Yes indeed, here it is:
We have had a couple of breezy cold days yesterday and today. Yesterday the wind here was about 80 to 90 kph sustained, for many hours. I do not know when I have seen such strong winds for a sustained period in a built-up area. Part of my aluminum siding tried to leave for Gananoque and points east, but I nailed them in place with a spike. I figured a hole in the siding, and wall, was better than losing the siding and who knows what else. Quite a few homes in our area lost siding and shingles, in some cases fairly spectacularly...........
Well, today I went ice fishing with an old buddy (Shane, for those of you who know him). He had come down to Kingston from Ottawa last night, joined us for supper and was VERY eager to go ice fishing today so I agreed. Well, we got a nice early start and started in to our old favourite perch lake, called Fishing Lake. The trail in had been flooded recently, and the ice over top of the flooded muck was less than sufficient to carry our weight, so we broke through repeatedly, as did the sled, which also objected to being dragged over rocks and stumps that are not covered by the pitiful 1/4" of snow that we have on the ground, so from time to time would eject the sled contents onto the trail, or in one case, into foul-smelling swamp water, at which point Shane may have said some words that one would not say in Church. Eventually we reached the shores of the lake, where the only access point is where said swamp drains into the lake. Most years there is some thin ice right at the mouth of the little creek that drains the swamp, but about five feet out or so the ice is generally fine. Well..........the ice at the shore was about a quarter inch thick. I edged out along a little cliff and onto the lake again, where the ice was twice as think. Unfortunately, if you are slick at arithmetic you know that is still just a half-inch, which is more than enough for the lunatics who ice fish on Owen Sound, but somewhat below my personal comfort level, even though I wear a full floatation suit. As I shuffled my way towards the main lake, it appeared that the ice was somewhat thicker, but as the main lake came into view, the neck through which we had to pass had open water rippling in the breeze....................so we went back down the very soggy, muddy, swampy trail, at one point with the sled not doing very well as a boat, and taking on water rather rapidly. Back at the truck, beaten by Mother Nature, we had a small drink to console ourselves. Now at this point, may I remind you that we had brought ice fishing tackle for perch. Not crappies, not pike, not splake, but perch. There is one lake within the same general area (maybe 20 km away) with perch, so we made our way over there. I should add at this point that I had to use my thermos contents to thaw my zippers sufficiently to get my floater suit off before driving to the new lake. Shane decided to use a bucket of water out of the creek to thaw his zippers and wash the slime off his floater suit and boots.
Well, we got to lake #2 (Round Lake) and by golly there was clearly lots of ice, as somebody had recently driven out onto the lake with a pickup truck. The wind had increased slightly at this point, out of the North at about 25 to 30 KPH steady, and the thermometer in the truck read -17. Wind chill was somewhat brisk. Anyways we decided to go out and give it a crack. I had to have a leak BEFORE I put on the floater suit, and again if your math skills are good you know that 4 inches of clothing and 2 inches of cold willy, who does NOT want to come out and play, is a losing proposition. Anyways, in the few moments it took to relieve myself (downwind, I might add), the head of my ##### froze. When the feeling comes back in the head of your ##### after it has been frozen, it is not pleasant. I had forgotten this fact, not having frozen Mister Happy since Calgary in about 1978 or 1979. Mind you, that time I froze the whole damn thing, running around the base at -40 or whatever it was that day............
In the meantime Shane's floater suit zippers were all completely frozen, and there was no way we could go out on that frozen expanse with just our warm clothing. By mutual consent, we decided to call it a day...............another Doug and Shane adventure!
Doug
