Not beary brave

I'm going to be consumed by a grizzly bear, and it is all thanks to the fact that Canada hates pistols.

My friend and I are planning a trip to the Canadian Rockies June 3rd-the 12thish. He just got done with medical school, and wants to do something celebratory/adventurous before beginning 4 years of residency slave labor. I want to do something adventurous with the hopes that at some point during the 9 or 10 days, I shall be afforded the opportunity to do something like, way heroic, and save his life. Which will then make him feel on some level indebted to me, which will hopefully make him my future cool trip/maybe-a-really-nice-carbon-frame-mountain-bike-someday-benefactor. Or if he dies tragically young at around 40, I'd like to be the guy upon whom he bequests all of his assets. After all, I did save his life. From drowning in a freezing river. Or a falling tree. Or whatever.

I think the extent of my heroic desires are pretty much curtailed at the point of grizzly bear involvement. I'd probably like, take a bullet in the leg. Or get my hands all sappy and probably pull a muscle lifting a tree off of him. I'd even carry or drag him for miles through the wilderness, in order to save him from a lonely, cold death upon a mountain. But I just don't like the idea of getting chewed up by a grizzly.

Think about it. Getting chewed to death. I can't think of too many worse ways to get killed. I guess if I was captured by a grizzly, and neither the bear spray nor the playing dead thing had worked, I suppose I'd probably try to strategically place myself in a position where chewing would be most effectual in causing a hasty death. I'd make sure to try to get my neck in a very convenient position for biting, with hopes that he would just maybe chew my head off real quick or something, rather than casually gnawing at my thighs for a while. Which is probably what the bear will be naturally drawn to, as they are probably the choicest cuts of meat on my body, due to months of biking and running.

So I was looking at the possibility of carrying a .45 in the Canadian wilderness, so that I didn't have to rely upon bear spray to ward off a bear attack. Bear spray? Get real. Can you imagine a 1500 lb grizzly bear being in any way deterred by pepper spray? "Hmm," thinks the grizzly bear, "185 pounds of easy meat accompanied by an itchy nose and teary eyes, or walking my ass into a freezing river to try to snag a few salmon. DUH."

Apparently, pistols are illegal in Canada. I think that maybe one of the unintended consequences of this, is a healthy bear population, which flourishes upon the tender meats of unarmed foreigners. Anyways, I guess my point is, I'm willing to be a hero in any circumstance which does not involve bears.

I'm sorry Adam, but when it comes to a grizzly, it's every man for himself. Which is probably a terrible philosophy, since he has longer legs.