Good googly moogly! How did i miss this thread? I have several absolutely horrifying yet laughable stories about "digestive changes" on canoe trips, but i will have to reserve the telling for actual campfire stories, as some of them are quite graphic. However, I can relate one from my first trip with our Outers Club. Bare with me, it's a little long. Think it was 1990, I signed up for my first 14 day trip, not really knowing what I was getting into. The fellow who ran the club then was a very frugal Dutchman. In fact, "cheapskate" comes to mind as a descriptor. By day two, I realized his prime mission was to starve us to death. I calculated that we were eating about 700 calories a day, while expending several thousand. Each morning, my belt buckle would reach a new hole, until by day 13, I had cut two new holes.
The most anticipated culinary delight was the triple cold smoked bacon that we still use today. However, back then, the slab that we consume in one morning now would be cut into three pieces and made to last three days. The kids and staff would congregate around the bacon bowl in the morning like sled dogs at the end of the Iditarod, growling at each other and gnashing our teeth, waiting for our measly one tiny piece of burnt offerings.
Day 13 was a rest day, and when I got up in the morning, the bacon bowl was still full. I asked the kid supervising the fire why there was so much bacon left, and only got a mumbled reply, so I proceeded to tuck in. Just as I was finishing piece number 5, the head cook came back and shrieked at me "don't eat that bacon". It had been a very hot trip and the bacon had been with us for 13 days, apparently it had been all covered in green mould and other goodies. Naturally I froze, with the half bitten number five piece still in my mouth, thought about it for a minute, and then finished it off. I was hungry.
Our fearless leader, the Dutchman, was known for his eating capabilities. No-one invited him for a meal, he was like a snake, he would eat incredible quantities of your food, and then digest for a month, eating very little of his own food, and then return to your house for another gut busting meal. On this morning, he couldn't pass up the bacon, and proceeded to eat the entire pot. No one said a thing.
At around 11:00 PM that night, as I lay in the staff tent contemplating my return to civilization, I noticed that my stomach was making some very odd noises. Five minutes later it was swelled up like an inner tube on a sidewalk in a heatwave. Then a variety of noxious gasses began to vacate my body with the frequency of a cosmic whoopee cushion. Finally, I decided it was no longer safe to pass the gas, and I "ran for the bushes".
To make a long story short, it was an excruciating night, and I was struck by "digestive changes" around 20 times in five hours. The kids in the boys tent heard the mayhem, and at one point, one saintly pre-pubescent martyr ventured out and gave me his last roll of toilet paper. In my haste to vacate the "back door", I sometimes didn't even make it to the bushes, so there were some white and brown flowers littering the beach. By 5:00 AM, I just hauled out my trusty 17 foot grumman, and layed on the bottom of it, a dried up, dehydrated husk. When the Dutchman came out of the tent, he immediately began yelling around, scolding the kids about the sh*t paper storm on the beach, at which point the little devils squarely blamed it on me. He then turned his tirade on me, and I was forced to crawl out and clean up the mess.
Later that day, on the bus ride home, we all began to smell these horrible farts rolling down the bus. The Dutchman looked most uncomfortable. He was a very private fellow, who would never discuss his bodily functions with anyone. He slowly came down the bus and quietly asked me "Er, did your little……problem……..start with some flatulence?" Try as I might, I couldn't help but laugh, and assured him that it did indeed start with some very bad gas.
We still had a week of school left when we got back, and the Dutchman didn't appear until the final day. When he walked in, I was startled at his appearance. He was a pale shell of his former self, looked like an abused POW. He claimed he had not left the toilet for four days. He blamed it on the kids not washing the pots properly, but I know it was the green bacon. I only had five pieces, he scarfed down around 25. I guess the old snake digestive system didn't work for him that time.
Anyway, I lost 23 pounds on that trip, probably ten the last night.
