May 29, 2011
Harry starts dragging out his canoe route maps in February long before the snow and ice melt. His equipment makes its first appearance in March as he fixes leaky mats, checks straps, packs and ropes, and then shops for replacement accessories. April is his time to think about menus and food preparation. He dehydrates and vacuum packs meats, sauces, fruits and vegetables for days on end. The house smells good from that and the homemade granola in the oven. A few days before he leaves, he packs things up. All the while, for months, the maps sit out for his frequent consultation.Fortunately, Harry did not have to pack incontinence pads for this trip. His incontinence lasted only a short while after the catheter removal in December. Would sitting be difficult, we wondered? He paddled on the lakes at Fort Whyte a couple of times to see whether being on a relatively stiff canoe seat for a long stretch of time would cause discomfort. Seems that was no problem either.
These days, Harry shows only one symptom of his ongoing anti-androgen treatment and that is the annoying hot flashes. In anticipation of the heat and perspiration from the hot flashes, particularly at night, he added a package of handy moist wipes to his trip supplies.
I expect we'll have a humorous and deliberately distorted account of Harry's paddling success from his canoeing buddies, Danny and Tom R. We'll relay that to the blog when they return.
If you would like to follow their progress this is the link to track Harry, Dan and Tom R's canoe trip in Woodland Caribou Park in real time: Harry's Current Trip (real time access expired)
June 2 Update: The weather in Woodland Caribou Park has been bad, preventing the guys from making typical progress. Here's a weather map from June 2 at 5:30 PM CST. The arrow shows their location right in the middle of a storm.
Click on the image of the map to enlarge it.
- MS
Contact hdstimson @ shaw.ca
