still in recovery...

instead of eating turkey and stuffing like normal people, my sweetie decided that the thing to do thanksgiving weekend was to take a kayak trip out by the discovery islands and harvest shellfish. see, oysters aren't any good in the summer because they spawn and get all gross -- october's allegedly when they start building a glycogen supply to live through the winter and actually get sweet. he'd made me promise a couple of months ago that i'd keep thanksgiving weekend free to go get oysters.

i had misgivings from the get-go, but i assumed we'd be camping at quadra island, head down to rebecca spit and pick up oysters from the beach at low tide. i thought we'd be out there for two of the three days, come home and get rested up and cleaned up for work on the monday. then i found out we'd be kayaking. and that we'd stay out all three days. and that low tide was at about 4am plus or minus an hour each of those nights. and that we weren't going on some romantic getaway -- a girl from his lab and s&a would be joining us.

i told him i didn't think i could go. the timing was shit. the weather had already turned rainy, i was supposed to write my thesis, and i was likely to be hitting the peak of PMS on the trip. i was going to freeze my ass off, i told him.

then he got all sad and whined about me promising to go. he tried to tell me i'd enjoy the trip and that it'd be good for me.

i relented, telling him that to make up for lost time on my thesis, he'd have to take care of stuff at home before and after the trip so that i could work. after two ferry rides interrupted by a two-hour drive from nanaimo to campbell river, we arrived at herriot bay, where we set up camp, had the last civilized meal we'd be having for several days, then headed out at about midnight to harvest shellfish. we filled our quota of oysters and dug for clams, then headed back to the campsite where a crazy and presumably drunk man was having a fit about a chess game or something. the noise, the cold, and my thermarest, which is not made with a lady's curvatures in mind, made for a rough night's sleep.

we set off on our kayaks the next morning, after numerous hours of dillydallying. the first ninety minutes were fine; we arrived on a tiny wooded island; the largest of an ostensible archipelago of rocks, several of which featured fattened seals in poses that might be considered sultry if they were human. their blubber rippled as they launched themselves with their bellies into the water, where they seemed considerably more elegant and cute. we ate a lunch of oysters at our wooded island; my first mistake (after agreeing to go on this trip) may have been that oysters were pretty much all i ate. most of us cut ourselves shucking the damn things; the wound i made with my oyster knife is still festering away on my ring finger now. although the oysters were quite fresh and delicious on their way down, let me tell you that i wasn't terribly fond of them on their way back up...

after lunch, we launched into a bleakly cold paddle against the wind toward an island but without a specific destination in mind. all we knew from my sweetie was that there were "some bays" on the other side of read island that probably have lots of oysters. after two hours of being tossed around on three-foot waves and having the wind chill me to the bone, i began feeling unwell. "we'll just go past that point there and there should be a place to beach."

past the point was an aquaculture operation, which meant that we couldn't harvest within several hundred metres of it. we paddled past the next point. more aquaculture.

this seemingly endless meandering made me feel even more ill, and with about an hour and a half or so before sunset, i lost it and vomitted off the side of the kayak. my sweetie picked up speed to drop me off in a bay where i was supposed to find a decent camping spot while he turned back to find the others and let them know where we'd ended up.

in neoprene boots and carrying an ungainly kayak paddle, i had to amble my way across rocky crags then hack my way through the bush only to find that the grassy area i thought might be a promising campsite was actually an impossibly rocky region next to a stream. meanwhile, the sun was setting, and there was no sign of the others. all i had with me were the extremely wet clothes on my back and a paddle. i climbed over this valley of fallen trees that smelled like rotting garbage and made it to a mossy landing, paced around, and waited. clearly, someone had been there earlier. there were discarded nets and old crab shells. was this person still there? was he going to emerge out of the bushes with a shotgun ordering me off his property?

i was relieved to see kayaks coming around the bend and into the bay just as the sun was setting...but they were sans my sweetie. apparently, when he'd backtracked, he missed them somehow. the others set up their tents while i sat and worried some more. after what seemed like hours, my sweetie paddled back into the bay, exhausted. he charged me with the task of setting up the tent while he pulled the kayak to higher ground. as i put the tentpoles in, one of them snapped catastrophically. we eventually reinforced the break with a piece of aluminum tubing, but it was just yet another thing that went wrong on this trip to make it stressful rather than enjoyable.

we started making food -- stirfried vegetables on couscous -- but after throwing up, it's hard to convince yourself to eat again. i swallowed a few bites and retired to the tent, where i spent another night tossing, aching, and being fucking cold.

the next morning, we harvested oysters from the bay, which was teeming with the creatures because, as we later found out, the land had actually been a shellfish lease, though my sweetie seemed convinced that it had since been abandoned. on our paddle back to our little wood island, we encountered even bigger waves than the day before, and although i'd taken all the steps i could to try to stay dry and warm, believing that being windswept and cold contributed to my seasickness, one of the larger waves came down right over me, running down my neck and drenching my fleece. i didn't throw up that day, but i sure felt like it. i didn't do much paddling, but by the time we got back to the island to set up camp, my thumbs were blistered, and i was cold and broken.

that night was a bit better; at least we could set up the tent in daylight. the island was small enough that we knew there was nobody else and no bears around, and my sweetie built a fire, which i used repeatedly to dry my feet. i only had my neoprene boots, and they were waterlogged. if i took them off to dry my feet, i knew i'd be wet again the moment i had to step into them to go anywhere. with our vegetables going bad, we just dumped everything into a pot and boiled them up with our clams and the remaining couscous, which resulted in a watery soup that would only be acceptable as camping food.

the next morning, we had a fortunately uneventful paddle back to heriot bay. and, as soon as we lifted the kayaks out of the ocean, the sun came out, after hiding behind clouds for the entire weekend. we ate at heriot bay inn that afternoon; we all gorged oursevles, me especially, since i was starving but didn't want to eat too much for fear it'd all come back up.

anyway, we got the 9pm ferry home, which meant that we didn't get to bed until midnight. the next morning, as i attempted to get up for work, i found myself with a cough, a headcold, and achy shoulders and knees.

"next time we go kayaking," my sweetie said to me, "maybe you'll listen to me and get the expensive paddling jacket."

to which i replied -- only partly in jest -- "what the hell makes you think i'll go kayaking with you ever again?"

~sigh~

i'm a bit better now, but i still feel dazed and quite broken. my sweetie is off on an intrepid hike up blacktusk in a couple of weeks.

i'm not going.