Free Republic

Ever coverage of the latest flood shows people stranded on their roof. I think anyone who lives in (or near) an area prone to flooding should have an inflatable raft with water tight storage container for food, water and first aid supplies. If I was a liberal, I'd make it a law!

-- Police in Ohio said a man who was seen engaging in sexual activity with an inflatable swimming raft had previous arrests for public indecency. Hamilton police said they arrested Edwin Charles Tobergta, 32, after a witness -- the owner of the raft -- reported he was engaging in sexual activity with the pink swimming accessory in the alley behind his home, the Hamilton Journal News reported Tuesday. The owner told police the man was told to stop, but he fled with the raft.

PHILIPSBURG, St. Maarten -- An 85-year-old British sailor who dreamed of crossing the Atlantic on a raft as a young boy completed the journey with three friends Wednesday. The crossing to this Caribbean island, led by Anthony Smith of London, took about two months and was generally smooth except for damage to two rudders on the large, sail-powered raft. "Some people say it was mad," he told The Associated Press when he

Floating A Big Idea: Ancient Use Of Rafts To Transport Goods DemonstratedMIT students built a small-scale replica of an ancient oceangoing sailing raft to study its seaworthiness and handling. (Credit: Donna Coveney/MIT) ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2008) — Oceangoing sailing rafts plied the waters of the equatorial Pacific long before Europeans arrived in the Americas, and carried tradegoods for thousands of miles all the way from modern-day Chile to western Mexico, according to new findings by MIT researchers in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Details of how the ancient trading system worked more than 1,000 years ago were reconstructed...

PIGEON FORGE, Tenn. - Dolly Parton's Dollywood theme park will be adding a new $5 million raft ride equipped with water guns to soak targets, other riders and bystanders. Scheduled to open in 2008, the River Battle sends eight passengers on rafts down a 500-foot channel lined with more than 100 targets. The targets include large-scale talking animals such as beavers, skunks, otters and bears, some of which shoot water back at the riders. Riders can also aim at other passengers on their raft or park guests along the edge of the ride. The Great Smoky Mountains venue will also...

From London soup kitchen to a raft in Scandinavian sea By Amy Iggulden (Filed: 04/05/2006) Police are trying to solve the mystery of how a homeless man living rough in London ended up on a makeshift raft drifting in the sea off Scandinavia. The castaway, who claimed that he had been drifting for four days, was traced back to a soup kitchen in central London. George Williams was dehydrated and frostbitten when rescued The centre identified him as George Williams, 46, who had been living on the streets for several years. Staff said he was last seen there two months...

<p>STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Swedish authorities Saturday were investigating how a man calling himself a "stateless American" ended up floating on a raft of oil barrels and wood planks in the waters between Denmark and Norway.</p> <p>The man — who carried no identification, spoke perfect English and said his name was George Williams — was found by a Norwegian oil tanker on Friday morning, floating in the Skagerak sea on a raft of four oil barrels held together by a frame of wooden planks.</p>

Two men seen taking pictures of the George Washington Bridge from an inflatable raft in the Hudson River yesterday afternoon were taken into custody by the police when they came ashore. The police said last night that no arrests had been made, but Sgt. Brian Mullen of the 34th Precinct said that charges against the men, who were not identified, were pending. One possible charge was unauthorized use of the raft in the wrong place, he said.