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I'm back home in Victoria a few days early! It turned out that many of the Quebec brushers, including the foremen, had to leave early in order to make it home in time for school, which for many of them starts on August 20. I was in Tom's office to sign my paysheet on the 15th, and he asked what date I was planning to stay until. I mentioned something about the Frenchies leaving early, and he said it'd be fine if I went early as well, but he just had to check it with the head office, which he would call later that day. Unfortunately, a family emergency forced him to leave, which left Ian in charge. Once I got to talking to Ian, it was too late to call the head office, so I would have to work the next day. The next day he also didn't call, but in the morning, about 20 minutes before we would be leaving for work, he told me it should be okay if I go.
This was the same day the Frenchies were leaving, and Felix and Vincent had to drive two trucks back to Vancouver, so I got a ride with them for much of the way home, along with two others. After cleaning our saws at a car-wash and taking care of various things around PG, we got out of town at around 10am. Aside from driving by forest fire at Cache Creek, the trip was uneventful. The fire was pretty amazing to see, very close to the city and within 100m of the highway at times. We camped in Hope at a campground that was adjascent to the main road through town, so it was strange to be camping in a place that was illuminated by street lights, flashing hotel neon, and gas station lights. The trucks were to be dropped off in Maple Ridge, which is still quite far from Vancouver and doesn't have great transportation links to the city, so in the morning I took a Greyhound from Hope to Vancouver, and then the PCL to the ferries.
The brushing at Babine continued to be excellent, except for one block that was a walk-in and required cutting herbacious. It was steep, slashy, the crop trees were tiny, and there was herbacious everywhere, so it took a long time. We finished Babine five days after I got there, and then drove to PG where we would be working from after that. Along one of the logging roads, there were two abandoned old snow-mobiles, and some of the guys actually got one of them going and were riding it around on the gravel.
We stayed at UNBC in PG, which is nice but much too far from town. I only actually brushed for one day out of PG before I left, but it was a pretty strange block. It was a 1.5 hour drive from town through some beautiful areas, and then a 4km walk-in. We only had to cut Aspen, nothing else, so we flew through the block very quickly. The plan was to have the 94-hectare block finished in one day, but we didn't make it. In the afternoon it started raining, which made the drive back to PG take two hours.
Despite how much I was looking forward to being finished this work, I was quite sad to be leaving, and I'll miss a lot of the people I got to know. It was only when I got onto the ferry back to the Island that it felt like I was coming home, and my mood brightened.
I'll probably be starting a contract for Blue Shift in a couple of weeks, working on Sega World Series Baseball again. That'll last a few months and then I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but I have a lot of ideas.
I just finished reading Songs to an African Sunset by Sekai Nzenza-Shand, who writes about her experiences when she returned home to Zimbabwe after living in England and Australia and marrying and Australian. Very much worth reading, it paints a very good picture of village life in Zimbabwe. This was written before Mugabe redistributed all the white farmers' land, so it would be interesting to know how things have changed.
Posted on Wed, 20 Aug 2020 at Saanich, BC, CA (altitude 101m) (map/google earth)
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