Читать книгу Canoeing with Jose онлайн

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“I heard there was a little mishap on the first day. Do you want to tell us about that, Joe?”

“About an hour into the trip we tried to run a dam and went into the river. What else is there to say?”

The clouds dissolved as we talked with Noah, and for the first time since being sucked into the river we had a dry patch of earth on which to air out our dank gear. The books I’d brought—A Field Guide to the Edible Plants of North America, Song of the Paddle: An Illustrated Guide to Wilderness Camping, Guide to Backcountry Survival Techniques, Wilderness Rivers of Manitoba, Canoeing with the Cree—were all sopping bricks, as was my hardcover journal. I placed the volumes on a picnic table to dry, the first step in a process that would ultimately take a month.

Our electronics were in hopeless condition. My cell phone, iPod, and digital camera were dead, as was José’s CD player. I was shocked to see José take the loss in stride.

“Ain’t no thing,” he said. “I can fix it.”

Apparently he had picked up some tricks for reviving electronics at the pawn shop. Customers often came into the store trying to hock gadgets that had been waterlogged. José convinced many of them to leave their iPods and cell phones for “recycling.” After applying “ghetto repair techniques,” José would make a few bucks pawning the functional devices.