21 days of canoeing therapy. A 21 day canoe trip on the Eagle, Bell and Porcupine rivers in the Yukon and Alaska with Wilderness Inquiry. I wouldn't call it a vacation because we paddled every day and I was quite fatigued every day. I ended up being the only disabled person on the trip. Some learnings taken from the trip:

1. The 3-legged folding camp stool was an absolute necessity, Crazy creek chairs are not feasible yet because of the problem of getting up off the ground. This way I could have a lap to set the food bowls and actually eat since my left hand is not usable yet for holding a bowl or plate without spilling.

2. I left my AFO(Ankle Foot Orthotic) packed away for the whole trip. After 10 days I could tell that I was getting a heel strike with my left foot, which the AFO prevents me from doing. Walking over extremely rough ground strengthened my ankle muscles but I could tell I was close to the edge of getting an ankle sprain which really slowed down my walking.

3.By the time the end of the trip came I was able to lift my left foot over the gunwale of the canoe without having someone else lift it out for me.

4. kneeling while in tent. This was pretty much a no-no for any of the rockier sites because I still only have a three-point stance, The left arm and hand still collapse too easily.

5. Moving around in the tent. It was a good thing we had 4-person tents, as I was getting ready for bed I would take up 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the tent as I flailed around getting the sleeping pad and bag ready.

6.Sleeping bag. Good thing it only got cold on two of the nights. I was able this year to get the sleeping bag zipped all the way up but not able to cinch the drawstring. So I draped my pile jacket over my shoulders. The second night I knew it was going to be cold so I just wore the jacket to bed.

7.Kneeling to paddle in boat. Because these were Pak-Boats they had aluminum tube frames that made it difficult to get my feet into the correct position. In two hours my knees and ankles would be dying. A lot of this was because I couldn't adjust my position after I got in because I couldn't get my left arm/hand down on the gunwale to push myself into a slightly different position.

8. Paddling on the left side. The first day I used the velcro hand wrap to attach my left hand to the paddle shaft. This only worked somewhat well. This was because the lower hand on the paddle shaft slides along it until the paddle is planted in the water. The rest of the trip I didn't use the velcro thing. I could manage about 5-6 paddle strokes before I had to put the paddle shaft on the gunwale and pull the shaft out so the hand was lower down on the shaft. I probably only paddled on the left side maybe 10% of the time due to this problem. Paddling on this side required a lot of concentration and looking at the hand to make sure it was still positioned correcly. Which didn't allow me to look at the scenery.

9. Paddling on the right side. I never tried velcroing my left hand to the t-grip because I observed how my right hand worked by clasping and upclasping the grip on every stroke. I ended up prying my hand open enough to force the T-grip in and curled the thumb around the end. I could paddle anywhere from 3-70 strokes before having to reposition the hand again. The paddle stroke still left a lot to be desired, I was never able to get the full extension on the left arm to get a vertical shaft but it was better than last year where the left hand didn't get off the chest. This year it was at least 10-12 inches out from the chest. Paddling on this side was much better, mainly because I could do it without full concentration, allowing me to see the scenery and talk to other paddlers.

10. Some of our participants calculated that we would need to do around 500,000 canoe strokes. We did around 600 miles, averaging about 30 miles per day in 7-8 hours.

11.finger intrinsics

First some definitions. Intrinsic muscles are those completely contained within the hand/wrist unit. The extrinsic muscles are contained in the forearm and connected to the hand by tendons and provide

most of the power and range of motion of the joints of the hand.

Intrinsics stabilize the hand in fine motor tasks.

I have been working a lot on passively flexing and unflexing my fingers which are the extrinsic muscles, flexors and extensors but have not been working on the intrinsics mainly because I think I need to get the extrinsics working first and I don't know how to start engaging them.

On my canoe trip on the day I ripped the skin off my left palm we were paddling downstream with an upstream wind of 20-30 mph and I was paddling as best as I could on the right side with my left hand gripping the t-grip. My extension of my left arm was pretty poor, only able to get it out maybe 10-12 inches from my chest. We beat against the wind for a couple of hours until we were all forced ashore. After some consultations it was decided to set up camp, sleep and start paddling again in the evening when the wind usually dies down. So we slept from 5-10 pm and started again at midnight paddling until 3 am(24 hour daylight is wonderful at this latitude) I didn't sleep too well because the left hand was aching a lot. I think what occurred is that I totally overworked my finger flexors and the intrinsic muscles in the hand started firing to try to help hold the paddle. This was a wonderful occurence to find out about since it may lead me to a way to get the intrinsics firing again.

12. Tiredness or being knackered as our English friends say. During the rest stops/lunch breaks I could easily fall asleep. This is somewhat of a conundrum since according to my latest physical I have a resting heart rate of 53, which at my age of 53 puts me in the athlete category. If I am an athelete, why am I so tired all the time?

13. Setting up tents was a problem because the tents had sleeves for the poles, not conduciveto one-handed help.

On the river we saw black bears, fox, moose, bald eagles, sandhill cranes.

We paddled past the 25,000 acre Porcupine River forest fire, saw some complete trees go up in flames.