Houston ... I have a problem ... my camera is NFG

I have been noticing over the last few months that my outdoor pics have seemed very washed out or over exposed. It was getting to the point where I thought I was losing my touch.

My paddling pics no longer had crisp water droplets in them. My skyline pics seems very bland and so on.

Normally I could just wlk up to a river or water falls and set my camera to 1/10th of a second shutter speed and voila .... an excellent pic with sliky smooth water. But that is no longer the case.

Luckily my sister (yes I have a sister and yes she hates me most of the time like sisters do) has the Pentax K100D which is one model below what I have. She was gracious enough to lend it to me last weekend so I could do some comparison tests between my camera and hers.

I was paddling at the Gull River on saturday and took some test shots with my lense on both cameras set to the normal 1/10th of a second and voila .... her camera pics look like this

My camera pics look like this using the same settings

My camera is now on it's way to the surgeon to get fixed.

Me being cameraless is going to be really strange as all of my friends know where I go my camera goes.

This will be the second time my camera has gone to get fixed. The first time it was a circuit board that need replacing as it was taking random purple pics like this

Padlding the Lower Yough River in Ohiopyle, PA

Well ... last weekend i decided to go paddling on a new river for me in the USA.

I headed of to ACME, PA from work on friday to meet my friend Paul for the first time in person. Most people would think that it is strange to just show up and stay with people you don't know.

But for us Open Boaters the globe might be huge but the paddling community is small. I met Paul online a few years back on the CBoats.net website so we already had a feel for each others warp sense in terms of personality.

During a few ice cold Canadian beers, paul gave me the low down on how to get to the river and what to expect.

I left for Ohiopyle National Forest Park early saturday morning to meet up with Joe and Tony who were both from just outside Philly somewhere. Added to the mix was Sean from OH and Mike from PA and they were both new faces to me.

We had a great day running the entire river. It was really great to focus on my technical skills of catching eddys and not swimming. After paddling it was basically have a beer and figure out what to do for dinner.

Turns out it is illegal to drink alcohol in a State Park and i was let off with a warning from the ranger instead of a ticket.

Dinner was pulled pork sandwhich and more beer and this place does it right. Forgot the the name of it but you can bring in your own beer :)

After that we head over to Sean's campground to check out the local playspot for future possible camping sites on a return trip.

I headed back to Paul's place for a late night drink before heading to bead.

The next day Paul, myself, and the two boys heded back to the Lower Yough. We met up with the gang from the day before plus Jay, Pete, and a few others. More new people to paddle with. Most of us just ran the loop section as we were pressed for time and had long drives ahead of us.

It was another great day on the river. The only problem now was the path off the river started as a goat trail between the boulders until it flattened out. I actually had to take it easy and put my boat down twice.

After that it was goodbyes in the parking lot. I stopped for a quick bite to eat at the BBQ place before my seven hour trip back to Toronto including the half hour at the border.

It was a great weekend meeting new friends to go boating with in the future.

I will definitely go back and paddle that river for sure.

Newfoundland - Part 02 and then back home for some paddling

Damn ... life has been totally busy.

I totally gapped it and forgot to update my blog when I was on vacation.

So here are the coles notes version:

Saw ice bergs in Twillingate and Durrel
Had a blast hiking around Gros Morne National Park on the west coast
Toured the Viking Settlement on the northern tip of the island
Saw "The Navigators" life at the local pub in Rocky Harbour .... fantastic show.

After that I headed back to the mainland and toured around Nova Scotia for a few days.

I spent a few days up in Canning visiting some friends from my high school days. I probably had not seen Mrs. M since 1983.

I ended up working a day in Halifax with some of our staff there plus an extra day touring around.

All goo things had to come to an end. I had not been in my boat for almost a month as was going through paddling withdrawls. I decided to head back to Ontario a few days earlier than planned.

I still have to go through the photos I took which will take some time.

I managed to drive all the way from Halifax to my dads place in Petawawa in 16.5 hours which included three 5 minute pit stops and a 20 minute Costco shopping spree for my step-mom in Ottawa.

It was nice to just relax before having some fantastic boating on the Ottawa for a few days. I also ended up taking some photos at a freestyle competition that was going on. I have slowly been uploading the photos here http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmnypny/sets/72157621383289639/