Leaving Stroudwater
Admiral Biscuit

I don’t know why it particularly caught my attention, but while Mersey had only chosen oats for her dinner, she’d occasionally lean over and eat some greens off Swanky Brook’s plate. He didn’t try to stop her or ask her why she hadn’t gotten greens of her own.

It wasn’t my place to question their eating habits, so I didn’t.

“So what are your plans, Joe? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“I was going to hike out in the countryside tomorrow,” I said, “and then take the train back to Manehattan. Just kind of explore the scenery some. Get a feel for what’s out here, and maybe plan for a longer trip later. It’s not as easy to plan a trip as it was back on Earth; you don’t have internet.”

“I’ve heard of that,” she said. “Somehuman was showing it off in a documentary movie I watched. I don’t think I’d like it, it all seems really complicated.”

“It can be,” I admitted. “But there’s a lot of convenience to it, as well.”

“You need a computer and a wifi and a internet subscription, they said. Books are better; you can borrow them for free from the library.”

“I can’t disagree with that. It can get expensive. Most Earth libraries have computers and wifi you can use for free, so if you don’t want to invest . . . maybe one day you’ll be able to get loads for your boat on the ponynet.”

“I don’t think it would be worth the trouble. I can get plenty of loads by just asking my regulars if they’ve got anything for me. Plus, I have a bunch of contracts, easily enough to get by if I wasn’t paying a mortgage on my building in Manehattan. Still, it’s worth it; if I can grow the business a little more, I can buy a second boat and hire a crew for it.”

“You’ve got a good way of thinking.” I raised my glass and clinked it against hers, only remembering after I’d done it that maybe that wasn’t a thing that ponies did. Fortunately, it was.

We’d just finished our dinner when Flash Lock asked me if I’d gotten a bed for the night.

“I—well, I was expecting individual rooms,” I said. “Not a bunkhouse arrangement.”

“You don’t like sleeping with strangers?”

I almost choked on the last of my beer when she said that. I didn’t think that there was any innuendo in her statement, but it was hard to be sure. “Not really. It’s a human thing. I really ought to just get a bed and not be a wimp about it.”

“If you want, you can sleep in the cabin on the barge,” Flash Lock offered. “Long as you don’t mind that we’ll start loading it early.”

“Well, I suppose that would motivate me to get off to an early start. But I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

“It’s no inconvenience. As far as I’m concerned, your ticket stays good until our next voyage starts.”

“Well. . . .”

“That’s not an offer she’d make just anypony,” Swanky Brook said.

Flash Lock nodded her head. “I had to kick a stallion off at Oakton once. He was a jerk. I told him he’d have to come to the company offices to request a refund, but he never did. Probably afraid Mersey would be there.”

It wasn’t my business, but I had to know.

“What did she do?”

“She bit him.”

I looked over at Mersey, who was still placidly chewing her oats.

It would be easy to complain about the cabin. The bed wasn’t really long enough for me. Admittedly, the ones at the inn probably wouldn’t have been, either, but then they wouldn’t have had walls at either end.

If it had been slightly wider, I could have slept crosswise in it.

On the plus side, there was a gentle breeze through the cabin, and the boat rocked ever so gently on the water. There was hardly any current in the canal, but it was just enough to stretch the lines that held it to the dock, then they’d recoil slightly, and the motion repeated like clockwork. To add to that was the gentle creak of various fittings on the boat, the soft slap of wavelets against the hull, and the occasional splash of an aquatic denizen.

I got woken up in the middle of the night as a barge passed close by. The two ponies hauling it were singing, too loudly for the middle of the night. They both had really good voices, though, and I was honestly sorry when they finally moved out of earshot.

Flash Lock wasn’t lying when she said that they’d be loading the barge early. The sun was up, but only just. Hoofsteps on the decks and more considerable rocking as they rolled in barrels were more than sufficient to serve as an alarm clock.

I couldn’t leave them as abruptly as I almost had the night before, so after I put on clean clothes in the little privacy the cabin offered, I went out on deck and said proper goodbyes to the three of them. Flash Lock hugged me, Swanky Brook gave me a hoofbump, and Mersey nudged my hip with her nose.

On the way through their warehouse, I had to wait for a pair of stallions loading up one of the wagons with the cargo we’d brought yesterday. Apparently all the ponies around the canal were early risers.

I stopped at the inn for breakfast. They’d replaced the soups with oatmeal, and they had both scrambled eggs and an egg casserole as well. In deference to the early hour, they only had one kind of beer, and they also had hot coffee and hot tea.

While I didn’t have GPS, I did have a folding map of the area, and my route seemed simple enough. All I had to do was follow the main road out of Stroudwater.

On the outskirts of town, the road crossed the canal on a wooden drawbridge. I stood in the middle and gazed down the canal. The dock behind Aire and Calder Navigation was empty; when I looked further down the water, I could see the barge, Flash Lock at the helm and Mersey on the towrope.

I waved, even though I knew they wouldn’t see me, and then continued my journey.

We have now reached the end of Joe’s journey on the canals of Equestria.

A blog post will be along in a few days, with lots of facts about canal boats and canal boating.

--admiral biscuit