...to go back to Maine

            This past weekend I was reminded once again just how fast the human brain problem solves. The speed of the mind is something rarely recognized during your average work week. That same brain that helps you decide what to wear in the morning, what to eat for breakfast, what to do at work, is the same brain that prevents car accidents and, well, drowning in Class IV rapids; the latter being on full display this past weekend in Maine.

We’ll get to that later.

            It’s been years, literally years that I’ve been searching for a kayak to call my own. No, I wasn’t looking for some open-top Old Town lake kayak that anybody can walk into L.L.Bean and take off the wall; I was searching for a playboat. This search has brought me closer and closer to owning the real thing and for the first time ever, I drove up to Maine this weekend with my own playboat strapped to my roofracks. It was like a dream come true! I couldn’t stop taking pictures of my vessel as it was shuttled around, first class, on the roof of my Subaru. The moment work ended at 6pm last Friday, my boat and I hit the highway for what was sure to be an unforgettable weekend of white water.

            Saturday morning rolls around early and another day of rafting brings me to consciousness. Most of the time, a day of guiding the Kennebec is something I crave but as I walked onto the loaded bus that morning I felt a twinge of anxiousness. It wasn’t that I was frightened about hoping back into a raft after a month long, work related, sabbatical. I just wanted to kayak instead! But, like most things, work came before play and we hit the river with a seven boat trip of excited customers.

            After what felt like the longest day on earth, Mason and I start packing the car for our long anticipated, inaugural run with two brand new Jackson Rockstars. The boats look perfect as we strap them onto the roof for the ride up to the river. They’re scratch-less, and so smooth and light that they float around atop the Thule roofracks as if the boats themselves can’t wait to hop off and into the river. We’re being accompanied by Tyler and some other guy who appears to be a hitchhiker that Mason had picked up on his way to Windfall (the basecamp). They pack two, heavy-duty rubber tubes onto the kayaks and we hit the road what was sure going to be an interesting night.

            After running shuttle we get to the top of the Kennebec dam. The river is blowing out 8200 cf of water every second, Big Water… Hell. Yes. The dam is notorious for changing “scheduled” flows and I didn’t want to believe that Big Water was happening until I saw it with my own eyes. Sure enough, the river had crept up the sides of the gorge and was lapping away at roots and trees that on most days saw less than a spinkle. Besides the quickly setting sun (it was 7:30pm) it seemed that everything was going well. I raced back up the stairs to put on my gear and notice Mason and Tyler rummaging rather greedily through my trunk.

            “Nah, man… I swore I packed it!”

            “Ah, I think I forgot!”

            “Yeah, uh, I really don’t have my life jacket right now.”

            “And I forgot the extra…”

           

            Here we were, finally, getting ready to drop our boats in the water for the first time and we were missing TWO life jackets. Mason was going to pack an extra for the hitchhiker who was still with us, and he forgot, and Tyler… well… He just straight up didn’t bring his.

            As someone who is a habitual planner with near OCD precision I started to feel a bit deflated. We were so close! But, with the desire to hit the river overpowering common sense we did a bit of improvising. Tyler found an extra life jacket somewhere, somehow and Mason donated his life jacket to the hitchhiker who I was beginning to think maybe wasn’t a hitchhiker after all. Finally, down the stairs and off to the river.

            I had set my boat up in the grass back at Windfall so I was able to sit in it with perfect comfort right from the get go. (This is where I’ll actually be reviewing the boat, so if you know nothing about kayaks then just be prepared to feel a little bit left out). Both of our boats were equipped with Happy Feet and Sweet Cheeks. I nestled my booties into the bottom of the boat and locked them into place, along with my knees and hips courtesy of Jackson’s perfect outfitting. Of every Jackson boat I’ve paddled, the comfort level has been leagues above the competition. I couldn’t move an inch within the boat, just the way I liked it… With outfitting this comfortable it was as if the boat were just an abnormally shaped and colored part of my own body. I slipped into the water for the first time.

            This new Rockstar, compared to previous models, felt perfect. It was as if everything I had wished for in a boat had come true. It boat felt a bit tippier than its predecessor, but not in the way you would imagine. After paddling a 2Fun that was too small for me I really got to feel what “too tippy” actually was. This Rockstar had just the right amount for someone in the middle to low end of its weight range. The tippyness gave me the ability to move more to the stern and bow of the boat. It was so easy to slice! I would have played around a bit more but the current was taking me after a few practice rolls and the river had grown dark with night. I wanted to get a move on. I paddled forward down the river, easily slipping to my stern and bow in my vain attempts to wave wheel. While the previous Rockstar remained a solid, stable boat it wasn’t the easiest to get to stall. This new Rockstar needed minimal paddle work to want to get on edge or on its nose. It felt like it wanted to have fun! So I let it.

            The first class III-IV section on the Kennebec is Rock Garden. Mason and I split the pour-overs in an attempt to really test out maneuverability. I watched as two perfect surf waves slid by, (next time for sure) and we continued to head down river. The boat was FAST. It seemed to feel very similar, in speed, to a Titan Genesis… (Although MUCH more comfortable). I bounced over waves, catching air and doing my best to stay upright through the munch of class IV rapids. The boat crossed eddy lines and boils with ease and I launched off Big Momma (15’-20’ crashing wave) into the hurl of water. With the Sweet Cheeks supporting me I felt like I had a better vantage point of the Kennebec in a kayak than I had before. The run continued and nothing went awry until Supernatural. The last big wave before Cathedral Eddy. It was here where I was amazed at the speed of the brain.

            The wave hit me, hard and knocked me over and onto Pocket Eddy’s boil line. As I began to situate myself to roll I felt something… strange. The right side of paddle, my rolling side, felt much lighter than it should of. I tried to roll and felt zero power. “Maybe I was slicing it?” I adjusted and tried again… nothing. Still underwater, and on a boil line, I felt the end of my paddle, sans blade. Nothing felt broken, there was nothing sharp, there was just… nothing! It was here where I had to make some of the quickest decision making of my life. I couldn’t pull, no way… not on my maiden voyage, so I scrambled. My off-side roll was only 50/50 in combat and I didn’t want to risk another failure, especially with my waning breath. I also didn’t want to hand roll because that was only 50/50 too and I would have had to ditch my black paddle into the black water at night where the chances of finding it again would be very slim. “Could I switch my paddle?” I thought it was worth the risk. With the boil line streaming around my upside-down body I very carefully turned the paddle around so that the left blade was now by my right hand. I rolled, success! All of that felt like it happened in slow motion, truthfully it must have been five seconds. Crazy.

            I held my broken paddle up in the air and looked back at Mason who was paddling furiously towards me. “Dude you were under for so long! I thought you were going to pull!” I showed him what happened and told him what I did. “That’s crazy, man!” He said.

            I was so scared. It was the most frightened I had ever been in a boat. Not of what had happened, I kind of felt like the man after that, but for what was to come. We still had half a river to run! Including a hit called Maytag which some people put in Class V territory. With my broken paddle I was forced to quit experimenting with my boat and start thinking about how the heck I was going to get down the rest of the river! I was so bummed! I had driven five hours to do this and now my Werner Player Carbon paddle had decided to take a vacation. If that blade had come off on something like Lachine, or the Penobscot, I could have lost my brand new boat. I was pissed. Luckily, this was the Kennebec and I knew the lines of the river perfectly. Still though, the broken paddle made me run the highway and miss Maytag, something I had been looking forward to running for weeks. Fortunately I was able to watch Mason surf it with the craziest two bounce surf I’ve ever seen. This wave is massive. For real. House-sized.

            So, review halted due to poor manufacturing of my paddle but soon, SOON! (like, this weekend if Werner gets their butt in gear and sends me a new paddle) I’ll be right back out there for another go. Now only if I could convince the sun to stay out later. 

...to jump into a sulfur hot tub with an old Hungarian guy

38degrees C isn't really that hot for a hot tub but I still felt slightly uncomfortable in the sulfur bath as the couple next to me participated in a much too vigorous PDA show. I mean, getting hot and bothered might happen more often in a steamy, yet therapeutic, bathhouse but the couple I was sharing my large tub with went at it without a care in the world! I could have jumped into different skin-cleansing bath but I was so enthralled I just had to watch, and no, I wasn't watching the couple... I was watching the old man across the tub who was eyeing the couple with this unexplainable expression plastered to his sweaty face. Half-disgust, half-lust but completely hilarious.

Budapest, Hungary was my home for the duration of the mid-semester break. It was in this city where my attempt to dive into the Hungarian culture lead me to Szechenyi Thermal Bath and subsequently the situation I wrote about above. I had been told about the "famous" bathing culture from someone at church so when I packed for my early Ryanair flight I made sure my bathing suit found its way into my backpack.

Hungarian Bath House Culture: 

(A synopsis) 

Big buildings, many rooms, many baths with numerous temperatures, several very hot saunas and MANY people of all ages/genders/classes converging to enjoy them. An experience indeed!

          Also, NOTHING is in English so be prepared to walk around aimlessly in search of the bath rooms. Too far to the right is the women's changing room (oops) and too far to the left is the super exquisite massage room, complete with fruit, twigs and berries... (oops)

The language barrier was minimal though, as most people will speak English to the best of their ability, but trying to pronounce even the most basic of words is a challenge

thank you : köszönöm
excuse me : elnézést
cat : macska
how many Hungarians can fit in this tub? : hány Magyar fér ebben kádban?

I basically spent the majority of the time pointing at things and hoping I would be understood. My best attempt at communicating with the indigenous happened at a bar one night...
         We sat down at table to enjoy some semi-local beers when all of a sudden this girl across the room decided to empty the contents of her stomach on a bench. Ok, bluntly, she puked everywhere and left. We were mortified, of course, but hey! We hadn't finished our drinks yet so we stayed and cheered on the bar tender as he mopped up the mess. Where was I going with this story? Ah, yes, so later on two girls sat down on the same bench that was previously occupied by throw-up so I went over to them and tried to explain to them why they should sit elsewhere. My first attempt resulted in an accidental awkward staring contest. My second, slower, attempt made them think that I had thrown up on the bench. My third attempt, complete with a mock demonstration of what throwing-up looks like, convinced them enough to change benches. In the end I should have just said... "Valaki hánytam a padon!"

Budapest is truly an incredible city. It felt like we had walked into a third-world country, to an extent. One of the best parts of the trip was a museum called The House of Terror which contained a history of Hungary from WWII to 1990, the first year Hungary wasn't considered communist. The building itself held a certain amount of "terror" as it used to be the headquarters of the Nazi regime in Hungary. Nate and I both thought how incredible it was that the city escaped communism only 2 years before we were born.

"Traveling is the only thing you can spend money on that makes you wealthier" was a quote I saw while in Budapest. Now, Mitt Romney will certainly disagree because technically investments have made him a millionaire but, Bain Capital aside, I really feel like traveling does in fact make you a better person. I'm not trying to equate wealth in the financial sense to making you a better person, but the real wealth found in travel is the new experiences and knowledge that you keep from a trip like this one to Budapest.
      If i'm not making sense, call me and we can talk about it

Alas, I have crossed the half-way mark in this EuroTrip. Alas, I miss everyone (even siblings). Alas, many more adventures to come I am sure!

...to go to Ireland, to call an ambulance at 4am

SHMLACK

The sound of a face smashing off a brick pavement is disgusting. It's not a hard sound, like the dropping a rock, it has more substance, more flesh. A unique sound indeed. It was this sound that made me turn around to see my new friend, Manny, face down on the Irish pavement at 3am, knocked out cold.

But that was 3am, let's start this Irish tale where it truly began, 11am at Isaacs Hostel, Dublin Ireland.

We pulled into the hostel after our early Ryanair flight and dropped our bags in the locker room. By "we" I mean Nate, Jenn, Cassie, Steph, Amanda and myself; 6 American's on their first Irish journey, 6 people who are completely clueless. We couldn't check in to our room until 1 so we began a very long journey around the city that included, but was not limited too, Temple Bar, Guinness Factory, a 200 year old prison and every other iconic Dublin tourist trap we could find. We walked, and we walked, and we walked walked walked all around the city and explored our home of 48 hours.

I experienced a city that was dirtier, more confusing, cheaper and in my opinion better than London. It just had the feeling that you didn't have to rock a collared shirt to take piss and the amount of Bentleys and Ferraris I saw was zero. This place was sweet, but the walk was only the beginning.

That night we joined a Hostel Pub Crawl which, for those who don't know what that is, is a guided journey around several pubs and restaurants where we would get free shots and discounted drinks. For 12 euros its a great deal! We started at 9pm at the Mercantile with a half-pint of Guinness and meandered our way around the city. I brought no money with me on the crawl so I wouldn't be tempted to buy any drinks so to keep my sober self busy I started meeting people. I jumped from table to table through the night looking for other college students with the tell-tale orange Pub Crawl wrist band and met people from all over the world. At midnight Nate and the girls were ready to head back to the hostel, but not I! They left and I remained with 4 guys who were staying at Isaacs Hostel too. Manny, Diy, Lile and Mason were my new companions as 12am rolled around.

After watching Manny throw down a pint in 3 seconds, and partaking in my first real Jeager Bomb, we left the bar with the few Pub Crawlers who remained and headed to Dandilion, Dublin's #1 club. It was sick. Three floors down opens into this massive club and bar where we would spend three hours dancing and drinking and having a merry Irish time.

In Europe, drinks are bought in rounds. For example, if there are five people in a group you buy five drinks, and then the next person buys five drinks, and so on and so forth. I was put in the round even though I explicitly said that I didn't have money for even one drink, much less a round, and all of a sudden I was 6 drinks deep and it was 2am. Awesome.

Also, in Europe, clubs have a much different atmosphere than in America. In America you go to a club, or a house, or a party and you look for someone to dance with; and by dance I mean grind. In Europe you go to a club, or whatever, and you actually dance! You jump around and dance with girls face to face and ahh its so much better! Needless to say I lit up the floor as usual, people love the worm in almost every setting!

At 3am the club music ended with Robbie Williams - Angels and everyone filed out to their next adventure. Being 3am I was dreading by 6am wake up and couldn't wait to get to bed, but alcohol had other ideas. That was when I heard it...

SHMLACK

...and I started running toward Manny who was face down in the street with blood dripping out of his mouth. We got him onto his back and Diy called 999 (911 in the US) to get an ambulance. By the time Diy got through to the operator Manny was able to sit up so he nixed the call and helped him lean up against a building to check him out. Then, this man came up to us and thought we were mugging him! For real! Once we reassured him that we were not in fact stealing Manny's money, but were trying to help him out, the guy left only to be replaced by two other blokes who thought the same thing! GEEZE! This time, the two guys decided to call 999 instead and an ambulance showed up with a paramedic who gave Manny a look-see and deemed him 'ok'. Manny went with Diy in a taxi back to the hostel while Mason, Lile and I walked.

4:30am and I crawled into bed with my head abuzz from the nights adventure, and drinks. I fell asleep for what felt like 10 seconds and was awoken by Nate's 5:50 alarm signaling the start of our next day. Tour day. We hopped on a bus and went all the way over to the other side of Ireland, specifically the Cliffs of Moher and the surrounding countryside. It was incredible! The bus navigated the coastline on the tiniest roads I've ever seen! Nate and I felt the Atlantic ocean and we all considered the journey one of the best parts of the trip. Ireland is gorgeous!

All good things to come to an end though and we hopped back on a plane the next morning and made it back to London in one piece. A whirlwind adventure for sure, and one not to be forgotten any time soon!

...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!!