Die Hard Three

I’ve been receiving an unusual amount of negative feedback from a recent series of blog posts revolving around my participation in a “dangerous” hike to one of the chalets in the Gatineau Park. Adding fuel to that fire, it was claimed that I amplified the situation by opening the kick-off article in a rather “dramatic” way.

Hello everyone. This might be my last post.

On top of that, instead of dousing them flames, the title of the article apparently fanned them.

Training Day for September Death Hike

So, in the interests of clarity and goodwill I’d like to take this opportunity to set a few things straight.

1. I was simply stating the obvious when I wrote that “this might be my last post”. As with every article I write on this blog (or any activity that anyone anywhere has ever done or will ever do) there is a non-zero chance it could be their final one. The future is unpredictable – for example I could have decided mid-hike to quit writing.

Or I could have started up an even better blog: DieHardFive.wordpress.com!

2. The title of the aforementioned post contained several punctuation errors. It should have read:

Training Day for September. Death? Hike!

3. But based on your reactions, most disturbing thing from that series of hiking posts was the inference that we would be visiting the “terrifying” Cabin in the Woods. Many people sent several messages begging me to get us the hell out of there. Some of the highlights: “Turn around!”, “What are you thinking?”, and “It’s a trap!”

Relax everyone. That was a name I just made up spur-of-the-moment. We were going to a cabin, it was in the woods. It made sense at the time. There was absolutely nothing to worry about.

Hi mom,

I just want to send you a quick note to let you know that we all survived the practice hike, including me.

And to help put your mind at ease, I want to assure you that if I ever do go on a hike where there is even a remote chance of encountering a bear, I will take with me several units of bear mace, bear chase, bear tase, and a 30,000 volt electro-perimeter fence (for sleeping).

I also promise not to eat any blueberries or salmon for the two weeks before the hike.

Jason

We arrived at the water tower safe and sound. Next stop the Cabin in the Woods.

We haven’t entered the park yet and I’ve already injured my dialling finger. This does not bode well.

Hello everyone. This might be my last post.

As some of you are aware I’m going to be hiking the Killarney Grizzly Bear Trail on the third weekend of September of this year. In order to get trained up I’m going on a practice hike with several friends, colleagues, and strangers this morning.

In order to stimulate a real hiking experience I’m bringing with me the exact same footgear I’m going to use in September as well as a backpack loaded with half a dozen four-inch paving stones (to simulate the weight of a full pack). The rest of the hikers think I’m carrying our water but all the containers I have with me are empty. I plan on filling them in the beautiful mountain stream when we get to the top. Carrying all that water would just make my pack heavy.

and I’m incredibly lazy.

So wish me luck. There’s a chance I could fall and injure my hand and not be able use my mobile phone to call for an evacuation helicopter. I love all of you.

As a matter of principal I ignore all forms of print advertising and I have not listened to commercial radio or watched any broadcast television in almost three years. So when my mom called me on Monday to find out if I wanted to go to the Star Wars Identities Exhibition at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, I was really psyched. My brother (being the political junkie he is) had purchased two tickets for my sister’s children so they could experience this incredible event first hand (my parents were going to take them the following day).

For the first few hours it was all I could think about. But after my initial excitement subsided, I began to question the wisdom of bringing young children to what was obviously (in my opinion) an event marketed to teenagers, adults, and senior citizens.

I was also perplexed at the theme the organizers had chosen. Identities? What’s that all about? You’d think that the Star Wars technology would be a much bigger draw. I mean, some of the characters were interesting but I bet you twenty dollars that if they displayed some of the actual Star Wars hardware they built, they’d get way more people to show up. Either way, I figured they’d have some physical Star Wars items but I was expecting the bulk of the displays to be informational.

So I got to the museum late (my parents and nieces were already inside) and after I paid my admission I noticed that there was an image of Darth Vader on the ticket. At first I thought it was just a marketing gimmick (ok, that’s kind of clever, I guess) and when I was picking up my audio guide they were playing the John Williams Star Wars theme (I wondered how much that cost them). But then, when I actually got inside, I found myself surrounded by all these props from the Star Wars *movies*.

I scanned the hall, frantically looking for any evidence of the *real* Star Wars. You know, the kind of Star Wars one would expect to be on display in a government-funded, national museum dedicated to aviation and *space*.

I looked around for the Lockheed Martin-designed communications base stations.

There were none.

Boeing’s prototype of the satellite-borne, giga-joule space-laser and interceptor?

Negative.

The advanced terahertz radar tracking and targeting sub-system?

Nope.

The dummy Soviet warheads that were to be used as test targets in the evaluation stage of the program?

They’re probably on display in a better museum down in the United States somewhere.

The bleeding-edge command-and-control / information processing systems?

Here we have some of the costumes worn by Natalie Portman in Episode II: Attack of the Clones.

The detailed analysis of the anticipated Soviet countermeasures to the Star Wars program?

Spoiler alert: they were just going to build more of the weapons they already had – they only needed a few nukes to make it through the American defences to ensure the total destruction of their adversary. Along with the rest of us. Assholes.

The budget projections and cost estimates for the program?

Okay. I was able to find this online.

A framed picture of Ronald Reagan?

Ugh. I don’t think I’ve ever been so disappointed with a museum in my whole life. And to be honest, I was kind of looking forward to the identities part. I’d like to learn more about the men who thought it a good idea to try to build a hundred-billion dollar, a single-purpose, space-based, treaty-breaking, military system that could never work in practice and could be easily defeated by low-cost modifications to the existing weapons they were trying to defend against.

So, long story short: I just paid $30 to look at a bunch of movie props I already paid $50 to see in London back in 2007. Anyway, the moral of this story is: George Lucas is a mad genius. I vote we forgo all future elections and put him in charge.

And they also had this thing where you could build your own Star Wars *movie* character. Here’s mine.

For the record I did this exact same thing when I was a kid – except I built my Star Wars character out of Lego and his name was Jay Solo – Bounty Hunter Hunter!

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Here’s the map of our camping route. The red dotted line represents the canoes and some of the campers. The text describes some of the notable events.

Can you see where the power lines are? Unfortunately none of that electricity was available for our use on this trip. 

I want to finish up the camping posts with a shout-out to my fellow campers. It was a great team and a great experience and I hope we can all do this same thing again sometime, but in the middle of winter.

SM – we would have all died several times had you not been leading us (but to be fair we also would have never gone on the trip in the first place because you organized everything).

AW – thank you so much for the German lessons. By the end I was getting sick and tired of all the spoken English.

DDB – I’ll bring my fishing rod next time and we can catch some fish together but we’re only going to eat them if there’s no other food.

LD – I’m sorry I got us lost on the drive home and you were late to hand in your masters thesis and now you’re going to have to wait a whole year before you can graduate. But on the bright side you have lots of free time to go whitewater canoe camping!

YL – Thinking of you gave me the inspiration to complete what was a difficult blog post about the dangers of camping toilets. Stay gold!

SB – You were a trooper. You probably didn’t notice because your back was to him, but YL was asleep the entire time you were paddling. He didn’t put his paddle in the water once. True story. ER and I could see perfectly from our canoe.

ER – I think I got it now. Latvia and Lithuania are two different countries with their own languages, currencies and hockey leagues.

And one final reminder for everyone out there – don’t forget: there are only three approved memes.

Peace sign

Bunny ears

Fake wiener

Jason – August 2013

The toilets in Algonquin Park are all very pretty to look at but if you’re wondering how well they work you’ll have to talk to one of the other campers.

I’m sure they’d love to tell you all about their camping bathroom experiences in great detail.

Even though I cannot see you, some of my readers are right now displaying expressions of confusion. “What? You didn’t go to the bathroom for three days?” Don’t be silly, of course I did – I just made sure that each time I went it was only category 1. “Well, what about… you know… the other category?”

I can see there’s no way around this. Someone should have had this talk with you when you were much younger than you are now. But they didn’t so I’m going to have to fill in once *again* for failed parents and educational systems all across the planet. “Do you ever get tired?” Yes. I’m exhausted and the pay is terrible. $0.00 per hour – so I’m going to make this short.

When the human body finds itself in an unfamiliar / stressful environment, it has the ability to temporarily disable certain subsystems. As this relates to me, when it comes to camping I’m not too comfortable with the idea of mosquitoes, spiders, snakes, porcupines, or any other animal biting my ass (if I’m lucky) from the dark cavern that is the campsite outbox. This most recent Algonquin Park camping bathroom situation (apparently) resulted in elevating my stress level so high that my body delayed the need to go until I got back to Ottawa.

Don’t get me wrong. These camping “toilets” would be perfectly fine if they were only to be used once. But why on Earth would one want to sit bare-assed on what is essentially a wooden box filled with snakes and spiders when there exists a beautiful, perfectly functional, $1,700 German toilet in my home available for my private use?

The only reason I can think of is to reduce the weight that has to be carried during the portages.

I discovered this feature of the human body when I was in China in 2008 when I took a three-day, two-night riverboat cruise on the Yangtze River. The boat we were staying in (on?) was an older one and the en-suite bathrooms had the oldie-time squat toilets. Now these toilets are perfectly fine if they have a trap to prevent the smells from the septic system from escaping into the room but these ones didn’t. With a little bit of training it’s possible to hold ones breath when brushing ones teeth or going number one. As for number two, well, not breathing during number two can be dangerous and counterproductive.

So the moment I discovered I was going to be captive for three days on this riverboat my brain sent a signal to change my system setting from “daily” to “later”. I didn’t understand what was happening at the time and it was only when we got to the hotel in Wuhan that I figured out what had transpired.

I’m going to finish up with a warning: not all stressful situations are created equal. Camping and Chinese riverboats are slow-moving events that provide the body with enough time to select the right setting. You have to be very careful because there are other stressful situations (fast moving ones) that cause the body to do whatever the opposite of “temporarily disable” is.

Man, what a trip. As much fun as it was, it’s good to be back in Ottawa. Over the past few days the thing I looked most forward to was sleeping in a room that was not wall-to-wall curtainless windows.

To be properly rested I need darkness (or a second pillow to block out the light).

I managed to drive almost 3,500 km (that’s 63,000 miles for my US readership) in a little over 62 hours and (like all my travel adventures) this one was a journey of discovery. Here are the things I learned and observations I observed during this trip.

1. America has the best highways. Sorry Germany.

2. America is a large country, maybe even bigger than Canada.

3. Contrary to popular legend, vampires do not roam the countryside.

4. Gasoline is cheaper in America than in Canada.

5. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

6. For a brief period back in 2008, Canada had an opportunity to purchase America.

7. More twins are born per capita in New Haven CT than anywhere else in the world.

8. This house is pretty.

Thanks to Tom for the digs on Wednesday. You are a star my friend, a shining, shooting, rising star. Thanks again.