Busier than a one-armed paperhanger these days, as my Uncle Bob would say. Or maybe it's a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest. I can't remember which, I'll have to ask Uncle Bob. But it's definitely not the three-legged goat in the pepper patch. I know that much.

Just got back from a dandy float down the lower Salmon a day or so ago and headed back out tomorrow morning at the indecent hour of 5:30 a.m. Sam's picking me up before five, so that means I'll have to get up at . . . can you even call that 'morning'? I mean, really. It's on the verge of night, I'd say. Henceforth, between the hours of 3 and 4 a.m. shall be known as 'mighting'. Or 'nornight'. I don't know.

Item: saw us some bighorns floating out of the Salmon. Awfully impressive beasts. Regret battery issue with my camera. Instead, I have for your viewing pleasure some random photos to behold.

That there is Morgan playing guitar. He just had a birthday, and Penny baked a four-tiered chocolate-chocolate extravaganza of a cake. You read me right. Four tiers. It was something. Happy Birthday, Mojo. And many more.

Item: that other image is the Winding Waters rig packing out a trip on the Dug Bar Road. Doesn't really give you a sense of how big that country is down there, but it's trying. I'll get another shot of that and try again. But it's one of those things, trying to show or tell the size of Hells Canyon unless you've craned your neck up or panned your vision across, trying to squeeze it all into your eyeballs. It's a tight fit.

Personal note to my mom: we're going to grill porkchops this trip, and I'm going to try and recreate your homespun apple sauce, Ma. I'm thinking it's pretty straight forward ... peel the apples, cook them down gently, add some cinnamon and a little bit of love ... anything else? If it isn't shaping up, expect a recipe call from the satellite phone.

All right. This here gearboatman has got to get some shuteye. That raft isn't going to row itself tomorrow.

Big tour on the Grande Ronde with runners from the Pendleton cross-country team.

Water fights? It was more of a floating street brawl. Madness. Water in the nose. Ears. I think I got water inside my eyebrows.

My nephew Little Joe rode along. That's him in the photo showing off some of the mad kayaking skills he's picked up over the years as an expedition kayaker, sponsored by Osk Kosh B'Gosh and National Geographic Explorer.

Morgan pulled off a wheelie to downside-up tail slide, which is fancy talk for pulling on a rope and flipping his boat on purpose. Because after all, it's fun, it's good swimming weather, and, really, why not.

But the trouble started when Morgan said something to the effect that he prefers track and field events that aren't quite so long as this "cross country" he's been hearing about. Give him a good 100-yard dash. Yeah. Now that's a race . . . and then the kid went for his throat, which is what you see here. I hope you've learned a valuable lesson, Mojo. Do not cross a cross country runner.

And the other picture is a big birdie we saw. I'm not much of an ornithologist, so that's either a merganser, black-winged redbird, or a really really big hummingbird. Whatever it was, it was kind of cute.

Day tripping's good stuff. Taco salad. Paddling kayaks. Kung fu waterfights if you're into that kind of thing. Sun. Swimming. To say nothing of the Boggan's Oasis milkshake at the end of the run.

Wallowa Lake has been treating us right. Fireworks on the 4th are launched from a barge on the lake. There's an armada of ski boats jockeying around on the water. An amphitheater of lawn chairs hugging the banks. A traffic jam to-be of cars that brought all the lawn chairs and the people sitting in them.

I hiked up on one of the moraines to watch the big sparklies. Paul and Penny were there. Sam showed up. It was a Winding Waters convention and an exciting one this year, since it looked a lot like the fireworks barge might catch fire when a few of the launches didn't seem to go as planned. Turns out the fireworks crew launches them via remote control from a safe distance, but we weren't privy to that as we watched burning showers come down on the platform, thinking our pal Carl was on the raft and probably losing his hair and eyebrows. But not to worry.

Afterwards we beat the traffic by riding bikes downhill to Joseph, and there's nothing quite like a long downhill stretch, bombing along on a mountain bike, to make you appreciate the invention of gravity.

Then we put the Starcraft in the lake the next day for the maiden voyage this year. A trusty 16-foot aluminum boat I grew up fishing from and skiing behind. I won't be doing any skiing behind it anymore, as I've added a couple pounds since the last time I got up in the wake of that boat. A 25-horsepower outboard can only pull so much. It would be cruelty to animals to expect those horses to haul such a load at skiing speed, and I'm an animal lover, people. Let's get that straight right now.

But we did putt-putt around that big deep glacial pothole on a nice summer afternoon, picked up some friends from the swimming beach and motored on to the rope swing strung from a big, leaning ponderosa pine along the Lake Highway. This here photo is of Paul "Big Air" Arentsen setting a new height record for North American rope swing launches. He brought back a handful of stratosphere as proof.

I was going to go, but there was some cloud cover that cooled things down a bit. And somebody had to run the boat, you see. Also I slapped the water so hard last time I went off that thing that the noise caused a small avalanche on Mount Joseph. But it is fun. And the lake's a good place to be. Little chilly for swimming, but you do come out refreshed.

We've got Salmon and Snake and Grande Ronde river trips getting ready to launch. Been having fun on the River To Rails train ride/rafting combo. Fishing's good. Weather's warm. Rivers rolling. My tanlines from wearing Chacos are coming in nicely. Let's go rafting.