Hoots to Wiley Davis for this read. I'll add that the Big Dummy is based on the Xtracycle platform, meaning that you can use any of the modular pieces offered by Xtracycle to fit into the plug-in sockets on the Big Dummy (or Xtracycle Freeradical frame), but you can also manufacture pieces that fit your needs and which plug in to the aforementioned frame sockets. So, for example, you could use the standard V-Racks (the uprights with the bags attached) in conjuntion with the Wideloaders (horizontal platforms), along with Rubbermaid totes and some sort of method of keeping them in…

Marlin gave me ample notice announcing a 2-day visit to the Cities from his home near Bayfield, Wisconsin. So I had the opportunity to plan and execute one last mission in his Alpacka Denali Llama packraft before it returned home with him to the shores of Lake Superior and the waterways that surround the Great Lake. I'd already used a Travelers Check for my first 3 sessions with the raft: 1) July 31st…Minnesota River…my first packraft experience 2) August 7th…Mississippi River...rode from home to where the Minnehaha Creek joins the mighty Mississippi (3km), paddled to, and partway around, Pike Island…

Thanks to all of you who have written in support of calling out asshats for being asshats. It makes my heart glad to know there is still some heartbeat left in honesty. Political Correctness hasn't taken over completely, although it continues to hypnotize huge swaths of the populace into limp, shallow compliance to someone else's goals and directives at least as much as it protects the defenseless. Still, we cannot indict the asshats without indicting ourselves, for they are of us. Sometimes when I need to feel that people are not headed enthusiastically en masse and without brakes or foresight…