Slogging through the swamp is a slow go.
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| Rule number one is to check the weather. |
That’s why to get from Point A to Point B humans rely on machines instead. It gets complicated in the swamp because at almost every spot is neither purely land nor one hundred percent water …
But rather a combination of the two.
Traditional trucks and boats simply don't work.
In their place are swamp buggies and air boats. Swamp buggies have over-sized tires, heavy-duty construction and high-torque engines that provide adequate traction across mudded and flooded areas. Airboats are smooth, flat-bottomed boats that operate in extremely shallow water by means of a large propeller that is fixed and caged on the back of the boat. Typically, the propeller and engine that drive it were originally co-opted from airplanes, thus giving them their name.
And oh yeah – they fly, too.
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| Rule number two is to be prepared. |
As for the buggies, they are a slow go.
It can take the better part of all day to reach a backcountry camp, and that’s assuming everything goes as planned. Buggy operators have expert knowledge of the half-land-half-water and equal acumen of their custom-built machines which – over a lifetime – depend on a constant craftsmanship and care (not to mention a pretty deep pocket of change) to keep them up and running and reliable.
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| Rule number three and four is to avoid that cloud. |
Nobody likes to break down in the middle of nowhere ...
Especially with a storm bearing down. Not that they wouldn’t know what to do and how to fix it if they did.
3 comments:
Owning a buggy is a love hate relationship. You love it when you get out, you hate it when you have to work on it.
Always a good idea to have good equipment and good preparation for problems if they occur out in the middle of nowhere. A swamp buggy sounds kind of fun, but an airboat sounds a lot faster.
As in the old saying for BOAT, i.e., "Bail Out Another Thousand, there must be a handful of similar sayings for buggies.
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