The First Day in the Front Country

Already this has been quite the first day back, and in a rather stressful way. Honestly its probably more stressful because of what happened on the last two days of this last trip. The trip was great, I had these three fabulous clients, that were so much fun to be out with. They were really relaxed, went with the flow and we all had a great time and had great weather, again.

The day before our pick-up however turned out to be slightly epic. We woke up and winds were building out of the south and so we hurried to get on the water to get across to the east side of the bay before the water got so big it wouldn't be safe to paddle. The crossing was a bit on the rowdy side, but we got across, and just in time, because by the time we landed the surf was building t0 3' waves. Thankfully there was a passing boat that I could call on the VHF for a weather report and the very friendly captain of the Kastine let me know that the winds would be dieing down in the evening. So we hunkered down just off the beach out of the wind and drank hot drinks and ate snacks and waited for the wind to die. Right around 4p we looked out at the water and didn't see any white caps so we jumped in the boats and headed south. We still had about 10 miles to go to our campsite, so we knew we were in for a late night. We would need to be on the beach for our pick- up at 7:30 the next morning, and we decided it would be better to paddle later into the night and sleep as close to the pickup as possible, just in case the winds picked back up again in the morning. Winds were on and off as we paddled south toward camp, and we arrived on Garforth Island at 10p, ate some oatmeal and went to bed. The next morning we had to be up at 6a to get to the Mt. Wright pick up. So by the time I got back to town after the trip I was excited about the great trip, but exhausted.

This morning, I got up to start cleaning gear and was checking my voicemail when I dropped my cell phone in the bleach water. It's totally dead and it took me 2 hours on the phone with Verizon to get a new phone. And just when I had that all figured out, I knocked tea onto my laptop and it shut down. Luckily a few hours later and some serious attention to drying it out and the laptop is back in service, but the phone is long gone.

As my dear friend Matt Allard said today: Rachel, You silly girl. You can handle an 16' 'yak in sea swell amongst floating chunks of glacier while humpback whales try to scratch their backs on your rudder, but you cant control a cell phone on flat pavement. What are we going to do with you?"

So true, what are they going to do with me? Turns out I'm a way more competent guide than I am technology owner. Such is life.