……Bill!

What a guy! Ol’ Bill was and is a friend from the city. He’s a techie. Right ‘out there’ with all the scientific instruments, multi-meters, soldering gear, bits and pieces of salvage from submarines, satellites and alien space probes. He’s got boxes and drawers full of transistors, diodes, motherboards and God-knows-what-all. He even has pocket protectors for all his pens and pencils. If it is any kind of weird science, Bill knows something about it.

He’s not just a little eccentric himself, of course. Health food nut, conspiracy theorist and with more than his share of absent-minded-professor-ness, he is a character writ large.

We are close friends.

The reason we are close is simple: he is a good guy. When I would get in trouble, maybe biting off more than I could chew (this is especially true when it comes to electricity), Bill was there electrocuting the both of us. It was at least comforting to ‘fry’ together.

One time I was in dire straits up the coast in the middle of the night facing an impossible deadline and working hard physically for over 24 hours straight when, out of the fog, at four in the morning, Bill arrived by Shanghaied water taxi to the rescue. Some things I will never forget. He’s better than Mastercard.

But that is not the story. The story is that Bill has kind of found the same path to the forest. He didn’t follow me, of course. Too independent for that. But he did come visit a few times (more than a few, actually. He was a big help many times) and he went from being ‘unfamiliar’ to ‘very comfortable’ with off-the-grid living. A couple of years back, he sold his huge Burnaby home and bought a small place on one of the southern Gulf Islands.

Then he met a gal. As eccentric as he is, L and he have ‘hit it off’. Things are looking good for them.

They met this way: he went to a local dance at the community centre. The idea was to meet a few folks, make an acquaintance or two. Tragically, he thinks he can dance but that did help get him to mingling.

He asked this strange woman to dance. Amazingly, she said yes.

So far in the story, the odds have been defied considerably. The stars must have been aligned perfectly and all the Gods were looking elsewhere. A rift in the time/dance/space continuum. There is no other explanation. By all rights, someone should have intervened.

She said, “I really should warn you. I am a bit odd. Peculiar, it seems. People say I am a bit ‘out there’.”

“Really!? Me, too! I’m really weird. I’m a nut!”

“Wow! What a coincidence!”

They’ve been together ever since.

And, for the record: they are both right.