Paddling Our Own Canoe

Parks and Recreation actor and Making It co-host Nick Offerman shares his humorous fulminations on life, manliness, meat, and much more in this New York Times bestseller. Growing a perfect moustache, grilling red meat, wooing a woman—who better to deliver this tutelage than the always charming, always manly Nick Offerman, best known as Parks and Recreation’s Ron Swanson? Combining his trademark comic voice and very real expertise in woodworking—he runs his own woodshop—Paddle Your Own Canoe features tales from Offerman’s childhood in small-town Minooka, Illinois—“I grew up literally in the middle of a cornfield”—to his theater days in Chicago, beginnings as a carpenter/actor and the hilarious and magnificent seduction of his now-wife Megan Mullally. It also offers hard-bitten battle strategies in the arenas of manliness, love, style, religion, woodworking, and outdoor recreation, among many other savory entrees. A mix of amusing anecdotes, opinionated lessons and rants, sprinkled with offbeat gaiety, Paddle Your Own Canoe will not only tickle readers pink but may also rouse them to put down their smart phones, study a few sycamore leaves, and maybe even hand craft (and paddle) their own canoes.

An Epic Memoir of an Intrepid Solo Adventurer, a Woman Who Lived by the Philosophy "Go Simple, Go Solo, Go Now"

The most comprehensive book ever written on canoeing technique ... essential guide for recreational paddlers is packed with information. -- Bushwacker's Wilderness Journal 09/2003.

Detailed plans and instructions on making, finishing and repairing wooden canoe paddles.

If the canoe is a symbol of Canada, what kind of Canada does it symbolize? Inheriting a Canoe Paddle looks at how the canoe has come to symbolize love of Canada for non-aboriginal Canadians and provides a critique of this identification’s unintended consequences for First Nations. Written with an engaging, personal style, it is both a scholarly examination and a personal reflection, delving into representations of canoes and canoeing in museum displays, historical re-enactments, travel narratives, the history of wilderness expeditions, artwork, film, and popular literature. Misao Dean opens the book with the story of inheriting her father’s canoe paddle and goes on to explore the canoe paddle as a national symbol – integral to historical tales of exploration and trade, central to Pierre Trudeau’s patriotism, and unique to Canadians wanting to distance themselves from British and American national myths. Throughout, Inheriting a Canoe Paddle emphasizes the importance of self-consciously evaluating the meaning we give to canoes as objects and to canoeing as an activity.

Well-illustrated with more than 600 color photographs, this how-to book achieves as high a standard as the authors' Paddle Your Own Canoe with step-by-step instructions on essential techniques, and includes history, recommendations, camping and more.

oin Phil and Kev on their adventure down the Thames. Two mates with no canoe experience, who decide to celebrate their 50th birthdays by setting themselves the challenge to travel down the length of the Thames in a two-man Canadian canoe. To further the challenge, they pledged to stop at every pub with a riverside fronting to partake in a beverage or two. Battling a distance of 136 miles over 12 days from the upper reaches with choking reed beds and overhanging branches to Teddington Lock, where the river becomes tidal. They witness how the river grows from a mere, knee-deep stream, through its many stages before becoming the majestic river as it approaches London. The author has managed to capture the daily incidents with characteristic humour while describing the history of the places visited in great detail following exhaustive research.