"Fair winds and following seas"...

that's a fine salutation, but the reality of adventurous endeavors is quite different. i've used outfitters of all sorts in different locations and could write a book about the things that did not go according to plan or promise. some minor, but in other cases we were lucky nobody died.

without peeking at my trip notes, i might have trouble recalling the day of calm before the storm. i wouldn't need my notes to remember the storm itself. sit at any campfire, and the stories that are rolling around are not usually of the things that went right, but of the things that went wrong-sometimes terribly wrong. if it wasn't the least funny then, the campfire version will get laughs every time. pick a calamity off the menu and i could probably tell a story to match. whatever happened, it never ruined a trip.

so if you believe in that adage "if things always went right, there would be nothing to talk about", you would have some entertaining things to say about this trip. your memories would have made a better campfire story than a canoe forum story.