Well, Glen (known to all of you as glens) Came over and we did three days together. He became one with the chipper.
First day I took him out in the canoe. We have this fast creek, and it had been raining two days, and I knew the water level was up. We went to the normal put-in, and the water was really high, so we went a couple kilometers further up. The creek was smaller, but the water was still gushing, so we drove upstream yet some more. We got to this place where the stream was very near the headwaters. The stream was just over a meter wide and only knee-deep. We parked an put in.
Each of us had a Silky, so we pruned overhangs and snags, cut small trees laying across the stream and had a really cool trip. I had promised to pay him $15 an hour, so I honored that and he paddled like a big dog, at least for the first three hours. I have to admit, it was a pretty long trip, but Tree Machine was having the time of his life.
We pruned the entire length of the stream, and somewhere near the fourth hour we converged into the big river. We only had about a kilometer to go, and it started raining. Then it started REALLY raining. Then it started hailing, kinda big, like marbles. We're in the boat with the paddles over our heads, getting pinged pretty good. There was really nowhere to go, but there was a bridge downstream. The hail was painful, but at the same time it was quite a hoot. It just kept coming and the surface of the river was filled with these little floating hail balls.
It started to ease up and we paddled like mad to get to the bridge. Just about the time we got under it, the temperature dropped very noticably. We were soaked, and had been for 4 hours. Now we were cold, and the hail kept coming. Now it was getting bigger, and coming down ferociously. I mean BIG hail, kinda like, thank God we're under this bridge-size hail. 3 cm diameter, around the size of ping pong balls. Definitely the biggest hail I'd ever seen. Every time one would hit the water, a splash would pop up about a foot out of the water. We watched tens of thousands of these things hit the water every second, I mean, it was coming down with sheer intensity. The water was dancing, the entire surface. It was surreal. Leaves and small branches were getting stripped out of the trees and depositied in the river and we were scooping up the big hail balls as they floated past. They were just huge. Had we been out on open water, it would have definitely been a painful experience.
We got to our take out, said "Screw working the rest of the day", went home, got hot showers and went to the brew pub.
An exceptional day at work, I must say. Light on income, but maximum fun.
