Water, Water Everywhere

Little Falls, MN--“Slow Falls”, the guy in the coffee-supply store (for lack of a more precise term; that's pretty literally what it was, a small but still-too-big-for-its-merchandise-so-that-it-looks-like-a-drug-front store with bags of ground coffee along the walls and a few miscellaneous coffee-making devices and then the guy himself, sitting on a stool in the middle of the room with a computer in front of him) called it after I had outlined my thus-far-fruitless attempt to find a source of wireless internet in Little Falls, which looks almost as populous as Bemidji or Brainerd and is a degree of magnitude bigger than the town of Aitkin, which had I believe more than one place where one could plug in and turn on. And though I couldn't exactly disagree with him, the name isn't entirely accurate except in one respect. The one place where one could purchase brewed coffee in the downtown area, “Pete and Joy's Coffeeshop and Bakery”, had neither seating area nor Wi-Fi. After inquiring at a local business-supply-store (no shit, this town is a pretty good size and seems to be at least getting by economically, but no enterprising individual or even chain has recognized this one gap in the local marketplace), I discovered that there was in fact a library with available wireless, but after spending half an hour searching for said bibliotheque and a further fifteen minutes talking to the woman outside while we waited for it to open only to discover that the current day of the week was not, as we had both thought, Th. but in fact Fr. (and I mean come on, I've been making my way through the wilderness of northern MN for three weeks and I was the one who ended up realizing that we were waiting for something that wasn't going to happen! Although maybe she was just too absorbed in our fascinating conversation to give it a second thought.), I ended up at a Perkins. Yup. A Perkins. The lady in front of the library had told me that the Perkins a mile out of town (when I asked what a Perkins was, she replied, after shaking off her disbelief at my ignorance, “Perkins? Nationwide family restaurant?”(and at this aside those of you who also didn't know what a Perkins was can breath a sigh of relief at the sameness of our world-spheres)) had internet, and thus here I am. Typing this post up in TextEdit because the fucking wireless doesn't work. I have, however, learned that one does become an easy target of condescension when one “dines alone”, even when one is clearly just eating at the establishment in order to use its internet as evidenced by the not-at-all-microscopically-small computer set in front of oneself on the table and thus one probably doesn't want to be interrupted every five minutes to respond to inane questions to which one's answer clearly wouldn't have changed since the last time said inane questions were asked not five minutes before. And this knowledge might actually serve me pretty well, as I've been shed of my assumption, now proven erroneous, that the seeming invitation and openness to inane questions of the single diner is not exaggeration but is in fact solid, corroborated fact.

Now of course Stuart might suggest that all of this drivel provides only a neat summary of the means of posting without addressing what it is I've actually done or seen today (Ed.: should I even bother raising my objections to this straw man, or are you by this point ignoring what I say altogether?) but as you can see this is nonsense, as I've worked anecdotes and descriptions into the fabric of the post ostensibly about how I've found Internet in order to post, in various subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways. But for those of you thirsting to hear more mundate details about my workaday life, here they are.

It rained again last night (after the day saw more sun than rain) and the tent was, once again, soaked. I had learned from the previous night where exactly to put my sleeping pad and bag and pillow and clothes so as to best avoid puddles, and this turned out quite nicely, save for the fact that I slept probably no more than an hour because I was so stressed about avoiding the rain and keeping my sleeping bag on top of the pad so that it wouldn't get wet because if it got wet I wouldn't be able to get to sleep. There's a joke to be made there but my approach is a little too blunt for it. (Question(s): at what point does a purposeful lack of irony become, itself, ironic? And is my generation thus doomed to irony no matter what we try, or is the only possible approach one of retreat from irony rather than progress past it, which is of course an utterly depressing thought?) So we're considering buying a new tent, one that costs a little more than the $25 Eve paid for this one, which, and I have to be fair, is a pretty cool tent, and had made it dry through a few nights of rain prior to these two so we're still trying to assess the pattern.

Today Eve is paddling past Camp Ripley, a military reservation that dominates (ha) the map, and right now I'm sitting right next to three men in camo, and listening to their conversation has started me thinking about the military. I know that I, and a significant proportion of my world-sphere-sharing intellectual Ivy-or-Little-Ivy-educated Northeastern hyper-literate liberal peers, have a certain automatic distrust of the military in the abstract (and here again in this sentence the question of irony is raised but I won't address it here (Ed.: have a gander) as another segment of the power structures that dominate and regulate American life, like the police and MSM &c, and it takes a conscious effort, a sometimes dishearteningly strenuous one at that, for me to remember that in contrast to (e.g.) the police, people in the military are not, by and large, power-tripping assholes, because of course most people in the military have no power, whereas you become a news producer or cop in order to feel and exercise power. And I was reminded of this because when the three guys sat down, one of them asked the waitress if they had a gluten-free menu (they don't, but the waitress also didn't know what it was) and then they got to talking about Michael Vick in some less-than-flattering terms, and I know all this I know I know that these things shouldn't surprise me but (A) they do, whenever I'm reminded of them, and (B) I know I'll forget and in two days I will again start making assumptions like that but is B a self-fulfilling prophecy?