Mission: Feathers everywhere and how long is that drive

By Billy Harris

Operation Jackson North is a go, got the call from Kristine and I have been packing the Mountain Surf Rig ever since. Roughly translated, I lived a life of Mayhem for 3 days, putting my lovely wife through all sorts of grief, “woman where is my super suit” more like ,”I can’t find my adaptor for the computer”. How is it that I loose stuff so fast and yet it can be found by Carly so quick. She’s like my own homing device; I just wish she were as good with directions… Anywhoooooo . The idea of Operation JK North started about a month ago, as many people know I love kayaking and teaching kayaking is also a passion of mine as well. I put together a trip plan for Ma and Pa Jackson and told them what I wanted. “I really want to travel across Canada and teach clinics and paddle with my wife”. Ma and Pa J said Do PK sessions and clinics for the shops demos for the festivals and we will help you out as best we can. Whooowhooo, so off I went on my very merry little way, wife to fly in on Friday. The Clinics are water and time dependant but the idea is to teach as many weekend clinics as I can at local spots out in Calgary and Vancouver area while creeking and paddling at skook. More or less pretty busy little guy for the next little while. PK sessions from Alberta to Vancouver, doing clinics on weekends. I can’t wait, Running Waterfall huck course in Whistler in June, a Skook clinic 15 16 17 of June with a good tide. If anyone is feeling ripped off or wants dates at their home spot Just email me and get some people to get together. b3harris@gmail.com even if you want to fly into Vancouver to take the skook clinic for a weekend no spots are filled as of yet. I will have dates on the Jackson site as soon as I can the clinics will be super cheap and festival demos and demos free just track me down via the internet.

Its actually been 3 days of driving under myself now, my butt is numb, my ears hurt 350 km to Medicine Hat should get there tonight sometime late if the wind dosen’t blow me off the road. Just outside North Bay north of Ottawa about 2 hours I picked up 2 hitch hikers. Kaven and Alexandra they had signs for Calgary and Vancouver so I thought why not. Kaven is driving as a write this and the trip has been awesome, I have dodged several moose, a really confused deer and smoked a duck today. I pulled into the Oil Changers in Brandon Manitoba and the guy under the truck said, “You have Duck parts everywhere down here, kinda fresh and gross”. I was just driving along and hit a Duck it was flying along and then just landed straight on at me just about the bottom of the grill. YUCK. , Who does that there is still blood on the windshield as a take this photo? Anyway, never seen so many feathers in my life Mallard Drake I believe. So I am staring at Saskatoon flat lands thinking, darn this country is big. Princess “Alex” in the back sleeps and chats in French all day, as it turns out English isn’t her strong suit so I am teaching her since she is teaching whitewater canoeing as a job in Canmore for the summer. (I would love to be a fly on the wall for her first clinic this year) And YES, Brushing up in my French, which turns out I am surprisingly good at picking up. However the French disagree, “BUT what do they know” The problem with the French as it turns out is music taste. Kaven, a normally nice guy seems to like death metal. Which is fine if it would just stay in his mp3 player. However he keeps trying to sell me on it. IT SUCKS. Screaming yelling and singing in a different language. I keep asking him, “whats that song about”. His answer, “ah I don’t know” with a French accent. Now they keep teasing me about my English and getting me to say rude things in French. Naughty naughty. So I just plug in my earphones and rock the volume to high…
Tolerance I am learning is about as good as my French. “Its music, not lyrics” He keeps saying. Where is the Bison Billy??? Aaaggg.
I love my life. I have been Crank Called at 3 am for the last 4 days by Dave New-IN-House. Pretending to be Eric Jackson, teasing me about fudging my times at worlds and showing up late, filling my phone with messages, Logan Grayling and Ben Marr Pat Camblin giggling away in the background doubtlessly happy with Daves foolishness at 3am.

Well back to the road, they agreed to stop teasing me.

Update: I arrived and paddled with Scott Findel, boating the Kananaskis river again today. But then as we got off. SNOW. Snow. 35 in Ottawa, and 3 inchs of snow here. It started out so beautiful…..

Billy Harris on a mission