This corner of the world

15

May 22, 2017 – This weekend was awesome. It started Saturday with a run to the insurance agent to “finally” insure the motorcycles, and that was followed by a not-too-short and not-too-long ride to remind myself that this machine is a very, very different animal from the little scooter that runs me around town. It was nice to feel the power and the solid weight under me again. We have to reacquaint ourselves again after a much too long hiatus through winter and a very long and rainy spring.

Along with the reacquaintance also comes the reminder that complacency can be deadly as it barely took five minutes on the road before someone drifted across the lanes without a signal and threatened to take Kirk out in front of me. Then, on the run across Second Narrows, someone had dumped a rather large load of pea gravel everywhere, and it spanned the entire length of the bridge, that was enjoyable and was followed by navigating around a car with the windows blown out after what was appeared to have been a high speed roll when he took the Hastings off ramp.

Survival skills and spidey senses are resurfacing..

The rest of the ride went much better.

Sunday I had a bit of a bout with vertigo so riding was off the table, but the day was lovely and we got the tomatoes out and potted and did some other things around the yard.

And today we drove down to the yacht club and picked up the two little kayaks we keep down at the boat and drove up to Whistler for a relaxing paddle across Alta Lake and down the River of Golden Dreams to Green Lake.

We’d seen the river when we’d been up in Whistler cycling and motorcycling and thought it looked like a nice way to spend a sunny afternoon, so today was finally the day to do it. We parked the truck at Lakeside Park on Alta Lake and launched the puddle kayaks for the lake paddle. The little boats aren’t perfect for this kind of paddling. They don’t track well but they are comfortable and enjoyable. My big sea kayak is a much better ride across open waters.

But I was so glad to have not brought the bigger kayak up with me. It wouldn’t have gone well.

Once across the lake we were into a marshy area and then into a slow and meandering creek that eventually had us pull out at a fish weir and make a very short portage around a corner to a map of the area. The map suggested a 300 metre walk downstream to the spot where the creek emptied into a faster flowing river. It indicated that at high water or at flood waters one should portage past the meeting place to a safer spot. We walked down and although the water was at the high water mark, it looked relatively benign and doable. So back we went and re-launched. The paddle to the merge seemed little more than a ditch with high bushes either side, and it was a struggle to paddle though the brush. And when it dumped into the main stem it was a moment of “wheeee!” as it sucked us into the flow.

The rest of the paddle was not as sleepy as we’d thought it would be, there was a lot of river-reading going on, and on most of the corners there was some hard paddling to get out of the more rapid flow and away from the overhanging trees and brush. But it was fun slipping through the eddies and across the current.

The paddle is about 20km and the scenery is lovely. It was hard to take any photos once we got into the flow though, every time I tried the current swung me around so eventually I just gave up. And eventually we arrived at the sportsplex pullout just above Green Lake where we hauled out and called a cab so Kirk could go back to get the truck left at Alta Lake. After loading the kayaks back on the truck it was into Whistler for a bite to eat followed by the slow drive home; long weekend traffic can really suck sometimes, but not unexpected so bearable.

It’s funny how one fabulous weekend of gorgeous weather can make you forget that it has been raining pretty much nonstop since October….except for December to February when all it did was snow. This weekend was the first May long weekend in 18 years…..18 YEARS!! …. that it was sunny.

Memories of weather are fickle.

Thankfully.

117 Photos in 2017: 52. Your Corner of the Earth