LUNGING FORWARD, SANS life jacket, for the bottle of Jack Daniel's, I balance on a human-powered raft that tips dangerously in the waters of the Mississippi River. But I need that drink.
Just two weeks ago, I was an out-of-work journalist watching reruns of "Roseanne" and talking to my cats. Now I am a reluctant first mate three days into a three-month journey from Dubuque, Iowa, to New Orleans aboard the Bottle Rocket, a 5-by-10-foot pontoon boat floating on 232 two-liter soda pop bottles lashed together by my rafting partner, Marc Eriksen.
He tempted me with visions of writing about my adventure. But I have yet to take a note. Overwhelmed by exhaustion, a bad sunburn and Eriksen's tally of my numerous failings as a sailor, I am an anxiety-ridden wreck.
Suddenly Eriksen yells, "The captain says, 'Sit down.' " He likes to refer to himself in the third person.
I snatch the whiskey from the cracked milk crate where we store our meager supply of canned creamed corn and various snacks from the good people at Little Debbie. I take a couple of swigs as I cling to the mast.
"You're not the boss of me," I say. The truth is, I feel like an intruder.
Eriksen, who is filming this trip to make an educational video, already has his routine down by the time I join him. He had started weeks earlier in August, at the headwaters of Lake Itasca, Minn., so not only am I late to the party, he seems content to have the whole river to himself.
I also suffer greatly from a lack of confidence in my abilities. I am not anybody's idea of fit. With my pasty, pale skin and squishy tummy, I am an unlikely candidate to pedal a homemade paddle wheel round and round, down what is arguably a large sewer, for eight to nine hours a day.
Still, with some strange compulsion to change my life driving me on, I met Eriksen at the National River Museum and Aquarium in Dubuque, and we soon set sail. Yet I can't shake the feeling I'd rather be home in Los Angeles, far away from this emotionally unwieldy trip with my ex-boyfriend.
"Pull over to that sandbar," I say, pointing with my bottle to a surprisingly lovely beach on the Illinois side of the river. Eriksen grabs the booze and steers the boat into the bank. Chortling drunkenly, I slosh off in a northerly direction, dragging my bags.
