As so many of our stories of good fortune seem to begin, yesterday we walked into a bar.

We had paddled 38 miles into the dark to get to Grafton, Illinois. We made dinner in the cool, dewey night down by the river. Looking highly suspicious, we turned off our headlamps when the cops drove by, wanting to avoid trouble. After devouring a particularly delicious (aka – we were particularly hungry) meal of thai peanut sauce and vermicelli noodles, we headed up to the lights of the town.

We found two bars, and we could hear the whoops from one of them all the way down by the river. We pushed open the door, and plowed into a raucous crowd of people. We hit one with the door. We couldn’t get the door closed before they spotted our maps and were buying us a drink. It took probably ten minutes for us to even make it to a seat, so many questions they had for us.