...In a beautiful, flag-draped boat. OmegaDad has joked, ever since we moved to Hippy Dippy Enclave in the Woods, that we were not complying with the HDEW bylaws, covenants and conventions. Oh, we have a dawg--that's required. But we had no canoe on the porch and no decrepit Volkswagen bus parked by the side of the house. (There is a rumor that one of the houses here actually has a VW bus buried in its yard, serving as a septic tank.) OmegaDad is a River Person. He was long before he met me; his most treasured memories of adolescence and early adulthood are of canoes and friends on the water, his deepest and most romantical of friendships were based on river cameraderie. Flowing water is a necessity to his life, and a life without rivers is--well, not worth living, to him. He has wisted after a canoe for years. He has cruised yard sales and perused the Sunday paper. We've missed a few by only minutes, or by lack of dollars in the bank account. He would search eBay for Daggers and Old Towns and find great deals--in, say, Pittsburgh. Or Orlando. Lately, however, he discovered that you could search on eBay by "closest location". Last week, he beckoned me into the office. "Come see this! You've got to see this boat! It is the coolest thing!" he said. Yeah, yeah, I thought. "No, really! Search on 'Betsy Ross canoe'," he said. So I sat down, keyed the phrase in, and saw this canoe. Wooden canoe. Draped in waving flag bunting. Bid so far: $199. Location: One mile from my office, one mile from his office. The story was that the owners had worked with SolarMan, a guy deep into promoting solar energy, on a variety of high school and college solar-powered boat competitions. They had, for the high school level, built 70 or so plywood canoes, and set the kids loose on them. When the competition was done, they had a canoe leftover. This was the canoe. We drove over the next afternoon to check out the canoe. The people were great. The stories were grand. They had begun the canoe in August 2001...then 9/11 happened, and the wife had this extra flag bunting fabric in the house, and they decided to lacquer the boat with the fabric and finish it off, and named it the SS Betsy Ross. It was beautiful. We left. OmegaDad said to me, as he performed a U-turn and headed back down the street, "I want that boat!" He wheedled. He begged. He asked me for a highest price. So he waited until there were 30 seconds left on the auction, posted his highest bid, and... We now have the SS Betsy Ross. Now if only the forest service would re-open the forest, so we can take it out for a test paddle.