The chance to hear more from this guy was too good to pass up. We asked for a few minutes of his time, and found out that Teddy ("like the bear") is a deckhand and nursing student training to be a captain. As the last of the tourists dispersed, he and a handful of other crew members were preparing to move the riverboat's floating dock in closer to the bank, because of rising waters. "It'll just be five minutes, you oughta watch," he said.

Forty-five minutes later, shivering but hardly in a position to complain, we had witnessed a remarkable effort involving a pickup truck on steep, wet cobblestones; scraping metal and spooling cables; the riverboat captain using his craft to push the dock; and all the grunts, groans, and heaving that went along with it. There was nothing computerized or high-tech about this maneuver -- just the reality of life alongside a mighty river.