Michael of Tallahassee wrote; >I admit to being befuddled by the technicalities. Therefore I must >put my trust in Mother Nature. I will stick with round until someone >can show me a fish or aquatic mammal with hard chines. Dear Boy, If only we would all put our trust in Mother Nature would we not all be better off? . Regrettably she does not always act responsibly. Consider, for example, the hard chine fish. Inuit legends tell us that all fish were hard chined prior to the Inuit discovery of crack cocaine. It was the hard chine fish that inspired the design of the Greenland kayak just as the mouth of the migrating salmon inspired the unique bifid bows of Aleut kayaks. All went well with fish and Inuit for many centuries. The hard chine fish was ideally suited to the arctic ocean environment being shaped roughly like and ice cube and more stable when floating on the surface than a round fish. This allowed Inuit hunters to catch the fish and then tow them home without worrying about them capsizing and drowning. A drowned fish, of course lacks flavor due to the excessive amounts of water ingested when upside down. For a people dependent upon fish as an important part of their diet (caribou are low in Omega -3 fatty acids) this was important. If you have ever eaten a properly caught and cooked fish you will know what I mean. Indeed, the only way to attract young Inuit girls is through a well cooked fish - but that is a different story. Nature played a dirty trick on the Inuit, however. Once the Inuit harnessed the power of caribou paunch and adapted it to the crotch dirigible they soon found their way to Columbia using this extraordinary means of transportation. There they discovered cocaine and it was not long before they were manufacturing crack in enormous quantities. So great, in fact, that they could not use it all themselves. The over supply threatened to destroy the Inuit economy as the US DEA was making imports to the US ever more difficult in flagrant disregard for the NAFTA agreement. And so the elders decided to throw the surplus into the ocean in order to support the price structure. This, as we know now, was a huge mistake. The fish soon mellowed out and lost their edges becoming the wussy, rounded type we now know. Totally devoid of flavor and difficult to keep on a plate, fish are no longer a major food source for the Inuit nor for couch potato North Americans who prefer the flat, table hamburger. Fortunately the Inuit retained the hard chined shape in their boats to give us some idea of what used to be. Sincerely, Dr. Peregrine Inverbon, Ph.d., DD, LL.d, Ph.G *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
[Moderator's Note: Content unaltered. Excessive quoting (including headers/footers/sig lines/extraneous text from previous posts, etc.) have been removed. Please edit quoted material in addition to removing header/trailers when replying to posts.] Thanks, very illuminting indeed! By the way, I heard a rumor that, somewhere in a swamp in Arkansas there has been a sighting of the formerly thought to be extinct Hard-Chined Duck. I wonder if it is true. If you don't mind, could you expand a bit on the "crotch dirigible". How did it work? Is it the predecessor of the modern "crotch rocket" as perfected by Honda and Kawasaki? Cheers, Michael in Tallahassee *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
> Thanks, very illuminting indeed! By the way, I heard a rumor that, > somewhere in a swamp in Arkansas there has been a sighting of the > formerly thought to be extinct Hard-Chined Duck. I wonder if it is > true. > > If you don't mind, could you expand a bit on the "crotch dirigible". > How did it work? Is it the predecessor of the modern "crotch rocket" > as perfected by Honda and Kawasaki? > > > Cheers, > > Michael in Tallahassee I think the whole point of the crotch dirigible is that it _is_ expanded. About as far as it can go. To expand it further would make it an "exploded crotch dirigible", or more simply, "ripped cariboo hide". I once lived in the Arctic (Aklavik, NWT) and there was nothing worse than the downwind smell of the Inuit villages when they were piling whale carcasses on the beach to generate the methane gas required to lift one of those crotch dirigibles off the ground. Ahhh, memories of a long-lost way of life! -- Darryl *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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