Homemade medicine

Well I went and managed to get a bung leg the other day playing one of those European sports. I feel really fucking useless right now. I was hoping that Sunday I would be able to plant a few things in the garden, such as the almighty carrot and the humble beet, but no such luck. Instead I went out back to my stick pile, then over to the wood pile, back inside I picked up my buck knife and I started to give it hell.

So without further adieu I present to you the crutch I made. It certainly helped for the time being but now that my family has brought me over a pair of crutches I am going to have to retire the stick to some lonely corner of my house.

Bison

Ok so this is the bison horn i found burried in the side of the Wascana. The pen is there to give you an idea of how large this thing is. This has to easily be the coolest thing I have ever found. I would really like to figure out how old this thing actually is, but I don't know how that would happen.

Urban Survival

AND GOD SAID, LET THERE BE RAIN. Right? That is how it goes right? Don't quiz me on scripture, I have been to church twice and am not exactly known as a man of the faith. However, if God so chooses he can rain down on me any day, as long as it is between the hours of 7 pm and 7 am so that I don't miss work. Any who, onto the picture, I scavenged this behemoth from the Lumsden dump, attached a nozzle and did some repair work with liquid fiberglass, which hopefully will stay repaired.... the last attempt, with caulking, failed miserably. I have diverted about a quarter of the watershed of my roof down into the cauldron and fitted the top with a screen to keep out the leaves and other junk. Being raised a couple feet off the ground allows for the water pressure to increase and hopefully with the odd rain this summer i will never have to use the actual tap to feed my thirsty plants. Move over appocolypse, make way for giant rain barrel.

Punk Rock

I got coaxed into putting on a punk rock show in July. Come check it out!
www.myspace.com/subsistance
www.myspace.com/failedstatessk
www.myspace.com/experimentsqc

Last Kick at the Can

So I had my last kick at the Wascana the previous Sunday, April the 18Th to be exact. That means I had a window of opportunity this year of 16 days, 4 of which I managed to get out for a paddle. I suppose the water was open a couple days before my first trip and would have been doable a couple days after my last but all in all the river is still only open for maybe three weeks. On Sunday you could tell that she was starting to dwindle. Paddles started to drag ground and rocks started jumping out at every corner, one of which I managed to not avoid and ended up rolling the canoe. To top it off it happened on the same corner I rolled it last time.... fuck. I'm not sure what it is about that bend but it really has it out for me, two totally different situations not ten feet apart put me in the drink this spring.

So while it is bye bye to the Wascana until next year, it is hello to the Qu'appelle for the rest of the summer thanks to directed runoff from the Lake Diefenbaker reservoir and hopefully it is howdy dowdy do to some Northern rivers this summer, but who knows what will end up happening.

Until next time, stay rustic, start planting your onions, peas and spinach and go listen to the Highwaymen.

ice jams on the wascana

fun fun fun. all gone now though. a few days after this picture was taken i was in the area again. The jam was gone but the force behind the jam was so strong that there was giant chunks of ice pushed 15 feet up the river banks that would have easily weighed 3000 pounds

dipping the paddle

The trip down the creek can be divided into two parts. From Regina to Wascana trails and from Wascana trails to the valley at Lumsden where the creek meets the river that calls. Or if you are more ambitious you could just do an over nighter and consume the whole trip at once. This was the original plan but what with the constraints of our everyday lives we were forced to call it in at a day trip and decided to do the second leg of the tour instead of doing it all(maybe we lucked out and avoided some Deliverance type shit by doing so). This is for certain the faster leg of the tour, outside Regina the country is still very flat and the creek does not flow very hard at points. The second leg has a larger grade and is also joined by another creek of sizable girth at which point the river really starts to move. Once this creek, whose name escapes me, is passed, no more ice jams occurred on the river due to the extra flow as they had all been swept down towards the climax. This might seem like a blessing but the ice jams are actually a very fun element of danger. Dodging floating ice bergs that easily outweigh a large car entertains an element of danger that gets your heart pumping and the adrenalin rushing ever so slightly. If you are looking for adventure within the confines of your own homegrown roots this is the trip you need to take.

We tend to take the Wascana for granted living in Regina and see the lake often as a feeble attempt to pretend the location of Regina actually made sense, and that our forefathers did not simply get lazy and set up camp when their feet got tired. The Wascana however becomes very beautiful the further out of the city you get. Large thirty feet banks sometimes loom above the canoe as beavers slap their tails in fear of my giant blue craft. Situated in a typical valley formed by the receding glaciers of long ago, it is, like all other valleys of this sort, immensely gorgeous. Trees constantly flank the river and waterfowl are always being scared up as often as the deer are numerous. The Wascana really is a special place and the best way to explore it is by boat. Come to think of it there really is not a lot of things that I would rather be doing in the first week of April(last year there was still a substantial amount of snow on the ground).

The mighty Wascana

Monday March 29th i went for a walk down Elphinstone to where the creek crosses the road. There was still thick ice across the whole surface. Tuesday the 30th I went for a walk to the river. No more ice. This was my Friday April the 2.