We don’t really rely on the barge but it makes life so much easier and we like the guys who crew the boat. They are coming with a load of lumber and our semi-annual fuel delivery today or tomorrow. Which is good. We want to get back to the ‘shop’ construction and, of course, we want to continue our pampered, lush, exceptionally satisfying way of life without having to work too hard to get it. The barge helps us do that.
The barge is huge. A bit over 100 feet long, maybe 35-40 feet wide and it sports a hy-ab lifting arm that can drop a ton (literally) of stuff with each lift. That is important because the company charges by the lift. It costs about $160 a lift but I have concluded that carrying and schlepping 2000 pounds of lumber (factoring in gas and ferry and not just a little blood and sweat spread over several trips) is well worth that sum. And schlepping gas and propane is some kind of enclosed-in-the-car hell that I gladly pay to have done by the barge. In other words, I think the barge is a great deal.
They don’t make any money off of us or any of the local residents. Not really. We are break-even at best. Our average purchase twice (maybe three times) a year is about $12-1500 but most of that sum goes to the fuel companies. Amongst residents, we are a medium-to-large delivery. They do a lot of smaller-earning deliveries. It takes them about half an hour once we are ‘in their sights’ to dock, unload and head off again. They have three crew and the boat would cost at least $5M to build if it was replaced. Any kind of simple business math says ‘there is no profit in servicing residents’. The barge makes a ‘go’ of it servicing the camps, resorts and fish farms along the coast. We benefit simply by being ‘on the way’ to somewhere else.
By way of explanation: some of the more industrial customers go through $100,000 worth of fuel every month!
And we get the same considerate and prompt service as they do. The crew doesn’t even really need us to be there when they come. But we like to see them. They know where everything is, how to get at it and what to deliver. We mostly just stand around getting in their way. But part of that hour spent is cracking a few jokes, catching up on any new neighbours arriving and learning about how busy the season has been for each other.
But the service is now threatened. For all of us.
It is hard to argue with the threat. We want the coast to be as pristine and unpolluted as possible. That is why we are here, after all. But in order to achieve that, the government has mandated that all such commercial ships be double-hulled. They want to reduce the risk of oil spills. And a barge full of fuel is a risk. No question. But to double-hull the barge will cost millions and the current customer base simply couldn’t shoulder the cost which the barge compnany would have to pass on. Plus, they have been plying the same waters serving the same customers for decades. They are the least likely of ships to hit something and be holed.
Makes no difference. They will be forced to comply. Probably. Or go out of business. More probably.
The net effect of this ‘better eco’ standard (again: which I find hard to disagree with) is that the service will be less affordable or withdrawn altogether. And that will impact those who live here greatly.
The overall effect will be to further ‘push’ people from a rural environment into an urban one. And one more indirect, subtle force will be levied that results in conformity and controlled living as determined by government. We can’t have the barge but we can get on transit. And we can no longer walk in the forest but we can go from one little box to another. Working for the system that put us there.
“Dave, surely you don’t think there is a plot afoot to drive people to urban living?”
No, I don’t. Not really. Not a conscious one, anyway. But there are decisions being made constantly by Big Brother and the Holding companies that have that effect. The desire to make things cheaper, to make people conform, to limit freedoms and to concentrate services has the effect of pushing people into concentrations and we call those concentrations cities.
I suppose we could call them camps but concentration camps has a bad connotation.
As for me, I will resist. I will pay the barge more if they continue their service or I will resign myself to doing the hard work and heavy lifting in a fuel-smelling confined space (the car) if I have to. It is still worth it. I will never return to the concentrations.
Our Off the Grid Home 
It’s only a matter of time until everyone is corraled into cities where they can be properly policed. First it will be economic and regulatory pressure, finally ending in the rounding up of the hold-outs, who will have been labelled as anti-social, lone wolf criminals. Your property will be turned over to the benevolent stewardship of resource extractors. Oh, and it will always be for the good of society. The blathering, sycophantic media will cheerlead as usual.
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Oh, DJ….you are wrong, wrong, wrong. They won’t round up the hold-outs. They’ll taser them to death. Shoot ’em. Disappear them. That is what they do when people don’t ‘leave the buildings’ as instructed. See Rodney King. See High River. See any police action with crowds. Just a hint of things to come. And only getting worse. All these so-often-happening evacuation orders? For our safety? How can it be for our safety if they kill us if we don’t comply? Am I paranoid? No. Not really. Before all that happens, I will be dead and gone. But it will be a reality. I can see that.
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Like you I and many other folk can and do think for themselves. That is a good thing I often wonder about the younger generation with cell phones glued to them, are they going to be able to be Contrary to Ordinary. Risky is New Safe I choose to be… Always enjoy your posts keep on keeping on…
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Thanks RH. Appreciated. I suppose to some extent my ‘resistance’ is the natural response of someone who is older and more experienced and knows that government and modern solutions have unintended (and intended) negative consequences. I just don’t trust them to get much of anything right. And this trending/herding force to get everyone rural into urban condos and on transit is a major, major mistake that will only lead to a life like that lived in Tokyo and Hong Kong. And your observation of young-people-with-phones is right on. Take a ride on the Hong Kong MTR (transit) and you will see gazillions of people mezmerized by their phone. And then disembarking like cattle to go to work for twelve straight hours in a concrete jungle. This does not bode well. Orwell would be yelling warnings. I just moved the hell out. And maybe not even far enough.
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Why not have a little more infrastructure on your island? A bit of road improvement, a wharf where some thing might be driven ashore? A little bit of one hundred year old technology. No too big or invasive just a smidgen, a modicum.
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Well, the population base is small and generally quite impoversihed. There are no funds and we don’t represent a large voter base to get the attention of a politician. Plus everyone is getting on and they have grown to live this way – simple, minimalist, lean. Put another way: we don’t want a ferry. We don’t want electricty. We don’t want all that ‘stuff’ that makes up infrastructure. We made our own as the needs of each person dictated. And it works. Barely, to be sure, but it works. And the benefits greatly outweigh the costs of doing otherwise. For the most part, we do not have a strata council, an invading Hydro utility that we depend on, a water system that fails now and then and a police state on the front door. We don’t have people losing their homes from high taxes and we don’t have levies and fees imposed by others for reasons that benefit a few. We don’t have traffic jams to cross bridges that cost billions. We don’t have sirens. We don’t have pollution. We don’t even have crime! We may not like everyone but we know them. We may be inconvenienced or have to work a bit for something but it keeps us healthy and fit and it is usually not too taxing. Sometimes it is even fun. Infrastructure? In the immortal words of Cheech Marin: “We don’ need no stinkin’ infrastructure!”
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I feel like ours will likely be the last generation able to choose to live outside of the global panopticon. The young-uns are so obsessively shackled to their devices and are wired into the hive mind with no hope of ever being self sufficient to any degree. If the grid goes down they’re doomed. Which may be part of the plan.
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ONE day Christie-Christie was picking up papers on her desk when–whack!–something hit her upon the head. “Oh my,” said Christie-Christie, “The sky is falling and it’s all the NDP’s fault”. So Christie-Christie got on twitter and twitted, “The sky is falling and I do not know what to do! Please Cocky-locky, Duckydaddies, and Goosey-poosey help me I’m over my head.”
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Hard to argue with that. Goosey-Poosey?
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