April 11 -
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Street Sale was a success! Thanks to anyone who read this and showed up. Friday night was a bit hectic, with Rene and myself scrambling to create posters and prepare the driveway to host the hoards of shoppers we anticipated. By midnight we were out around the town posting posters for the sale and by 1:00 AM we were snuggly tucked into bed, well Rene was anyway, I slept on his couch.
The day broke with clear skies, crisp temperatures and a slight breeze. We got things started around 6:30 AM with setting up the tables (borrowed from Algonquin College – thank you) and distributing our various goods for browsers to see. Christine came by with coffee and muffins around 8:00 AM which made my morning, but unfortunately she could not stay, as for some reason, her furnace had decided to stop working.
Our fellow street vendors came by around 8:00 to set up their goods and our first customers came by around 8:30 AM. Business was good for us, the neighbours and those who had come by to sell their own wares. We fired up the BBQ around 10 and began feeding the masses. We sold out of hamburgers and went through quite a few sausages, we used what was left to feed a few starving students we call classmates.
The sky began to cloud over just in time for our closing time of 3:00 PM to arrive and we began shutting down and packing up. All tallied up, Rene managed just about $400, I sold over $150 and the food raised over $100 toward the trip fund. The most important accomplishment for me yesterday was getting rid of several large pieces of furniture, which is going to make moving out that much easier come the end of April.
Now here we are, less than a week away from blast-off, time rushing past us faster and faster. Already we are wishing our classmates good luck and good tripping as they leave for exotic places and extreme trips. Ours is the last group to leave, the only group staying in Canada and the first trip ever in the history of our program to make Newfoundland our destination. Our class this year has groups departing to Peru, Utah, France, Spain and Mexico – all very exciting places, no doubt, but we wanted snow and we wanted a unique challenge. Ours is one of the only two hiking trips, the other group is trekking the trail to Machu Picchu in Peru which will certainly have very little concern for snow or chilly temperatures. This year we have two groups climbing in France and Spain, respectively, two groups whitewater boating down the Green River in Utah and a group going on a sea kayaking expedition in Mexico.
Each expedition will certainly have their own challenges and tribulations, however just as I’m sure the members of our fellow groups would say of their own, I think our trip is in a class of its own.
April 6 -
Wow, what a beautiful weekend that was! Easter weekend could not have been prettier; the sun shone everyday, the highest temperatures yet recorded this year with the only issue being a night of high wind that didn’t affect anyone because we were all too asleep to notice. Things have been shaping up well for our Street Sale next Saturday until we checked out the forecast with Environment Canada and saw this:
…snow? Snow?! How are we getting snow after a weekend of +25 degree weather? How are we getting snow with a high of +10 and a low of +1? Environment Canada needs to start explaining this phenomenon – this sort of stuff is only supposed to happen in Alberta!
Well, we have no plan B weekend, as the following Saturday we are on the road, so we shall plow on ahead. The show must go on, even if it goes on until Sunday when the sun shall shine clear and melt away all that snow from Saturday. The group has decided to create a tarp-city set up – kind of Indian market style – in the case of rain (or snow). Thankfully we have been trained well in the arts of Tarpology (thanks to Cam, Greg & Ben), so this event will be our chance to put those skills into practise. However, in the event of absolutely horrible weather, we may try delaying the sale until Sunday. As it stands now, we certainly will not allow a bit of snow to get in our way, hell we’d have to cancel the whole trip if we were afraid of a little snow.
March 31 –
Well I just got two really cool things sent to my inbox from our good friend Paul from out east. Number one, we’ve got our very own article posted on the IATNL’s website, which you can view here, that outlines our trip, goals and a brief mention to where we’re coming from and why we’re doing this trip – thanks Paul!
The second piece of awesome news came in the form of a photo, in fact it was this photo:
That interruption that you see popping above the snow cover is where we have planned to take our rest day on day 4 of our trek. Paul had sent us this photo last night along with a few others, including the one I posted yesterday. I distinctly remember sitting around Rene’s kitchen table as we sketched out our required back-up trip plan (a car-camping trip hitting up as many trails as we can in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park) where we gathered around the laptop screen and joked about the trip, naively spouting off such statements like “Could you imagine if THAT was the hunt cabin? I mean, how cool would it be to have to dig that place out before we could even get into it?!” We should have known.
I can’t wait to tell the other group members about this fact, though it may seem a mundane detail (inconvenience?) of the trip to some, I find the prospect of digging this place out and holding up for a day by a cozy fire quite exciting.
March 30 -
Well, it looks like it’ll be a snowy one after all – at least for now. I received a few photos from up in the mountains from our friend Paul from the IATNL and it looks like we’ll get our winter camping trek, so long as the temperature doesn’t shoot up in the next two weeks or so. These photos had everyone in the group excited; we were beginning to think that winter was over everywhere in the country and that we would end up doing more of a slush-hike.Thankfully, Newfoundland has come through for us once again.
In other news, our Street Sale promotion is now in full swing. We’ve set a date, a place and a time for all those interesting in buying or selling to come down and check things out. Today we’ll be cruising around town posting posters and leafing leaflets for the people of Pembroke. I have already contacted the local radio station, myFM, and requested that they send their cruiser around to Patterson Street to check out the event. Ads have also been posted on Kijiji and Craigslist for the maximum exposure that the internet provides. If you’re reading this and you happen to be in the area on the weekend of April 10th, come on down, we’ll be serving coffee from Cafe Ole in the morning and hot dogs and sausages for lunch.
Speaking of which, I think I’ll go have one of those coffee beverages right now… Until next time, you stay classy, planet Earth.
March 22 -
Alright so you know how in our last post (if you forget, scroll down) I said that we’re now coming to the fun stuff? Well, it has begun. We are now coming into a few last-minute fund-raising events, at least one of which is going to be both fun and extremely useful to us students who wish to shed a few extra items before taking off for the summer.
I am talking, of course, about an ODA yard sale. Unlike most yard sales that our classmates are used to, this one will not involve skis, poles and small pieces of loosely attached clothing becoming aerial projectiles. You don’t even need a helmet for this yard sale. Our group is hosting this wide-ranging event on Patterson Street off of Pembroke St West and we’re encouraging anyone who has gear, furniture, art, literature clothing, knickknacks or anything else (that is legal to sell on the side of the road in Ontario) to join us on April 10th to empty their lives of those things they don’t need anymore. We will also be serving cold beverages and food from the grill so that no one goes hungry whilst perusing and purchasing. Table space prices have yet to be decided, but they are coming soon, so watch for our advertisements!
Another event we’ve got going on leading up to our trip-date will have Rene Gendron doing a pair of Monday-at-noon shows downtown at Cafe Ole. This is no sort of formal event, more like busking inside with a fancy jar instead of an open guitar case. So if anyone is hungry for a delicious lunch and some good live music, Mondays at Cafe Ole are for you. Rene will probably be playing on March 29th and April 5th around noon and all donations are much appreciated!
I’d like to side-step here for a paragraph to talk about the people we Ontarians commonly refer to as ‘Newfies’. I have had the pleasure of dealing with the people from Canada’s Easternmost province quite a bit over the last couple of months, primarily through email, but more recently I’ve met and had conversations with a few in person. I would just like to say that the rumours are true, Newfoundlanders are indeed the nicest folks in the country. Everyone Newfoundlander I have discussed our group’s trip with has been instantly curious and helpful. It has been a great experience planning this trip and working with and talking to the people of Newfoundland has made it all the more enjoyable. Thanks Newfoundland.
Oh and one more side-note; we were handed back our Trip Plan today and I’d like to give our group a solid pat on the back for a job well-done. Our trip plan was awarded a mark of 110%, and our prof has not even checked out our GoogleEarth mapping system yet.
March 20 -
Now that we have officially ended the Initial Planning phase (even though we will continue to plan and re-plan until we are safely back home from our trip) we can finally begin making headway in preparation. We have already done a lot to prepare ourselves for this trip; acquiring the necessary gear, making travel plans, brushing up on our Wilderness First Responder and rescue skills and practicing various winter camping techniques have all taken place to ensure that we are well prepared mentally and physically.
We have acquired or secured the necessary gear for our trip, including a Sat Phone, fuel and potentially snowshoes and trekking poles from the IATNL and the College of the North Atlantic in Corner Brook. Not surprisingly Corner Brook is home to a similar college program to our Outdoor Adventure program and after having taken a look at their program course-load, it’s obvious they take full advantage of the natural features and landscapes they have stretching out in every direction from Corner Brook.
The next steps of preparation include booking motel rooms, spots on the ferry between Sydney, NS and Port-aux Basque, NL and maybe reservations for the luxury lobster dinner that we intend to reward ourselves with after a trip well tripped. Might have to keep that last one off the books.
Thankfully we are in a good spot right now in terms of preparation. In the not-so-distant future we will begin gathering and preparing our food for the trip – plenty of cooking, dehydrating and seeking around for the right ingredients. Other jobs to come include a group gear shakedown, first aid kit shakedown, prepping the vehicle and many more that I cannot think of at the moment. The paperwork is done now so we can finally get to the fun stuff!
[...] Preparation [...]