downtown Denver, a guy named Michael, after hearing what had happened said, "Let me see what I can do." He went into the back and returned with a brand new rain coat and a fleece jacket, telling me that I could have them. My faith in humanity had taken a serious blow, and he gave me much more than a couple of jackets that day. 