Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

This description is going to be in English for the reason that some of the participants of the boat trip would not be able to read it in Latvian. I don&39;t know whether they will read it at all - but they will be given a fair chance, and that is highly important in my mind. However if you, dear reader, happen to require any assistance reading this text and would like to complain to me for it not being in the state language of Latvia, I sincerely apologise to you and as for forgiveness. Or I don&39;t, whichever you prefer.


It is quite tricky nowadays for me to do a boat trip as I have neither a car to transport the boat (and myself), nor a boat. Still it is times like these when progress is made in the world - you think of new ways, new solutions to achieve your goals - that is to have a great time doing something of no real importance. Thus when I had decided that a boat trip was required for this weekend, I asked my helpful friend @sicis, whether I could borrow his gumboat for the weekend. Also I had to find a route where both ends could be reached by public transport and which at the same time would be new to me and interesting to undertake. So I chose the 2 day trip on the river Ogre from Lēdmane to the city of Ogre.

On Saturday morning after fulfilling my citizen&39;s duty to vote at the municipal elections (sorry, @lastguru_net - my vote did not help you much) I went to the nearby store to get some edible supplies for the trip (and ended up buying way too much food), and then to my parents where one of the most important events of the trip took place thanks to an accident. You see, I wanted to fix my sandals which have a tendency to fall apart after spending too much time in water, so I occasionally glue them back into shape. And on this morning I did just that but since I did not have enough time to wait for the glue to dry, I also took the glue with me on the trip.

Then it was almost time for me to take all my belongings and go to the Zasulauks train station. Carrying all the stuff, including a rather heavy boat was quite exhausting, but I knew that it was manageable, so it was. At 10:40 I was supposed to meet the rest of the crew.

As a matter of fact, this was not a very populated boat trip - there was just one person except for myself participating in it. This person is Kseniya - a nice young girl that I&39;m very fond of (certainly - more than recommended) who ocassionally says "Yes" to some of my bizarre ideas. Kseniya did not have any boating experience which meant something very important - she would not be able to judge just how good or miserable I&39;m at paddling, making a campfire or building a tent. And at the same time she&39;s a beautiful and intelligent girl, so I would have good company for this trip.

First we took a train to Ogre and from there we needed a bus to Lēdmane. Through my amazing powers of choosing the wrong direction we managed not to find the bus station which is right in front of the train station, but after asking a local we did actually find it. Then we had to wait some 40 minutes for the bus to take us to Lēdmane, and around the same time - on the bus itself. There was a bit of a distance from the bus station to the river, and my plan included:
1) taking all our stuff to the river;
2) leaving Kseniya to guard the stuff;
3) going back to the "centre" of Lēdmane to get some drinking water (there was already too much stuff to carry without 10 additional litres)
4) starting the actual boat trip.

It turned out that Kseniya could inflate the boat while I was going for the water, thus there wasn&39;t really any loss of time involved. I kinda hoped that I would be able to hitchhike to the shop and that, but I did not even get a chance to try out whether my natural charisma would make any drivers stop, because on the way to the shop no cars were going my way, and on the way back there was just one car that was already overcrowded, and after it - a wedding procession. I was not sure that I was ready to take part in their celebration.


When I came back, the boat was almost ready but it turned out that "Houston, we have a problem" - there was a quite visible hole at the top side of the boat which was letting air out reasonably fast. I thought - how good that @Sicis always has a package of glue in the bag next to the boat. Too bad the glue container was absolutely empty. What can we do? What can we do? Is this gonna be this year&39;s failed boat trip number two? No, it&39;s not! Take a look a few paragraphs back and you will see that I had brought glue for my sandals! And do you know what - this was exactly glue for rubber! So we made a patch, and just a few minutes later we were ready to set sail. Hurray!

I honestly did not have much of an idea, how good or bad Ogre would be for a boat trip this time of year. Is the water level high? Is it low? How do you know? It turned out - the water was just perfect. And the day was just perfect - it was sunny and warm, and even the water was not excrutiatingly cold (just plain cold that is). The river itself is a great way to get to learn the beauty of boating - with many turns, with slower and faster segments of the route (and rocky parts with waves along the way), with some nice scenery next to the river and, of course, with the presence of your humble servant who&39;s always capable of telling a true-ish funny story.

As it is typical on a good boat trip where nothing goes wrong, there&39;s not really much to tell about the trip itself. I paddled a lot, Kseniya swam in the river a lot, I swam in the river a little, Kseniya paddled a little. As we had started in the afternoon, we covered less than half a distance over the first day and made camp next to the biggest island on our way (not on the island itself, because it did not look very welcoming). Since it had been a warm and sunny day, I had no trouble whatsoever starting a fire (my biggest worry!), and we were able to eat some warm food - rice with beans and canned meat. And then we ate some more. And then a little more. And then we were ready to go to sleep. Oh, as a matter of fact there was a bit of a problem with my tent - the string that connects the parts of the rod supporting the tent had broken, but the rod can hold together even without this string.


The next morning came early, as the sun was heating up the tent very quickly, so we had to get out while we were still alive. After a quick breakfast we hit the water at 8AM. And after that - another great day on the river, repeating the same things from the day before. And I don&39;t even know yet, just in how much pain I&39;ll be tomorrow after getting to much sun over two days. The only twist of the trip came quite close our final destination, when it turned out that a dam was blocking our way - something having to do with some factory. We managed to get nearly stuck in front of some barriers, a few local children nearly jumped into our boat and splashed a whole lot of water into the boat, but finally they were able to tell us that we should carry the boat for a few hundred metres to be able to go on with our journey. I did the obvious thing - asked the kids to help me carry the boat, and so they did, and soon we were on the river again. And so we reached Ogre where we got out of the boat next to the bridge on the Rīga-Daugavpils highway - just managing not to enter Daugava and probably half an hour before we would need to get out of the boat which was slowly losing air (in addition to the main patch we had made a second one - a less carefully glued one - in a place where it seemed that there would be a hole coming up soon, and this second patch was not good enough (still - it had held air for something like 7 hours, so it wasn&39;t that bad either).

The rest was prosaic - waiting for the boat to dry, packing the things, carrying our stuff to the train station (and leaving a full, unopened 5 liter canister of water next to the highway, as we had already way too many things to carry), waiting for the train while eating ice cream, the journey back, saying goodbye to Kseniya, waiting for the train to take me home (there was absolute chaos at the Riga central station with absurd contradicting messages coming up every 15 seconds), and then - the final struggle to bring the boat to my apartment. For some reason it seemed twice as heavy as on the previous morning, despite the fact that I did not feel tired from the boat trip. And now I&39;m writing this description and writing about writing the description.

Special thanks to all the people who made this trip possible:
- to @sicis for lending me the boat
- to my dad for letting me borrow the glue
- to Kseniya for enduring my presence
- to "Latvijas dzelzceļš" for not closing down the passenger train connection to Ogre (yet)

Some facts:
- covered distance - 42.5km
- start at 13:30 on Saturday, finish at 15:00 on Sunday
- no animals (apart from mosquitoes) were harmed during this trip
- this text lacks photos, but I just did not take any, so - I can&39;t do much about it now.