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Holy dear mother of pearl...
MY ARMS HURT SO BAD!! Augrh…dag nab it. Today I went on a canoe trip with a bunch of people from a group called Teatime. Teatime mainly consists of international students and Sarah got the bright idea to go canoeing. I thought it was cool. Only I didn't realise she meant canoeing for 5-6 hours straight. Arrrarararar....
I initially started out with Sarah as my partner because even though I had canoed before, it was a very long time ago. I couldn't remember how to steer and all I did was be the forward push to the boat (I sat in the front). It was nice and sunny which is good, because the forecast predicted that it was going to rain in the afternoon.
An hour into the trip we were powering along and turned back to see that we only had one out of 6 canoes in our sight. Crap so we wait. When we caught sight of two or three groups of the others, we continued on.
After about two and a half hours we stopped again, only this time not only to wait for the others but to eat. We first connected the canoe to the canoe of two other girls (don't ever ask me for names....I still don't know them) and then we waited as slowly all the boats caught up to us except for one. As we all sat connected, resting and eating, we waited for that last boat. About an hour passed and we still couldn't see them and they still haven't arrived. We wondered where they could be, a shark didn’t get them did it? I hope not because it was a river but we did start to get a little worried.
Two of our boats grounded themselves and the boat with, I think Mark (Our bus driver?...I think) also grounded and the plan was to run back along the shore to see if we could find them. Sarah and I also grounded our boat just as the lagging couple we were waiting for arrived and grounded theirs and got out.
Poor David..(is that his name? He's a tall Korean anyway.) He looked so tired and beaten down as he got off the boat. His partner Anne (I think...) also got off the boat but looked a lot happier than he was. They both never canoed before and I think the difficulty and speed they were going at overwhelmed and discouraged them.
We decided to switch partners to see if that would change anything. I became David's partner and Sarah became Anne's. I went to my spot at the front of the boat to supply the power as David pushed off. Aww, he still looks...dejected. :(
David started out steering like he was with Anne. I can't say he was very good, cause I don't think he really got the hang of it. I tried teaching him but I don't think I explained it very well cause we still veered off course a lot. XP
We ended up deciding to switch. Wow, David is one smart cookie. I was all prepared to ground the boat and change sides...he said we should just turn around. That made much more sense.....hehehe..er yeah...I knew that. So we turned around and I became the one with the power. Mwahahah. Ahem.
Well, I wasn't very good. Don't ever get me to drive a car is all I'm saying. For the first half hour I tried to remember what I was supposed to do to steer. I wasn't remembering very well. We kept on turning around and going off course again. We ran into a couple of banks and the other boats were waaaayyy ahead of us. I don't think this lifted David's spirits very much. Woops.
Eventually though I got the hang of it till I only ran into the bank once and a while....then none at all. Yay! I'm smart. :P Sort of anyway. We seemed be going pretty slow cause David was not really putting much force into his strokes, but that's okay! We were going straight and pointing the right way! Score.
The boat was quiet. I didn't really know David and he didn't really know me. So I started to quietly sing to myself, and try..main word TRY to remember some of the old poems that I read when I was a kid, like that one with the owl and the cat. You know that one with the pea green boat? Well I got as far as, ‘pussy my love sweet pussy you are’…or something. I couldn't remember much.
David probably thought I was a creep, talking to myself. (I did that whenever I couldn’t remember the words to the poem.) I hope I didn't annoy him because we still had about 4 hours to go and that's a long time to be stuck with someone that you think is annoying. I was trying to get his mind off of being last....again, but our placing was entirely my fault. It wasn't a race, but then again it still feels bad to know you're holding everyone back and you’re the last.
So we trudged along and started to amazingly catch up to a boat! Yay! We passed said boat and eventually made it to the first 4. Us being fourth of course. Woo, we're good.
Eventually, my boat and Sarah's boat were the only ones in the front, though I doubt we would have been there if Mark's boat hadn’t stop to wait for the stragglers. David looks a lot more cheerful now and made a quip about the others being so far behind now. I thought it was kind of funny he said that cause he was probably thinking the exact opposite when we were still getting used to my lousy steering.
In the last lag of our trip it was only Sarah's boat and my boat. We lost the others back at a bridge somewhere. Not bad...starting out last and finally making our way to the front.
At this point David and I kept on pausing to rest. We lost Sarah again after a while cause we stopped and did nothing but float. At one point we passed by a "current" while we were drifting and all I could think was, 'wow, we're drifting faster the I thought.' But it wasn't us...it was the current that was moving. O.O Beaver!! I think...or a really big fish.
We saw a couple more beavers. Haha so cool. You could only see it's head and when it dived underwater, it would slap it's tail on the surface. There were a lot of dams close to the end of the trip.
When I saw the canoe rack I was so happy. Holy man. I laughed in delight and I think it soon started to turn manic. We made it! Wahahaha! My arms are stiff.
We got off the boat and now all we had to do was wait for the others. BANZAI! I could barely stand. I still had my sea legs. Arr, land lubbers.
I forgot that the bottom of my bag got wet from the water in the boat and I put it on. Dag nab it. I'm glad that bag is plastic lined.
While we waited for the others, I tried to catch a fish. Didn't work out very well, all I did was get wet. They were the small ones, looked like anchovies.
I found out that before we switched partners, David and Anne, in an attempt to gain more ground faster, tried to carry their canoe. I thought it was funny. They said it looked light and if Jason, the guy that supplied our canoes, could lift one by himself, it should be easy for the both of them. Apparently it wasn’t as easy as it seemed. XD
Well everyone reached shore safe and sound. Excellent. I don't think I'm going to go on one of these for a very long time. My butt hurts from sitting on that hard plastic seat for 6 hours straight and my muscles feel like they're on strike.
Mark accidentally drove us to Southgate by accident on our way back home. He was heading for the church. I guess more than just our muscles were fried during the trip cause neither of us even noticed till Sarah asked where we were going. Brain fart.
I totally forgot that today was the hockey game. Woo. When I called ma to tell her that I was coming home I asked her the score and we were tied with Carolina 1 all.
Apparently the neighbour upstairs had been spitting down at our balcony. The bastards. My mom saw them throwing food down onto our balcony and went out to confront him. The ass, just said 'What?' I have a really really strong urge to go up there and Vaseline their doorknob, or do something, but it wasn't me that caught them and ma couldn't tell me which floor it was. I’d like to be sure before I start plotting payback on someone.
Apparently just as I got home the Oilers scored seeing that a bunch of people on the 6th (?) floor started blowing fog horns and the car in front of the building started honking it's horn. I saw the crowd up on the 6th floor. Seems like the guy is having a party. T.T Now we can't really say that it was the neighbour cause it was probably their friend that did it. Why worry about being caught when you don't live there?
On regular days we only find cigarettes and sometimes some trash. I wish those idiots would throw their crap in their own house. What happened to respect and courtesy? I still want to put in that video camera so that we can find out who does it. I wonder if we can charge them with harassment and or damage to property. I know it's not really permanent or bad damage, but they are still polluting our balcony or whatever. I don't know what else to call it.
I managed to get home just before it rained. Thank god it was sunny during our trip cause it rained pretty hard after.
I was pretty beat. I basically tossed everything on the floor and dropped dead. Okay not really, but I was tired and when I laid on the carpet (I couldn’t lay on the bed cause I was gross) my arms started aching. I managed to sleep some till the stiff muscle feeling woke me up. You know that feeling when you totally overwork something and then go to sleep, wake up the next day and feel like someone shocked your *enter body part here* with an electric tazer and now it's stiff and achy. Yeah. Woo boy.
I took a nice long hot bubble bath. ~Ahhhhhhh~ That's the stuff. Now I don't hurt as much though it does seem a bit stiff. Yup, I don't think I'm going on another canoe trip for a long long time.
Jason our canoe guy apparently brings groups to Jasper to snowboard or ski. I would like to do that but it doesn't seem like anyone else wants to go. Aww...only me. I guess I could go by myself but it's more fun with other people. Even if you don't know them.
Alright, anyways, I'm done. Time to pass out. *thunk*
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