…hardly blog worthy but so, so unusual for us.  We have been up here for ten years and, not counting the somewhat frequent brushes with death by machines, blunt trauma and myriad other weird, wilderness-related accidents, we have been healthy.  Disease free.  We managed to dodge all the flues and colds that make the usual rounds. Isolation will do that for you.  No people, no disease.

But we haven’t had a visitor in a month and yet we have classic back-to-school colds!?

Of course, we have encountered some people during that time and it was just last week we went to town on a shopping day so it is easily explainable but usually we can handle the occasional immersion in the germ pool without succumbing.  Not this time.  This back-to-school cold got us and is having it’s way with us like a kitten with a ball of yarn.

I mention this only because we also have an increased disease awareness these days. Ebola has a way of getting your attention, ya know?  So does Enterovirus 68. Enterovirus 68 is paralyzing only a few kids so far but the disease made it all over North America pretty quickly.  And people travel around the world in droves all day, every day. Even Liberians are traveling!  My point: disease can attack faster than terrorists.

“Geez, Dave!  You afraid of disease now?”

No more than before and, to be frank, NOT very much.  Disease has been an enemy of the species since the dawn of time.  We have been soundly defeated by bugs not just a few times.  They estimate that as many as 100 million people died from the Spanish Flu circa 1918.

The interesting thing about the Spanish Flu was that it covered the globe in an era BEFORE the world was travel mad.  AND there were fewer people in 1918.  The point: something as benign sounding as ‘flu’ can take us out in swathes.  Something like Ebola is much, much more deadly.  Spanish flu had a death rate of about 4 per thousand people. Ebola kills 500 of 1000 people.

“So, what are you saying?”  

Ebola is more important than ISIL/ISIS.  REAL leaders would be way out ahead of this one.

Mind you, for all that, climate change and pollution are more important than ISIL/ISIS and our leaders haven’t done much on that score at all either.

I guess my point is about politicians – why do we call these people leaders?

This is an interesting blog to write……….it is about you, the readers.  Whoever you are or (as in some cases) whoever you work for…….

Firstly, I encountered one of my ‘regular readers’ on another and very unrelated news-oriented website yesterday.  He used the same nom de guerre on that website as on mine.  Wrote with the same voice (sane).  It was like bumping into an old friend while traveling in say, California.  Weird. But neat. Birds of a feather……..

Another friend was a student at Tiananmen in ’89.  His input was simple: the protest will not end well in HK unless the students de-escalate their demands.  Methinks he should know.

According to Google stats about 25% to 33% of my readers are in China or HK.  Or Russia.  I have no idea why.  Some are likely friends from our travels there but most likely my site is monitored.  I occasionally write about Hong Kong and China, after all, and their government does tend to monitor such things.  Mind you, I sometimes rant about our government, too, so maybe some of the Canadian readers are CSIS staff. I never write about Russia.  So, who knows?

I should write more about the CIA and MI6 just to keep the whole spook community equally engaged, I guess.  It increases my readership at the very least.  I could end my blogs with ‘Allahu Akbar’ but that might be pushing things a bit too far.  Big Brother has no sense of humour.  And they do have jails and tasers.  Well, they all seem to find jailing and tasering folks somewhat amusing so maybe it is just a different sense of humour, eh?

Since this blog is a bit deviant, let me ask a few questions…..ISIL/ISIS is reported to have 30,000 soldiers (more, according to Obama).  But they don’t have significant numbers of vehicles, no tanks, no planes and, presumably, no discernible supply lines. Young men eat a lot.  They need food and toilet paper.  And soldiers need transportation.  So, how are they doing this?

Iraq has 250,000 soldiers, tons of planes and tanks and the backing of the world.  So why is Harper sending them 60 or so advisors and a few F-18s?

Why is Harper doing the same kind of thing in Ukraine?

Did Canada become a superpower while I have been away?

My guess?  Canada and the US intend to get aggressive around the Arctic circle and they have some kind of quid pro quo thing going on.  Plus Harper is an idiot and fancies himself a historical figure in the making.  He is easily manipulated as a result.

Ebola is getting out of hand.  It will likely ‘burn itself out’ as they say but it hasn’t so far and more efforts are needed to stop the possible pandemic.  Canada has offered up some supplies but the supplies can’t be shipped because commercial air carriers aren’t going into Liberia and Sierra Leone anytime soon.  So our contribution sits in Winnipeg or wherever. They are planning to ship it by sea!  Doesn’t the Canadian government have a few more planes other than the F-18s?  Aren’t the US flying in?  Can’t we hitch a ride?

How is it that we can join the forces against ISIL and not the forces against Ebola?

Where has Canada’s peace-keeping role gone?

How did a dickhead like Harper hijack our nation?

POSTSCRIPT: Seems Harper DOES read the blog!  After that last post, he announced a stepped up effort to address the Ebola issue.  Authorized a whole new mobile clinic to be sent.  I think the man suffers from a number of psychiatric disorders but making better decisions has to be acknowledged and fighting Ebola with more aid is a better decision.  ‘Bout time.  

The recent student-led protest in Hong Kong against Beijing-influenced elections is not exactly new.  HK Chinese have protested before and increasingly as the central government’s tentacles have reached further into the city-state’s administration over the past ten or so years.  The promise given at the 1997 ‘handover’ when HK went from a British colony to return to China was; “One country, two systems.”  It promised to keep the loosely-defined Hong Kong form of democracy and autonomy in place.  But they lied.

That government doesn’t speak the truth is not news anymore.  That Bejing lied is to be expected.  Lying is endemic to all governments.  And, with a hobbled and muted media, they get away with it.  In Canada, too.  But Hong Kong Chinese believed them.  They really did.  And they are fighting for that belief.  It is a show of incredible courage.

The real story is that the students are leading the revolt once again – like in the times of Tiananmen Square.  And in no small part that is a surprise in itself.  The government does not teach the Tiananmen Square history in school.  Chinese students today are generally ignorant of that time in Chinese history and even their parents have opted not to speak of it most of the time.  Safer that way.  These students are protesting without the sense of tradition or history that so often lends courage to such efforts.

They are NOT saying, “If they can, we can!”  Because no one in Hong Kong knows they could.  No one knows they did try once before.  And no one knows that the protests were crushed by none other than the People’s Army.  That video we are all so familiar with..? The man with the shopping bags blocking the path of a line of tanks by simply daring the driver to run him over..?  That video is never been seen officially in China.

Of course it has been seen but not officially.  And it has become part of the secret history that only a few know about now.  The extreme minority of Chinese who are personally committed to protest are not open about it.  They are not visible.  If that should ever happen, they are jailed.

Who amongst us would forget the images of Kent State?  Rodney King?  The Watts riots?  Who would forget the story of Lt. Calley at My Lai?  Nixon’s departure from the White House?  These are images that give us vision, that provide us with perspective and that help us make decisions on what our limits are.  The Chinese don’t have that. They get rhetoric and propaganda exclusively.

They are lied to even more than we are.

I totally respect the protestors.  To stand up to Goliath without the foundation of history, knowledge, perspective and the known support of others is incredibly courageous.  You are seeing a lot of brave young people in Hong Kong these days.  And to do that in conflict with a culture steeped in obedience, harmony and cooperation, is amazing. These are students born into a culture of respect for the hierarchy and for ‘your superiors’ and their school system is very, very reaffirming of that.  For them to object to anything in an anti-social way is nothing short of a major shift in the ‘force’.  These young people are different and they are making a difference.

We could use a few Chinese dissidents here.

It has been over a month and the genset has not been used once!  Sally even twice ironed her quilt-in-the-making pieces, a previous hangin’ offense.  I figure we have saved at least $25.00 so far in fuel, maybe a few dollars in depreciation and wear on the genset and at least ten hours of noise.  So far, this solar thing is workin’ out.

A few days ago it blew a gale.  Maybe gusted to 30.  The array presents a lot of surface area to the wind.  And, as you know, I eschew proper engineering and opt, instead, to use what I have at hand.  Maybe doubling it all up if I have two of them.  Tripling if I am worried.  At first I wasn’t worried.  Not in the least.  “Let her blow!”

But then it did blow.  It howled.  And my confidence ebbed pretty quickly.  I went up to look at the array when it was blowing about 20.  It was fine.  Not a vibration.  But, at 30, I went back to worrying.  Which is silly.  ‘Cause, what are you gonna do at that point? Catch panels as they fly by?  What will be will be.

Everything held and there was not a hint or indication of a problem.

I am going to double up on a few things.

I blame my neighbour for this sense of worry.  He is the very good neighbour who is pretty knowledgeable about construction and all things woodsy.  I respect his opinion. But I don’t always follow it because if I over-engineer, he over-engineers what I would do.  If a 2 x 2 is strong enough, I might use a 4 x 4 but he would advise employing a 6 x 6 with steel reinforcement.  I exaggerate only a little.

“Geez, Dave.  I dunno,  I am not saying anything.  It’s your money.  But you think that will stand up to a good wind?  Well, good luck to you.  Glad you can afford to throw away money.”

“I can’t afford to throw away money ’cause I don’t have any to fling!  Do you think that is going to fall down?”

” I ain’t saying nothing.”

“Yes, you are.  You just said it!  You are scaring the hell out of me.  What do you know that I don’t?”

“Have you calculated the wind force per square inch for this area?  What kind of steel thickness and hardness did you use?  Do you know the breaking strength of those cables?  What kind of rock anchors did you use?  How deep did you drill into the rock?”

“Unh..well, the force is the same as a small jib.  So, there is lots.  I used to sail, so I know  there is lots. The steel was salvaged from an old storage rack and it was hard enough to require me hitting it strongly with a hammer and welding parts of it.  Then I jumped on it with a friend of mine.  A bunch of times.  It held.  The cables were shrouds off an old sailboat and I drilled about six inches into the rock.”

“Well, I am glad they didn’t build the Ironworker’s Memorial bridge like that.  But maybe this will become the Ironworkers Memorial solar array.  We’ll see.”

I really have to stop asking him about things.  I may just triple a few things while I am at it.

Transient Orcas went by yesterday.  Heading south.  Six or seven of them, I think. Huge.  Likely all male judging from the profiles of the fins (all tall).

I first noticed the two bright red whale watching boats across the channel and got the binoculars out to see what they were looking at when, all of a sudden – ‘SWWWOOSH’. Right in front of me!  They whales were fifteen feet off my beach!

The whales were on this side of the channel and the tour-boats, keeping the requisite distance were far away on the other.  I guessed that the whales were the transient pod due to the high number of males but that was confirmed later by a neighbour who told us they had watched the whales find lunch – two seals.  Seems the transients eat mammals (seals, dolphins, porpoises) and the resident pods eat fish (salmon).

The whales eventually turned the corner of the point and the tour-boats scurried after. The game was afoot.  And what a game it is.  The whales draw a tour boat crowd every day and are followed relentlessly as they go about their Orca business.  It has to be a form of harassment but, to be fair, the tour-boats do keep the required distance (100 yards, I believe) and they are religious about it.  They are very good at being annoying as Hell.

The whales can get away.  Of that I am pretty sure.  Sometimes they simply dive and stay down a long time and, while down there, swim fast and go a long way.  If they do that twice or three times, they tend to lose the tour-boats pretty quickly.   But the tour boats are not without aids.  They, too, have binoculars (on many pairs of eyes), sonar and now, I understand, the aquarium is following pods with surveillance drones.  It is an interesting and merry chase for the tourists but I am not so sure how the whales feel about it.  There is no doubt that the boats make hunting and fishing harder.

Fewer Eagles this year.  Fewer sea lions.  Plenty of seals.  Seems the salmon came back in droves so that is good.  The ebb and flow of life on the coast, I guess.  A couple of years back jellyfish seemed to be the predominant life form.  They were a gelatinous carpet at times.  Then we had way too many sea-stars.  This year few of either.  If anything was noticeable in the numbers this year it was boaters.  We simply had more small (under 50 feet) boats plying the waters.  With fuel prices being what they are, I was surprised.

First official day of Fall and it is marked by a serious day of rain, a gloomy cloud cover and a gale warning for the evening.  And I am feeling pensive and, oddly for me, already missing the sunshine.  But the whale tours are basically over.  The boat traffic is all but gone.  It will be quiet again.  And that is the way it should be.  Quiet is good.

The silly season is finally over.  I can feel it.  I can also see it.  There are fewer boats going by, fewer e-mails coming in, no phone calls, the pace has slowed on everything. Especially me.  Sal is still busy, of course, but she has gone from warp speed to something closer to formula one – a big slowdown for supersonic Sal.

I have projects and I usually have overlapping projects so that I can keep as busy as I want to.  But not right now.  Right now, I am at the end of a major project (the new array) and without one ongoing to go to.  Worse, I don’t feel like starting one. I have had a long week off.  So long, in fact, it has been two weeks (well, there was a bit of tower dismantling but that doesn’t really count)!

Mind you, this time is not so much relaxing as it is lumpifying.  Like a stale bag of Reddi-mix, I am now just a heavy useless lump.  I am hardly moving at all. Yesterday, I got up, measured a few things and then spent long sections of time thinking about the new project (distant future) in a comfortable chair. Sitting was interrupted only by tea-making.  After I had done a lot of thinking, I went to another place and measured a few different things and repeated the chair and tea thing while I thought about that second project (further distant future).  A ball of fire I am not.

But that’s OK.  I got no boss, ‘cept Sal.  And she – as I said – has slowed down, too. Plus she pulled a muscle the day before (wrestling an old carpet into a garbage bag, no less) and so the whip has been hung on the wall for a bit.  If there is going to be any rest for the wicked, it is when Sal hangs up the motivator.

And the lazy brown dog?  Well, he has been on ‘idle’ for a considerable time.  But he looks positively active now compared to us.  A lot of balls and sticks have been fetched these past two weeks.  He has been getting some of the attention he thinks he deserves and he has been busy settling his canine accounts.

This is not a true Indian summer because the temperature is dropping.  Slightly.  Still warm and sunny but definitely Fall has been ‘in the air’ for awhile.  Mind you, we just had an algae bloom last week (a bit late) and I am still in shorts and a t-shirt.  Outdoor furniture is still outdoors.  Still veggies in the garden, fruit in the neighbour’s trees. When the weather turns, it may not come back to sunny and warm and we may be immersed in the change of seasons but, right  now, it is even more pleasant than ever. September to mid October is my favourite time out here.  It’s perfect.

It’s all good.  I am content.  But I did hear Sal talking on the phone about cattle prods and where to buy them so I may have to start doing something soon.  I hope I can put it off til Spring.

.

Now that the new array is up and functioning beyond our expectations, it was getting time to dismantle the towers upon which the old array had been previously erected. Time to clean up the yard.  We had two redundant towers to remove, one 20 feet high, the other 16.  Each had a large steel, square picture-frame like structure at the top on which had been fastened the first generation panels.

So yesterday afternoon we began the dismantling of the old towers located out near the back garden boxes and had disconnected the guy wires that were fastened to the surrounding rock. I then took the mini grinder and lopped off the bolts holding the tower to the concrete ground base.

Previous to that, Sal had tied off a rope from the top of the higher PV tower (20 feet) to the the top of the really high (50′) ham radio tower we use for carrying the wind gen. That line was supposed to stop the old tower from falling.  But, unnoticed by me and forgotten by Sally, she had neglected to tie the rope back up after tying another length to it and so the 20 foot tower just sat balancing on 4 bolt heads.  We didn’t notice.

But we did notice that one old guy wire was still attached.

Sal and I got a lot of woods cred from our friends and a few readers this summer. “You guys are the real deal, all woodsy, chainsaws, off-the-grid and all!”  

And we say, “Aw shucks, t’aint nuthin’.  Not really.  Jus’ doin’ what needs to be done to survive, if ya know waddah mean?”

But we are just pretending.

The truth is we are softies.  Spoiled.  We eat and live like royalty.  We can’t even find our abs!  Seriously.  We have all the mod cons and, with a microwave (maybe – the jury is still out), we will be up to speed with the hip and the gridded.  Even got a smarter-than-me smartphone.  Only difference really is that we aren’t as connected to the systems as we used to be.  We don’t pay BC Hydro. Or Pizza Hut.  Or Starbucks.

We don’t take mass transit either but, then again, we never did.

But let us not pretend about anything.  You need to know the truth.  We are still very much ‘gridded’.  Hell, we drive a car!  We get our food from the store still.  Probably 75%….maybe more.  We can and do get food from the ‘land’, the ‘sea’ and the ‘forest’ like real west coast-cum-mountain folks but not very much.  Usually summer bounty – like berries and fish and stuff.  It is more a comfort and/or a treat than a source.  We know it’s there.  We know we can.  We sometimes do.  But most of the time we enjoy a nice store-bought steak BBQ, assorted 100-mile vegetables followed with a nice Argentinian Malbec. Tonight Sal makes a great Fijian curry.  This ain’t a hard life.

OK, building from scratch was pretty tough.  I’ll admit that.  But it was tough mostly because we didn’t know what we were doing.  Took us basically three years and more than a few pints of blood to be able to ‘live’ like normal people.  But a guy up the way is a builder and has been for 30 years and he and his wife put up a house in one summer!

A large part of our challenge was simply having to learn while on the job.  Being old. Being unskilled.  And that has little to do with the wilderness.  More to do with a soft previous lifestyle.  Living off the grid is a lot of things but, with a little research and cutting into slovenly habits, it can be done fairly easily.  OK, a little sweat is required.

“Oh, not for me or my wife.  She likes to shop.  I have a bad back.  And, anyway, our family is all here.”

I am not trying to talk anyone into it.  Not really.  OK, maybe a little.  It is just that nobody is really ‘born to shop’ and family will come to you when you live on the water – whether you want them to or not.  And, if you have a house in the city you can sell it for enough to have one built for you in the country and you don’t have to lift a thing but the pen for the cheque.  Living off the grid is not like leaving the planet.

Sometimes I wish it was.

Let me put all this another way: Sal and I sometimes wonder if we got away far enough. That has to tell you something.

Climate change is real.  Even Newt Gingrich says so.  Betcha Baby-boy Bush even says so now.  We know Obama says so.  ‘Cause he actually did say so!  Out loud! Even the newt-brained Stephen Harper likely says so, too.  Maybe not too loudly at the Petroleum club in Calgary or Houston but they all know that climate change is real and exacerbated at the very least by BIG OIL.  To be fair, they are likely to follow that confession with, “Hey!  Waddya gonna do, stop driving?  I don’t think so!”

Then they all laugh heartily.

And that’s where the rubber leaves the road and loses traction.  We don’t have to stop driving to cut back on oil consumption.  In fact, we can drive more, have more jobs, be happier and, with less health disorders, we could even be prettier.  Piece of cake.  Just have to shift to another power source is all.

Suggestion: start the transitioning by withdrawing all the oil and gas subsidies and use that money to subsidize solar panel installations.  From my point of view, it’s a no-brainer.  Germany agrees.

But we don’t even need the no-brain bastards giving us our own money back.  We can do this on our own.

I use gasoline.  Get 60 gallons delivered every three months so I average 20 gallons a month or 2-3 liters a day.  Or, better put: I did.  The car takes even more, of course, but I drive so much less now (less than 5/600 kms a month) that no matter how you cut it, we use less fuel than we did when we lived in the city.  By far.  Use petroleum based consumption metrics and we use less than a 1/4 of what we used to.  Use BC Hydro electrical metrics and we use 1/10 of what we used to.

But all that was a gradual change.  We ‘transitioned’.  We went from an on-the-grid home-with-a-heated-pool to an off-the-grid one half the size.  Went from two cars to one.  We went from a larger boat to a smaller one when the building was over.  Then we used the smaller gensets as time went on.  And we added more solar panels. Planning our trips better was likely the greatest conservation method – we just did more with each trip than we did before.  Today, I don’t drive the car unless I come back with 2-400 pounds of stuff.  Ten years ago I would get in the car to go get a renta-movie.  It all subtracts down.

No question: we have a smaller carbon footprint.

But the most illustrative act was the recent addition of 200% more solar panel power.  I went from 640 watts of power generated to 2100 watts.  That turned out to be huge.  I have not run the genset in almost a month.  That’s right – not for 24 days and, at this rate of energy storage in the batteries, I can promise 30 days with no problem.  Even if it rains!  We have lived well, done laundry, used power tools and watched movies.  We have recharged batteries, used appliances and pumped water.  We have basically generated our own power for 24 days of high-numbers-of-guests and done so without the sound of the machine or the cash register.  It has been a delight.

“Geez, Dave.  We know that!  You are telling us what you have already told us before!”

You are right of course.  I repeat myself.  But this is a bit different.  Before August 20th we had solar panels and we used the genset.  I had some idea how much was coming from which source but not precisely.  I do now.  I now make more juice from the solar array than I normally use so I am always in the black, in the money, in the surplus…..whatever way you want to put it.  Even if I tap out a bit more than I should, I will get a top-up the next day.  No worries.

At least this is true this September.  This sunny September.  But, at the rate we are going, I don’t expect to hear the genset til November.  Seriously.

And that is my point: if everyone got panels and did so even at just 50% of normal consumption levels, I am pretty sure that the satisfaction derived would make everyone ‘conserve’ down so that the 50% panels did almost the job that the spending-easily-hydro did before.  What a deal!  And who has to be the leader in this?  No one.  Just go do it!

“Oooohhhh, shouldn’t the federal government give us a tax break or grant or something?”  Yeah.  And you can wait in line for that kind of intelligence from Ottawa as the C0-two climbs out of sight.  Wait for dickheads and all you get is dick-all.

Just go do it.  It’s worth it.

Ebola is running rampant in Liberia, they say.  2300 patients have already been infected and the World Health Organization expects ‘exponential’ growth in more cases over the next little while.  “It is out of control!”

It must be a horror show for those people living there – especially the ones they have trapped in some locked off urban ghetto called West Point.  Trapped in so many ways by life and now trapped by the guns of their government and the threat of Ebola, these people are truly victims waiting to happen.

Could this be the start of a worldwide pandemic?

Could this be what the doomsday preppers prepare for?

ISIS is a violence-prone fundamentalist Islamic state-in-the-making.  Another Hamas. Another Taliban.  Al Queda gone more nasty and effective.  They seem to want some large portion of the Middle East starting with the old Iraq.  By all accounts, they are not nice people and don’t like anyone not into Islamic fanaticism. Obama reckons they are a force to be reckoned with.  Mind you, the other fanatical groups from Lebanon to Palestine, from Afghanistan to Somalia, from Pakistan to the-next-nuthouse aren’t all that pleasant either.

Russia is getting a bit ballsy these days, too.  Invading Crimea and all.  You’d think they would be content to sell oil and gas for awhile after having lost the empire but they are definitely bullying Ukraine.  That’s a bit closer to home for Europeans, anyway.  So soon after Bosnia and all…………sheesh.  Peace is alright but kind of dull and war isn’t boring at all, I guess.  By that measure, Syria must be having the time of it’s life.  So is Iraq.

No point in going into climate change.  That is some kind of massive but insidious threat we can’t really know until it’s here and what has been seen and felt so far isn’t making anyone happy. California farmers immediately come to mind but almost all equatorial sections of the world are getting too hot and causing massive starvations and migrations.  It is getting too hot to live near the equator it seems.

Anyone notice how much older Obama looks these days?  The guy has aged twenty years in the last eight.  I don’t think that is indicative of anything but massive concern, an incredible sense of responsibility and an even larger sense of impotence.  I feel sorry for him.  Harper, on the other hand, is getting into it, rattling sabers at Russia and Syria and ISIS.  Lucky we got a tough guy, eh?

I am not a doomsdayer.  I am not.  I am enjoying my life.  Hell, I even like to see the new cars, the new technologies and the new cheap B flicks.  But maybe I am in denial. Maybe there are enough signs worldwide to warrant a bit of extra preparation, anyway.

And, I am naturally doing some of that.  Some.  A bit, anyway.  But I think I am doing that mostly to save the tedium of going to town, I am doing that to become more independent and skilled in my new ‘world’.  I am doing that because I am interested in learning.  But, in doing so, I may also endure somewhat better.  Sal certainly will.  She’s getting good at all this.  So we hope for the best.  But you have to call ’em as you see ’em and I see us ‘prepping’ a bit.  Hard not to.  We kinda feel that there is a handbasket full of hell out there.  And we are the semi-reluctant survivalists, I guess.