Canoe trip? You mean how was my fucking sailing trip!

It is the July long weekend, the Canada day long weekend. I can distinctly remember spending this weekend trolling Regina Beach for fist fights and fun loving females in years gone past. I hope that I have slightly grown up from this, but as I think about it, I may not have digressed that far.

This weekend would however be different. It has now become the annual adventure weekend for me and my hillbilly friends. A weekend where cell phones are left in secret hiding places, fireworks are bought by the crate, paddles are broken and whiskey is drunk like water. If there is one weekend I look forward to all year long, this is it.

Last year we paddled a stretch of the South Saskatchewan. This year we would travel through the provincial forest down the North Saskatchewan from the Cecil Ferry crossing to Nipawin. Six men and three canoes would accept the challenge. Dogs were left behind as this summer would be particularly dangerous. With the flooding this year the river peaked roughly a week before we were to set our vessels in the current, and peak it did with a flow of over 2000 cubic meters per second. For comparison sake, Wascana Creek has an average peak flow of 16 cubic meters in the spring.

Aside from Joe becoming slightly upset when I threw a cup of pee at his truck, the trip up was relatively tame. We arrived late in the evening at what was supposed to be the ferry crossing. The high water had closed the road leading down to the crossing and as we walked up to the bank we could why. The torrent of water had turned the river a dark brown as whole uprooted trees floated past us like giant foreboding gestures.

Three of us would be in charge of driving to the Nipawin area to drop off a vehicle while the other three would be in charge of drinking and setting up camp for the night... but mostly drinking. I elected to stay behind and sent the others off with a somewhat non detailed map and a list of hazy instructions to find the shoreline in the middle of the night. As it would stand though, instructions were not followed and the vehicle was left somewhere down a road as far as the muddy surface of the bush trail would allow.

Eventually the weary travelers made it back to camp just in time to shoot fireworks in the direction of a group of high school kids frolicking on the opposite bank. Beds were then made as mosquitoes were avoided while visions of sugar plums and whitewater began to dance in my head.

We awoke to a dreary overcast day and set ship. As we floated from our camp we could hear someone screaming at us from the opposite bank in a panicked voice. Was he warning us of something? Was Wīhtikōw himself, eater of flesh, waiting for us in the shadows of the next bend. Hopefully not, maybe the old man was just making sure we were aware of the large tree headed in our direction. Regardless of what the warning was for, it was an unnerving start for the trip.

Now I had travelled the first section of the river before so I became the unofficial guide of the trip. I had been through the stretch known as LaColle falls before at much tamer water levels. I knew the boys were coming up on a challenge. True to form the falls produced swells twice the size of a canoe and one boat just about took on enough water to swamp it. When your canoe has six inches of water in it you lose all control and losing all control while you are hitting 20 km an hour down a 300 meter stretch of rapids does not exactly compare to opiate induced relaxation. Luckily they managed to float to shore and bail out the canoe while we travelled onto the abandoned Prince Albert Dam . When I had been at the dam previous it was possible to climb inside it and walk around. Now the water was so high that the entrance way was completely submerged. While waiting for the others we stumbled around, happened upon a geocache and ran into a couple of teenagers out for a stroll. The teenagers decided they were not interested in sticking around after one member of our party proceeded to get rip roaring afternoon drunk and shoot his WWI era rifle at the concrete dam. Not really sure what their problem was….

We proceeded to eat some canned ham tomato wraps while JJ bravely lit a live hornets’ nest on fire to entertain us. I don’t have balls that big. I was impressed. The would be members of Davey Jones' locker eventually caught up and after having our fill we shipped off once again into the wild blue yonder. The rest of the day was spent with a myriad of animal sightings. The first was a cow and calf moose that joined us, floating down the river just in front of us, racing towards the promise land for what must have been a solid 2 km. Following that we came up on a cow elk floating in the distance and later on even a bull moose showed up for a bath in the river. I’m really unsure why there were so many animals in the water that day. Perhaps they were due for their weekly cleaning or were simply escaping the wrath of the Saskatchewan mosquito. The rest of the day went on uneventful aside from some naked swimming at a sandbar just north of the forks of the North and South Saskatchewan Rivers and a ruckus camping adventure where we spent the evening being assholes to Jason who made the mistake of telling us about his dream of becoming a police officer.

Enter Awesome Day

This is the day that will forever be known as Awesome Day. This day, July 1, 2011 is now capitalized and forever will be. The government told us they would have issued another calendar holiday, except that it already is one. On Awesome Day, everything is wonderful. The sun decided to pay us a visit this groggy hangover morning. A beautiful day, we set forth for the horizon. The waters from this point on started to calm as the river began to widen in advance of the dam miles ahead. This afternoon four members of the party indulged while the other two were designated as baby sitters for the man children. The world was beautiful. We tied all three canoes together and simply floated our craft ever so slowly towards paradise.

Perfect, complacent, magical, the 7 wonders of the world have nothing on us....Suddenly though… Our world was shaken. Brett had an idea! “An idea” I ask? “Pick up your fucking paddle, were going to shore you useless tits.” Okay,” I thought to myself, “I can do this.” We all joined in and paddled our not so maneuverable raft towards a clump of aspen on the river bank. “Give me ten minutes,” demanded Brett. “Hey, you do what you gotta do man,” was the only reply we could muster. Brett left with a saw and an axe and true to form came back with 5 polls. Two were lashed across the thwarts and the other three were crafted with duct tape and rope into a mast. JJ offered up his tent (a small black tarp). Well in hindsight he did not really offer it up, it was more so just taken, however it was a very small price to pay for what would come next. With Brett’s ingenuity and my artistic ability, we soon had a Jolly Roger sail for our pirate ship. We called it the Docket Rocket.

“How was your canoe trip?”
-“You mean how was my fucking sailing trip!”

And yes… It worked. We were cruising down the river at 14 knots without even dipping the paddle. The only paddle in the water was used as a rudder by our esteemed captain, Brett “mother hen” King. For the rest of the afternoon we sailed on through the provincial forest riding our happiness vessel like a pinto pony sent from fields of Elysium. Eventually in the distance we spotted a large bridge. We had made it to the crossing at Wapiti ski valley. Cruising under the bridge we startled a few fishermen who were enjoying a leisurely afternoon of sturgeon fishing. After what we had been through thus far, I am not sure if we were more startled to see them or if they were more startled to see us. As we drifted past the valley we had a brainwave that we may be able to find women at the local campground.

With our brave captain in command we steered towards shore. Once we docked we realized that upstream paddling would be impossible. But not impossible would be a night spent at the campground! Once again with our brave captain “mother hen” at the helm (a large rope attached to the vessel, the other end to himself) we would make it back to the recreation site. Chest deep in the water, Brett trudged on with our shouts of encouragement from the comfortable seats of the best pirate ship Satan ever concocted. We would arrive just before Brett’s legs would give out in exhaustion.

ENTER THE HUMANS

We had only been bush for two days but it was enough that I really did not want to have anything to do with the normals. A few of the more gung ho sexually deprived individuals ventured up to discover a campground full of nice family types. We did not fit in, so we marooned our ship in a cove and set up our own little private campground. Of course in the haze of Awesome Day we managed to forget that it was also Canada day. And in the true spirit of continually making everything better on Awesome Day, we discovered that a firework shot under the water went in magical directions and could make a really neat noise. Also we learned that impromptu floating firework barges create a fire hazard. We would eventually flame out just as fast as the perceived fire hazard in anticipation for our final day on the river.

Words of wisdom from Awesome Day:
“Make it better, Make it work”
“Were losing time, but gaining fun”
“It’s getting better!”
Maybe you had to be there…….



Third and final day

Obviously this day was spent sailing. Why fuck with a good thing. We did add a windsock though so we could steer properly into the wind. The river now was really starting to widen and slow down so the sail definitely helped. The only downside of a slow wide river is the influx of normal humans. But hundred thousand dollar wake board boats proved no match for the Docket Rocket. Every time a boat would get to close, Joe would wave his “stick” at them. The stick was actually a loaded bolt action rifle, but who is counting. Anyway this day proved relatively tame until we happened upon Pabst Blue Ribbon camp.

You know those commercials where they rant and rave at you, tricking you into drinking really piss poor Budlight Lime just so you can have a chance to party at Bud Camp. Are people really stupid enough to forget that the bud girls are just sad renderings of the sluts from your high school that were not intelligent enough to pursue even a bullshit fine arts degree? Ignorant… Drink real beer. But enough ranting…. Anyway, while we were canoeing we kept talking about how we wanted to discover a mythical Pabst Blue Ribbon camp where silicone is restricted to a caulking gun and expectations just simply do not exist. (not that Pabst is a particularly good beer, but at least it is marketed to hillbillies instead of flatbrim nothings).

The verdict? Sadly I think we found it. We could see tents in the distance so we once again marooned our ship in the presence of the normals. A few members of the party walked off in search of Pabst Blue Ribbon headquarters while the rest of us lay on the beach for a well deserved nap. We did after all spend an entire day doing nothing while the wind did all the work. I was exhausted. Amongst the drift wood that had piled up on the beach the previous week I found what appeared to be.... a coconut? That really must have been some high water. What was a coconut doing here? Well me not knowing much about coconuts, or anything tropical for that matter, I decided to crack it open. It of course was rotten inside. ROTTEN. I have not smelt anything like that before. And If I can die without ever smelling it again I will have achieved my life’s ultimate goal.

While I was enjoying my nap someone had found the Pabst girls. True to form, JJ took off his shirt and began doing pushups to impress the girls. When JJ does this, I always think that he is more interested with impressing us by showing us how hilarious of a situation he can muster, but regardless the girls were also impressed. Groggily I surveyed the situation. We could sit here all evening, PAY for a camp site (an outrageous idea) and watch JJ perform the “mean lean” (this is where he puts one hand on his hip while the other is lifting himself off the ground in a display of panther like sexuality), or we could paddle the short distance to our end point, hope we can find the car and enjoy one more evening avoiding the normals.

It would take some convincing but we eventually shipped off and sure enough when we were 30 meters on our way down the crick, certain crew members of the Docket Rocket attempted to convince the Pabst girls to flash us. Being Pabst girls, they gladly took their shirts off. No thanks, my spectacles remained in my waterproof tickle trunk. In our final hour of paddling we managed to get into our first fight. Without wind we were hopeless. No one wanted to paddle. All I wanted to do was dive naked off our ship and swim around it annoying everyone. The front simply wanted to drink. The back wanted the front to paddle. It was a vicious cycle, a standstill would best describe the final hours of the journey.

We would though eventually make it to where we hoped the vehicle would be. After half an hour of outrunning the mosquitos we found it and retrieved it down the road we were supposed to have dropped it off on which would take us directly to the camp site. We set up camp and scrounged around for the last morsels of food we had packed. The presence of bear tracks near camp was slightly unnerving but I am not sure if I have ever slept so soundly in my entire life. Sailing is exhausting.