Snakefeet

As far back as grade school I wanted an aluminum canoe. Specifically, a Grumman aluminum canoe. I was enchanted by the idea of the having a canoe made by the same company, maybe with some of the same tools, that made some of the planes that helped the Allies win World War II. There was an industrial Cincinnatus feel to the story: not swords into plowshares but fighters into fishing boats.

I want a Grumman panel truck too, for the same reason but that's beside the point.

One day I found an old one for sale and snapped it up. It's kind of a rescue case. It spent years abandoned, half buried in a sand dune. And it still has the remnants of a strange paint job. But it is serviceable. It should clean up nicely. Most of all, it makes me happy.

I recently took it on a waterway cleanup in Lake Windsor, beside Mount Trashmore.

After check-in with the cleanup manager, and after launching the canoe we made a beeline for the far side of the lake. On cleanups like this I prefer to start at a distant point and work my way back while picking up trash. That way the load is heaviest when I'm closest to the end.

At the far side of the lake from the launch site is the new gates and pumping station. In recent years the city of Virginia Beach made the lake into a tool for flood control.

Ephialtes & Agenor?
Isander & Hippolochus?
Isander was killed by the god Ares while fighting the Solymi, a warlike people of Lycia.
Hippolochus became the father of Glaucus, who fought in the Trojan War and recounted his grandfather Bellerophon’s heroic deeds to the hero Diomedes.