The Road Here

When I was 27, I bought a houseboat and lived aboard, year-round in St. Paul, Minnesota from 2006-2014.

PIC:

The red-eye, the low-rise pants, and I’m breaking ice off a baot… It must have been the oughts.

It was a shitty old boat, I had no idea what I was doing, and I didn’t know anyone else who had ever done such a thing. I was broke as a joke, single, and desperate for an adventure. 

I named the boat, The Road, after my favorite Robert Frost poem, which concludes with:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

For the first three years living aboard, it was only me and my trusty dog, Gracie. Together we hacked the hull out of the ice in the winter and lounged in the hammock in the summers. 

In 2009, I welcomed aboard - in more ways the one (le snort) - my then-boyfriend, now-husband, Andrew Melby.  Everyone refers to him as simply ‘Melby’ which, now that we share a last name, can be occasionally confusing. So it goes.

In 2010, two significant things occurred: Gracie passed away (RIP), and Melby and I purchased and moved aboard a bigger, better boat called, Toad Hollow. 

PIC: Toad Hollow in her summer splendor. 

I looked at The Road after we moved aboard Toad Hollow and felt pangs in my heart. Boats are much more like old horses than old furniture and my years aboard had been so profound to me, that I couldn’t just send her to the glue factory. 

Before planning The Big Trip downriver, I stumbled upon something I had written a few years prior, in 2008, as part of a story-telling event aboard a paddleboat. In it, I detailed when and why I had determined to purchase and live-aboard a houseboat on the Mississippi River and the mystical thing that happened to me when I first stepped aboard The Road.

“It was no fluke,” I concluded. Had she not proven every bit of magic that had whispered in my ears in those early days? Had she not defied the odds in every way up to this point?

Yes. This boat not only could make it down the River to the ocean, but I could captain her! It was unlikely that I could make it all the way down. It was dangerous to try. But to attempt such a thing would be a respectful conclusion for the boat, and a proper adventure for me. Melby was prepared to join me, hell or high-water… and we were likely to encounter both. 

Then, starting in October, 2012 - we started the trip. And we fucking made it!

Along the way, every few days in real time, I published this blog. It included Melby’s incredible photographs and my running commentary on daily events aboard. 

It was a dope trip, but I’m not gonna lie - it was a kick-ass blog too. 

And it got attention beyond our circle of family and friends. Melby and I were featured on the cover of a popular local magazine called The City Pages and I had interviews, and articles for various other boater and river-focused publications. 

Picture featured in The City Pages, 2013.

We were trying for an American Gothic kind of pose, I think.

Then, two years after the trip, in 2014, Melby and I turned our eye to land, bought an old RV, and drove to Los Angeles for awhile… to see how we liked it. 

And we fuckin’ loved it! 

I found luck as an actor and comic, and a regular job as an entertainer at Universal Studios. Melby got a job at Netflix and what do you know - we got married and bam - we have a kid!

Life, am I right. 

Then, 2020 did what 2020 did to all of us and there was Covid ,and the kiddo-started school, and we move into a house-house… and the next thing you know it’s 2022. I’m an historian, I do dates. That’s a big date.

"Holy shit,” a new face said to me in the mirror, “the boat trip was 10 years ago?” 

And it occurred to me that it had fallen into a memory hole. 

The kick-ass blog had been off-line for over a year because the domain it was on was defunct, some transition from iWeb to sandbox, I’ll spare you. I was confident, however, it was on a hard-drive somewhere I’ll just have to dig it out from the many moves that have happened over the past decade. 

I did finally find it, and it was fried. Would not open; its contents inaccessible. 

I again comfort myself with the fact that it must live still on an old laptop. The original one that I published the blog from, surely it’s still there? Right? 

Wrong. 

My heart sank. 

Did I actually lose it? Over 30 days of detailed real-time journaling of one of the greatest experiences of my life… erased? 

It turned out, not entirely. With the help of a hacker friend (I’m not kidding) I was able to access the fried hard-drive, but with some caveats. My blog was there, the text was sometimes garbled with unwanted asterisks and bad spacing, but it could be re-assembled without having to be re-created. 

The photos still existed too, but there was a curse of riches. Thousands of HUGE files and no way to correlate them to the time and places in the blog without going through them manually. 

That was the lay of the land two years ago. 

Early this year, I recommitted to bringing The Big Trip Blog back into the world. Rendering it visible and readable again. It was to an extent for vanity, I’ll admit. It’s this thing I’m so proud of, that is so pivotal to me and how I move through the world, and as far as the internet was concerned, it didn’t happen. The ‘gram could not confirm. 

More than, vanity, however, I realized the value of it as an historical record. My historical record. A possible tendril that can connect me to the world that outlives me, that can inform or inspire, or maybe just give my daughter something to throw in my face when I tell her to ‘be careful’ too many times. 

So here it is. The daily, real-time account of a boat trip taken down The Mississippi River from St. Paul to New Orleans in the fall of 2012. The Captain is a 33 year-old woman who has lived aboard the boat in question for six years. The first mate is a 27 year old man who has lived aboard the boat in question for three years. The dog, is Dorothy. She’s two and doesn’t really want to come but she’s part of the crew so…tough shit. 

As for you, welcome aboard. It’s a wild ride and I’m delighted to bring you along all over again. 

Dawn Brodey. October 30th, 2024 - Los Angeles.