edwards block

Well, I had a great time in Costa Rica and Panama, and I’m very grateful to Colin & Roberto for being such generous hosts. Though I feel like I could have kept travelling indefinitely, I am glad to be home to see my friends, and start school next week.

As soon as I arrived home I went out to Ruskin for my grandmothers 92nd birthday. Unfortunately, by the time I got there, they had already taken her home. However, I did stay and visit Phillip and Elaine on the farm for a few days. This was a bit of a change from my lifestyle of the past few weeks. It’s a 65km bike ride to the farm, which is no problem but a change from my recent slothfulness. I wasn’t as out of shape as I thought, though, as I made it out in about three hours.

There is never any shortage of projects at the farm, and I enjoy the physical work that they require. It’s a refreshing change from such day to day exertions such as sitting, staring, breathing and typing. I got my moneys worth this visit, though, as the current project is to reinforce the banks of the main creek that runs through the property. This involved hauling wheelbarrow loads of granite rocks from the main pile out to the edge of the creek “valley”, across a log bridge, down an embankment at the bottom of which is a sharp right turn, and then up a sandy trail to the work site. After numerous loads, it started to rain more heavily than I’ve ever seen it rain in greater Vancouver, followed by a good supply of hail. As we were taking a tea break, a rare flash flood ensued, causing the stream to overflow it’s banks. The water, following a path of least resistance, found it’s way across the Allouette chicken yard to the basement stairs and created a waterfall into the egg room, sending us into damage control. Once that was done, we went back to the creek to find some of our previous work damaged and new damage downstream. The hauling of rocks soon seemed like Stalin’s Siberian gulags, except with regular coffee breaks.

Despite the hard labour, I was very well fed, and by the time I cycled back to Vancouver this morning, I felt quite strong and healthy again. There’s nothing like a little hard work to make you feel like a new man (unless of course you’re doing it for some multi-national corporation).