Yesterday was community work day.  We were back at it with diminished gusto after a winter hiatus (the spirit was willing, the flesh somewhat reticent).  We started by putting up dry wall and then I left the tough-going to Sal and J, D & R and went down to the Q-hut to meet H and prepare the new space for all the workshop tools we are getting.  They are coming by barge on Friday.

That’s the day – wouldn’t you know – that all the guys are scheduled to go to town and shop or, more likely, see the doctor.  Seeing the doctor seems to be a regularly scheduled stop these days.

‘Course, it wasn’t planned that way.  Really.  People were going to be here.  It is just that, well, the doctor doesn’t travel (neither does the grocery or hardware store) and appointments are made well in advance. The planets just didn’t align this month, that’s all.

The barge travels on the first three days of the month.  Always does.  That’s the schedule.  Sometimes it goes north first and then circles down south.  Other times the circuit is reversed.  It depends on the weather and the urgency of a needed delivery.  As a consequence, most of us have no idea when the barge will come.  So, we just carry on with our schedules and sometimes meet the barge and sometimes not.  Shame, really.  The arrival of the barge is always kind of exciting.

The barge is really a fantastic service!  This big sea-going behemoth carries propane and fuel along with pallets of supplies and materials all around a five hundred square mile area.  The guys nudge the 150 by 40 foot monster gently on to the beach (adjusting for tidal differences each time) and they unload all manner of things off the dropping front ramp.

The Barge Coming into the Dock

One of their main chores is to hump a heavy hose up the shoreline – sometimes hundreds of feet – to a filler pipe – and then, after the fuel has been transferred, wrap and drag the whole, heavy, dead-python-like thing back neatly onto the boat.  This ain’t easy.

Fancy GPS systems and such ‘hold’ the boat in place despite often being buffeted by strong winds and even more influential currents while the work is being done.  We typically have 1000 pounds of propane and a few gallons of other fuels delivered, only twice a year, but we feel like the captain and crew are good friends.  And they are.

Everybody’s landing is different and each landing is made more different by the conditions of the moment.  Doesn’t matter what they have loaded on the barge, they manage to find a way to unload it onto your beach in the most convenient-to-you way possible.  They get pretty creative with some pretty nasty, heavy, awkward and dangerous stuff.  I have nothing but respect for them.

Eight years ago we had two filled-to-the-brim porta-potties to get onto the barge from a steep rocky promontory (don’t ask – the answers don’t make any sense).  That was a major and stinky affair.

Whenever I call the barge head office and say my name, no one knows it.  I am just one of a hundred customers.  Then I say, “N, this is Porta-potty Dave!” N laughs every time and says, “OK.  I know where you are.  I know who this is!  hahahahaha!”

At least he knows who I am. 

This Friday the crew will have to squeeze down close to the public wharf (boats and things have to be rearranged to make enough room) and then they will unload onto the upper deck up at the community landing.  Then the work begins.  We have to schlep all that stuff up a steep gravel-strewn dirt road about 1000 feet to the Q-hut in which the tools are to be housed.

We may wait til Saturday when the ‘work crew’ members are all back from town.

I got a call yesterday from the captain.  “We’ll be there.  You can count on it.  But it is a bit difficult to make a business case for the tool delivery this time since we have absolutely no other customers over your way scheduled for fuel.  It makes it a whole lot more feasible to try to service a few other stops at the same time.”

“Give me an hour.”

Phone calls were made.  “Yo!  Cap’n.  Could you please stop by D’s and drop 1000 pounds of propane and three drums of fuel. Then stop by my place and drop 1000 pounds and one drum and I am pretty sure L is wanting much the same but he’ll phone you direct.”

I could hear the smile in the Cap’ns voice.  “Yeah, sure.  I think we can squeeze that in. See ya Friday.”

It is a different set of challenges getting things done out here.  One has to think onside the barge, as it were.

Boxes?  We are waaaaaaay outside the boxes.  Hell, I long for thinking inside or outside the simple boxes!  It should only be so simple.

Now I am going to have to start thinking upside the gravel road.