WAR!

I'm at war.

With the scorpions.

Its quite simple. They must die. My wife says so.

See, scorpions bring my wife much distress. Understandably so. The little bastards walk around, tails curled, stinger glistening, pinchers held at the ready. They look fairly bad ass, I must admit.

My approach to defeating them is multifaceted. First, I must purify inside my house. They have likely infested my attic, which I have no access too. So I have to do what I can. That means applying liquid residual poisons followed by powdered residual poisons to all outlets, light fixtures, cracks, windows, and any other spots that might conceal a scorpion. Following that, I will apply vicious wicked poisons of several varieties to the perimeter of the inside of the house, under the sinks, in the bathrooms and all over my bedroom and along my bed. Most importantly, I'll apply generous amounts of poison in my closet. Scorpions like to hide in shoes. Fuckers. I also plan to drop numerous glue traps in the bathroom, my bedroom, and in my closet. Just as an added layer of protection. After that, I'll caulk every thing that I feel needs caulking. To bar their entry into my dwelling.

Following that, I'll begin cleansing the outside of my house. If I started with the outside I might risk driving the little fuckers indoors. My approach to the outdoors involves poison sprayed from the hose, more concentrated poison sprayed around the outside perimeter and on the rock wall around my yard, poison all along the walls of my house and on the flat roof (where I'll also spread the poison granules).

I call that Operation Shock and Awe. Its my air assault.

After that I begin open war. The ground assault. Every night, I'll gear up with a poison cocktail and black light. See, scorpions fluoresce under black light. Makes them easy to spot. The poison is because they give birth to their young live. And then they carry them around on their back. So if I just smashed them I might get stung and I might not kill all the little babies. The poison insures all hostile parties meet their end.

You also might be wondering why I don't just spread my poison and wait for them to die. Well, thats an interesting story. See, poison is notoriously ineffective on scorpions, hence the multi-poison approach. Additionally, scorpions can live 10 fucking years. So if the evil bastards in my attic decide to just chill in my attic, fuck, and never venture into my poison they can continue to spread their young which can then venture into my house, be spotted by my wife, and freak her out.

I do have allies in this battle.

Harley, my cat, is trained in the martial arts. He is particularly skilled in cat-to-scorpion combat. Just the other day, I was laying in the floor and he ran over, jumped me, and kung fu chopped the shit out of this scorpion that was on its way to destroy me. He was rewarded with tuna juice.

The battle ahead is long, but my cause is noble, and therefore I will continue to walk down this war path until the last scorpion falls under my stream of poison.

Rio Grande Trip: Episode V - No Mas

This day got off to a roaring start. We got up, packed up our crap, got in our kayaks, and started paddling. For about 2 minutes. At that point we had to get out and drag our kayaks due to low flow. Then we got back in. Then we got back out. We repeated this for about 2 miles until we reached our pick up point.

Some stuff happened between then, though. First, we encountered a group of canoes heading up river. I imagine they did more dragging than paddling.

Then, as we got near the end of Santa Elena Canyon we got to a point where there was a multitude (ok, 3 or 4) of people. There were hiking trails with nearby road access that brought people to the waters edge. I suppose as the three of us navigated our kayaks down the river it made for a pretty cool picture with the canyon behind us. Luckily, Brandon and I realized this was an opportunity for us to ruin someone's day and began ramming each other with our kayaks engaging in a Greko-Roman style naval battle to the death. Unfortunately, the contest ended in a draw and neither of us died.

Shortly there after we arrived at the end of the line--a massive, exposed gravel bar on the Texas side with an imposing thousand-foot cliff on the Mexican side. As we sat baking in the sun, waiting for Bobski to arrive we met some bikers and some old people that looked upon us with vigilance and suspicion. I offered to take a photo for them which they promptly refused.

We decided to seek refuge from the sun and wandered up the road. We found some park composting toilets and Brandon decided it would be prudent if he donated some material for composting. As he sat down, a caravan of park rangers arrived to inspect the station and began banging around outside the toilets. This probably ruined Brandon's composting experience which brought joy to Justin and I, who had been chatting with the Rangers. They explained to us the river was low because the fucking Mexicans were stealing all their water. We all fell silent and mentally shook our fists in the direction of Mexico.

Once Bobski arrived we loaded our crap. He then said, "I've never had a traffic ticket, so why don't one of you guys drive."

Apparently he had trepidation regarding two of us riding in the back of the pick-up through the park.

Justin drove.

Poorly.

Over dustiest road in existence.

Fortunately I had my trusty bandanna and used it to cover my mouth and nose outlaw style.

We pulled out of Terlingua and headed for some spot Justin knew that had cool T-shirts. I wanted to buy one for my wife in order to please her and incur less wrath for engaging on a long trip out of cell phone range. We got to turn off only to discover the gift shop was like 15 miles out of our way. We made a consentual decision and said, "Fuck it."

We made a stop in Alpine for Mexican food and Margaritas--only to discover they were "wine based" Margaritas. We settled for Diet Coke instead. We queried the waitress on the issue of if Brandon's man-card should be revoked for refusing to sleep under the stars like Justin and I. She said, "I would have slept in the tent!"

That confirmed our suspicions that Brandon was acting womanish and promptly revoked his man-card indefinitely.

Then we drove a long ass way home and the trip ended. Successfully.