Last Update for the Season

I had a camping trip planned for early September. I was going through my checklist (as always) getting my gear ready before the trip. All was normal until I got to the water filter. My incredible (and crazy expensive) new water filter, the MSR Guardian. I realized I hadn't seen it since my last trip, and having torn apart the entire basement looking for it to no avail, there were only two possibilities left:

1. I'd lost it. 
2. It was in my kayak

Since there was nothing I could do about option 1, I focused on 2. I live in Toronto, and as my kayak is longer than my lot is wide (no, that is not a joke) I keep my 'yak on floating docks in the downtown Toronto Harbourfront. It was a regular routine that I'd be biking down there almost every day to go paddling, but that was pre-baby and pre-dog, when a 3 hour evening paddle was something I had time for. But I digress! The point is, I hadn't been down to my kayak once since my last camping trip (a month prior), so it was possible I'd left the filter in it when I dropped it off. So, without no other options left I hopped on my bike and headed for the kayak. 

Success! My water filter had spent a month in the day hatch of my kayak. I wasn't pleased that it had spent 30 days of boiling hot summer baking in the sun, but at least I'd found it. The camping trip was going to happen after all!

And then... for no reason I can yet explain, while biking home on the same trails I'd ridden hundreds of times before, I fell off my bike. At speed, onto hard pavement. One minute I was riding along, the next I got to experience what it felt like for the bridge of my nose (along with a few other other body parts) to be grinding along asphalt. 

This has already gotten longer than I planned, so long story short: I had many surface abrasions and minor injuries, but within a few hours of the wipeout my right wrist was all but non-functional. I realized there was no way my camping trip could happen when even peeling a potato required me to do it left handed. 

I pushed the trip back a week, thinking I'd be better by then. Then another week, then another. Then, I finally realized that whatever I'd done was not going to heal quickly, and my camping season was over. 

So yeah. This happened almost two months ago and it's taken me this long to type it out. I had a great trip planned that I was super excited about, and it's taken me this long to come to terms that an entire camping season just came and went, and in that season, the year 2016, I went interior camping exactly twice.