Comfort Inn Pembroke

A mere 400 or so miles later I pass into very familiar territory, the Ottawa Valley. Rolling farm fields, barn smells and small towns after you bypass Ottawa (which has a charming hostel - the old Ottawa Jail right in the downtown).<br>There's a fiddle festival going on over the Labor Day weekend. It's become a phenom now after several years. The riverside park fills with rvs and bodies. Nice location.

... covered bridge. There were also some snowmobilers making a river crossing at the same time. Right through the middle of town, snowmobiles. Only in Canada.<br><br>Anyway, Therese was on a mission to find some "interesting forest shadows" so we hopped back in the car and looked for some. We just drove around the backroads slowly until Therese saw something interesting, then we'd get out and take pictures. Hence, all the pictures of trees that I took. That was pretty fun. I ...

... Middle Channel in a canoe, including Big Butterfly. There was a lot of portaging too... We then had a girl's trip riverboading the Ottawa and another to Ottawa to do some crazy whitewater swimming in a kayak slalom course. This was swiftly followed by a shopping trip and a visit to the Level 6 HQ (with a 40% discount from them, most of us still spent a fair amount on clothing there). Anyway, after that we were back for one evening which was spent packing for ...

... and took turns to guide one rapid each. The first day I guided The Normans and today I guided Coliseum, both of which went reasonably well and everyone stayed in the raft. We had some fun at Butcher's Knife, when the person guiding took the wrong angle into the Chopping Block wave and the raft high sided and dumped everyone. Not a flip though, so we ...

... not to mention slightly dangerous. When they said this was intensive they weren't joking! We carried her (with a lot of help from another team) up the steep ravine and through the woods to the bus, where we loaded her onto the back. The exercise went extremely well, especially for a first attempt. Apparently we did it in record time. Between five teams there were five patients, all located, treated and evacuated within an hour and a half!

I have made a rolling contract with Karine C. This means that whenever I want to practice my roll she has to go out on the river and help me but whenever she decides I should go out and practice I have to go. If we have time we are going to practice tomorrow afternoon after class. I'm not sure how much time there will be though, as we are doing a night search and rescue tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to that.

Christmas came at last this morning and we got some of the gear which we ordered so that everyone had enough to go paddling. We were supposed to be doing day two of the Wilderness First Responder, but Jim (who is supposed to be teaching it) broke down on his way back from Northern Quebec and was stranded 7 hours away, so we had kayak school day one instead! We loaded up boats from The Stick and brought them back on the bus before unwrapping them (see, just like ...

... to set up correctly before she would let me try a roll, which I managed once with a small amount of help from Karine. I will try again tomorrow after Christmas (when I finally have a kayak to use). Upstream Dave is apparently here tonight and he is excellent - the whole bar should be rocking as people come from all over the place to see him. I can't wait.

... completely intact. There are three main waves in Coliseum after a diagonal at the beginning. The first two boats made it over the diagonal and went straight into the foam pile of the diagonal. They are small rafts and the result was that they just went up and over, spilling people everywhere. Some swam for it, some were picked up by the kayakers and rafts at the bottom, some (I presume) were picked up by the motorboat before ...

We decided to borrow kayaks today and paddle out in to the bay. It's beautiful; the sun is shining, the water is calm and there are little sparkles on top. I could stay here for ever. Will just arrived, and apparently Kelly arrived this morning but we haven't seen him yet. I can't wait to meet ...