bittersweet. . .(resisting the temptation to say symphony. . DAMN!) D23

Who is excited? I am! I’m excited first because my keyboard is F-ed right now and won’t display apostrophes (‘) or question marks (?). Well I’m not going to reboot or stop using them. **inserted later, I fixed this problem but am not rewriting this entry so pretend it’s still there**I’m going to type cause that’s what I feel like doing right now, so here is my garbled entry. It’s like the time I did that entry from Geneva and the French keyboard gave me a French accent when I typed. Anyway the story below was pretyped and doesn’t have any of the drawbacks of the present. Some notes: The last pic in

this entry is of a guy I saw on the ferry coming back. His shirt says “Breakfast Included”on it. Awesome. I realise I do have something to add before the last Mozizzle entry. I have poo on my shoe. It’s dog shit actually. We made a big joke about it the other night when Bob came up to Guelph. Gabbo came and joined us, it was nice. Gaby I’m still waiting for my facebook video insult. So yeah, Laura, Bob and I went to the Red Papaya, Thai and Viet Namese cuisine, downtown. Not the same as the old uptown location. Why? Because this would never happen: At the Red P you have to write down your order yourself। First the number and then the name of it and any extras you want. Robert wanted Pad Thai, so he wrote 501, but that’s not Pad Thai, that’s Rad Na. Next to that he wrote the words ‘Chicken Pad Thai’ (Forgive the lack of quotation marks, there’s another button that does those now that’s too annoying to hit). So out come the meals, everyone’s order is good, of course, except for Bob’s Rad Na. Bob stares at it for a bit, and when the waiter comes around to see how it’s going (I’m hoping this time I can finally ask him for a damned drink) Bob informs him that he ordered the Pad Thai. Baffled, slack jawed, and not so discreetly the the angry waiter takes the meal away. He comes back momentarily with our slip to show Bob what he wrote down, in a not so thinly veiled attempt to make him look like an idiot. ‘You wrote number 501, that’s the Rad Na, but then you wrote Chicken Pad Thai next to it, but that’s number 500, so do you want the Rad Na or the Chicken Pad Thai?’ Really? You came to see which one Bob wanted? Well let’s see, what was he more likely to mix up? 500 and 501 or the words Chicken - Pad - Thai and Rad-Na. Which of these is not like the other? Bob kindly apologized and said he wanted the Pad Thai, and the waiter informed us that our punishment would be that it would take ‘a while’ and that 50 lashings and bamboo shoots under the fingernails would be administered each of us at some moment before we left the restaurant. So 2 minutes later, literally, a waitress plunks a dish of tofu stir fry in front of Bob and walks away. Still we have no drinks, and we stare at each other in disbelief. Bob starts obediently to eat it, tired already of arguing. He’s three bites in when another server comes with a Pad Thai and looks at Bob’s meal. I cut in not to worry and that he hasn’t even touched it, so she promptly pulls his meal out from under his nose and efficiently plunks down the Pad Thai before walking away. At this point we are giggling in uncontrollable fits over Bob’s misfortune, when over Laura’s shoulder I see a waiter with a dish of Pad Thai walk into my field of view. He walks up to the server that hates us and quietly mumbles ‘Who’s the Pad Thai for?’ The server points without looking to our table. ’They already have a meal though. . .’. That grabs his attention. Now the two of them walk over to our table while bob sits frozen and uncomfortable. The guy who hates us glares down at Bob’s dinner with a disapproving scowl. He shakes his head in disbelief, and in a breathy voice of scolding, as if Rob has really done it this time, he shakes his head and says ‘That’s not the chicken Pad Thai. . .That’s the veggie Pad Thait.’ Bob visibly shrinks in his chair in shame as he pushes the third dish over to the waiter, and out of his mouth squeak the words ‘I’m not a scientist.’ Priceless. At this point I had the nerve to ask for drinks and the waiter couldn;’t believe it. ’Oh you guys want drinks? Like three of them?’ Yes, surprisingly three people want three drinks. They didn’t serve beer, which is exactly what we all needed right then, my guess is because some kid who ordered a mango smoothie probably got a stiff gin and tonic by accident by some similar mechanism, but who am I to judge. Anyway, if you ever want a laugh but you aren’t that hungry, go to the Red Papaya in downtown Guelph. The original reason I was excited and a bit sad is that this is the conclusion of the Moisie entries this is nice because I won’t feel the pressure of uploading them any more, but sad because I have to make up my own shit now. Anyway, it’s nice to be done, and it was a pretty good ending to a trip, even Paul McCartney has a role in it. Thanks Paul, call you Friday.

D23

Today is epic. We brigade back down to the water in the cold of predawn and we are off. 15k to the gulf. The makeshift tide chart I draw up turns out to be right and the tide is high but ebbing as we get on the water. The Moisie widens in the morning sun with every turn we take until the home stretch where our river seems never to end. We are in canoes looking over the atlantic and the sense of accomplishment is palpable. What a strange way for a river to end,

looking like it goes on forever. It’s like a movie about space panning upward into a sky blacker and more starless than space itself, and then just rolling the credits there. . . We paddle toward a small settlement (Moisie) which is just a group of trailers on a low grassy sand spit. The water here is noticeably brackish, what a strange sensation A race breaks out amongst they boys when the bus appears, looking gigantic against the sky as it backs in the canoe trailer. 300m out I have no doubt that our driver, ambling down the beach to greet us, is Stan. Of course, We pull up and Stan and I shake hands. He says he just couldn’t refuse because he had to know how the trip went. After loading the bus we cross the point on foot to see the atlantic, and there it is. A seemingly endless gulf, and though where we are has an out of sight opposite shore called the southern coast of Newfoundland, I look where I imagine the gap to be that has unobstructed ocean to Europe and Africa. Big planet. After a salty swim and some looking at crabs and sseashells we load up and head off, following the ocean boulder fields in the tidal flats past Sept Îles all the way up the St. Lawrence to Quebec city. 9

hours later we are back where westarted: In Murielle’s backyard. The only difference is we are not the same people, and we’ve eaten a lot more fruit since we’ve gotten on the bus. We’ve seen some belugas breaching also, as we crossed the Saguenay at Tadoussac in the ferry. We head to the local ice cream place again, for tradition’s sake, and we head to the lookout point. It’s a warm night with no bugs, the humidity and grass and southern trees are all out tonight, and we bask in the warmth. Paul McCartney is playing a free concert in a crowd of over 150000 people in the city tonight, and we sit looking over the St. Lawrence at one of its

narrowest points, studying the reflection of the skyline and the city lights with Chatêau Frontenac as the crown. We enjoy the fireworks and the strains of Hey Jude that blow our way as we think about one man drawing so many people so far across space and time, and yet more helicopters over the stadium where he’s playing. We think of what a small world it is. Tomorrow we head home, thousands of km from where we started, 2 provinces and a mountain range away. Small world, big planet.

Trip Stats

Put In: Labrador City – Lat 53°00’ Lon. 63°30’ (NFLD)

Take Out: Moisie on Gulf of the St. Lawrence – Lat. 50°15’ Lon. 66°00’ (PQ)

River Distance: 426 km

Elevation Drop: 600m

#of portages: 18

Portage Distance: 13,800 m

{This section only applies to me and maybe Murielle cause the kids only did 2 trips on each portage (lazy bastards) and I did 3}

Distance walked on portages: 69 km

Distance carrying boats, barrels, and packs: 41.4km

Bearing of trip: 183°30’ SSE

3°30’ off of dead south