Tragic End to a Good Day

 I went to Waldo Lake yesterday. 

 It was supposed to be 80 or more degrees there.    For the most part it was warm enough at least for a couple hours.  Then clouds rolled in but it was still pleasant.

I left about 11:00 and got there near 1:00.   

I had bought a new hand pump and had no trouble blowing up my board this time.  Ha!  Finally.

I paddled along the east bank to the south end, toward the island.  My usual route these days.

Suddenly, near the cove where I first saw those four duckling with their mom, I see flashes of red all around me in the water.   Kokanee!!!  Spawning time.

Probably 15 or 20, really hard to count fish zooming around.

All spawner red.  

Kokanee are landlocked deep water loving salmon often found in Oregon lakes and reservoirs.   These are the fish, prized elsewhere, that died by the thousands upon thousands, when the corp of engineers began deep drawing down reservoirs, like Green Peter above Foster, in our county.  They did so because they were required to by a judge, as a result of a lawsuit brought by, among other groups, the native fish society who apparently like migrating salmon not landlockers.

The red in the water are salmon

 I paddled on past the island, going around its shore side.  There were too many people and dogs there enjoying the day for me to want to stop and go swimming.   On along the shoreline I continued to the west side of the lake.  On along the west side I went all the way to the old tunnel.  I've been to the tunnel many times over the years.  There's a big log up by the sign, about the tunnel, its history.  I like to sit on that log to take a break and just enjoy.

The tunnel sign

Sealed up tunnel entrance

 

The tragic end?   Well, when I was driving out of the boat ramp parking lot a biker had just left, on his large motorcycle.   I got up to the stop sign at Shadow Bay road and the road down to the highway, where there is a stop sign, and I saw some cars stopped.  I got out and went up and there was the biker laid out on his stomach, the stop sign was torn out of the dirt and laying a bit farther on from him and his bike was another 20 feet beyond that.   

A lady was talking to him.  His legs were broken, one badly bleeding.  She'd tried to put a tourniquet around his thigh, with a strap but she said it was not tight.  I went to find a stick to tighten it, and ended up getting a flashlight from my car to use.  When  I got back to him, she said they'd lost his pulse.  Now he had to be flipped to his back for cpr, no matter what that might do if he had spinal injuries.  Ambulance is far far away, like 45 minutes.  So we flipped him, I his legs.   

Three people, two women and a man, proceeded to take turns giving him cpr for 30 or 40 minutes until the ambulance arrived and declared him dead.     Poor man, just out for a ride or a day trip or something, laughing down at the boat ramp minutes before he crashed.  If a car was involved too, they had vanished from the scene.  The police will figure out what happened.    Rip whomever you were in life.  In the end, you had a dozen or more kayakers around you.

Today a neighbor is taking all five bathroom kittens in, to tame them off for adoption.  She's done this before, no novice to doing it, with cats and kittens from a relatives colony.   I am so grateful.