Saturday, March 10, 2012

How Not To Portage A Canoe


A Few Years Back

It was a crappy day at work, the kind where I wished I had won the lottery all day long but I didn't. One wrong thing after another so I should have known better but some days I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

So I ended up needing to move my hogged backed OT from the carport down to the canoe rack, not a long distance but we got another snowfall last nite, already thigh deep in the field with only a snow blown trail to walk in. With a nice new coating of snow I dragged my boat down to the canoe shed and then hoisted it up on my shoulders and got to the thwart. No problem!!

Now I start walking in the thigh deep snow towards the canoe rack. Well, we’ve have nothing but rain, snow, freezing temps, sleet and the thigh deep snow is like a rock so I think. Halfway to the rack I break through the crust and I'm thigh deep in snow and the canoe follows the rule of gravity and continues forward and down. My legs are now stuck, more like locked deep in the snow and the canoe lands on top of me, the carry thwart driving me down, hard enough to bury my face in the snow filling the space between my eyeballs and glasses! Crap!! Why do events like this happen so fast?

Now I'm not a big guy and the canoe weighs probably half my weight if not more. I'm wiggling like a bastard to get the damned thing off of me! If you had been a passerby all ya would have seen was a red canoe moving all over the place except upwards and maybe heard some muffled swear words drifting across the field. I was completely covered by that damned canoe!

Took a minute or two but I finally got the bugger off of me, a few minutes more to get the snow outta my face, glasses, nostrils, and then a bit more time to finally rack it. I think I'm gonna be one sore ol' coot in the a.m.

Come spring I'm moving that g*&%^$@ rack a lot closer to the house! Beware of deep snow and portaging a canoe!