Friday 6 July- Monday 9 July 2007

Ryan and Silver’s Excellent Adventure 2007 crossed paths with the Great Shuswap Adventure this weekend, as I met 9 of my friends to embark on a housetrip trip on Shuswap Lake. The 9 included my brother Sean, our friends Colin from Regina, Hannah from NB (who put this whole thing boat thing together), Nadya from Saskatoon, Leah and Alicia from Yorkton, Hannah’s friend Leslie from NB, and her friends Kim and Jodi from Lloydminster.

After leaving Kelowna early on Friday, I met up with the rest of the crew who traveled all the way from Saskatchewan to Sicamous on Thursday. It was another damn hot day, and we had about 4 hours to kill before we had to board our boat.

We went to a waterfall called Crazy Creek before we boarded. For only $9 we got to see a little waterfall, cross a little suspension bridge, and get bombarded with not-so-subtle Christian propaganda that detailed how we must donate to this facility because it is being used to promote the Good News. Since they already took $9 from me I declined to donate more.

After our little side trip we went back to Sicamous to get groceries and board the ship. We had to wait about an hour and a half to board, but it was well worth the wait. For the next four days we swam, lounged, ate, drank, and basically had a blast.

The lake was beautiful, and the weather was perfect: four more days of 30+ degree weather with no clouds. As a Captain of the Ship I was partly responsible for getting us to where we wanted to go, which was easy because we didn’t really care- except when we ran out of beer and had to find a liquor store. The only difficulty was driving the rather large boat- considering that it was huge and I had never driven a boat before.

This is where anybody who was on the houseboat who reads this will notice that I totally lied about driving a boat previously. Sorry guys. But hey- I think I did damn good considering this was my maiden voyage!

Other than that, the trip was largely uneventful, which was nice. The typical tensions that exist when 10 people with 10 different sets of wants and needs and 10 different conflict resolution mechanisms are all trapped on a boat together were even kept to a minimum- all things considered.

One of my favourite nights was when Colin and I went swimming at about 1am in the lake. It was so warm and clear. We just floated there as the moon was shimmering across the lake and a number of bats were flying overhead to capture the numerous moths and other bugs that were attracted by the lights on our boat. So peaceful. It was awesome.

There were some very late nights and early mornings which eventually took its toll on my system, and by the last day I was getting a little worn out. On Monday we returned the boat and the crew started to make its way all the way back to Saskatchewan. I, on the other hand, rode back to Kelowna for a much needed rest.

Not sure what will happen tomorrow, I’ll decide when I wake up.