...to get mugged (not really)

Turning off of the path trodden upon by millions of tourist's feet can be an exciting experience, and Gumtree is leading the way.

   We needed a fridge, plain and simple. You can't drink cold beer, you just can't, and bars are way to expensive for anyone on a budget. SO! What do you do? Go to Gumtree, the pseudo Craigslist, and start hunting for a cheap fridge relatively close to you, and that was exactly what I did. Finally, a deal popped up, a real banger, 35pounds for what looked like a small mini-fridge, a mini-fridge perfect for our dorm! As I emailed the seller and made arrangements for the pickup, students paraded around the halls and through our room on their way to a night of pub crawling and club nuke-ing. Not I, not Nate, we were on a mission. 9pm rolled around and we finally had a destination, stop T on bus 18, 30min away. We walked out through the main doors like the other students but instead of dressing like classy Londoners we threw up our hoods and skulked below the cameras looking ghetto as possible, we were going fridge hunting.

   We crammed on bus 18 which was packed with people leaving the main part of the city, presumably toward their respective homes, or to jail. As we shuttered along we noticed the buildings growing smaller, the lights becoming dimmer, and the stops becoming fewer. Finally, stop T showed up and we hopped off the bus into the litter filled street in a part of London that no sane tour company would ever bring customers too. We were in the middle-east. No, not literally, but even though I can't read Arabic I know what it looks like and the majority of shops were covered in either Arabic names, or Arabic graffiti. The diesel bus leaves the stop as an army of police officers fly by at 60mph, sirens blaring; it was too late to turn around now.

   I pulled out my iPhone to look at the map, instantly assuming I would be jumped, and tried to find the correct road to take off the main drag. Upon finding it we ventured forth through the darkness towards something called Jubilee Centre, our meeting point. Apparently the Mayor of London spent very little money on this part of town, with its minimal lighting and trashed streets; can't say I blame him. We passed fully covered women sitting on their stoops, staring at us through the slits in their clothing, expressionless. Tv's blared from flat's windows in foreign languages and uncut lawns sprawled across the sidewalk we were walking on; this fridge better be worth it.

   Finally, we find our man. Neil, I think his name was, stands on the curb wearing a sleeveless collared shirt and a wicker bucket hat. I was amazed he was English, having not seen anyone white in 20 minutes, but I was no less worried about being mugged and beaten, especially being an American. Neil made a joke about Crystal Meth dealers, something about how he thought we would be one of those, and he unlocked his gate to his flat. After unlocking his gate he unlocked his door, and then unlocked his house, and then we saw it... the fridge. It was working, nice and cold as Neil promised. It was Bosch and "...Bosch appliances run forever!" Neil reassured. It must have been a 20 year old fridge, but as Neil counted the 35pounds under the yellow light of his porch our journey with the fridge was going to begin whether we wanted it to or not.

   Nate and I hefted the MUCH larger than expected fridge out of the gate and started making our way back towards the bus station. This time, instead of being sketched out, we were the ones who looked sketchy. Just two Americans, walking though Pakistan with a fridge at 10pm, no big deal. We found a street with more lights this time and set down at the bus station. As the bus pulled up to pick us up he opened the doors only to wave at us frantically and shout NO! He drove off. Crap. Well, we thought about trying the next bus, crossing our fingers for a more lenient bus driver, but when we read the digital sign that told people the estimated time for the next bus it said "NO BUSES EXPECTED FOR 30 MINUTES" double crap.

   So we hailed a taxi, loaded the fridge in the seats, and made our 10pound journey back to Regent Park. The taxi driver even gave us 2pounds off because, as he said it, "I feel bad for you guys." Well geeze, if people gave me money every time they felt bad for me I'd be in good shape! But, we thanked the driver and made our way into our dorm and started cleaning the filthy fridge with hand-soap and water, mixed up in an old Coke bottle.

Clean that fridge!!

   And that was it. We woke up the next morning, turned on the fridge, and to our delight it fired up and cooled down, it even has a freezer! Our goal is to charge people for keeping their drinks cold, hopefully we'll have the fridge paid off by the time we leave. Until then, we have the coolest dorm room in Reid hall, we have a fridge.

...to go to London!

London 2012

It appears I have changed locations, dramatically. This blog will now be giving updates of my adventures (with Nate) of London and oh boy, it’s been ridiculous already.

Plane: Freaking smallest plane ever. I’ve been on a bigger plane to Wisconsin!

Orientation: Slept through the whole thing so you’ll have to ask Nate (who was probably taking notes) what it was all about.

Public Transportation: Easiest thing ever. Cleanest thing ever.

People: Nice. Kind. They say “Cheers!” as “Thank you” and I’ve already decided to adopt it.

Ok, so what have we been doing? Exploring. This city is immense and overwhelmingly exciting. We have been out almost every night to a different location pretending to not look like tourists. Big Ben, Piccadilly Circus, Buckingham Palace and so on and so forth. Once we learned that you stood on the right side of escalators, and walked on the left, traveling around the city became much less embarrassing and much easier. We’re Oyster Card pro’s, swiping that thing erryday, on the busses as well as the trains. We’ve tried to find pubs and bars (harder than you might think) to buy some rounds at and generally messed around the city as best as possible.

Our pre-term-get-together happened on the Thames River on a pretty good sized party boat. The boat gave us some amazing views of London’s coolest attractions, all at night. We popped a champagne bottle (courtesy of Tayeb) and hung out on the boat’s deck just in awe of life. It was an incredible night, a night that will probably never happen again in my life. It was as if I was suddenly transported into luxury for 4 hours, an amazing 4 hours.

Tonight was much different, but no less exciting. After explaining to people that I was going to church to worship God, and not going to Club Church to rage on ecstasy, I set off with a map in hand to find Victor who would be showing me the venue. I knew Victor, through Roo, through Ashely, through Windfall and we met a tube station in Euston. Along with a fantastic message the church held a great deal of wonderful people, and a lot of them students. Looks like God put me in contact with the right people this summer!

Alright, I know this was a quick update so hopefully I’ll have more time to write in the future. Cheers!

...to have the summer of my life

                Even though this summer has been different in every way imaginable from my ‘typical’ summer, it ends just the same; cold nights, colder mornings and trees hinting of fall with their premature color changes. Of course, ‘busy’ is used again to describe the last few weeks I’ve spent up here but this time it’s been a different type of busy. Guiding has finally become a more relaxing activity and I’ve been able to focus more on kayaking and spending time with the people I’ve met up here in Maine. As the summer progressed I was able to see my skill at navigating the Kennebec get sharper day by day and it makes me realize how outright awful I was at this guiding thing at the beginning of the year. Like, first year guides suck, I was no exception. But now I have a handle on it, (I think) and I can worry more about making a funny face for the camera, than trying to avoid Good-Bye hole with a boat full of camp kids.

                Two big things happened this past week. One being “Guide Olympics” and the second being a trip to Montreal that was utterly amazing.

                Guide Olympics? Yep, Olympics for guides, not even kidding. We had thought about making a team and entering but sadly finding six team-mates was easier said than done for Windfall so we watched the games instead and made mental plans for next year. Basically, it’s an evening of fun for guides of all companies (except Northern Outdoors(because they suck)) to get together and compete in various events such as… The boat stack, the trailer stack, the guide flip and of course… the beer chug. It was an eventful night for sure, I haven’t been around so many drunk people since UNH, but Windfall’s sober presence was felt in the community. I guess Windfall had never been to Guide Olympics before, ever, so this year Mason and I made sure we got our team there and we had an excellent night. Next year though, we’re competing!

                The other big event was Mason, Mitch and I’s trip to Montreal to surf the Lachine rapids. Basically, we drove 9 hours round trip to surf one wave, and it was so worth it. We left Jackman at 11pm and made it to Magog QB at 2am, found a campsite and slept under the stars with our boats close at hand. The next morning we drove to Montreal and started kayaking around 9am on this one wave called Big Joe. It was the perfect surf wave. A behemoth wall of smooth water that kayakers dream of surfing. It was such a sick wave that there was actually a stand up surfer surfing it. Like, on a surfboard. It’s hard to describe how cool this place was and we spent almost 9 hours lapping the wave and hitting it as many times as possible. Hopefully I’ll be able to make a quick edit from the GoPro shots we got during the day. Oh, and a sidenote, this section of rapids opened up into a bay so if you had to pull your skirt, you would have to swim for three miles... Kind of scary? Yes!

This was our campsite, no tent required

                I know that the amount of detail in this post is lacking but its hard to describe everything on paper, or, computer. If you really want to experience what you're reading you need to come to Maine! Yes, the summer is over, but if its God’s will I’ll be here next summer and those who didn’t make it up will have a second chance :)

                So that is it for the summer portion of the blog. I want to thank everyone who made this dream summer a reality. Thank you Michelle for Facebooking me and putting the idea of this summer on the table, it was the best summer of my life on so many levels. I know that I will be leaving Jackman Maine a stronger person physically (Have you seen the pictures of me on the river? I’m ripped! Jk) but more importantly I’ll be leaving a stronger person spiritually. I’ve been able to make so many new friends and acquaintances and work for an incredible organization. Thank you parents, grandparents, friends, bosses, coworkers and everyone else who encouraged me, this summer rocked.

                The next portion of this blog will be London. Nate and I will be stepping on a plane this Wednesday and heading to Europe for an entire semester. I’ll be leaving Jackman Maine (population 900) and entering London (population 8,174,100), but I can’t wait.

                So long for now!

...to do some overdue updates, and break a window with my face

I think now would be an appropriate time to officially put the FAFSA fiasco in the rear view mirror and re-focus myself on writing about my summer again. The last few weeks have been busy, and that is not an understatement. Part of the reason I've been unable to gather my thoughts onto the internet is that I haven't had any time to do so! It's been cray cray up here in Jackman. Rafting, kayaking, shuttling and hunting geese have kept me quite occupied. Geese you say? Well... I'll get to that.

First off, have you ever been mudding in a 15 passenger van? I'm going to creep out on a bendy limb here and say... probably not. Another part of our duties here is to do some shuttling for local (or not so local) organizations. Sometimes this includes dropping kids off and then picking them up elsewhere a few days later, or, in this case, driving them to an extremely remote place in the middle of the woods, dropping them off and leaving them behind. This shuttle was one of those. Kyle and I packed two 15 passenger vans full of screeching children, and chaperones that acted as such, and drove them on one of the worst roads I have ever seen to their destination. When I say "worst roads" I honestly mean it. I think that they built them near bogs so they would become purposefully washed out, and here I am in a massive van driving through 3ft deep mud bogs with a bunch of kids bragging about their respective hickies! Gah!

Another exciting thing we did up here was what we call, a Night Run! Ernie, the man who runs the dam, gives the rafting community a chance to go rafting in the dead of night on the Kennebec. We loaded up on a bus filled with more beer cans than people (not ours of course) and headed to the dam at 10pm equipped with flashlights, glowsticks, RedBull and yes lots and lots of alcohol (once again, not ours). The run, as you can probably imagine, was crazy. You couldn't see anything, nothing, literally nothing. BUT IT WAS AWESOME!! Seth guided our boat and we attempted to surf everything in the whole river and we even flipped the boat. It was so fun, even after losing three paddles. At one point we were surfing in this hole and I was able to get out of the boat and stand on the rock that was creating the surf-hole in the middle of the river. From the rock, which was submerged in about 4-6" of water, I spun the boat around and around. Now, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about but if you do than you know, it was sick.

Side not, I just broke my boss's office window with my face. It was really an accident. I was looking at the sky, then I shifted my gaze down towards the parking lot to say hello to Tyler and my face smashed the glass and broke it. I patched it with scotch tape, there is no way he will notice. Well, he could read this, or, actually that will probably be the first thing he notices in the morning anyway.

Alright! This is it for now... except for these pictures of me kayaking the Kennebec...

I also think I broke my big toe today, a paddle landed on it. It really hurts and its all black and blue. 

Alright!! I'll write again soon!!

...to be put in uncomfortable situations

So I've been doing stuff.

Guiding trips on the reg now along with my fellow full-timers, learning new stuff everyday and making ends from frenemies.

Our first multi-boat trip that we did this year was, well, mostly a failure. Something that is very important when guiding these trips is to always keep good spacing between your own boat and the other boats in the trip. Now, this was our first time, but it was about as miserable as it could have been.

Look at these... http://www.rapidshootersmaine.com/windfall/2012/0707k/boat02/index.htm ... This is Kyle's boat, and there is Kyle, along with Me and then Marissa all in the same picture, which shouldn't happen, basically ever. Marissa has some incredible facial expressions courtesy of Rapid Shooters. And there is Kyle up front, smiling to the camera, oblivious to the carnage a few yards behind him, oops. I remember dropping into Big Mama, looking behind me, and thinking (for a few scary seconds) that the boat behind me would land on my boat and crush my innocent customers. BUT. It wasn't to be. Everyone was safe and fine and we all learned some, very, important lessons.

The ten boat trip went quite a bit better this past Tuesday. For Windfall, that is almost the maximum. Add camp kids and we had a recipe for crazy muffins that the river was about to bake. But, bake it did not and we had a great trip in some great weather.

Now, story time... I'm going to use the most politically correct terms I can conjure up when writing this so let your imagination run wild... I don't like people touching me. I don't like people in my bubble, I don't like people dragging me into the water and I definitely don't like people "grazing certain zones of my body with their metacarpus in a quick, repetitive, manner". Yeah, I definitely don't like that. In fact, I don't like watching other people touch themselves in a strange, out of context, manner. But there she went. This customer, under NO provocation, came to me and decided that it would be appropriate and timely to show me her "awkward salmon". Immediately I knew I didn't want to know what ever the "awkward salmon" was so when she asked me...

"Do you want to see my awkward salmon?" I said... "No"

But this particular person, an individual whose BMI rating was above the recommended level (according to BBC Health), bends her mass downward, takes her hand, and starts slapping her thighs. Right thigh, left thigh, right thigh, left thigh, slap, slap, slap, isthishappeningrightnow, slap, slap. I was dumbstruck. It was like watching a car crash, so horrible but you're just transfixed because it was so mind bending that averting your gaze is impossible. All of a sudden, the slapping stopped. I didn't say anything to this girl, who was now looking at me with a facial expression of pure joy, but instead turned directly around and starting looking into the woods. I hoped that maybe I would see a squirrel humping an acorn, or a deer being shot, or maybe even a bear eating someone dear to me BECAUSE all of those things would have been better to look at than this girl slapping river-water soaked thighs in quick succession. I had not finished hoping that the entire episode never happened when I heard this...

"That's not how you do it, this is how you do it!" This girl's brother, another person whose BMI level was above recommended, had to show us all how it was done. I was glad I was looking into the woods. I was glad I was not going to have to watch this whole thing happen again. I was glad that the sun was shining and that I was eating a chicken-bacon-ranch wrap. I was even glad that my shoes were full of rocks because it gave me something else to be uncomfortable about. It was all for naught. Suddenly the unimaginable was happening. He was touching me, very close to things that are politically incorrect to mention on a blog posted on the internet. Places that are illegal to talk about in Germany and China. I was being "awkward salmon-ed", this wasn't happening. If someone took a video of what was happening to me, and posted it on YouTube, it would be removed due to YouTube's community guidelines. This kid, that I didn't even know, was doing this to me and I was being mortified. Why was this happening? What makes him think this is appropriate? Once the episode ended I took a bite of my wrap, sipped some hot chocolate, and calmly walked in the opposite direction of anyone. Once I took a few steps it finally dawned on me what happened and I gagged on my food and I accidentally spit my hot chocolate on a stranger. Luckily the stranger was from France, and that was normal in France, so it was wasn't too bad. (I made the hot chocolate part up) But I really did gag on my wrap.

I look back and see one of my fellow raft guides buckled in half with laughter, I was not laughing. I don't like people touching me. I don't like salmon now. All of a sudden I hate all seafood, all seafood. I hate the sea now.

...to have the wheel with one hand, and a PBR in the other (NO! Not me)

First Commercial Trip!!

Was a success. I was originally supposed to just run shuttle but Seth put me on the river instead for my first guiding expedition, eek! Although I was nervous, I remained calm, cool and collected as I steered the heaviest boat of all time down the river. I only missed one hit, Whitewasher, but other than that it was an excellent first run. I also played the "This is my first time card." quite a bit and yes, got some tips. One of the best parts of the trip was when I gave our Herbal Essence joke a try... It goes like this...

Guide "Hey everybody, look at that waterfall over there!"
People In Raft - Turn heads, "ohh, ahh"
Guide "Ya know, they once filmed an Herbal Essence commercial right there by that waterfall"
One of my customers "Oh really?!?! I think I remember that commercial!"
Guide "Well, I definitely just made that up."
Guide and People In Raft 'awkward laughter that turns into normal laughter'

So, after the trip ended and we started loading the boats back on the trailer I got stopped by a kid who works for Magic Falls, someone I recognized from the river,  who asked me if Windfall was doing a play run that night. We had actually thought about doing a play run earlier that morning so I said "Yeah" and we exchanged digits and called each other bro and dude for the next 10 minutes.

Then the night go interesting. Heather, Kyle and I pack up the Sube (with a 350lb boat on the roof) and head to The Forks to meet up with Joe who was bringing some friends with him for our play run.

We arrive and meet Joe, Don, Simon, Tyler, Hannah, Rod, two Brazilian guys, Ashley, Marissa (who met us in The Forks) and some other people who's names I've forgotten and start planning our run. Once I realized that the majority of the party was drunk or high I realized that planning was probably not going to work. So instead we all hopped in the cars and headed up the dam! Halfway there we dropped a car for shuttle and crammed 8 people into my car and 8 other people crammed into Joe's car. At the top of the dam we checked the whiteboard and saw that there would be 6400cfs water running till 8pm, perfect. We unpacked the boats, pumped them up and got ready to rock until we realized that all our cars were no where near the bottom of the river. Ooops, I guess planning REALLY doesn't work while we're bombing down dirt roads and throwing back possibly alcoholic beverages (Once again, not me), but hey! We're in Maine! (insert quip about open container laws and how they should always be followed HERE) PBR is just gross water anyway, so what if a little bit spilled on the leather seats, nbd. Anyway, we want to get on the water asap so Joe and I hand our keys to these Brazilian transfer students from UNH that we had never met, and instruct them to drive carefully back to the Ball Field which was take-out. I literally don't even know if these kids had licenses, but I handed over my most precious Subaru and instructed this new friend that he should drive slowly, and that he should be sober. To which he replied, "Ok" and "I'm sober enough"... I crossed my fingers.

We get the boats in the water and make it about 500yards down river when we notice something very bad. The water was dropping like crazy. The dam had decided that they didn't want to give us water, that Boston had enough power for the day, and so were left rafting the gorge at like 2000cfs. Our plans of cliff jumping, hitting Maytag and running the pourovers in Rock Garden fell apart and instead we paddled our brains out to make it to Carry Brook before all the water went away and we got stuck running the river at 340cfs, which is, the worst.

At this point, Kyle, was celebrating. Against Ashley's advice he had decided to kayak the upper. So when he saw the water dropping he was very glad indeed, low water was much easier for a kayak. So while we frantically paddle ourselves down the river, Kyle whistled a merry tune and got off the hook for a hard gorge run. This isn't to say it wasn't hard, just less hard.

Magic Falls was pretty tricky but other than that we make it Carry Brook unscathed. Now, remember those Brazilian kids who brought our cars to the Ball Field, well... oops, because the water is so low we would barely make it to ball field so instead the girls take a car that we had left at Carry Brook and have to drive to Ball Field, to drive back, and blah blah blah... It took a while, it took long enough for my imagination to start churning with images of burning Subaru's and Brazilian wreckage, but at 9:10 we see headlights and ta-da! The girls brought the cars back yay! Saved...

So even with the water level dropping to an almost unraftable level, and not being able to do any crazy stuff, we still had an awesome time going down the river and meeting some new frrraaannddzzz! Don has decided that Windfall should rename all the rapids to things that apply biblical meaning, (we actually thought this would be a sick idea) and we get to hear more about how Magic Falls runs its operation, as well as Pro River Runners who, by the sounds of it, have almost ended their Kennebec rafting days.

All in all, sick day... The Marshall even opened their kitchen for us and made Kyle, Joe and I burgers and fries at 10:30 at night. We ate them while the boom box played something similar to a Lamb of God song which we all found very inappropriate for eating. Alas, friends made, rivers run, burgers eaten. I'm going to start renaming the rapids now... except I'm actually going to bed because there is trip in the morning. WOOP!

...to have some bad days, then some good ones

Last Sunday sucked.

No need to sugarcoat it, the day blew and it was directly after Saturday (thanks Rebecca Black) and Saturday was great.

At 9am we hop in a boat laden Subaru and head to Greenville where we have been attending church. Halfway there my tire goes flat and it was only after "Whats that noise?" and "Whats the smell?" did we realize the back left tire had shredded itself. So here we are, Ashley, Marissa and I, changing a tire on the side of the road because God said "Don't go to Church today."

Bummer!!! But, after a possible $600 tire repair the day had to get better right? Nope, not for me anyway.

After lazing around the base we decided to go to the Moose River to practice kayaking. It's a great river to try to catch surfs on and its normally a blast. While Mason and Kyle drove away to shuttle the vehicles I was going to go over a "tiny" waterfall, eddy out, and wait for them, but it was not to be. The "tiny" waterfall flipped me (because I'm still a noob), I lost my air because I forgot nose plugs, I missed my roll, I couldn't grab the handle to pull my skirt and I generally freaked out under water until finally I escaped my boat. At this point my paddle is starting to head down the next set of rapids, a paddle that is not mine, a paddle that I can not lose! I push the kayak as hard as I can away from me and start swimming toward the paddle. I grab my paddle and then swim to go get my boat which is also not mine, which I also cannot lose. The Moose river is like 2-3ft deep and swimming for like 1/4 mile while being berated by boulders and raking myself on rocks was mildly unpleasant. It was the worst swim I've ever had.

Last Monday was much better.

I was able to find a used tire of the same size (Subaru owners know how important this is) in Skowhegan, Kyle and I were able to go to McDonalds and then Andrew showed up later that day! Things were looking good! We ventured down to The Marshall to chat with some more people about coming with us to the Penobscot River the next day and we all enjoyed a burger and beer for $6. (of course, substituting the beer for something with no alcohol) Although we didn't find anyone else to come to the Penobscot with us we did find a very angry girl who's boyfriend had broken up with her, and we watched some crazy videos of guys going over 30ft waterfalls in Rafts in the middle of winter.

Tuesday was the bomb.

We woke up early Tuesday morning, finished loading the cars, fueled up and headed east to The Nob. Mason and Ashley had run the river before but Kyle, Marissa, Andrew and I had not and boy was it sick! We scouted the gorge from the cliffs surrounding it, pointing out lines and talking about angles, when Three River's five boat trip started making there way down the gorge. The first boat made it fine, the second boat (filled with a good number of teenage girls) flipped and we watched them all swim through the Class V rapids knowing that they would never want to raft ever again. But, if 13yr old girls could swim this, psh, we got it for sure. We saddle up the 15ft raft and hit the river with Mason as our guide making it down with no problems at all. Farther down the river is The Cribworks which is another Class V section that Mason navigates with ease. Now it was our turn. After some joking about injuries and recirculation, Kyle, Andrew and I bring the raft back up to the dam for round 2! Here is how our run went...

Ian Guiding the Gorge, Kyle Guiding the Crib

We get back late Tuesday night, exhausted but pumped. The day on The Nob had been incredibly fun and challenging. We all had a blast and no one got hurt! Andrew got a taste of what we do and how we do it (although on a different river). He even guided Pompanoosuc falls once, what a boss.

So from bad to incredible those three days were all something to remember. Having Andrew coming up here was freaking awesome! Hopefully I'll see some more people from down south drive up 201 and pull into the Windfall parking lot.