Sharehouse_Episode II: Snatch

The garbage bin rolled through Trevor’s dreams. The plastic rumble of the Sulo wheels being dragged over patchy grass tore him from sleep. His sedated confusion resounded through his head, accompanied by various mumblings. What the fuck is going on? The rumbling stopped. Footsteps pounded on the cement stairs leading past Trevor’s room. He heard the fumbling of keys, the door creek open, then slam shut. Trevor glanced at the alarm clock. The red digital display branded his eyes with 3:14 am.

7:01 am. Someone was knocking on Trevor’s head. Who knocks at this hour on a Sunday morning? He rolled off his mattress onto the thin carpet and a few sharp books. As he staggered to his feet, he heard footsteps running from the front door. Probably Lyndon: missed the bus and forgot his keys again. But it’s Sunday. There’s no bus for Lyndon to miss. Trevor pulled on a pair of jeans and a singlet. It wouldn’t have been the first time Lyndon had gone sprinting out the door to catch an imaginary bus. But why the knocking? Trevor opened his door and almost stepped on Jason, who went roving about the room as if he were chasing something visible only to him.

Sharehouse_Episode I: Siren

The fluorescent plastic of the inflatable couch cast fragments of light around the room like a collapsed disco ball. Trevor reclined until his head thudded against the torn yellow plaster, padded by his faded beanie. He stared at a little fishbowl television. The screen was so curved that it could have been mistaken for a glass basketball shoved into an undersized box. An infomercial reeled up slowly in separate frames, barely allowing Trevor to fiax his attention on each picture before the same program replaced it from underneath. The narrow division of grey static between each shifting frame soon became more amusing than the ‘Ab-Swing’ being advertised. More interesting still was the way his breath obscured the unstable picture in shoots of opaque moisture. Trevor’s outstretched snow-boots rested at a comfortable height on an uneven stack of Aristotle, Plato, Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca, Nietzsche, Dante and Homer.

A creak invaded Trevor’s head from down the hallway, followed by the frenzied patter of scratchy paws on carpet. A hazel ferret sprinted into the lounge and up Trevor’s leg. He brushed it from his lap onto the floor, where it sprawled momentarily, then began to scurry around the room in search of food scraps, like a selective vacuum cleaner.

The only working vacuum cleaner.

Guide Training 2012

Kumsheen Rafting Adventures has just kicked off the 2012 rafting season with its traditional guide training program. 8 paddling padawans stepped up this year, four guys and four gals, ranging in experience from guest rafters to a Swiftwater Rescue swimmer, a Kiwi Kayak instructor, and a German paddle guide. Also in attendance was a young born-and raised Lytton man, the first local to attempt the course in many a season.

Raftmaster Rawley was lead instructor, and I was fortunate enough to be his second. Our mission: to pass on enough whitewater rafting skills and smarts in a single fortnight (that’s two weeks in North American speak) to prepare trainees for their written and practical Raft Guide Exams, abandoned by the provincial government but upheld by Kumsheen.

Lake Washington Loop

Rode around Lake Washington the other day. I was the spandexless guy with the steel commuter bike, and no pump or spare. You may have wondered what I thought I was doing on a technical 100km loop. Truth is my knee was injured, I couldn’t run and decided to ride 10 times my running distance to achieve the same endorphins. And what could be fresher than a Sunday loop around the lake? The weather was Seattle springtime: a year’s seasons cartwheeling over my head, sodden cotton socks and squeaky parched chain the only tokens of the previous hour’s rain.

Center of the Unknown Universe

V. Come Down

28/09. There is a height at which all estimates regarding the proximity of the ground become hopelessly disparate from one person to the next. It was precisely this height at which Hale, Jean-Baptiste, and myself clung to the flaking steel underbelly of the Lytton bridge straddling the mouth of the Thompson. We were scouting an anchor for a suicidal rope-swing, brain-child of the mad Frenchman. One would swing out from the rocky riverbank, shoot between two cement pylons with an inch of clearance either side, pendulum high over the river, release at the apex, stall like Wile E. Coyote, plummet into the Thompson and swim to safety or be flushed into the yawning Fraser. That was the idea.

IV. Swiftwater Dreaming

01/08. My first solo-guided paddle trip with living stranger-souls aboard fell on Jacob’s birthday. Jacob by this time had successfully integrated rockstardom with his personality and his lanky, long-haired Jacob-vision and torn denim ruggedness… I said hello and he responded with a skyward twitch of his head, as though acknowledging a fan.

02/08. The second rowing of passengers down the Thompson, though still fresh with rush and challenge, marks the entry into routine guidehood. For the first time, I was doing things that I no longer hadn’t done before. But the commercial scene is merely the roadsign and driveway into Confluence Kulture. Let me therefore dispense with the pleasantries, and steer these memories into the crux of our whitewater lifestyle.

III. Rookie

05/06. Lytton may be the hottest town in Canada, but the hottest patch of earth, the nexus of the summer fury of Helios, is the workshop yard at Confluence Rafting Resort. The glaring wall of White Canyon beams the heat and light from miles around. The white hypalon-coated tubes send reflected sunlight up your nostrils. Even in the shade, your skin tingles with Ultra Violet shattered on sun-bleached surfaces. The wind only fan-forces the thick air, throws dust in your eyes and sends dirty ghosts twirling across the yard.

II. Guide Training

01/05. Last day of manual labour before guide training. I spent the day digging rocks from the earth and quad-biking them down a dirt track to an undisclosed location in the scrub. In the evening, I hiked down to the Thompson river for the first time. There’s a small patch of sand down there called ‘Rattlesnake Beach’, a site of past and future shenanigans. Two-and-a bit days, and I would finally be out on the water, doing what I came here to do. What could stop me now?

I. Deep Brain Thrombosis

15/04. Sydney International Airport. The glass door to my departure lounge was dark-tinted, smashed, and presumably locked. I could see nothing on the other side. The two women in front of me turned away to look for another entrance. I ventured closer just to be sure it wouldn’t open, and it opened. I wonder if those women ever made their flight.

The following are an expansion of my travel journal, which at times had to be written and in public areas. Why do we sit down in departure lounges before international flights? What we need to prepare for our 20-hour sit is surely not a seat. A jumping castle would be more sensible.

(I think this computer is melting. It smells like melting.)