dear nick

dear nick
i lost your hat in amsterdam
i lost a girl same damm day
we'd been on the road since hong kong
had a lot of smiles on those miles
but our patience was wearing thin


we drank some russian standard
and got to arguing
when we got to camp our stuff was gone
when i woke up the next morning so was she
we lost our cool
and i lost your hat in amsterdam

dear cam
i lost your scarf in mongolia
it had been good
and kept me warm on the steppes
but when i got on the train to russia
your scarf had found a new home

dear dad
i lost your pocketknife in victoria
lost my first girl that very same night
ivory and brass and carved all to hell
i was leaving so we got to drinking
woke up in a cell and your pocketknife was gone

dear mom
i lost my glasses of the watertaxi wharf
you were so mad we went back to look
i dove in the water for an hour and a half
but they were still gone and i was white as a ghost
so they stayed on the bottom that day

dear dion
i gave your dawson creek jersey to chief
the sleeves were gone in thailand
and it really made him smile
we were in norway it had been on enough summits
it reminds him of home and hockey and you

your honor
i lost my cool when i punched that cop
but he was a dick and i can't take it back
i broke his nose and didn't give a damm
so you gave me six months and i learned my lesson
I kept my cool the next time i got mad

dear julia
i lost your heart in amsterdam
it wasn't right the way we were going
but when i think of the miles i can still smile
i know you cried but remember the alps
and the trains and the planes and the miles

dear nick
i lost your hat
and cams scarf
and my cool
ands some hearts
but that's life
and i can still make you smile

"i love my mom" and "it's a pentagram."

It started at the russian border.
Actually it started in mongolia but at the border sounds better. As soon as Julia and i got onto the train and demongolianated in the bathroom sink. We had been hoping for a shower car like the chinese train but it wasn't meant to be.
There we were sitting around minding our own business and figuring out what card games we knew and sucked at when a white fellow stuck his head in our cabin and with gleefull abandon said "White people! You speak english!" half a question mark on the last bit, we were speaking english but it could have been a trap. I do understand how he felt.
His name was Jeff he had been in asia for a fair while and was on the last leg home from his epic overland adventure. Thailand to the u.k. with no airplanes and only a few boats. Well, he taught us to play shithead and we helped keep him fed till he found a bank machine, the funny thing about mongolian Tugriks is that they aren't worth much in mongolia and less than much outside mongolia. Especially in russia...
We had a lot of time on our hands so we got to know each other pretty well, the good stories got exausted and we broke out the bad ones. Then when those ran out we played more shithead!
One thing we didn't have in common was tattoos. He assured me his mom was tougher than a nazi death camp and would kill him, me and everyone involved if he got a tattoo that said anything but "I love my mom" and that there may still be beatings involved if that is what it said.
So we laughed at the mongolian side show on the train platform everytime we stopped, and searched the russian stalls for cash machines, cigarettes, beer and vodka. Plus various foodstuffs to keep us alive, the beer was not very good but did come in 4 litre jugs.
Five days later we were sick of shithead and ready to get of the train, we hadn't seen a bottle of vodka since mongolia and the shakes were getting unbearable. Jeff had decided in order to celebrate properly we should shack up in the same hostel that night. This would make a serious vodka binge in moscow poeticly simple.

 We found our hostel, checked in and showered, which was amazing. Then we went on a mission to find a vodka purveror! It was as easy as following to blokes from the hostel on their food mission. As soon as we entered the grocery store we saw a beer section but a scan of the floor did not uncover vodka. What gives? Then we saw the escalator heading down! A whole floor beneath us!
More food, a wine section, various spirits....Around the last corner, THE VODKA SECTION of a russian supermarket!!!! It was amazing. Wall to wall and ceiling to floor, It was breathtaking. It was a problem when fifteen minutes later we hadn't made any decisions....
And then it happened, a young russian man with a very serious face on, 2 bottles of coke and a couple bags of chips in his cart marched up to THE VODKA SECTION, grabbed two bottles from the middle with a grey label named "russian standard." He put them in his cart and reached back to the shelf for two more bottles, Then two more after that, with six bottles of russian standard in his cart he stood looking slightly puzzled. He pushed the bags of chips aside and looked at the 2 bottles of coke next to the 6 bottles of vodka and then reached back to the shelf and took down one more bottle with a satisfied look that was very close to a smile but still more of a scowl.
As he walked away we looked at each other then the prices of the various other brands, russian standard? It wasn't expensive, there were cheaper for sure though. The name and the young russian moments before sealed the deal. 2 bottles of russian standard!
Now we have vodka and a freezer and food and a night to kill, Jeff asks if we want to see something cool. Of course we do! He disappears into his room and returns with a cylindical object just like the scroll we picked up for my dad in bejing...unrolls it and says "guess what it says?" with a shit eating grin.
"No idea." I don't guess well at all and told him so.
"It says.....I LOVE MY MOM! In cantonese!" He bought it in china from an old man selling his paintings on the street who also spoke perfect english.
"You should tattoo it on my forearm!"
"Can i do that in a hostel?" I ask.
"Of course you can! anything goes in these places." is his reply.
So of we go! as soon as we are set up and the design is on him we break into the vodka and almost as soon as the machine starts to buzz the room starts to fill up with people and the questions begin. whatcha doing? and other no brainers and by the time we are done the room is empty except for us. Next room however has a couple east indians in it waiting patiently and drinking beer...I don't recall exactly what was said but i do know the rest of the night involved riding a big stuffed cow and drinking vodka with russians out loose in moscow with jeff and some punk we picked up along the way, after putting a very drunk julia to bed of course. Vodka is her secret weakness.
The next morning i had a funny message on the computator.

Hey, Joe, i will be coming to the hostel, by 7. I am checkin out of the hostel, got invited to another hostel close by. So, tell me , or if possible, call me when u are back, and u are free and ready to make a tattoo. am givin u my no.

so i wrote back.
Joe Quin March 16 at 12:43pm

hello! we are on the 10 train but will be leaving here by 7 i think. if you get this we are at the hostel now come on by

Well he did and so i did. And what i did was a small red circle with a simple geometric design inside it. And inside that design i also did a goats head. all in red. if i had got to do it bigger it could have been really cool but no small was important. At one point i had to go fetch supplies and julia asked him about his choice of subject matter, the answer was deadpan "it's a pentagram." he likes pentagrams she said when i got back to work.
Then we went to the train and left moscow for st. petersburg, which is where things got a little sticky.

Arjun R Prakashey March 17 at 1:20am Report
hey joe, what do you think about the satanist symbol of tattoo?

I wasn't really thinking when i wrote this.
Joe Quin March 17 at 8:21am
yes you have a satanist symbol tattoo.

Arjun R Prakashey March 17 at 5:55pm Report
am a hindu man, does that tattoo apply to me also? cos i dont follow chirstianism, Or satanism. Now this thing really confuses me. I wonder, how i never thought about this before. What do you think? Am i a member to hell now? A really confusing question, and sorry to be disturbin you, but that evenly disturbs me.
I mean, does this tattoo really infect me as written? Am a hindu, i dont promote, much satanism or christianis, its just that i like pentagrams. :)

Arjun R Prakashey March 17 at 5:59pm Report
I just mean, all that i did, because i like pentagrams, not satanics, yes u can laugh, even i smile at this problems. but thats really confusing you know.. you are my tattoo artist, i thought you wud be the best personality to get consulted. i believe you in this case. Take care and have a happy europe tour. :)

Joe Quin March 17 at 6:36pm
dude im sorry to disturb you. it is just a pentagram and you like pentagrams so wear it with pride. do some digging into the origin of swastikas if you want an example of symbols being corrupted. i am an atheist and have a great big upside down cross tattooed on my back just to screw with the god types.
peace man, as your tattooist i say wear what you want with pride and style.
but do realize some people will judge you based on that little tattoo. i personally deal with these judments as a way to weed out people i didn't really want to know anyways.
you take care and travel safe as well
 
.Arjun R Prakashey March 18 at 7:19pm Report

yeah man taking care. i mean, this tattoo which i am really loving now!! no, am surely not removing it. i read about swastikas though just as you told. and its no disturbance man, its my questions which are disturbing though :\ yes, some people will judge me i  am prepared for that too. bujt branding with this tattoo? doesnt mean am breaking any laws yet? for religions, right? i really need you to solve me up. idk why. talking to u about this lightens me up. cos i dont wanna disturb any others religious activities. and neither do i wanna fall. so if you can answer these 2 questions. PLEASE? *am i disturbing any religion? *and even if i do, does this tattoo automatically pulls me in satanity? No i guess? cos .. i dont promote either. but neither do i wanna disturb any. so.. *Do these laws apply to me also? i really dont think so. A nice topic to talk i guess? lol. please answer man. need and advice, from the tattoo artist as experienced as my age.
 
Our next correspondence was through a chat on facebook so i don't have it in the files. I told him that all the power a symbol will ever have is only what you give it. Oh ya, and that it wasn't illegal to have a pentagram or a swastika or an upside down cross tattoo. In the end he ended up with a pentagram and i never sent him to hell.

mongolia

Not even of the train yet and it's already becoming obvious that my small bag of tricks for survival would not be enough here. To the horizon scrub grass, sand and rocks. Sub-zero temperatures and howling wind are doable on foot if there is enough snow to dig in and build a shelter or there is wood for a fire but this is unlike anything i have ever seen.


Mongolia, the vastness of these steplands is undescribable. The horizon is broken every once in a while with a chunk of rock stickking up, sometimes even low hills with some snow sitting at their base, enough for water but not shelter. Every once in a while there are horses, small ones but sturdy looking and they would have to be the key.

Without a horse there would be no way to pack enough gear for the nights, no way to range far enough to find fuel or water or food.

After thailand with it's jungles teeming with animals and birds and insects, not to mention millions of people it's a pleasant change. It's easy to see how there are so many people there and not here. Survival would present some challenges but with the amount of raw materials at hand, no big deal. fuel to boil water even the dangerous animals are at least built of food it would be easy and a lot of people are proof. Here there are no people. at least not in comparison, a village every couple hundred kilometers, ruins of old houses once in a while but still the scene from the window is desolate more often than not.

The train pulls into a small community and i check the itinerary. We are in Sainshand, in the gobi desert. No wonder its like this. Sunrise was a spectacular affair, clear and warm feeling thru the window but the odd pony’s frisking along the tracks with their manes whipping and thick thick fur tell a different story. So does the frost in between cars thick next to the door on the jam side and feathering away, falling to the floor and crunching underfoot.

While we were stopped i stepped out in the flip flops inside the door of the cabin. It’s not that cold out, i tell myself but in the direct sun is always a different story. At night it got cold and out of the sun it’ll be cold. As the train pulls away i see a low mound of dirt with a chimney, the givaway that it’s someones home comes in the form of a taller mound of dirt with a hole dug in the ground at the far end, in the hole against the mound is a door. A wooden 4 panel exterior door on a mound of dirt about 60 feet long. Curiousity is killing me.

Breakfast, the dining car is different now, we must have changed it at the border last night when the wheels got changed for the difference in tracks from the standard to thicker russian system. Cryrillic signs and a menu with soups and beef pancakes and cigarettes and a dozen kinds of vodka as opposed to 3 kinds of chicken, sweet sour polk and meatball in brown sauce.

More snow now and hills, 10:30 and Ulaan baaar by 1:30. The temperature outside is -15 according to the thermometer in the dining car, the north slopes of the hills are bright white in the shade. While we eat i see a carcass against the fence alongside the tracks, it’s picked clean and bleached white. A Small cow or horse lying there legs tucked under it, head down as though it just laid down and went to sleep. Peaceful, serene the scavengers didn’t even dare disturb it. Just picked away till they got it all and left the bones in silent homage.

Ghengis or chinggis? Does it matter? However you spell it the people he came from and then left in his wake surely help lend credibility to the tales. Nomads in an incredible harsh surreal world, not believing in breaking the ground or leaving behind proof of their passage the single greatest testimonial to chinggis is the great wall that china built to keep him out.

Vodka for breakfast, vodka for lunch. For dinner, dumplings filled with mutton and onions and potato. And a bottle of vodka. When the dinner is done and the bottle is empty and we have sat for a bit our host sabina finally breaches the subject. “maybe another bottle of vodka?” in her heavy german accent.she’s been here 8 years and speaks mongolian like a native but i can’t help but wonder if they can hear the accent too.

we go out into the star filled coal scented night leaving julia with sabinas children and husband. We are in the gher district of Ulaan bataar where houses and fences look like relics from centuries past with the odd satelite dish just to keep things in this era. Rusted sheet metal and crumbling plaster and rotting wood of the stuff that doesn’t belong, then in every yard a squat round gher covered in heavy felt, we only go three yards before we stop and start banging on a steel gate. After a couple rounds of banging and shouting finally a very tall mongolian comes to the gate and lets her in, me he looks at suspiciously and i start to get the feelinging that this is going to be an adventure. Sabina barks some german mongolian at him and waves her arms around then we are in. Out of the night into a low ceilinged warm as hells kitchen little hovel just like the rest of them. And our host motions us towards the bed, his single peice of furniture in front of the tv other than a coffee table.

our mission to find another bottle of vodka has us three doors down from sabinas home in a gher-like house with a strange mongolian man serving us beer and sausage. Sabina explains that liquor resale is illegal and it's not polite to get right to business anyways. "take whats offered, it's custom." she says.


Then to explain further "Your safe inside the gher. You don't have to take anything you don't want too, but in the past if you didn't accept a host's hospitality when you left he could kill you."

Three hours later we have finished four litres of beer, one large sausage, a loaf of bread and a bottle of vodka. our host is cooking some form of liver and noodle dish and has shown me a map of canada and pointed out toronto where his cousin lives. Things are going well but i am sure julia is going to be pissed having been left in a strange place in a strange land with some strange people for far longer than expected. And we haven't even negotiated a bottle of vodka for ourselves.

Just before the food is ready i make a break for it. "I have to go get my girlfriend, it's been hours and i am sure she's worried" I say then head out into the night.

It is so clear and cold i don't even feel drunk heading down the alley. Stars and snow and the sulphur smell of coal smoke in a totally alien world. When i find the correct house and bash in through the door Julia is asleep on a low bench and responds exactly as i thought she might. "i am so pissed with you...." "i know, you have to come help me drink vodka, i will explain on the way." Is all i have to offer her.

You don't have to accept everything they offer, and your safe as long as your inside the gher....

These words echo for the next week, we go to the countryside with sabina to visit her relatives there and learn more about these wonderful wild crazy people.

Rule one. gifts are important, some food. usually mongolian noodles or rice and potatoes, sweets for the children and cigarettes or vodka, preferably vodka.

Rule two. pecking order, sabrina married the eldest male in the family so what she says goes. We stay first in a gher belonging to the sister of her husband and her husband. They cook what she wants and we sleep as guests and family in their beds. If they don't do as she says she is allowed to bash them in the head, as she explains this she gives a male relative who will later be known as shithead a couple test bashes with a balled up fist on the top of his head. sure enough he grins and bears it. then does as ordered.

When we arrive there are 2 goats heads simmering in a large steel wok set into the fireplace, they have been expecting us.The oldest child is a 12 year old girl who's name means falcon in mongolian and within minutes she is tieing julia a friendship bracelet, holding the cord ends in her teeth and trimming the ends with a rusty cleaver from  the floor. with that done and the gift bottle of vodka drunk with the elders it is time for some treats. She picks a jawbone each for us and sets about scraping what meat is left on the heads into a pot along with the eyeballs. when our jaws are picked clean she splits the heads on the concrete floor with the cleaver and scoops the brains into a plastic cup then serves everyone a spoonfull in order starting with julia and i until they are gone.

The water the heads were simmering is is now used to cook rice along with some potatoes and onions and it is suprisingly good, while it is cooking the gher is uncomfortably hot so the children and i go outside and take turns sliding down a packed hillside on pieces of plastic from water jugs and garbage bags. there is a wooden sled as well and i take the youngest girl on my lap for a couple runs, later i find out that all children under 4 are girls.

Male children attract bad spirits so until they are 4 or 5 they don't get haircuts, are given female names and dressed in girls clothes. when it is time they to get there first haircut the family seeks out a monk who will tell them when the correct time is and who the correct family member is to perform the haircut. Very serious business indeed.

Rattle and lurch, 5 days of chasing the sun westward from mongolia, asia is in the east now where it belongs. On european soil and moscow time the 5 days spent amongst the mongol hordes seem a continent away.our wait at the train station was a vodka blurry goat smelling feat of stoic patience broken only by the occasional prayer for a shower on the train. The chinese train to UB had showers.....This is a mongolian train full of mongolians, and not the dirt poor kind we had just spent 5 days with but the upwardly mobile moneyed kind. which meant they had all just been to bejing and spent as much as they legally could on cheap chinese crap. this turned the train into a bizzare travelling circus slash bazzar slash flea market.
 
blankets and track suits, bras and 3-D jesus placemats. every new station is an excuse to get of the train and sell sell sell for 15 minutes. as we fill out our entry forms for russia the anything to declare section stops my eye and sure enough it is the middle of the night when we reach the border and at the mongolian border a mad shuffle occurs. The provodnitsa or train attendants are in on it too! ours hurriedly hangs 3 black leather purses in our room, one for each of us, and they match! 15 kms later the russians board the train and order every one out into the hallway 3 seperate times. once for a search by the border police, once for a search by a dog, and the last one for a search by a very very tough looking female soldier complete with pistol and 3 foot long mag light. I am sure she had a kalishnikov leaned agains the train somewhere outside but refused to carry it inside to keep things sporting. Later we hear from the only other english speaking passenger that in his car a mongolian was caught with too much stuff and all they did was search him a fourth time. when he re-entered his cabin he had less than he was allowed and all was well.

and that was mongolia in a nutshell. russia was a whole nother story for a whole nother day.

art fag

Art fag


I had a conversation with a good friend of mine, Karl Matson. We had a conversation about people like you, and me, and him.

If you don’t have a real honest god fearing job, a 9-5 construction or trades or even office slash supermarket slash burger flipping job and you aren’t on welfare, you’re probably an art fag.

Even if you do have one of these jobs you may be an art fag. If you come home from work tired and find yourself unable to sleep until you have given life to the images behind your eyes. A voice to words you have never read or a melody to the song you’ve never sung before.

You are an art fag.

We had this conversation after work a couple nights before the Sweetwater 905 festival 2010. A yearly affair his family puts on out at the Matson’s family farm on Sweetwater road, Rolla B.C.

What started as a brainstorming and bitching session by me (I don’t have time or space to paint or create this year Karl) well why don't you get on stage and read? you've been writing. (cause it’s scary...ok I’ll do it.) So I did, and scary or not it was good and I grew a bit that evening, a bit art faggyer.

The year before he approached me a month before the show and said “hey your an artist, you should make something for the show this year!” so I did. He said the key word was monumental so after a couple days and some sketches my idea went from a sketch of a painting of a metal moose to a real metal moose to a real metal moose that drove around. His name was Gary and he was good. In an art faggy way.

And that is what drove our conversation that night to art fags.

It’s not easy being an art fag, it’s not friendly or fun or cool. Our loved ones have a hard time understanding sometimes... a lot of the time really. But how do you explain what you can’t understand till it’s done?

I need to build something. What? I don’t know yet.

What are you drawing? I don’t know.

I hear stories in my head and they won’t let me sleep until their told. I tell Karl this and he says “I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU MEAN!”

it’s like being driven, or possessed, or something even worse This thing I see, it has no colours or shapes, I don’t even know how big it is how will it ever fit on this canvas? We don’t do it for anyone else, not fame or money, good luck getting paid for what we do is the most common symptom of art faggotry. This passion and stupidity that drives us try’s the people around us as surely as it tries our own sanity. But to stop? Unthinkable.

The night wound on and the conversation grew quite animated till his lovely blonde haired blue eyed daughter distracted us in most 4 year old way. She was up way past her bedtime already so it just made sense to indulge her little play pony tricks and feed her fruit that her pony could have too. Before long we had a race course with hurdles set up around the house and we were all racing ponies and spinning stories about the ponies we were racing, by the time Inge-jean came home there were paints and pens and ponies and drawings of ponies and hurdles and empties spread from one end of the house to the other.

One time Karl put his canoe and his lovely wife Inge-jean into the creek in his backyard and they rode in that canoe till they reached the Hudson’s bay some 2500 kms. North and east. Their longest portage was 30 kms. I think he made a movie of it; he’s also made documentaries in India. He paints and welds and creates and couldn’t stop if he wanted too.

He is an art fag.

I wrote this at 1 a.m. in Chungking mansion on Nathan road in downtown Hong Kong. It’s a cheap guest house in an old mall complex about a city block long and 15 stories tall. B block 3rd floor room 316. My girlfriend is snoring next to me and there will be no sleep till this story is out of my head.

I am an art fag.

To quote the Ramones, “we accept you, gabba gabba we accept you, one of us”

My buddy jay Balaam likes to think of himself as an art thug.

He is an art fag.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Sitting on the porch of a jungle bungalow in Thailand sweating with nothing to do, seems like the only way to cool of other than another cold shower might be to think of cold. Really cold.

The cabin at the end of the road is halfway across the world and cold as hell right now. I know I’ve been there.

2010 December sometime. We had finished the summer before and used it for climbing trips but it hadn’t seen any winter use yet, insulation and a stove went in that fall as temperatures dropped but that was when the road was still open. In October probably.

Now that the road was closed and the snow thick in the mountains the thought of an overnight trip to the cabin seemed like a really good idea, Jarrett and I, Dave Tuttle and his girl Bobby Ann, with her 5 month old foetus. The Fellows, Gary and Johnny. A good idea indeed.

The plan hatched and agreed upon several weeks prior, all seemed go until Jarrett decided to get a vasectomy, 3 days before the trip. He was still in but his wife didn’t really think it was smart, and then the weather forecast for the weekend came up. -35 C. Pretty dam cold, but still doable. Pig headed fools that we are the plan moved forward. Jarrett agreed not to ride like an asshole and we all agreed to smack him if he did, that didn’t really impress Brandi but it did get a go ahead, she’s his wife and the boss when push comes to shove.

Husky gas station, north end of Dawson Creek 6:00 a.m. Saturday, -35 as promised, two trucks with trailers full of snowmobiles meet for fuel and coffee. Go time. Bobbies belly gets some fun poked at it but she’s been riding and seems confident. With 2 and a half hours to daylight and only 130 kilometres to cover till the beginning of the trail the plan is a go.

Tumbler ridge, 100 km. From Dawson we stop at an oil and gas camp for breakfast, Gary and Johnny’s mom is in charge of the kitchen and feeds us up as if we were all hers. The sun is coming up and although the temperature is steady at -35 it’s still early yet. We push on to the beginning of the trail. Where the plough stops on the road into the Monkman Park is a wide spot with a stop sign and turnaround. From here we have 50 kilometres to ride to the cabin.

Unload the machines and get them fired up, hitch skimmers behind the biggest machines and strap jerry cans to everyone else’s backpacks and gear on. Everyone is very careful to cover exposed skin neck warmers and scarves and balaclavas all around. The temperature isn’t bad at rest but with wind-chill frostbite is a very real concern. Checks and double checks complete we head out into blazing blue skies and a sunrise that pictures can’t describe.

Within the first 5 km. Jarrett’s pulled over.... his machine is overheating, steam billowing from under the hood. A check of the coolant shows the catch can full of green ice with the coolant lines running to the tunnel stiff with ice as well. Someone forgot to replace the coolant from last year’s ride where he cooked it till it boiled then replaced what boiled with snow melt. Someone being him. Blame be dammed it’s time for a fix, and as luck or fate would have it on one of the skimmers is a 3 foot section of stovepipe for the cabin. An afterthought to help the woodstove draw a little better by getting its end above the roofline.

To work! We all start chopping or sawing, dragging wood next to Jarrett’s machine. He carries a hatchet under his hood and all our shovels have saws in the handles so in no time we have a smudge of smoke then open flame next to his machine. Fire the stovepipe into that and prop it under the tunnel pointed at the cooler and the fix is on. We keep dragging wood from the bush and he keeps the fire crackling and fans the flames up the pipe. Lots of laughter, who brings a stovepipe snowmobiling? Just in case? We do! Every couple minutes he fires the engine till its warning beeper sounds, getting the heat into it from both ends.

It’s going to work, and we are all quite pleased but a new development comes to light. Bobby’s belly is getting kicked from inside and she’s not very happy with it. In fact she’s obviously pissed right off. She’s not a very girly girl and the thought of going back has her downright mad. However, to her credit she’s also not stupid, better now than way out there so while Jarrett Johnny Gary and I deal with the dud sled Bobby and Dave Dave decide to pull the plug on her ride, she tells Dave not to worry if he loads her sled with her she will drive home alone and he can keep riding, it leaves us with one more sled to haul on Jarrett’s truck and trailer combo but we all agree it can be done.

Dave and Bobby head back and we carry on with the big thaw. Finally the reluctant sled fires and runs without beeping and the temperature has come up t a fully acceptable -20. Dave’s not back so we race back to the truck. And I do mean race, with a 130 horsepower under the throttle lever it’s really hard not to want to go fast.

Bobby’s sled is loaded and we get back to the truck just in time to say goodbye then it’s time to make serious miles, Dave and Jarrett are both lugging skimmers so it’s up to Garry, Johnny and me to break trail through the fresh snow and for the first 20 km. There is a track to follow, someone has been out here in the last couple days but their track disappears at the turnoff to Kinuso falls. From there it’s 30 kilometres more through two feet of fresh powder on top of another 3 feet of packed snow. Drifts and the rough road underneath make for some pretty epic riding but not really easy to keep a straight line through, add in the urge to race factor and Garry and I make a dogs breakfast of what should be a decent trail.

In the last 10 km. The worsening road underneath the snow has my machine dropping out from under me and then launching skyward every 20 meters, it’s fun but takes some heavy exercise to control finally the constant full throttle fun catches up to me, the machine drops out I chop throttle till I feel the next jump point uphill and when I squash the throttle to launch up instead of the pull on my arms everything stops moving, a brief panic rev and my bodies momentum carries onward. A perfect graceful front flip over the bars and I’m upside down on the hood of my machine.

Gary pulls up and whips his helmet off, “Dude that was awesome! I think you blew a belt.”

No shit Gary, hood up start pulling the rat’s nest of belt shrapnel out from the clutch side of the motor. The rest of the pack shows up and starts giving us shit. What the hell kind of trail is that? A messy one that’s what. Do you know how hard it is to follow you two when you do that?

Chastised but unrepentant.... belt fixed and reefers burnt. We plug on, the going has been slow but we make it out to the cabin with an hour of light left and bushwhack our way to within a couple meters of the cabins backside. Time to fuel the machines and cart our groceries inside.

Home sweet home! A summers worth of hard work and an epic ride to relive round the woodstove, bobby sent a dozen homemade chicken pot pies with Dave and they may just be the best thing ever...Till Jarrett starts making tortellini! A mad orgy of eating, drinking fireball and smoking reefer ensues. Gear is spread out everywhere round the stove drying, and the bench racing is getting out of hand in the best way, did you see when I did this? Or what the hell was that in the bush you where chasing? I wasn’t chasing it I just ended up out there!

We carried a lot of wood in when we started the fire and in the loft space it’s almost uncomfortably hot, but by the time people start nodding, it’s obvious it’s getting really cold out, the floor is still chilly to the touch and the woodpile is almost burnt inside. Johnny the ape-man is first to bed and as he starts snoring the discussion turns to him sleepwalking. If he wakes with scuffed knuckles we’ll know right? His brother Gary loves this topic and it carries almost to bedtime for the rest of us. The snores stop and snickers begin. “Very good Joe....” is his final sentence.

There is room for everyone in the loft but someone has to stay below to stoke the fire, it’s burning a full box of wood every 45 minutes and if it goes out life is going to suck. I have the best sleeping bag and agree to stay below, head by the fire feet toward the door. Every time my feet start to get cold I wake up and stoke it. Must have woke 25 times that night, Jarrett goes for a pee and comes back in shaking,”my weatherdick says it got to be 45 below man”

When we wake in the morning the first light reveals the truth of the matter, a frost line a foot up the walls and carpeting the floor...when we get home we learn it hit -50 that night, killing cold.

By the time breakfast and coffee are done and the sun is shining on our sleds its come up a bit but still, its firkin cold out there. It takes 3 fires to get 5 sleds going, mine is the oldest and although it took close to a hundred tugs it did finally run without fire, Dave’s is the only fan cooled machine and brand new, also ran sans fire.

The ride out is slow, my sled won’t go fast without the carbs icing up and everybody else is running into issues as well. Not the least of which is just plain uncomfortably cold, the wind chill creeps into every chink in our gear and the next day we all have a black spot or two somewhere. My neck has 2 small hickies and Gary has raccoon eyes from his goggles before we even get to the truck.

Dark is falling fast as we reach the truck and a whole nother mess is there to greet us. We knew the truck was going to be frozen solid. The plan was hatched midday to get there and start falling deadwood.

What we didn’t expect to see when we rounded the last corner was a small SUV buried a hundred yards up our sled trail with 2 men shovelling furiously using the sheared of stop sign from the end of the road. As we get closer it turns out there are three off them, one inside the still running vehicle warming up and the other two with only one winter jacket between them. Holy dead men batman!

The questions begin and the answers follow. They are German tourists who thought they could drive out on our trail to see the falls. They realize now that there is no cell service out here and if we hadn’t come back to the truck today they would be popsicles tomorrow. And yes they are hungry? Garry and Johnny both have mini stoves bolted to their exhaust with pizza pockets and garlic sausage in them. They sit in the car and warm up as we hook three machines onto their bumper, then we tug and they push and their soon back on the ploughed road.

Back to our own problem, a turn of the truck key and nothing, we pop the hood and job boxes and start rounding up gear as Jarrett explains to them in no uncertain terms their obligations now. “You don’t leave till our truck runs.” They pull alongside and we hook our jumpers up. Will that work? Is their next question, but no one is sitting still to answer. A tarp is being stretched over the hood and trees are dropping in the bush beside the road.

Within minutes Jarrett has a fire going beside his trucks bumper. And we are all dragging wood not just to feed the fire but to keep warm as well. It’s a killing cold and in order to live there are tricks. By the time the fire has produced enough coals to fill a scoop shovel it’s so cold that a jug of motor oil turned over the coals doesn’t want to pour. If the oil was hanging six inches out of the spout and the jug righted it would just retract like a snail’s eyestalk. But when the oil hits the coals it produces serious heat so we keep on the track, it will work we just have to get the engine oil inside the motor thin enough to let it turn over.

And sure enough it takes two hours but the truck does run and everyone gets home safe!

Wives are unimpressed Jarrett’s balls are sore and we all have frostbite scars to remind us, but every time I think of this story I also think of a bumper sticker I saw in Squamish once

“Your worst nightmare is my best vacation”

The end.

corea

once upon a time in a far away land called corea a beautiful young virgin bride was drowned offshore of a small fishing village. Her husband was not able to swim out in time to save her and after the tradgedy the fish catch in the area began to decline.
Steadily the catch decreased in sinnam, this lovely little fishing village was helpless without the fish that they lived on and sold inland for their livelyhood.
one day a fisherman had to empty his bladder and he did so into the surf  from up on the rocks, that day he caught more fish than he had in weeks before.
remembering the unfulfilled young brides tragic end, he assumed that the girls death had cursed the area and unless she got what was denied the curse would remain.
and so the story of sinnam and its penis park began. i don't know how long ago but judging by the numbers and variety of styles it must have been a long long time back.
today you can go to this little village, which is still small but visibly thriving, the racks of squid and fish drying will attest to this. and if you pay a small fee of 8000 won, ( about 8 dollars canadian) you can enter the park and see just how important making this girl happy was to the generations that followed. the hillside has a all the asian park necessitys, gnarled pines and cleaned stone paths with a rugged shoreline below. the first thing at the entrance that tells you its not just a park but a story is the bundles of  sticks hanging in the trees. all carved to resemble phallic symbols.  then the sticks standing from the ground at chest height, bell ends with faces carved in the shafts these are all obviously old, very old. around a corner you meet the next generations, a giant bronze dick juts from the middle of the path, above that a black stone dick on an axle so it rocks up and down with 3 more erect above it. granite and wood ornate and simple every generation has added an erection. literally hundreds around the countryside.
And at the top of the hill a diorama, lifesize korean fishermen with their dicks to the wind. Halfway down the hill is a fishing museum with aquariums and boats and gear explaining how important the fish are to the people.

In fact if you spend any time looking around this country you will see how much history means to them, when the japanese ruled for 35 minutes in the 70's they wrecked as much as they could to break their spirit. and when they left the korean people rebuilt. painstakingly. they kept the new spelling, when japan took power they renamed corea, the letter k is further down the alphabet than j so that was how the new spelling went. you will still see the old spelling on old buildings and signs.
i met 2 old men in the ancient fortress city inside suwon, who assured me that it was a very new city in relative terms. started in 1796 and finished in 1797 it had artillery emplaceents and was a miracle of modern technology. both men mr. kim and mr. park knew of canadian history which they learned in high school. mr park seved in the korean airforce for 28 years and thanked me personally for all that our people had done for theirs during the korean war. Mr kim sang to me a song about the rocky mountains in the morning, with perfect pitch. he forgot the words halfway but carried the tune anyway.
All in all it was a surreal country to visit, i recommend a visit to anyone with a sense of humour and respect for history.