Can Al Canal?

Yes, Gentle Reader…as of August 5th it will have been two years since The Big Row (www.thebigrow.blogspot.com), when we collectively raised over $18,000 for financial aid for Boys' Latin while I simply had to pull on the oars about 130,000 times over 452 miles. Last summer's rowing interlude centered on Recycled Love's Row for Rescue ($12,000 raised), that time pulling for the pups who reside on Death Row…and the saints who try to preserve them.

Alas, Wanderlust has struck again…but my appetite for dunning you all for more money on this one is, for now, being held in check by conscience and the recognition that many of you in the BL community are in the midst of a robust Capital campaign; wells need to replenish, memories need to clear, breath has to be regained. Sure, I'll accept pledges again for this summer's adventure, and happily, but at this moment the emphasis here is on fun – mine and yours. My fun will be in making (and writing about) this next journey; yours can be in reading about it, if you would like, or simply being glad that you are not with me.

Yet if you get as much pleasure out of fiddling with your checkbook as I do in rowing, there is no reason whatsoever that we might make even a 'lil bit of magic yet again.

"So," you are asking, "what's with the clever Can Al Canal? title, and how in good conscience can an English teacher employ "canal" as a verb?"

The grammar question is a good one. The title is a shameless play on words, that's all. Cheesy. Unimaginative. Rhetorical. So let's move on, shan't we?

The canal in question is the Erie Canal (www.eriecanal.org). The plan is to row from Buffalo to Whitehall, NY. The boat will again be my trusty Adirondack Guideboat, the schedule again blissfully un-choreographed, and the propulsive unit (me) is again the weak link in the chain. I was 55 and a day on 8/5/06; adding two years to 55 is not the same as going from 15 to 17. We're looking at between 400 to 450 miles, depending on the side-trips I might make on adjoining bodies of water, and I'll pass through more than 50 locks as I descend 566' from Lake Erie to Troy, NY, then up again as I head north to Whitehall (the Birthplace of the United States Navy).

So…stay tuned. I'll have a website up before the end of the month. You can of course contact me with pledges if you wish (we're at $50 even before this announcement; thanks, Mac!), and I'll find a way to make the pledging thing easier as I again enlist Kathy for her electronic wizardry.

Maybe there will even be another book? (Yet as Steven Colbert says, "If you make the first one good enough, you don't have to write another.")

Al