If the authoritarians won't let you drive without a seat belt on or smoke a cigarette... why on earth would they let you float down the river on a hippy dippy boat strung together by dreams?

because when their motor fails to work and they go drifting into or over one of the dams with the potential for loss of life and/or damage to the river and commercial traffic, it suddenly isn't just a whimsical adventure but a very real danger... that's why!

I have no issue with a minimum standards being imposed on this vessel. Cars need to have very basic required things like blinkers good tires and breaks etc. If not, the car can be taken off the road. This is no different. This was the wrong way for these kids to go about this. A little more education on what's required and maybe they can try it again. Anyone with some experience and know how who wants to donate a little of your time and money to help them build or obtain a proper boat? Maybe some business could sponsor them and make this a profitable deal? I'd like a cut for the idea though.

Not much of which either of these two demonstrated. I'd think the prudent thing to do would have been to putt around a local lake for a few days to see if everything worked as advertised. They didn't do that, and it came back to bite them. I think the local officals cut them a pretty good deal as far as giving them time to fix things. Oh well. This will be a learning experience for these two. I think......... Mebbbe not......

Does anyone remember the riverboat expedition of Charlie Poloquin (or Paliquin-sp) circa 1960, who also built a boat and sailed down the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, headed for the Gulf of Mexico? He stopped periodically and sold admission to visitors wishing to explore his boat. I recall my family (living in Bloomington at the time) going down to the river to see this eclectic phenomenom. It was widely covered in the media at the time.

Where I live there are Amish people pretending it's 1883 all over the place. Slow horses on the road, inadequate sanitation, and no vaccinations are all part of their hazardous lifestyle yet I don't see anyone doing a damn thing about it. These two need to declare some sort of religious exemption and they can be back on their merry way.

So why exactly does commercial traffic take precedence over this type of thing? As long as money is involved you can do whatever you want. No sense of adventure in that. I know that Mark Twain would have something to say about this.

I think before you can get a full gypsy boat operators license you have to first have to call yourself Charlie and Lois and apprentice in a 12 foot Lund with an evenrude. This requires bib overalls, meat loaf sandwiches and seed caps. For there you graduate to French trapper status. call yourselves Pierre and Monique and wear furs in a dented canoe and eat dog and roots. Then you spend a winter ice fishing to develop the proper quarters and combine the whole thing with repeated viewings of the movie Chocolat' and you are full fledged gypsy impersonators. I think the key question here is whether you want to do the thing or play the part. If they had keyed on the accomplishment more than the image, they could have made it. I say try again,folks, it is a great dream!

I didn't even read the story after I saw the headline "This boat don't float" because I was so disgusted. You couldn't add two more letters and use the word doesn't? Really? Is there no pride remaining in the Star Tribune editing department?

The Miss Rockaway made it as far as Saint Louis. Check it out, they still have a web site up: www.missrockaway.org I don't recall if they had any chickens, but I think there were dogs and maybe a parrot.