The first thing I saw when I got to the Assiniboine was an island, that ended in a sandy point. I was enraptured; I thought this new river would relieve all the Qu'Appelle's troubles. I even noted that on one section there was wind against me, but the current was still strong enough to push me forward through it.
These ideas were soon to be corrected. When the wind has it out for me, it can easily throw up foot high waves to impede my progress. I felt like I had hardly gotten anywhere when the rain started, just a sprinkle.
I found a rocky shore, but there was still an inch or two of soft mud through the rocks. It didn't seem meaningful to stop there; the mere presence of rocks could not be taken as a promise of cleanliness. I continued.
The rain continued as well, it was growing in strength. A bridge crossed the river, aloiw bridge like those early on the Qu'Appelle. It was just high enough to be ducked. If the water were a couple inches higher I might have needed to get out and guide the canoe under. If it were a foot higher I would have needed to portage.
The rain was coming down and I saw no rocks, no sand, no islands to stop on. I turned my attention towards finding good tree cover to shelter me from the rain. Some cow-stomped mudbank would have to service, but when I stepped out I was up to my knees in mud.
There wasn't any point in going anywhere else. I ferried my things up under the trees and established camp. I removed as much mud as possible by rubbing some sweet-smelling weeds against my skin. There was nowhere to drag the canoe aground so I had to simply tie it to a tree, leaving it sitting in the water.
The wind roared impressively during the night, and even my well-sheltered tent shuddered in it. I had a mental image of my canoe drifting out to the middle of the water, and sinking end first, like the Titanic, but sans orchestra. The clouds covered the moonless sky so I could not check on it until morning.
Day 66 ended: 50*08.281N, 101*03.633W
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
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2 comments:
All canoes should come with an emergency black box, that's a boom box, to play appropriate music upon sinking, to assure that such events do not pass without the appropriate pathos. Good luck through the night!
The following is from your challenge to keep writing about what I did during the day.
I pulled out an old grammar I did for querying sequence databases, and it was rather poor. I touched it up a little, but most of it is serviceable to add as a backend.
Today I thought some about the work being done with ProfW&N. I think there's an easy way to write a lot of it, but I don't know if there's anything new there. But, it should be handy for writing this closed-loop supply chain sim.
Today I had lunch with one of my office mates, T. He doesn't talk much, but if you draw him out, he doesn't say anything weird, although he's very friendly.
At work, the most interesting thing that happened was I figured out that one needs to send the function name to the option argument if the function is a pseudo-object parameter inside of a tag-delay assignment.
I'm going to try getting up earlier, to have time to work on my own stuff more. I get so frustrated when things happen that keep me from getting to it.
John,
I am so sorry that you had to go through so much trouble drawing out your office mate, only to discover that he doesn't say anything weird.
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