On the Trail…On the Columbia River
In 30-plus years of magazine work, quite possibly the best assignment I ever got was boarding a tug in Portland, Oregon and riding it, while it pushed a couple of barges, up the Columbia and Snake Rivers all the way to Lewiston, Idaho.
Three days and nights on the rivers and seven hydroelectric dams provided all sorts of opportunities for photographs and for just shooting the breeze with the two crews on the tug. Each crew worked a 12-hour shift; changeover times were 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Through it all, the tug and barges chugged upstream at about 7 mph.
Pass the various dams along the route offered the most interesting parts of the trips and some of the best photo opportunities. This picture is of the John Day Dam, the third dam upstream from Portland, Oregon.
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Those barge crews see each other face to face so there are no mis cues on what each other is thinking and doing. This is un-like Internet communication where there can be all sorts of mis-cues, misunderstandings, and no clear ideas whatsoever of what the other is thinking. It becomes assumptions only. A real guessing game. No one really knows for sure what they are dealing with.
EVERYONE involved begins to act on their assumptions which can
be very mis-leading because assumptions are NOT FACTS