mikebeauchamp.com - ramblings

Halifax was a very interesting city and a great place to end the trip. The last night, I spent in Dartmouth with my friend Christina�s Mom. She was a cute little Spanish lady that cooked up this really good Chilean dish involving spicey meat with potatoes and such. In the morning, she dropped me off at the airport to head to Hamilton with a stop-off back in Montreal.

Once in Hamilton, my friend Sean came and picked me up. I stayed at his place for the night and then my cousin Stan and his girlfriend drive up from Windsor to come pick me. A few hours of driving on the 401 and I was back home.

I�ve never been away for that long before and it was quite strange returning home. After a few weeks, everything felt pretty much back to normal. I shaved the beard off, unpacked all my stuff and ordered a pair of 250GB harddrives to start dumping all of the video footage to. I also went and shot all of the extra footage I needed for the movie that I didn�t get before I left, including all the shots for the introduction to the movie. The original plan was to take a day and shoot all of the introduction in Stanley Park in Vancouver, but since I was 80% sure that the trip would fail anyways, I didn�t bother. I only ended up shooting one quick little thing of me riding up to the camera asking �well, can I do this?�.

Needless to say, I felt pretty silly going to some crappy local park with empty panniers strapped onto my bike and riding around trying to approximate the look and feel of the Stanley Park footage. That�s not to say that the footage looks bad or anything and seems to be working just fine.

As for the rest of the movie, I filled up the 13 tapes I brought with me with only about 20 minutes to spare! However in New Brunswick, I did buy an extra 3 tapes just incase. The footage is is taking up approximately 328 GB and I�ve reviewed all of it at least once. Editing it is turning out to be quite a challenge, but I�m happy to say that I have a fairly decent 20 minutes of movie already done. It starts out with a 10 minute segment, showing the preparation that I went through in the 9 months before I left.

I don�t know if I mentioned this before but some time out of Quebec, I ran out of money. Thankfully I had a credit card with me to get home and such. A lot of people helped me out and without them I wouldn�t have been able to do this. I spent every dollar I had, plus about 200 extra. Most definitely worth it though!

Being back home after something like this is really strange. When I was doing this trip, I felt like every day had a purpose. Now, everything seems like useless toil. I really miss not having to worry about things like food, shelter, weather, nature, bears. I had my first Asthma attack since I�ve been back. It was only mild, but it was caused by being in the same room as a smoker. During my trip, not once did I have any breathing problems. My dry skin is now back to being dry and flaky. During my trip, my skin was really smooth and such. It�s just strange how that all works, but it worked out exactly how I thought it would be.

I really miss being out there, in the middle of nowhere with legitimate concerns to be worried about. What am I going to do for shelter? which direction do I travel? what will the weather be like? What do I do if something breaks? What animals live here? Do I have enough food? Living outdoors completely agreed with my body, except for the strange rash that I had through Alberta (which still left scars on my arm). I�ve never breathed better, or been in better physical shape or felt more healthy. Even my brain seemed to be working better and I jotted down a lot of interesting ideas in my journal. I really, really think this is a lot closer to the way people are designed to be living.

Anyways, I�d just like to thank everyone that helped me out in any way during this trip.

Once the movie nears completion, I will be posting information about it here. Peace

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