Baby Update

Update: No baby yet.

Joey went to the Dr. yesterday and he did another ultra-sound and a stress test. The ultrasound showed that there is a baby in there, beyond that, not too helpful.

This Christmas, in addition to flying my entire family out to the valley of the Great Salt Lake, my parents gave me some money. I spent most of it on wool pants, mukluks and snowshoes.


I bought some lampwick for bindings and tried out the snowshoes on Saturday, (after thawing pipes, fixing furnace going to the dump etc. The bindings are simple, field expedient and light. You can remove the snowshoes without untying the bindings, but it is not particulary quick or graceful, at least with the military mukluks, but with real mukluks it might be doable. That could be a nusiance, or it could be really helpful if you plunge through some thin ice and need to kick free in a hurry. I wasn't really able to put the snowshoes on without tugging them on with my hands. The snowshoes seemed to stay on fine, although you can move your foot about 45 degrees to the side before feeling any resistance from the showshoe. They are floppy in other words. When walking on the shoes, at least in sub-zero weather on less than 3" of snow, the shoes track perfectly and the bindings are very comfortable. I had no trouble with my foot moving to far forward, and there was no squeezing feeling around the foot or the ankle.

I like the set up. The mukluks are great, but I still would like to sew some traditional mukluks up some time. Before I take that on I need to finish my Duluth style pack.

New, 10 Point Austerity Plan.

Yesterday was payday, and so when I got home I was a little surprised that after Joey had paid bills she still needed another $30.00 for something out of my gasoline/ammo/crack money. The trouble is that my gasoline/ammo/crack budget is about $90.00 each week, and my gasoline expenditures average about $70.00 and my credit card bill takes about another $35.00 per week. If I want to get my hair cut or something, that comes out of the $90.00 also. All in all, its rare for me to have any money for ammo, and unheard of for me to have money for crack.

That is about to change.

I am announcing the new Erickson family 10 point austerity plan:

1. From now on, except as provided for in paragraph 6, we only eat what we can kill.

2. Yukon: out. Yugo: in.

3. Medical experiments aren't just for research, they also pay money.

4. Our condemned trailer is surrounded by woods. Lets try burning some of them. With a little Yankee ingenuity and some duct work, I believe I can convert our electric stove to wood burning, and thats what's right for America. As an added bonus,it supports Global Warming. On a day like today, I think we all agree we could sure use a little global warming.

5. Cold showers, 'nuff said.

6. I am no longer turning up my nose at the idea of roadkill. When I moved to Maine 15 years ago and people told me about how they had scored some awesome deer that was hit by a car, I felt pity. Now, I feel envy. Just this month two families in our Branch have gotten moose that were struck by cars. As Napoleon said at Kips wedding, "Jel-ousss".

7. Ebay + healthy white baby = insane profits.

8. Henceforth: Birthday presents will consist of one or two unusual rocks; Christmas presents will be ordinary sticks with small brightly colored pieces of yarn tied to one end.

9. To save bandwith, we are dispensing with point 10.

10. See 9. supra.

Here is a picture of Joey. and the new, currently nameless baby, who I will call LaFawnduh for the time being.



LaFawnduh is quiet now, but soon she will be screaming at the top of her lungs.(By all means, you owe it to yourself to click on this photo to see it life size.)



This afternoon I went to the Bangor City Republican Comittee meeting at Husson College. I had never been to anything like that before, and it was a real eye opener. Setting aside Steve Sailer's theory of affordable family formation, which, if true, dooms the BCRC to ineffectual obscurity, I was very disheartened by the tone of the meeting.

When I think of Republicans, I think of conservatism. I read The Corner on NRO, I listen to Rush and Glenn Beck when I get the chance, in my office I have a picture of me shaking hands with John Ashcroft from when he was the Attorney General. Perhaps I learned today is why Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe are how they are.

There was a gentleman at the meeting who referred to Susan Collins as a champion, and he was pinning his hopes in 2008 on the champion to electrify the republican voters and carry a bunch of the lower races along on her coat tails. I think the same person opined that somehow "we" needed to reach out to "social conservatives" and make them feel welcome.

I don't know this for a fact, but I got the distinct impression that most of the people in the room were in general agreement, but I didn't have much confidence that any of them relished the idea of rubbing elbows with those peculiar "social conservatives", and I have my suspicions that more than a few of them have NPR programed into their radio.

I have voted for Snowe and Collins every time they have run. I have never written in Mickey Mouse, or abstained, but I always think about. I don't view Susan Collins as a champion, I view her as a liberal, and I suppose I thought that if Republicans really knew how she voted on the important issues of the day, they wouldn't like it. I assumed that she was elected because she was the incumbent, and although seriously flawed, she was undoubtably better than whoever was running against her.

If the meeting I attended was any indication, the lesson Maine republican's learned from the 2006 election was apparently: let's be more like the Democrats. Let's be more moderate, let's distance ourselves from Bush, the Iraq war. Let's embrace wind power, forge a stronger alliance with Europe, and extend a helping hand to those willing to do jobs Americans won't do.

I am begining to understand why so many people in Maine are Democrats. If the Republicans are just beautiful people pretending to be democrat lite, why not vote for a genuine Democrat.

Genealogy Find of the Day

Here is a copy of a death certificate that I found online at the Utah state archives. (Click on the image to enlarge it.)



It seems to match Carl Erickson, my great-great-grandfather. You can find a familseach.org link here and then search for Carl Erickson. The question I have is that the names don't match too well on the parents. Familysearch had his dad's name as Erik Magnus Knutson, the death certificate has Eric Erickson as the dad. The archives site is pretty cool, but I had to look through the names one at a time because I seached for Carl, the archives have him as Karl. Anyway, worth a look if you have ancestors in Utah.

Paddle Primer: Hardwood v. Softwood

When I learned how to canoe as a scout back in the 1970's, in Utah, a place not well known for traditional canoeing, all the paddles I saw were softwood paddles, often laminated. I think the reason for that may have been the same reasons you still see a lot of these paddles, namely they are light, often pretty, feel good in the hand, and can be had for a reasonable price.

Old Town offers a laminated basswood paddle on their website for $45.00.



With propper care, a laminated softwood paddle will be pleasant to use. In my experience the basswood paddles weigh next to nothing. The downside is that, although all wood paddles can be damaged by abuse more easily than a plastic paddle, the basswood paddles are fairly fragile.

Last year on the Stake canoe trip a couple of youth borrowed a basswood paddle that I had borrowed from one of the brothers in our branch. They had it for about 45 minutes, and by the time I got it back so much of the varnish had been scraped off that I had to buy a new paddle to return to the person I borrowed it from. When I say scraped off, I mean that that there were big long chipped scraped, and the varnish on these paddles is very thick because the wood is so soft that the varnish is the only thing protecting the paddle from dents. Chips in the varnish quickly stain black, and because of the thickness of the varnish (polyurethane?) it is no small matter to try to sand the paddle down and revarnish.

Now I prefer to use a paddle cut from a solid plank of ash, but people to whom I loan my paddle do not share my enthusiasm for them.


The reason people don't like my ash paddles is that they are much heavier. That can be a real consideration at the end of a long day. I think the reason I am willing to overlook the weight is that I bought one when my basswood paddle got banged up, and since it was new and pretty I used it, even though it was heavy. After a while I just got used to the weight, and tend to overlook that aspect. Now I focus on the beauty of the grain, the vastly superior strength and resilience of the paddle in comparison to a softwood paddle, and connection I feel to the old school paddlers when I use an old school paddle. I weigh about 260 pounds, but I can take an ash paddle and lay it across the gunnels like a thwart and sit on it. I would not dare that with a softwood paddle. Shaw and Tenney does not recomend softwood paddles for whitewater, and I can understand that, though in my limited whitewater experience I have never seen a softwood paddle break per se.

Shaw and Tenney offers some interesting paddles (more about shapes and lengths in future posts) in a variety of woods, and after visiting their shop in Orono, I am astounded at the quality. The trade-off is price, with a sassafrass beavertail paddle coming in around $100.00. The owner gave me a tour of the place, and showed me a bunch of paddles. My quick impression on the woods is that cherry is heavy and pretty (for furniture cherry is about my favorite wood, but seemed too dark on paddle), maple is heavier and actually more pretty to me because it is lighter in color, black walnut suprising light in weight, sassafras very light, reportedly very tough and springy, but a little ugly.

A great value, in my opinion, is Porter Woodworking in Millinocket. They make some great ash paddles, though not quite a perfect as Shaw and Tenney in workmanship, I like the patterns at Porter better than the paddles at Shaw and Tenney. If you dinged a paddle from Porter's its no big deal, if you dinged a paddle from S&T, you would feel like you damaged a piece of art or scratched a piece of fine furniture.

In Mitt Romney news, I see that Peter Cianchette is on board the Romney bandwagon. Cool.

Dynamite Road Trip

Here are some sweet pictures from our nice roadtrip to Preston.

This is, of course Nappy's house. It is located outside of town on a dirt road.

My favorite scene here was Uncle Rico talking about how he would have taken State back in '82 if the coach would have just put him in. If only . . . he could be relaxin in his hot tub with his soul mate right now.




Pedro's house is even sweeter in real life than I imagined. My only disappointment was that there was no El Santo Nino de Atocha statue on the front steps.







Here is a picture of Emily and I contemplating Mitt Romney's run for the presidency in 2008 on the steps of PHS. Mitt has some sweet skills. Budget balancing skills, Olympic turnaround skills, traditional marriage skills, plus he's like the only kid in school with a mustache.