Are we ready?

Wednesday 18th

I woke up in the morning and, still heavy with sleep and significantly short on caffeine. I lay, listening to my body, not in the metaphoric sense but literally. If I move my hips a certain way, it crunches, my knee clicks and my shoulder groans. There are many stiff and sore parts of my body first thing in the morning and with the rapidly approaching prospect of sleeping in a tent in what is increasingly predicting to be a cold and wet passage across Canada, I am very aware of them! I am equal parts excited and terrified at the prospect right now.
We have been planning our gear carefully, adding to and updating our equipment as required. I suspect Mike is feeling much the same after our latest purchase. We had coffee with a friend who had worked in Norther Ontario, and he described the dire consequences of black fly attacks. Neither of us said much about it but I was glad that we had two mosquito nets, small that they were. It was a day or so later that Mike suggested, after what must have been a session of deep thought, that we buy a bug house, one of those mesh tents that covers a BBQ table and more. One more trip to Canadian Tire and with visible relief from both of us, we placed our new bug house on the growing pile of equipment to be packed. I will pull all the stuff out tomorrow whilst Mike is off playing cricket on Vancouver Island.
Yesterday, aware as I am of my creaking body, I was noticing how stiff my hips had become. Instead of sitting on the stairs to pull on my shoes as I set off to visit a good friend, I stooped from the waist to fasten them and realized it was getting much harder to reach my feet. I puffed and grunted to tie my laces when I was interrupted by the buzzing of my cell phone. I pulled it out of my pocket anticipating a cute video of our granddaughter. I did not put it back in the front pocket of my jeans as I bent again to deal with my shoes, and lo!...... I was suddenly way more flexible without the restraining presence of a large flat block at the joint!
Maybe we can do this trip after all.