This morning I get up early and have hot cereal for breakfast-banana, raisin, oats and quinoa. It was good-backpackers pantry I think. I start to pack up though it looks like rain I think it will be short and light and I’ll be able to paddle right through it. By the time I'm done packing a solid gray wall is approaching and it now looks like a long steady rain so I put the tarp up and stash my gear under it and set up my flexlite chair to wait it out. It is a good steady rain but only lasts for an hour, maybe two, and I'm on my way. Today is all paddling as I cross the long, large, and aptly named Crooked Lake. I get out my fishing pole and plan to pull a lure behind me all day but after a few snags I give it up and don't fish for the rest of the trip. I expected the season to have already changed to fall and thusly the water vegetation beginning to die off but this isn't the case. I'm really doing this trip for the travel, scenery and the adventure-not so much the fishing. The south wind picks up again and crossing the larger bays with their rollers is an adventure. I stop for lunch at a nice protected site and spend a couple hours there trying to decide whether to move on or stay the night here. I decide to go because the wind has died down a bit and I have one bigger bay to cross and want to do it while conditions are favorable. Of course part way across the wind comes up again and I'm quartering the waves again. I really don't like getting broadsided by waves. I'm sure the boat could handle it but it scares me. When I finally get across I take this little short cut up a very small stream and had a bit of a laugh-so this is what feeds the mighty iron curtain? The shortcut saves a half a mile or so of paddling and soon I find myself at the Hilton of campsites as I have heard it called. It's a nice site with a small beach for landing a canoe and wading out for a swim or in my case a much needed bath. The site is big enough for a large group yet still has an intimate feel. There is a nice long rock along the shore for filtering water or fishing from. I put my tarp up-thunderstorms are coming.

Banking: In the beginning there was the barter system and soon within the barter system silver and gold became most valued for trade not because of any perceived value of the metal itself but because you can make all sorts of valuable stuff out of it-it's malleable. In those days you didn't walk around with much of it in your pocket because as much as we think we live in a violent, criminal society now it doesn't even register compared to the way it was then. Statistically speaking, Mariel, we live in the safest, most secure time in history. That being said those who were rich back then needed a place to keep their booty. This would be the places of worship (remember the bible story of the moneychangers?) which were in the center of town, a place of rule, and a place that held valuables themselves so they were well guarded and of course the other place for people to store their money were the gold and silversmiths themselves. Receipts were given out for the deposits and this would eventually become paper money. The people who held the gold and silver soon found that they could lend out some of it for profit, then all of it, and then simply write receipts and lend out more than all of it and this, Mariel, is how we got to the house of cards that is the economic system we have today. In 2008 we had a severe financial crisis here in America and the government stepped in with one trillion taxpayer dollars to try to stop it. Everyone knows that but very few know that of all the money that actually got doled out every bit of it was paid back with interest. The American taxpayer actually made money on the deal. The system works as long as it doesn't get too awfully corrupt and everyone believes it works. The trick of the trillion dollar bail out was to make everyone believe while the leaks were plugged.