The Western Adventure: 2008

What a crazy week. First, our supervisors came down to camp with a whole lot of food and a whole lot of beer. Fun stuff. Everything else this week went wrong. One of our trucks kept on stalling all over the place so we brought it in for servicing... apparently someone put diesel in a gasoline truck. So this week's lesson is DO NOT PUT GAS IN A DIESEL VEHICLE OR VICE VERSA.
This screw up will be documented on our wall of "People have to try pretty hard to fuck shit up this bad" (-K.D.)

Today we went to a small town called Smith for a small bakery that was said to have the best sticky buns in the area. Those sticky buns were probably the best sticky buns I've ever had. Not too doughy and not too sweet and just the right amount of cinnamon. Ahh.

After our trip to Smith, we went to Fawcett Lake. Beautiful day for a drive across the northern Alberta countryside.

Tomorrow Carole-Anne and I will be attempting wakeboarding. Kyle will be capturing the evidence of our struggle from the back of the boat. More to come tomorrow!

I also want to include a little blurb written by one of my co-workers, James Adam Campbell, about our bear safety training. It goes a little like this:

In the event of a confrontation with a black bear:

If I stare him in the eyes, he will charge me. If I run away, he will catch up and kill me. In the most unfortunate situation where a bear charges at me, instead of running away and getting killed by him, I'm supposed to let him knock me down and then fight the bear. Also, if a bear pokes his head in my tent, he's not curious, he knew i was there and is trying to eat me, thus I'm supposed to fight him.

Yes, thats right. According to my bear training, I'm fully expected to engage in hand to hand combat with black bears if attacked.

However... If I encounter a grizzly bear, anything I do will pretty much result in the bear killing me, so I just lay down and pretend that I'v already been killed. The bear will apparently try to bite my head a few times so i must cover my neck so he rips my fingers off instead of my jugular, and also, if I allow the bear to flip me onto my back, he will eat me.

Now on the other hand POLAR BEARS! Thats a whole nother story. In the field u have to sleep with a handgun between u'r legs, so when the polar bear sneaks in u'r tent and starts pulling u and u'r sleeping bag out the door, u can quickly access u'r gun and shoot him in the head. Where black and grizzly bear encounters are almost always accidental, a polar bear is actually planning on eating u and will track u down. They have been known to follow ski-doo tracks back to camp.

The only way to survive a polar bear encounter is with a hand gun.

Although I don't have to worry about polar bears, the fact that my job consists of me walking around the middle of a bear infested forest in regions where bears have never seen humans before scares me. I just dont think I'm strong enough to take a bear in hand to hand combat...