Considering how frequently I travel, you'd think I understand airline pricing (except, those of you who travel even more frequently and book your own flights are sitting on the floor laughing by now, because clearly, *nobody* understands airline pricing.)
I am the prime audience for "loyalty" programs - as in, they actually work on me. During the Tim Hortons rim rolling mess every spring, I drink endless cups of what I consider pretty lousy coffee - and in *paper cups* - just so I can win a donut or something. Right now, I have convinced myself that I will win a trip to Turkey from Coca-Cola through some stupid promotion, so, for the first time in years, I'm drinking pop. I don't even *like* pop! So, given this propensity, it is not surprising that I have a number of rewards type things in my wallet, namely: the Airmiles card, the blue and white one - which I've had since I was 20 or so, and I have never redeemed a damn thing; the PetroCanada Petropoints card, which I use with most of my gas purchases, and I'm sure I've earned several free car washes by now but I have not redeemed them; the Starwood Preferred Guest card, because the last time I stayed in a spiffy hotel they said I'd get a free bottle of water or something if I joined the rewards program and it was free and didn't require filling out a form... and then there's the Aeroplan card and the accompanying credit card that also collects me points. And that's where I'm truly loyal...
Air Canada? Kind of sucks. But! Because I am so very loyal, I get good seats in their planes, sometimes I get upgraded, and best of all, I get to hang out in the Star Alliance Gold lounges - but only on Star Alliance flights. Guess what I book...
Problem is, I need to go to the UK, and all the flights I found for the dates I needed - and I had no flexibility - were over $2000 on Air Canada (and all other major carriers serving LHR and YYZ). That wasn't going to fly, pardon the pun. So I was resigned to a charter (charters make my skin itch) or going via - ack - the U.S., which requires clearing US customs and makes me truly unhappy. But I really want to go to this meeting in the UK, so, resign myself I did...*
And then I logged onto TravelCuts on a whim, and they showed me return flights to Heathrow for under $1000. They weren't direct, but they also weren't via the US. They would only tell me "major airline", but if there is another major airline that flies from Ottawa to Heathrow at precisely the time the regularly scheduled Air Canada flight does... So I booked it.
It does seems silly. If I use little flights between Montreal and Toronto and Ottawa and Toronto, my fare is less than half of what the YYZ-LHR direct flight would be. This is what happenes now that Air Canada has extended their bizarre five tier pricing structure to UK flights. They would rather I hang out in their lounges and drink their complimentary drinks and take up a seat in extra flight legs, I guess.
I'll be sure to use all the services available in the lounge, just to complete the Air Canada-intended experience. Maybe I'll have a shower at the London Lounge, both on arrival *and* departure. Just because I can...
--
*I don't want to hear about what a spoiled brat I am that I turn my nose up at international travel because I'd have to sit in a charter plane - I know, ok? And I don't complain about all the travelling I do because I really like it, but that does *not* make airports and airplanes more tolerable, it really really doesn't. I've found that, the more time you spend in airports, the less you like them. If you only go someplace once a year, perhaps there is a frisson of "I'm going to Europe!" that makes it all so much more interesting. But keep in mind that at times I am at Pearson Airport so often that a new in-flight magazine is a novelty. I guess that would be an argument for flying on a different airline right there...
"You're going to have to be a bit more specific than 'uh-oh'", Elke said, maneoevering us around the obstacle that had promoted my comment. Me, I thought "uh-oh" was a substantial improvement over "we're gonna die!" but Elke demanded more. Something about naming both the obstacle and its position relative to the canoe. I never did get this one down, and after a while, 
Elke adopted my style of communicating: "uh-oh" she said, as we came up to a stretch of what looked like not super scary stuff. Don't tease the chicken in the bow, because I didn't know *what* to make of it if *Elke* said uh-oh. Turns out she was just messing with my head (which, if you know how Elke and I interact, is about par for the course...)
On the May long weekend, I tagged along on a Wilderness Canoe Association "wine and cheese paddle" down the Lower Madawaska. Elke foolishly decided she'd prefer to run the river with a monkey in the bow than solo, and thus I got the invite. 
And since I am still subscribing to the tripslut philosophy (ie. I am so keen to go and *do stuff* that I say yes, even when I don't know really know what I'm saying yes to. And you can roll your eyes if you want, but I *don't* get invited on trips all the time, not at *all*. I usually *ask* people if I can tag along! I organize things and invite other people!), I of course had my barrel packed before I confessed just how little I remembered from the whitewater course. Really, confessing that was a waste of time - Elke would have figured it out by the first riffle, when I did all but clutch the gunnels and cry. (Ok, I exaggerate somewhat. I only clutched my paddle, not the actual boat, and I sniffled, I didn't cry.)
Other than Elke and me and the wonderful organizers and the very cool poodle Nimbus, there were, by boat: Jon and Dian, Brian and Charles, Jim and Ethan, Peter and Rick, and Jaromir paddling solo in a kevlar boat with a kayak paddle, and Matt paddling solo in a playboat kayak (also with a kayak paddle). They were all nice people, and every single one of them - including Ethan, who is about 1/3 my age - far more accomplished at this hurling yourself down water flowing over drops than I am.
The one thing I was accomplished on, though, was eating - and this trip had some pretty wonderful eating opportunities. I'd read the trip notes, which said something about 
bringing a snacky thing or a desserty thing and Larry and Helen would take care of the rest of the food - and I figured that maybe there would be pretzels or similar snacks. Oh no. Not with this crew. Sure, there were chips (hi!), but there was also bruschetta and clams and several kinds of dips and olives and so on. And, for dinner the first night, Helen made a thai green curry dish with chicken and sweet bell peppers and cashews. These people are good at everything.
Do you notice the part where I'm telling you more about the food than the river? There's a reason for that - see, I would feel awfully silly describing a river when what you're looking for I don't understand. There were words like pillows and eddies and haystacks and while I know what they mean in theory, I can't read a drop worth the green onion garnish on the second night's beef stew, so I just did as I was told.
Well, not all the time. At Rifle Chute, I took one look at it and told Elke to make a new friend, I was having none of this, and Larry took over the bow of her canoe (for the record, I regretted this decision later, after I watched a few people run that sucker). I pulled a similar move at Raquette Falls, but this one I don't regret. On that one, Ethan 
chose to walk it too, and Jim first ran their boat down solo and then took the bow of Elke's. And before you chastize me for being a big chicken, do keep in mind that Elke likes some of the pictures I took of her doing her thing, and I couldn't have been doing that if I'd had a death grip on my paddle in the boat (or if I'd been swimming). I *know* that's a weak excuse, but I'm going with it. And it's not *that* lame an excuse, see for instance these series of Jim and Ethan and Elke and Larry at Rifle Chute:
You have to admit all that looks cool. And whining and uh-oh aside, I really did enjoy it a lot. Even Split Rock, where we successfully avoided a big hole on the left but took on a lot of water - and still made it into the eddy ok. 
It wasn't until after we left the eddy and tried to ferry across the river to be in a better position for the next set that I demonstrated my inexperience very spectacularly and subsequently showed that I was perfectly capable of getting out of thigh straps and swimming. Oops. But the thing is, it was *so cold* that day (at one point, frozen stuff came down on us) and I was wearing polypro and fleece under my drypants and drytop - the river actually felt kind of nice. Not that any part of my bare skin touched it except my face during the split second I was under. Elke, who was wearing neither drywear nor wetsuit, probably didn't agree with me. But amazingly, she was still talking to me. And she still is! I got an email from her today and everything!
We camped at the Narrows the first night, and just below Slate Falls the second night. We portaged around Slate falls on the right, and the portage was short and painless - but maybe that's because Elke was carrying the canoe? Ethan and I were at the front of the pack when we got to the end of the portage, and I think we both had a moment of "that's it? we're at the end?". Elke had been telling me how sucky this one was all day, after all (and I'm told the one on the left side is all that and more. But that's not the one we used!)
And, except for that one quick comment about how the water felt warm relative to the weather, I'm not even going to bitch about rain and cold this time. For two reasons: the brief period where it wasn't raining and kind of warm, it was super buggy; and... well... I've been on so many cold 
and wet trips that I'm kind of bored with complaining about that. And maybe, just maybe, I also don't feel like moaning about cold because it's 32 degrees inside my apartment as I write this, and my hair is blowing in the wind from the fan and a bit of cold sounds good to me. I wish the pool 
were open already. But back to the trip... we had great snacks and great food that second night too, and by this time I even knew everybody's name.
Our last day, there was not much more paddling - and only one serious drop. And it was a big one... Hyland falls was scary. So scary that even the big boys portaged it. Well, some of them. Jaromir ran it in that kevlar boat, Jim and Ethan made it look easy, Larry and 
Helen had no difficulty, and Brian and Charles did it wonderfully (and they should have, they spent about an hour scouting it!) And then, the trip was over! I want to take this opportunity to thank Elke to share her boat with a dummy, and Larry and Helen for incredible organizing and even better cooking, and everybody else for being such a warm and welcoming group.
The May long weekend in Canada is called Victoria Day, and it falls on the last Monday before May 25. You see, Queen Victoria, she was born on May 24, and the holiday used to be on the 24th no matter what. However, long weekends are better than having an isolated Wednesday off, so sometime in the fifties, it became the practice to celebrate a long-dead queen's birthday on a date which may or may not actually be the date she was born. Complicated. I don't care, I'll be a royalist if it means a long weekend in May.
And so, our May long weekend is often known as May two-four - nice little double meaning, incorporating both the original date of May 24 and the slang for a case of beer (24 bottles in a case in Ontario, which I suppose is a "flat" in other parts of the country). And that pretty much describes what a lot of people do on May two-four: drink too much. That, however, is coupled to another tradition: doing it while camping or at the cottage. See, the weekend is also considered the kick-off to the summer season, and thus is cottage-opening weekend for many folks, and all the campgrounds are booked to capactiy, and all that. It's a big weekend.
And in our excitement at ripping into the two-four on May two-four and all, we conveniently overlook a couple of things: 1. the weather generally *sucks* this weekend and 2. it's bug season. Seriously - I can remember more May long weekends where I was shivering under a tarp or otherwise cold and wet than nice ones. If you're not shivering, you're bathing in deet. It is, quite honestly, a pretty lousy weekend to be outside most years. And yet, en masse, we unquestioningly accept this as a mandatory camping weekend and go outside. And determinedly enjoy it.
I'm no different. This past weekend saw me shivering under a tarp - except for the short time when the sun came out, at which point I was slapping bugs - on the Madawaska River, and drinking wine. On the way home, I pulled my coat tightly around myself, standing in line at Kawartha Lakes dairy in Bancroft, for ice cream. I was freezing my butt off, but it was May two-four, there must be ice cream on the way home. I felt ridiculous even as I was doing it.
And I enjoyed almost every minute of the weekend anyway. It would be *better* to have good weather and no bugs on a long weekend, but really? A weekend squatting under a tarp or slapping bugs while doing something fun is still better than a day at work.
Weekend write-up to come.
A while ago, Google Talk added a little image option, so you can "see" a person when you "talk" to them (I usually just use the IM option). I thought that was great! Because that way, I can save on the typing and just let my expression do the talking! I immediately grabbed the camera and started making Johanna-emoticons.
And now, Gmail has started adding whatever image you have currently selected in Talk to the gmail interface. Sweet. I feel like dusting off my emoticons.
This is the expression you would get if you announced you were sending me chocolate. Or any other present for that matter. Or if you came across me on a sugar rush.
However, spontaneous chocolate sending never happens in my world. Sigh. Sometimes, though, I try to influence the lack of chocolate arriving in my in-box with this look. It's worked once, for sure - I really did get a puropack of chocolate this spring. Really. I did.
Of course, I was pretty shocked that this worked. My expression alternated between the first "glee" emoticon and this one, which is what I look like when I am surprised.
But I know that manipulating people to send me chocolate is *very bad*. If someone else did it, I would be very disapproving. Look at me disapprove.
But that would be easy to misinterpret, because my disapproving look is very similar to my "huh?" look. I don't know what it says about me, that I look disapproving when I'm confused, and vice versa.
Though I don't use the disapproving look all *that* often. My usual tactic when I think something is ridiculous is to stare at the person until he gets really uncomfortable, starts talking too much, and ultimately gives me chocolate to appease me. I'm not kidding, that has also happened in the past few months.
This one needs no explanation.
Really, it's a shame that I don't use these - my image is almost pemanently set to "normal". Which is this one.
Really, a shame. Because I also have this one! Which is my all-time favourite, though I can't for the life of me figure out what emotion I was going for when I took this one.
Heh.
On Wednesday, it was sunny and 23 degrees. It was also Wednesday, which is the middle of the week, and thus devoted to working. However, when Elke told me she'd be in town, I told my boss I wouldn't be in that afternoon and asked that Elke bring her canoe. Prime hooky opportunities are not to be missed.
The canoeing around here is of the daytripper variety, but we only had half a day anyway. And we started that half a day with a burger and a pint in the pub. It'd been ages since I'd seen Elke, must cram all the things I miss doing with her in. Plus the Woolie has this apricot wheat beer on tap, which has finally prompted me to overcome my dislike of fruity beers and start scheming to find ways to get there on sunny afternoons.
Given the substantial time already devoted to burgers and beer, there was no point going far for a nice paddle - and why would we, when there is the Eramosa and I'd enjoyed running that one every time I had done so in the past. I did fail to consider that the latest I'd ever run in was Easter weekend, and that it's been dry this year. So we walked parts of it. So what? It was still fun. And it wasn't my canoe we scraped up (sorry Elke!)
We saw: a deer, little turtles we couldn't name, a big snapping turtle, several blue herons, and a bloodsucker. The leech we saw on the back of my leg - or rather, Elke saw him, and did a weird voice, ummmm, Johanna... I looked down, named him, and left him there when we paddled to the Boathouse for ice cream. He was still there when we paddled upstream to my car. He got fuller and fuller - I touched him (her?), and his/her belly felt much like mine does at a potluck dinner. By the time he let go, he was attached by his bloodsucking end and his suction end, but his belly was hanging down in the middle too heavy to support. My theory was that the anticoagulant would be counteracted with something else, but this turned out not to be the case since my ankle kept bleeding for a while 
and Elke gleefully pointed out that it looked like something had been gnawing on me. But the pharmacy is next to the liquor store, and we needed more beer for at home, so I picked up some antibacterial wipes and cleaned it all up, and then rested on my bloodsucker bragging rights.
Sometimes, it takes very little to make me happy: a burger, a beer, a sunny day, an adventure buddy to hang out with, a canoe, ditching work, and ice cream. Come to think of it, I don't know anybody who would not be happy about that situation... But you know what? I've had a tough time lately. I so deserved this day.
Before you read anything else in this entry, you must click on the picture of Sam at left. Those white specks? Snow. No photoshop here. Snow, in May.
A few weeks ago, I was all proud of being hardcore when Melissa and I went camping on the Snakes and there was snow. But that was early April, people! And the point of that trip was to be on the Bay right after ice out! Where is the glory in being in Algonquin in May, even before bug season? Where is the hardship you could get credit for? Exactly. It's Algonquin. It's May. You're thinking your grandmother could do it. I know!
The thing is, it's been so stunningly beautiful and warm. I'd been wearing sandals. There were beers on patios. Thus, it's a good thing that our taxes still provide weather forecasting, because otherwise I might have packed a sundress and a straw hat, instead of all the layers of expedition weight fleece I own - not to mention a warm toque, and big fuzzy gloves, and my -30 sleeping bag. I do not like to be cold. So I felt a wee bit foolish when I got to the Opeongo access point and it was bright sunny and warm. I debated leaving the pogies in my car and just taking the neoprene gloves. I wondered if Sam would make fun of my gigantic clothing bag. But I was too lazy to repack, and shoved everything into the boat - plus the somewhat too big but totally cuddly hoodie I bought on clearance at the Opeongo store.
So, off we paddled, with all our warm layers, in the bright sunshine. That lasted about five minutes, then it clouded over. But we were warm, the winds were on the calm side, all was good. By the time we got to the beginning of Opeongo's East Arm, I wondered if it would rain - and was thus all in favour of setting up on the first suitable site we saw (good tarping trees, nice flat spots, two firepits so can pick the more sheltered one, good beach for landing and parking - what's not to like?). As soon as we got our tents up, we settled on the lower (more sheltered) firepit and started the epic tarp hanging. It wouldn't be epic if Sam knew the bottom of his lean-to tarp from the top, or if he 
only changed his mind once. Or even twice. But hey, we had three whole days, and not a lot of other stuff to do, so if some big Swiss guy wants to make you do a dance with a tarp saying "this way", "no, this way", "sorry, guys, it's this way" while grinning and wondering how long we'll put up with it, that's ok. Not to be outdone, I devised the most complicated food bag hanging system ever: I looped my one rope over the chosen branch, and made six bights, on which I clipped six carabiners, and got the six of us to thread our ropes. Then, up goes the whole rig, and you can do your own rope as you please - do it yourself bear pole. It was complicated. It had to be lowered four times (Elaine's food went plummeting along with her rope, the ropes got tangled, the ropes got tangled again, Elaine's rope blew out altogether). Take that, you tarp dictator Sam...
Food rope rigging and advanced tarpology only take so much time, though, and none of us was too keen on getting back into the boats (I am stil feeling smug about the dry paddling clothes thing, though - no wet nasty neoprene for me!). Hart proposed a walk. Dave must have had an idea of what sort of walk Hart likes, because he said he'd stay back at his tent. The rest of us grabbed our jackets and trooped off into the bush after Hart. He soon turned off his hearing aid to silence the complaints, I think. Ok, I'm being an ass - it was actually a pretty cool-oh bushwhack. I loved it. Except for the part where we had to bushwhack up a completely pointless hill - I think it was the part where I bitched that there better be a view at the top if I was going to work this hard that made Hart turn off the hearing aid! He claimed that it was easier walking on high. We pretended to 
believe him. It of course wasn't, though we did see some neat evidence of lightning strikes before climbing over big piles of deadfall to get down the other side. Our goal was an old homestead, its inhabitant having been killed by a bear. We whacked. We complained. We had fun. We didn't find it. We did find the dead guy's grave, and explored around what we thought was a large radius from there, but no homestead. Hart had been there 25 years earlier and felt confident he'd recognize it. But no luck. Eventually, we gave up, and went back to whacking the bush. This time I followed Sam, who avoided the hill but instead 
had us clinging to the side of the slope. I felt drunk, I was so off balance (Hart and Elaine went back over Mount Pointless, and Elaine started fearing that Hart was leading her off into the wilderness). We got back to camp. Having felt drunk without any alcohol, I decided this was as good time to rectify the blood alcohol situation and poured myself a drink. The rest followed suit. Hart became a firemaking wonder, and it was a nice evening. I was glad I brought the big puffy bag.
In the morning, it was cold. And gloomy. And windy. I declared that I would have a busy day of sitting by the fire (which Hart already had nicely stoked by the time I crawled out of my sleeping bag). Somebody proposed hiking, sombebody else suggested that going back into the woods for more firewood qualified as a hike. We all took turns doing this, and working with the saw - it got body temperature up. We watched the fire, and then the rain, and then the snow, and discussed our reasons for kayak-camping. Every single reason stated was about the after-camping: Sarka enjoys washing her hands with warm water at gas stations on the way home, Sam lusts after his ice cream cone, 
I miss my bed, and so on. We invoked the ghost of that really wet really cold early season McCrae Lake trip that Sarka, Sam and I did once upon a time - primarily to remind ourselves, other trips are colder and wetter and we were miserable then, *this* is *much* better. And it was, you know.
I make it sound so sucky, but it totally wasn't - I'm just making up for the convenient "I'm deaf, I can't hear you complain" excuse... Because, as you could probably guess, by noon - even though it hadn't really cleared up - we 
were sick fo the tarp sitting, and decided to paddle. This was when we discovered that our bushwack the day before did not take us much more than 1 km from camp - and it took us hours! And then we paddled to the far end of the East Arm, where there is a "cart track". We did not know what a cart track is in Algonquin lingo, and discovered (by asking the guys hanging out there) that it is a looooong portage (like, 8 km long) that is sufficiently well-maintained that you can strap a cart under one end of 
your boat and wheel it on down. I don't know why you would want to take your boat on a walk this long (they say the fishing is worth it in Lake Laveille, but I'll have to take their word for it). We walked part of it without our boats. Then we walked back. Then we paddled some more, and it was sunny. It was a great day after all. And the fire was warm, the drinks were fine (I had multiple-malt scotch in my hot chocolate. You get multiple malt by 
repeatedly topping up your scotch flask, but never with the same bottle. I suspect Sam has been developing that particular multiple malt for years...) I did not regret coming. The company was good.
Of course, it was still cold the next morning. And there was headwind. And I'd foolishly packed the pogies. Thus, I decided to ruthlessly take advantage of Sam's responsible trip leader position and for once in my life get to the take-out before he did, because he stayed with the group. 
That alone would really make the trip worth it, come to think of it. I know, I know, Sam will put me in my place on the next trip, to the Western Islands, and that trip will feature a long crossing and I will be lucky if I see his paddle flashes in the distance.
Whatever. I have a GPS.
A while back, I got these super high thread count sheets, and last night I finally got around to washing them for the first time and putting them on my bed. So now I have a high-thread county, down-duveted, pillow-top mattressed nest up in my loft. I did not want to descend from my wonderful warm white fluffy loft this morning. I had a moment where I contemplated spending my entire vacation (which I cancelled! because sometimes life sucks...) in my bed.
But once I made my way down the ladder and put on the coffee, I read my email, and the last line in one of John's messages was:
and I have had my bagel... sesame with cream cheese... fresh and still warm
I responded with:
the last sentence made me hungry. fresh warm bread. as good as freshly washed high thread count sheets (which is what I slept in, it was wonderful. I love sleeping. I love my bed. Who needs a boy when there are high thread count sheets?)
response:
other than the risk of crumbs, no reason you could not share your love of the bed with the warm bread
And then John wrote me a poem! It's a good poem:
bread in your bed, bread in your bed ?
is that what she said ?
oh no. ! oh yes
oh what a mess !
why do you eat your warm bread in bed ?
its comfy she says, all due to the thread...
threads you say ? too many to see ?
oh no oh yes, a zillion and three ...
too many to count ? too many there be
a boy would be nice, but no room you see ?
cause bread in my bed, threads too high to count,
means no boy can climb, into the loft he will not mount
cause no room is left, no room at all,
on the edge he would sleep, and most likely fall
(John has young children. I think he reads a lot of Dr. Seuss!)
For over 20 years, now, I've been fascinated with landscape and meaning: I tried to get at it from a standard academic perspective using cultural ecology in the early 1990s, I remember being fascinated by an article on the iconography of the Canadian landscape in art (my Lawren Harris obsession dates from that time), I've tried to rationalize why we are drawn to certain physical and human landcapes loosely based on Roderick Nash's ideas, and I've done my share of egghead reading on productions of meaning.
But why certain landscapes speak to us, it's not an egghead academic question. I think it's entirely an emotional one. I know that I respond to the Canadian Shield in a way that can't be reationally explained. And for some people, it's the Prairies. It's not something I can relate to, but I've heard enough songs immortalizing the flatland (e.g. Grievous Angels: "You still make jokes / about Saskatchewan / but you'll always call it home"; Connie Kaldor: "The sky is bigger than anywhere else / as far as the eye can see". By the way, all of the Grievous Angels CDs survived the latest of my semi-regular "I have too much crap!" purges, but Connie Kaldor did not). I've read enough of those starkly beautiful novels of Prairie literature to understand that people feel an emotional connection to this place too.
So, I tried. I spent a week in Regina. I climbed on a bus for a field trip - we went to to see the Gardiner Dam and the hydro station that goes with it. We had a church lady style lunch in a blink and you miss it town named Broderick (there was no pie, though, which is the best part of church lady style lunches). We bumped our way to Outlook to visit an irrigation centre/research station and look at a rail bridge converted to a pedestrian bridge over the South Saskatchewan River (what I am confused about, though, is there a rail trail that goes with this?). We visited the Craik Sustainable Living Project in Craik. But most of the time, we sat in the bus, because these sights to see are far apart, and between them, it is almost uniformly flat.
It's a whole other world for me. I knew better, but when you tell me that there is a dam creating a 44,000 acre reservoir, somehow, I expect some visible technological wonder. And perhaps it is, being the largest earth-filled dam in the world, but it still only stands 64m high. The lake it creates looked, from the dam, uninspiring - the horizon of land and water seemed to blend together, so uniformly flat were they. 
I liked the tail race - there were pelicans. And maybe, if you live in southern Saskatchewan, it's the biggest whitewater there is. In terms of structures which impress by their volume of concrete, the spillway most closely met my criteria.
I do know that this earth-filled dam was not that easy to construct - just think of the weight it has to hold back. The reservoir has a capacity of 9,900,000,000 cubic 
metres, which translates to 9,900,000,000,000 kilos of water weight if it's at bank-full. And while I know that not all of the weight of that water is pushing against the dam, it's still a whole lot of force to hold back. The dam itself is just over 5 km long, from edge to edge. And 1.6 km wide at the base. That's over 8 square kilometers of earth fill! And apparently, the dam moves downstream a few centimeters every year, and required additional backfilling after it was first constructed because it just needed more ballast.
Contrary to what you'd think, most of the water in Lake Diefenbaker is not used for irrigation. The largest single consumptive "use" in the reservoir is evaporation, and it's biggest production function is hydroelectric generation at Coteau Creek station, which is just below the dam. The station has a generating capacity of 185MW (annual output of 800 million kW.h), which is supposedly enough to power a prairie city. 
What impressed me was that the people who worked there seemed to spend more time giving tours than anything else: from what I could tell, the generating station is almost fully automated now. I sat in the big chair in the control room, and almost all the knobs were labeled do not operate (I swivelled in the chair and contemplated the red emergency knob while all those around me cracked Homer Simpson jokes. I demanded donuts, but none appeared. Though in Canada, we were well over an hour's drive from the nearest donut shop, I think).
The Gardiner dam is the world's biggest earth-filled dam, and the Outlook bridge (built on an old CPR viaduct) is the world's longest pedestrian bridge. I'd say they're into the Guinness Book of World Records sorts of designations in 
Saskatchewan: for example, the park that contains Wascana Lake in Regina is the largest urban park (bigger than Stanley Park! Bigger than Central Park!) 
and I'm sure the list goes on. This emphasis on superlatives is intriguing - we don't do that here in southern Ontario (though I can: most populous province in Canada! Toronto is the largest city in the nation! the CN Tower is the tallest free-standing structure in the world! Hey, this is not so hard...) But back to the Outlook bridge - it's almost 1km long, and nicely done (though it has a bit of a bridge to nowhere feel to it). What I liked best was the view.
But it didn't grab me, this landscape. I could tell you about Craik, which impressed and intrigued me far more than I thought it would (I'd been expecting more dreadlocks and tofu-making, less realistic visions), but their website tells you far more than I could. If you find yourself driving through Saskatchewan, you should stop there 
and spring for a tour.
And then, we climbed back on our bus and rumbled along the highway with no need for the busdriver to change gears, ever. So flat. But the sky! It's bigger than anywhere else (they even tell you about it on the license plates).
Today, I was multitasking. Unfortunately, multitasking had this soundtrack:
OhNoOhShitOhNoNoNoNoNoooooooo.
See, I’m not so technologically savvy. I’ve been playing with some pretty run of the mill end user stuff: google reader and skype. And I was using skype to whine at John that google reader didn’t pick up my entire blog entries, fix my rss feed pleeeeeeeeease (whining works better with audio) and at the same time, I decided to send a rather… ummm… sensitive email, using the skype chat part. Except I’m such a new skype user, I sent it to the wrong person.
I suspect skype has beet red blushing emoticons. I realized what I’d done the second *after* I did it, and that’s when John’s speakers delivered that wail. And then, I frantically sent a real email: don’t look at your skype chat, it’s a mistake, I’m stupidstupidstupid so so so so sorry I’m a dummy.
And then I agonized over that, while John calmly tried to figure out why google reader managed to pick up blog entries that I had deleted or never published in the first place, and we figured out that Movable Type v. 2.64 doesn’t always delete the entry, just fix the navigation, and it still shows up in the rss feed so I had to FTP in and get rid of the stuff I don’t want up there (and you’re not missing anything, it was just navel-gazing stuff that I got bored with before I finished it).
And then my gmail beeped and my inadvertent recipient of a personal message friend told me not to worry, he got my follow-up panicked I’m-so-stupid email message, and then while I was whining at John to feeeeeeeeex my rss feed which required going into the access logs to find out what it was actually reading, I put him on hold because my skype rang and when I returned to talking to John he suggested I install a new copy of Movable Type but knowing me, I’d somehow manage to publish the entire contents of my hard drive (which are not juicy, just work-y) so I gave up.
Somehow, during the 90s, I never fell into the trap of reply all when I meant reply, but I did accidentally post a harmless (but nevertheless unintentional) message to a listserv that I have moderating privileges to *in reply to the other moderator noting that she’d sent something to the listserv by mistake* (people have a field day telling you you’re idiots when you do that. They’d happily do it to the whole listserv, but we are the only ones who have the privilege of doing so because we are control freaks!)
But that was months and months ago and only technologically, not personally, embarrassing. Today was both! But only to a good friend who laughed it off (after admitting that his wife was perhaps a bit taken aback!)
Eek.
“why do I have to fix this for you?”, John asked.
“cause you’re a bigger geek than me!” I brightly told him.
Only because I didn’t want to say, because I have the computer skills of a newt.
A very embarrassed newt.
Sigh.