The Pump

As some of you may remember, when we arrived here there was ONE pump for the leaky red boat, and it had to stay with the rescue boat [read: safety pancake]. Mike Braeuer shipped us a pump overnight, and the above photo shows what we did to ensure that it was not purloined. Nancy spent the better part of a weather morning on this.

On the day it arrived, we carried Super Pump everywhere around camp.

Heidi: “ I don’t want to put this pump down. Where will we store it?”
Nancy: “When one tires, the other one will carry.”

Super Pump, we thought, was not going to be useful once we got our new boat. Sadly, the new boat had no need of a pump because it held air about as well as a colander. So, Super Pump’s value sky-rocketed.

Yesterday, we arrived at LRB at Roberts Lake to find that a bear had ransacked the place. One dead float, many scratched floats, bear hair in boat, gill nets upended, etc etc. We walked over to LRB in trepidation…..had the bear ate Super Pump? Pumps have been eaten before…..

Nancy: “PHEW! Luckily, the bear read the death note! Okay, I’m going to turn the escape pancake back into an escape pod.”

Heidi: “Good idea. As we know, the key to a good bear strategy is an escape pod. [Counts floats]. Sigh. Good thing Mike gave us extras!! We should tell those bear DNA folks to fly over here. Actually, maybe they should just follow us around.”