Things Not Going Well [Reader Post]

We all have weaknesses, one of my weaknesses is being vulnerable to bad water or more specifically, Giardia or as it is more commonly referred to, Beaver Fever.  It is a parasite that thrives in rivers and lakes, it likes to set up house keeping in the gut of vertebrates including man and especially this man called Skook.

I’ve traveled and worked extensively throughout Mexico and managed to contract Montezuma’s revenge on several occasions and if offered the option, I’ll go with Montezuma on any given day.  The symptoms are similar to flu symptoms, only twenty to thirty times worse than the not so deadly H1N1 wasted and bungled crisis or hoax.  You could say that the H1N1 manufactured crisis wasn’t going as well as the administration hoped nor is the Climate Conference going as well as the Socialist Leaders of Third World Nations had hoped.

I was guiding hunters with my friend Knarley Manners on the Red Deer River In North Central BC, when I contracted the disease, I became too sick to work, so my friend Knarley who was also the boss on this expedition, instructed me to take out the elk meat and trophies with three pack horses and to get his older brother to come back to take my place and to bring in more supplies.  No one likes to be around someone who looks like he is dieing and I needed to go home to rest and get some medicine to recover.

The ride out was hard, my skin felt like my clothes were like sandpaper and rubbing me raw, I was so cold I was shivering and yet I was steaming from under my jacket and suffering from severe stomach cramps.

I was riding my favorite horse Dallas, a Clydesdale Quarter cross that had saved my bacon on several occasions.   I had pulled her from the mare while she was being foaled with calf chains, a major no-no in the horse world; but time was running out and something had to be done, it worked and the foal lived to be a source of joy for thirteen years.  No one else wanted to ride her, she had the habit of wanting to buck really high in the morning while moving towards the men around a campfire.  She scared everyone and to tell the truth, I loved it when she bucked towards guys eating breakfast and drinking coffee around a campfire, their eyes showed a lot of white when 1600 pounds of horseflesh was jumping four feet off the ground in a reckless exuberance that caused sheer panic on the ground.  She knew exactly what she was doing and how to stay out of trouble.  When it was my turn to cook, she made a point of wandering into the kitchen area and watching me work while she stood in the midst of everything without breaking or knocking anything over.  Although everyone was afraid to ride her, including Knarley, I could put six or seven kids on her at home and she would walk around all day as if it were an honor to pack them around the yard, the kids would scream and laugh while she slowly walked around until one of them started to fall off and she would stop until the kid was pulled back on her back or fell the rest of the way off.  She was also a great comedienne, when we were crossing a wild river and the guys were tense and nervous, she would seize the moment by putting her head completely under water and blowing bubbles.  The guys would crack up with laughter and finish crossing the river without the tension.

But today, she knew I was sick and it was a serous trip we were making.  The Red Deer is a deadly wild River that can throw up rocks the size of a Volkswagen once in a while so there was no consideration of foolishness while we walked the narrow trail of frozen mud and ice about twenty feet above the river.

Suddenly my lead pack horse stopped.  You must realize these horses are well trained and know when they are in trouble to stop and wait for the boss to come and straighten out the problem.  The pack horses are tied head to tail with a six foot length of rope.  The rope is tied from the nylon halter on the head and secured to the tail of the horse in front with a squaw knot.  This knot is designed to release if you pull on the loose end of either the tail or the rope.  The rider holds the lead rope of the first pack horse in one hand as a safety measure.  I stopped Dallas and turned around to view a big problem.  My middle pack horse, Bart, had slipped off the trail and was hanging suspended against the sheer wall of the cliff, over the raging river below.

I tied Dallas and walked over to Bart, things were definitely not going well.  The tail of one horse and the head of another was holding up a thousand pound pack horse with one hundred and forty pounds of elk and an elk head and rack on its back.  I realized I was in danger of losing all three animals if I didn’t do something really fast.  I walked over to Dallas and untied two thirty four foot ropes that were tied to the saddle.  (This is the length of a throw cinch for packing with a top pack, this is the pack on top of the panniers that is used to tie the diamond and it is the length I use to picket a horse with a bowline beneath a front fetlock, with the other end tied to a sapling.  Like I said these horses are well trained and can do almost everything, except play checkers.)  I dropped down onto Bart’s back and ran a rope around his belly in front of his hind legs, I then ran the other rope around his chest behind his front legs.  I then tied off both ends of the two ropes to poplar saplings that were growing along the trail.  I untied the two pack horses that had been holding up the suspended horse and led them further down the trail, out of the way.

I then walked back to the horse in trouble and dropped down on him once again and removed the panniers and pack saddle and climbed up on the trail.  At this point I could have cut him loose and said adios; but that isn’t my style.

A man my size can pull on a rope and lift half a horse but not a whole horse, of course I am talking about a strong man not a man ravaged by Beaver Fever.  I untied one rope at a time and pulled to gain a foot of clearance and then retied the rope and repeated the process on the other rope; seesawing the horse up the cliff face until I had about ten feet of free rope that wasn’t being used.  I backed Dallas up to the two poplar saplings and while maintaining the half wrap around the trees, I retied the excess rope to the side rings on her breast collar.  She walked away effortlessly and the poor pack horse came up and over the lip of the cliff.  I made sure to stop her before she crushed him against the poplars.  I backed her and untied the two ropes and unwrapped them from the pack horse while he laid on the side of the cliff in exhaustion and pain.  There was a light snow and the frozen mud was even more treacherous, the decisive moment would come when he tried to stand, it is hard for horses to rise up from a prone position and even harder on ice.  If he slipped now, it was the end for him.

Finally he resigned himself to stand, with a long sigh he pushed himself up with his front legs and brought his hind legs up underneath him.  The legs slipped for a second, but he caught himself and stood.  I led him forward and applied bacon grease to the rope burns and scrapes.  I put the pack saddle on him and laced the packs on with a One Man Diamond.  It was getting dark and we still had about ten miles to the truck and the corrals for the horses.

Now things didn’t go well on that cold day above the river and they didn’t go well when I contracted Beaver Fever; but I saw the problem and overcame the situation with determination and expertise.

Professor Stephan Schneider, from Stanford, a senior member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was promoting his new book at a press conference when he was asked a question about his opinions on the leaked emails concerning the fraud perpetrated by Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University.  Instead of confronting the problem like a man with integrity, he decided that things were not going well and called in  armed security guards to confront the man asking the question.  True, it is hard to explain how a science can be based on fraudulent data, but the questions are not going away.  Relying on an evangelistic fraud like Al Gore to lie away lies with lies will not make the problem go away,  Actually the problem becomes magnified with denial of glaring evidence of fraud and manipulation of data. The refrain that says, “What if the problem is real” is fast running out of credibility.  

There is science and there is faith.  To expect literate cognitive people to fall for the hysterical plea that the risk of a Hoax is too big of a gamble to deny the possibility is preposterous.   It is time for the left to support their absurd claims or let their Hoax horseflesh be swept away by the river of truth and reality.  Their claims are unsupportable and they don’t have the integrity nor the expertise to save their wild claims, I expect them to use this Orwellian tactic more and more in the future to keep their Hoax from being borne down the river of reality with many other fraudulent claims throughout history.  Congratulations Professor Schneider, for being the first Leftist to implement the only strategy the Progressive Marxists have left to continue the Hoax, the Chicago Thug Method of Intimidation.  The River of Reality can be a rough and dangerous ride Professor Schneider, we will see how long you can stay afloat in the light of real science, integrity, and honesty.