Canada

I've been meaning to write a post-Canada wrap up for a while. It was an interesting little leg of the journey; a painfully uneventful month punctuated by moments of excitement.

Trying to get into the country I may as well have been Osama Bin Laden applying for an American Green Card (I wrote about this experience back in August). Consequently, I felt like a hero when we finally reached our destination, only to be cut down to size by Mother Nature. Many say that where Greg Thurman goes, the rain will follow. True to the superstition, we got about three days and 400 acres into the 5000 acre job and then sat through ten days of bad weather.

Marean Lake Resort, our idyllic lakeside campground, rapidly morphed into a prison with water views. Looking back, I feel a bit guilty about my attitude toward the place because it was an amazing location...a single gravel road led down to the lake which was surrounded by woods and log cabins, there was a golf course, a beach and fire-pits scattered around the campsite. I think the issue was that it is a holiday location and we weren't equipped or in the right frame of mind for a holiday; it's the kind of place that you come to with a few books to read, some boardgames, a fishing rod and a boat. We also arrived just as many were packing up their cabins for the Winter.

If I write about the cabin fever that I've been feeling here in Faulkton, we had it ten times worse in Canada. In hindsight, I think we were a little depressed. We went through all of the comedies on the DVD shelf and started watching full-on war epics like The Thin Red Line. One of our idle days, Brian spent a whole morning whittling a little sword out of a stick.

And then one day, like someone had flicked a switch, the weather turned good and we hit the 'go fast' button. It became apparent that most of our time sitting in the camper was spent considering how much we did not want to be stuck in Canada and, as a result, our efficiency in the field peaked. Many nights, Brian would have to drag us away from the crop. We cut for nearly two weeks straight, finishing the job in one big hit.

Eric, the farmer that we worked for was a great guy. In his mid-30s, he is the youngest farmer that we've worked for and had one of the biggest and most impressive crops (clearly a pretty sharp operator). Surprisingly, he's also the only farmer that has bought us a case of beer at the end of the job...back home, the case of beer is considered a currency in its own right.

My Dad came to visit! It's still bizarre looking back - a whirlwind visit. He was in the US for a wedding in San Francisco but managed to squeeze in a fairly major detour to visit me in the middle of nowhere. He arrived in Saskatoon about lunch time, hired a car, and made the three hour drive in time for supper in the field. We drove around together in my truck for most of the evening, trying to catch up as much as possible, pausing every now and then while I unloaded. He met all of the guys, got a ride in one of the tractors, and then came back to the camper to see where I've been living before heading back to Saskatoon late in the evening.

Dad's visit was too short to have a significant effect on me, but it certainly represented the intersection of two different worlds: the lawyer and the truck driver. We arranged to meet at a cross roads between two highways. I was hoping to make a dramatic entrance in the big rig, perhaps creating cloud of dust as I pulled onto the shoulder of the road. This scenario didn't quite play out (one of the Thurman Harvesting pick-ups had to suffice), but nonetheless it was strange seeing Dad in this context (probably stranger from his perspective).

Seeing Dad made me realise what I have left back home and also highlighted just how far I have wandered from the routine of my life in Sydney Town. However, at the same time, catching up with Dad and seeing the effort that he made to visit me showed me how supportive he is of my venture, even if he doesn't completely understand what it is that I am doing (hell, nor do I sometimes!).

In what was a pleasant coincidence, our Canadian adventure came to a close on my 26th birthday. It was a very low key birthday yet one like no other that I've experienced. Most of it was spent by myself driving a 90 foot long oversized truck across Northern America, half of it in Canada and half in the United States. Eric's wife Shona very kindly made me some cupcakes to share with the crew on the road and the boys arranged for some candles to be stuck in my sausage at the truck stop where we had breakfast.