Savage River
One of this blog’s lurkers asked me to send a photo of my Savage River lightweight 18′ recreational/racing canoe, constructed of carbon fiber and Kevlar. It’s on the Toyota FJ in the garage of the hovel where I live at the White Wolf Mine in Arizona, and I’m not taking it off to snap a shot. I’m taking out to Clear Creek Reservoir for a run sometime later this week or maybe this coming weekend.
It was designed and handmade for me by John Diller about six years ago and I love it.
It weighs in just over 30 lbs. dry. The kevlar bottom protects it from rocks and even though it’s had significant use on a number of waterways over half a decade, it looks like new. Rather than e-mail a photo, it’s a blog post. Highly recommended.
Chilidawg is hard on the European Mind
The very act of eating a chilidog (properly) with chili blended with some yellow mustard and onions dripping over one’s hands would offend many British people I know (not Jules), who would try to eat it with a knife and fork, which defeats the whole experience. Adding to that, the guy is called Chilidawg for a reason and I’ve never seen a musician in France playing the guitar while drinking a beer and/or eating a chilidog. It’s simply not done there. Likewise, it’s impossible to eat a chilidog with chopsticks. While delicious, they’re not an international food. In China, Chilidawg might be viewed as a barbarian.
And while I’m sort of the subject:
I’ve watched segments of Cooking with LSP on his blog and I’ve eaten at his compound in Texas but to this day, I don’t know if he has an authentic LSP Cowboy Chili suitable for dropping on a hot dog.
Bullet Points:
** Whose country is it? You could call me a “dog-faced pony soldier” for even asking the question if you were the President of the United States. Of course, the place belongs to the highest bidder, less 10% for the Big Guy.
** Perdeim rates are out of control. It’s not just Tokyo, Amsterdam, New York, Boston, and Hong Kong, which have always been high. Even Arizona is insane. People ask me, “LL how do you deal with it?” I charge the customer more money – what else can I do? Even a small and unambitious exploratory trip that’s upcoming is a $50K bill. They balk. Get somebody else nimrod… well, LL they all want more than you do. Exactly. The Messed up planet: Not my monkeys, not my circus. BUT the little guy is ground to dust in this environment.
Airborne – What do you mean…there are two divisions in our rear?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c70e6nsWvsI
Arctic Airborne – “I believe that in the future, whoever holds Alaska will hold the world.”
G-2 (USS Tuna SS-27)
USS G-2 (SS-27) had already been decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Register at the time of her sinking. USS G-2 was a G-class submarine of the United States Navy. While the four G-boats were nominally all of a class, they differed enough in significant details that they are sometimes considered to be four unique boats, each in a class by herself.
G-2 was named Tuna when her keel was laid down on 20 October 1909 by the Lake Torpedo Boat Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, making her the first ship of the United States Navy to be named for the tuna, a large, vigorous, spiny-finned fish highly esteemed for sport and food.
She was renamed G-2 on 17 November 1911, launched on 10 January 1912 sponsored by Ms. Marjorie F. Miller, towed to the New York Navy Yard after the termination of the Lake contract on 7 November 1913 where she was completed, and commissioned on 1 December 1913.
Decommissioned on 2 April 1919, the boat was designated as a target for testing depth charges and ordnance nets in Niantic Bay, Connecticut. During an inspection by a six-man maintenance crew on 30 July, the boat suddenly flooded and sank at her moorings in Two Tree Channel near Niantic Bay. She went down in 81 ft (25 m), drowning three of the inspection crew. Too deep and too old to salvage, the submarine was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 11 September.
Submarines are somewhat safer today. I never crewed, just rode on them as supercargo.
How Uniform is the Uniform?
Identify the Aircraft
1
Not a 190
2
3
IDA:
1.) Focke-Wulf Ta 152 Interceptor fighter
2.) Avro Shackleton Maritime patrol aircraft
3.) LFG Roland D.XVII
IDA: Correction
3.) Fokker E.V.
Identify the Aircraft:
1. Focke-Wulf Ta 152H
2. Avro Shackleton
3. Fokker D.VIII
Surly ran the table this time. #3 was a Fokker D.VIII.
What was it the Brits called the Shackleton… “contra-rotating Nissen Hut” ?
-Kle.
Look’s like we share the same taste in color and type of vehicles whether it be land or sea 👍. The handmade looks like a “need” not a want for me. Looking at it from the overhead view it looks like it can really handle/distribute some essential gear evenly and stay nimble for creek, river, estuary… possibly even the drink.? Do I see a flyrod in there? Please tell me John Diller still makes 4 a year?
I have no idea how many canoes that John Diller is turning out. He has some new racing canoes he designed since he built mine – smaller for the most part. From the times that I communicated with him pre-Covid, I sensed that he began to power down his operation. The guy is a visionary and engineering genius when it comes to carbon fiber and Kevlar canoes.
PS – The canoe rack on the FJ is a custom rig that I designed, cut the bar steel and DOM, and had welded by a guy who could weld better than I can. Then I had it powder coated and wrapped it in a type of evolved neoprene so that the canoe would sort of sink into the rubber, providing a cushion. The neoprene is tie-strapped to the crossbar. The rack comes on/off in a couple of minutes – easy, and it’s very robust.
Nice canoe, seems like it’d be a lot quieter heading downstream or traversing a lake. Moons ago did a month-long trip through Eastern Canada in an 18′ Grumman…came back with a few more dents, and despite being aluminum the many portages got old as it needed both of us to carry. 30#’s would be sweet.
Sidebar (apologies to our host, this is bugging me straight off this morning): Free Speech and Dissent, that is, The 1st Amendment, is now a crime according to The Dem’s, despite them doing the same…so, one-sided only application. Of course the actual crime is undefined by the TIC’s, Tyrannical’s In Charge (same as the insect, TIC’s suck the life blood out of anything they latch onto while depositing disease in the process.)
It appears that any ‘We The People’ who expresses their Constitutionally protected right to speech and dissent is now a target for this newest nebulous charge, but truthfully, the Evil Dem (ED) design is obvious: To disrupt the next election by again using fear as a tactical tool.
This would end it: Tucker did an interview with former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund who admits the Jan 6th crowd was loaded with Federal Agents. Fox owns the tape and is burying it. They lied. The J6 Committee lied. Jack Smith is nothing more than a Lawfare Line Cook creating criminal recipes using rotten ingredients. These people are destroying The Constitution and need to be taken down a notch…or three.
Live your best life despite the subversive insanity going on “out there”.
Free speech is now defined as “Freedom to spout the Party line” and there really is only one political party in America with window dressing to suggest that you have a choice. The propaganda machine props up the regime fueled by big spending on the media.
It reminds me of the 1930s book burning the Nazis did. Only we the oppressed are standing in the crowd watching it happen.
With little recourse. When those tasked with upholding the law, do not..then what? There’s no where to do except direct action.
The Jan 6 Political prisoner hunt and jailing was a volley across the ‘We The People’ bow, with The Uniparty projecting Don’t even think about it…we have six ways from Sunday to take you out…ultimately leaving true God-Fearing Americans with potentially only one solution to excise the TIC cancer.
*to ‘go’…
Recourse.
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1686713571994959872
Justice was duly served, don;t mess with Sikh shop owners, especially when the tax-paid-for authorities encourage thievery.
Right now “We The People” are in a moral dilemma; “Lawmakers” (now an oxymoron) are the lawless, and we’re stuck until the inflection point for each of us is reached. For me that would be some direct interaction (with my Pocket Constitution in hand). So far that has not occurred as I employ the ‘stay away from the General Public’ as much as possible tactical move, understanding many do not have that option and are refusing to be ousted from their homes because a bunch of idiot Lefty’s violate their oath to uphold the law, hence endangering residents. Sorry, arrest me, but I’m not waiting around when injury to myself or anyone I know is imminent.
We live in Arlington, TX. Much of the year I am dressed in a T-shirt and St. John’s Bay cargo shorts. So far, this solution is working well–
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FDIILAU?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
Am also fond of the movie ‘The Jack Bull’.
Love it. There is always a solution available to those willing to put in the effort.
LL, We’ll call it Getting Jacked.
I occasionally visit liberal websites just so I don’t end up in a virtual echo chamber. In my opinion when the subject of Pres. Trump come up some of these people are throwbacks to the Salem witch trials and even though we have the same facts the left starts screaming “guilty, burn the heretic” while I am thinking “so what”.
That’s because they have no real argument, only accusation(s), indicating a brain run on emotion, not rational thought.
Me, I often emote (especially when like this morning my spiritual discontent is sky high)…but I do it for [what I believe to be] good reasoning and rational thought. Them? Symbolism over Substance (h/t Rush) is their mode. Never the twain shall meet.
I see idiot lib commenters on my blog.
I typically dont respond, They are rabid with TDS.
L.L. the telepathic one! The caffeine just started firing my neurons a little bit faster and that’s exactly what I was going to ask you If it was a neoprene and powder coat mixture. Hell the way it’s all layered together it’s almost like you’ve made your own form of Kevlar in a way. You better get that patented so you can finally retire;) I would expect nothing else but I quick detach/release system for the canoe rack. That way you can swap out quickly for an M60 or even MK19 in case you ran across the alphabet pink Jeep people!
It’s 5:18 am where I am and I’m about to go to sleep for a few hours. But before I drop off the map, it’s more of a durable, squishy rubber than a Kevlar that is wrapped around the DOM crossbars – several layers thick. The cheap plastic tie straps are all that you need to hold it in place. They break at times and I replace them. The neoprene is UV resistant and hasn’t broken down in the least since I made it. The rig is in the garage at the moment and while the canoe stays inside, the FJ usually does not. Maybe more now that the ’48 Willies has been sold?
If that son-of-a-B had called ME a lying, dog-faced pony soldier, I’d probably still be in jail. I should imagine a fair percentage of this blog’s commentariat would have done the same.
He definitely doesn’t work for you…
Watching the airborne drops, I wonder how all the troop movement changes the CG of the airplanes? It must take some fine piloting to keep the airplane level as the troops are exiting.
Fly by wire – the computer compensates.
One airplane in the group was a C-130.
The C-130 has been upgraded so many times, I’m sure the Flight Control System they use these days can handle a CG shift.
G-2 was a spiteful boat, unwilling to be expended as a target w/o first drawing blood. If not allowed to take enemy lives, then friendly lives would have to suffice. I’ve always sort of admired that.
I love that canoe, LL. Not only does it appear to be a real treat for it’s purpose, I am also pleased by the “$30,000 hammer-forged Inconel club” aspect.
-Kle.
LL, I have owned reinforced fiberglass canoes in the past and from that experience I learned how to lay up glass mats over rock puncture holes in the bottom and sides, do you have that problem with that beaut of a canoe? Had you have a hole, could you repair the damage? With your canoe strapped on the FJ, does it try to act as a parasail? A lot of area under to catch air. I had my canoe on a rack on my truck canopy and had as low on top as I could get away with for that reason of parasailing.
In six years of use, the Kevlar bottom has not experienced a failure. The Carbon fiber sides/bulwarks are thin but very strong and likewise haven’t failed. If it failed, could I patch it? I do pack patch material/epoxy but haven’t used it.
I am familiar with how to use epoxy and cure times.
Your question caused me to reflect on the distances I’ve hauled the canoe over the past six years. At least 1500 miles. I built anti-chafing sleeves that go over the cinch straps for longer hauls. For short runs (under 200 miles) I don’t use them. I haven’t had a chafing problem given that. There is lot of area to catch air but I haven’t had a problem with parasailing. When hauling it distances, I check the straps when I stop for gas. No problem so far. I originally thought of making a canvas cover for it to prevent those issues but haven’t had the need. So I never made one. I use 4 cinch straps – fore, aft and two lapped over the body of the canoe.
The carbon fiber is much tougher than it looks.
I have flipped the canoe and as a result of that experience, keep surf fins secured to a thwart. In a lake, I can swim it to shore more easily with the fins than without (experience).
I don’t take it over rocky, rough river bottoms.
PS – I’m a strong swimmer but pulling a swamped canoe half a mile through a windy lake wore me out without fins.
Per diem rates follow the actual value of the dollar, which, as it falls, the per diem rates rise, just like everything else – and everybody complains when they get their bill from the dentist. “Y’ didn’t charge me this much last year, Doc; I’m just gonna havtuh find a cheaper dentist.”
Or use pliers.
I pay cash for premium dental care at insurance rates. I have all my own teeth even at my age. Dental hygiene is important. Boron would love me. No pesky charges from credit card companies. Never scrimp on your teeth.
Amen.
Active shooter scenerio at the Capitol. It’s locked down and Capitol Police are telling people to shelter in place.
Now saying it was a false flag…BUT wait for AOC to give a statement from 3 blocks away how she feared for her life.
#3–I think it is an eindecker, not a dreidecker (E2 or so, not DVII)
It’s a VIII. The Eindecker had a low wing, this one came along at the end of the war after the Dr-I
Does the central swell on your canoe aid in stability?
LL, I sense a challenge.
I have seen an aircraft packed with our airborne troops described as a massive can of “whup ass” that our enemies. do not want to have us open.
The advances in missile technology and targeting systems might make that method of troop delivery problematic.