@carmen: Why would undocumented workers already in the U.S. (thus making their status illegal) want to build a boat that could travel for 4 months on the Mississippi?

Even if it's for a letter back home, isn't there already wood in Mexico? And wouldn't that be cheaper than orange juice cartons? And the Rio Bravo is so shallow in so many places you can't really even get a boat on it anyway.

Your comment is hurting my head!
Now...if we were talking about frustrated Quebecois...!

(Hope you're feeling better.)

92BuickLeSabre

pardon me... "that [they] talk about in the article"

A3rd.Zero

@MrBlahBlah: yeah. that's the wood part that talk about in the article remember?

A3rd.Zero

I hear the sounds of paper and pens from many illegal mexicans right about now. Ideas are what dreams are made of.

carmen hates the hospital

any one know what their average speed will be? 4 months seems incredibly long yet possible

rndmideas

looks like wood to me in the picture

MrBlahBlah

It'll sink when it collides with Bear Grylls's film crew.

johnnyabnormal

It actually shouldn't be that hard. He can't start from the beginning (lake itasca) though. There are way too many falls and no lock or dam until St. Paul. Minneapolis to New orleans through 27 locks and dams isn't that tough. My 75 year old neighbor does it every other year. NOT in a paper boat though.

TerryinSt.Paul

oh Juice cartons... I thought you meant JUICE cartons. Which is more like a syringe really, so I thought, man I would like to see the dudes they collected all that material from... Jacked right?

But then it looks like plywood to me so...

Jasontrainer

@shamoononon has a hebetudinous dog:to say

shamoononon has a hebetudinous dog

@carmen: Wow, ignorance never ceases to amaze.

Anyway, let's see how environmentally-friendly this is once it comes apart and we have a ton of juice cartons floating down the Mississippi.

sojrner

Oh he will die...I read somewhere the Mississippi River is lowering in depth levels....

CutePuppyz

for a read head, i guess he sure does well with the sun. Not sure what else to day.

shamoononon has a hebetudinous dog

them Brits love the Ol' Miss:

[www.amazon.com]

Pretty sure they will make it to at least Dubuque in that thing...

krugorg

Brings me back to the days of reading Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
Me and my brother used to play it as kids.
Though we never had a boat or river to play with in landlocked Oklahoma.

dave_1138

I never really thought of the Mississippi as "treacherous".

Joey B

I'm sorry, did we already forget the Mississipi was flooding? Did we decide there weren't enough people who needed rescuing in the last few days or something?

Where is he launching from? I'll wait for that answer before I call him a giant farking idiot.

Paradise

92BuickLeSabre: Also, thank you sweetheart :)

carmen hates the hospital

@sojrner: Oh shut up.

@92BuickLeSabre: IDEAS, sir, IDEAS. They can use THIS example as an IDEA to get from one country to another.

carmen hates the hospital

Where's N-word Jim?

Git Em SteveDave has a crush on the Swedes

just don't break my levee and don't waste my tax resources when you need to be rescued, and then i'm all for the kid killing himself

Pepper

I ran the river from MSP to NOLA about 12 years ago in a 16' Compac sailboat. It IS treacherous. I had a hole knocked in the 1/4" fiberglas bottom, was nearly swamped by the standing waves in the St. Louis river channel, and had half the boat buried in mud by a collapsing riverbank. The barge traffic can be absolutely terrifying, and there were numerous times I wished my 5hp motor was a 50hp.

Between the racking induced by ship traffic and the large quantity of flotsam, I fear for the integrity of the Juice Box boat hull. That said, the trip is extraordinary and I wish these guys only the best.

@TerryinSt.Paul: Is your neighbor's boat a blue motorsailer named Beluga?

Bos'un's Mate

No joke. A friend of mine from high school did the MN to NOLA route in a canoe. A FRIGGIN CANOE! Picture the guy from Outdoor Wisconsin on PBS and that's what he looks like. Said the most dangerous part was near the end when he was almost capsized a few times by the big river barges. Craziness.

N@tedog

@carmen: I'm still not sure that a boat is a particularly new idea...especially for a non-navigable waterway...

...but then again, I don't have any problem with physical immigration. We've got plenty of space. It's all the Canadians migratin' on to my virtual intertubes space, eating up my blogosphere elbow-room, that chaps my hide.

92BuickLeSabre

In the picture, why is the craft covered with plastic and tarps? Is that so it doesn't get wet? This could go very badly indeed...

Mooby

@92BuickLeSabre: "Now...if we were talking about frustrated Quebecois...!"

Yeah! It's all those damn illegal Canadians!

@Joey B: "I never really thought of the Mississippi as "treacherous"."

You can get "raft-jacked" in some of the bad neighborhoods.

@Paradise: "Did we decide there weren't enough people who needed rescuing in the last few days or something?"

THE RESCUE RAFT!!!

@Mooby: "Is that so it doesn't get wet? This could go very badly indeed..."

Maybe they should have used Sunny-D bottles instead.

GadgetPlay

@92BuickLeSabre: It's more so using just plate crates to make a boat and come on over...you know those fruit farms have TONS of crates!

carmen hates the hospital

Um, since when is the Mississippi River 3,700 miles long?

Futrell

@Futrell: Kilometers, maybe?

GadgetPlay