The Brown Knowser

Last week, as I was working on the next video of DW's and my trip through the Saguenay , I encountered an issue that, for a moment, made my heart stop. My usual workflow for editing video from one of my 360-degree cameras is to connect it, through Wi-Fi, to my smartphone, which holds a dedicated app. I'll made the edits with my phone and then export the completed clip to my phone: after which, I transfer the files on my phone to an external drive on my computer. The next video that I was going to make was DW's and my kayaking adventure in Baie Éternité and the Saguenay River, in the fjord. It's already out on my YouTube channel, which you can check out if you're into kayaking videos. Subscribe to my channel while you're at it. Because so much of our vacation involved kayaking on challenging waters, I didn't want to risk having everything on one storage card, in case something happened to the camera. I saved one micro SD card with our first two paddles a...

I have a secret that I haven't shared. On my Bluesky social media site, I've tried to portray myself as a happy-go-lucky, positive guy. I tend to start every morning by posting a positive message to my followers and anyone else who stumbles along that message. My message always begins with "G'morning, folks. How are you now?" I try to say something uplifting about the day, ending with, "Have a great day and be awesome!" Sometimes, if I'm in a particularly sleepy state, I'll have that post with just those three sentences. Similarly, before I go to bed, I'll hope that my readers had a great day, let them know how awesome they are, and then bid them, "G'night, folks. Sleep well." If just one person reads these sign-on and sign-off messages and feels good, I feel that I've made a difference. And I'll feel good, too. Like everyone in the world, I don't always have good days. I'm not always a happy camper. I striv...

A few years ago, DW bought me a photo-editing app that incorporated a lot of AI into it. There were pre-set filters that could tremendously enhance a photograph to create whatever results you wanted in a fraction of the time that it would take you to make those changes, yourself, using standard editing features with the program. It could also add elements to a photograph to improve the overall image. Don't like the bland, washed-out sky? Add some clouds. Want to add other elements? How about some birds, or lightning, or fireworks? Why not slot a moon in? Don't like the colour of someone's eyes? Change them. Heck, change anything you want about that person. They don't need to look like themselves. For a couple of years, I had fun with Luminar AI but I still liked using PaintShop Pro for most of my photo editing. I'd been using PSP for more than a decade and was used to the interface, liked certain settings that defined the look I was going for in my images. At t...

On the evening after DW and I completed our 20-kilometre run down the Jacques Cartier River, back at our campsite, we were too tired to think about dinner. It had been a long day. We had awakened at 6:00 to make breakfast and tear down our site. Because our trip to Parc National de la Jacques-Cartier had been sort of last minute, after plans to cycle around Lac-St-Jean with friends had fallen through, we weren't able to get our site for five nights. We were able to book it for three, but someone else had reserved it for the forth night. That meant that we had to vacate the spot by 1 pm. We were able to book another site at the campground, but couldn't move in until after 2, as it was also occupied. Because we had booked a shuttle to the river put-in at 8 am, it meant that we had to tear down our site before we left for our paddle. There was no way that we'd get back to our site before we had to vacate the spot after our paddle. So we ate, packed up our equipment, throwing i...

DW and I hadn't stood in that room more than 31 years. In searching for a place to go for a hike, DW stumbled upon an interesting adventure at the Mackenzie King Estate , in Gatineau Park. We've been to this popular destination many times over the years but hadn't been there for an event since July of 1994. That event had been our wedding. But for this event, for which we had to make a reservation, was an escape-room style of activity that would see us exploring parts of the estate that we haven't seen before and have us return to a couple of spots where we celebrated our union—one place that we hadn't seen since that joyous day. DW discovered this adventure last weekend and booked us in for this past Sunday. At the Moorside garage, you are given a backpack that contains various items that you need to complete your quest, such as a garden trowel, a notebook, and various other items. The backpack has three small pockets on the back, all held closed with combinat...

I've given it enough time. When I finished my second draft of Dark Water , I gave it to four people to read, in the hopes that I would get some feedback and criticism. Three are dear friends; the forth person, DW, who is always my biggest critic and biggest supporter. One friend left a couple of comments on the shared online document but has been silent for a few weeks. Another friend said that she'd read through the full story, first, and then go through a second time and leave her comments. At the time of writing this post, I haven't heard anything from her other than for her to tell me that she's enjoying the book. Another friend didn't commit to a timeline for reading Dark Water and I haven't heard from her, either. And I understand: people are busy and have lives of their own. DW downloaded the book onto her iPad and read the first two chapters while we were on vacation, whenever we had downtime. And she provided comments right away, tearing the content to...

We want to do this again but next time, we'll rent. When DW and I decided to go to Parc National de la Jacques-Cartier , a few weeks ago, we had seen a video of people kayaking on the river, on sit-on-top boats, negotiating some big rapids. If they could do that in those kayaks, we thought, then surely we could run that river in our sit-in kayaks. But could we really? I mean, the kayaks in that video were pretty short—no more than 10 feet long, we figured, if not shorter. We knew from watching various videos that there were some sit-on-top kayaks that can handle various rapids. There are also much shorter, whitewater kayaks that are specifically designed for these kinds of waterways. DW and I have 14-foot touring kayaks that are specifically designed for flat water and open water, where the only white water you encounter is white caps on wind-swept waves. Our kayaks aren't really designed for white water. Sure, they can easily negotiate Class I rapids (swift-moving water) a...

DW and I could have driven all the way home from Tadoussac. The drive is only about eight and a half hours, meaning that by the time we had checked out and were on the road, we could have been home that evening (allowing for a couple of stops for fuel and meals). Ferry crossing at Tadoussac, looking up the Saguenay River. But we didn't want to get home late and exhausted. We've always promised ourselves that at the end of a trip, when we walk through the door, that we'll put everything away right away. This would mean that first and foremost, we'd have to take our kayaks off the roof of our car. We'd have to wash them (it's good practice to remove whatever had collected on the hull before you put the kayak into different waterways) before we hung them on the wall in our garage, make sure our gear was dry and put away, where they belong, and bring in any other gear that needed to be cleaned, separately. We do this after any kayaking trip. Our car was stuffed ...

It was so nice to finally sleep in a real bed, in a real room, with four walls. I tried my best to find my old love for camping but I just couldn't do it. And on the last morning in a tent, when we awoke to steady rain, I was reminded of another reason I don't like to camp. Tearing down our site in the rain. Our tent had to go in its packing bag wet and we had no place to lay it out to dry for the rest of the trip, which meant that our car started to smell funky after a couple of days. But that was okay because after seeing beluga whales swimming in a bay, we were headed to a proper hotel. And by proper, I mean the most prestigious hotel in Tadoussac: the Hotel Tadoussac . This hotel has been around since the 1940s and is an old-world resort hotel with tennis courts, an outdoor shuffleboard area, and even an area on the lawn for croquet. Muskoka chairs looked out onto the bay. The room was a bit dated but, by God, we had a proper room with a comfortable bed. We checked i...

The day after DW and I had paddled a 20K stretch of the Jacques Cartier River, over several technically challenging sets of rapids, I was pretty beat. I realized in the five months since I had lost my job, I had become fairly inactive. I still sat at my home-office desk, but instead of working for somebody else I wrote my novel, Dark Water . Only occasionally would I get on my bike for a ride: I can count the number of times that I rode it on one hand. The most exercise I'd get would be from mowing the lawn, but the summer's heat meant that our lawn dried up, and I went more than a month without having to mow it. In our first three days in Parc National de la Jacques-Cartier , we had kayaked three times and hiked two trails. I covered most of that activity in a video on my YouTube channel —if you haven't seen it already, check it out. I'll have the 20K river run video next week. On our forth day, I was pooped. DW and I wanted to climb one of the hills on another tra...