Advertisement
Twelve years ago, the former U.S. Marine was sitting in the Kuwaiti desert with other members of his platoon.
"We're as miserable as can be," Eriksen said last week as he passed through La Crosse. "There is sand in our faces, we're hot, homesick, but we're laughing about this trip we're going to do.
"When we get home, we're going to build a raft and go down the Mississippi River," he said. "No one did it. I tried to find some buddies from my old platoon, and I couldn't find them. They're spread out across the country."
Eriksen, 36, who is originally from New Orleans, got to thinking about the river trip again during the recent war against Iraq.
"I decided with this war that just happened that life is short — do things now or you'll never get to do them." he said.
And so he built the Bottle Rocket, a 10-feet long, 52-inch wide raft that floats on 232 two-liter soda bottles in two pontoons. Insulation foam around the bottles improves the buoyancy, while he rows or peddles using a paddle system made from the parts of two bicycles.
At the La Crosse Municipal Boat Harbor — about 600 miles from the river's Lake Itasca headwaters where he started out — Eriksen added a sail.
"I found the sail right here by a dumpster, and I found some poles with the sail and I've made two new oars," he said. "I sort of scavenge along the way to improve the raft."
Eriksen's "crow's nest" is the seat of a 1983 Ford Mustang he found in a junk yard. He stores canned goods and water in four crates on each corner of the raft.
Early on, the river was about 10 feet wide and six inches deep, Eriksen said. He dragged the raft a lot of time before the river widened and turned into rapids for a while.
"I've had a few minor problems dealing with the raft over rapids," he said. "The boat was getting dinged up and I had a few bottles shoot out.
"On the rapids, I go with the current and that can be five to six mph in some spots. With the wind, I can make three to four mph if I get a real good tailwind. If I get a headwind, I've just got to stop. Actually, it pushes me backwards."
It took Eriksen about a month to reach La Crosse. He plans to make New Orleans by Christmas.
"I want to keep fall behind me as much as possible," he said. "I'm making 12 to 15 miles a day."
Along the way, Eriksen has seen all manner of wildlife, a sunken steam ship in low waters as well as river junk such as a refrigerator, lawn chairs and tires.
He lived in Los Angeles for the last eight years, and in May graduated the University of Southern California with a doctorate in science education.
The river trip also is providing material for a video science series Eriksen plans to produce called Mission Science. In Los Angeles, he said he was a traveling science teacher specializing in dinosaur skeletons. When he gets to New Orleans, he would like to build a small science museum and exhibit a collection of dinosaur skeletons.
The river is beautiful, tranquil and sometimes lonely, Eriksen said.
"It's fantastic," he said. "Sometimes I sing to myself, I talk aloud, I laugh at my own silly jokes. I think about life. Where I'm going from here. What's next."
The river also can be dangerous, and Eriksen always wears a life jacket. He sleeps on sand bars, either in his reclining car seat or in a tent.
"The biggest danger is the barges and there are some big cruise boats that kick up a huge wake," Eriksen said. "With the barges, there's no wake, but they are really big and they don't stop and get out of the way. So I'm always looking over my shoulder and looking ahead round the corner."
Eriksen has made friends along the way, and some of them have even traveled with him at times. He interviews "interesting people," takes photographs and intends to highlight the issue of shoreline erosion when he is done.
"Sort of exploring how this river is utilized, how humans control the river, how we make use of it and some of the repercussions of it," Eriksen said.
He makes a point of stopping at a town each week to e-mail travel updates to a Web site that can be accessed at www.missionscience.com.
Ed Hoskin can be reached at ehoskin@lacrossetribune.com or (608) 791-8226.
