Blowing 20 gusting to thirty today.  A Storm warning in effect.  Similar forecast for tomorrow.  Tomorrow is bookclub.  Location: our place.  All the little boats around the area are leaping and plunging at their lines in anticipation.  The women?  Not so much.  It can get a bit wet and messy out there. Attendance may be down.

Attendance will definitely be wet!

Our neighbour built a dock/wharf/float this summer. The floating part is about 10 feet by 20 or so.  Very substantial.  Strong like bull.  Built mostly of steel, it is more substantial (on scale) than the local BC Ferry.  But he is the fastidious, careful, worrisome type and he has been on tenterhooks since he left it and went home to the city.  “Would you mind looking in on the dock now and then?  Especially on the 15th or 16th of December?  Those are the two days the tide is highest and, with luck there will be a storm.  Maybe a storm surge.  If it rides well then, then it will likely fare OK from then on.”  

So Sal went out with her camera and Fiddich.  Before breakfast.  The two headed over the storm tossed sea.  In her motorized saucer!  She checked it out, bobbed around for a bit, took a few pictures and headed back.  All riders seeming to fare well on this stormy day.

Not quite.

We have a big cedar butt tied up on the beach.  It is the mother of all kindling.  Been wkackin’ at it for awhile now.  Damned if the thing didn’t get away in the storm!  ‘Course, Sal won’t have this!  So, after having made sure our neighbours dock was fine she headed around the corner and saw the cedar making a run for it.  While the wind was a howlin’ and the seas were a jumpin’, she tied a line on the old stump and began to tow it back to the corral in her little boat.

Normally, I can watch over this kind of thing.  And I do.  The bouncing of her boat would have tested the pain threshold on my black and blue butt but, in a pinch, I would head out and rescue or assist (taking a few pillows) in my own boat.  If I didn’t have to, fine.  But I have to watch!  So, with radio in hand and binoculars on my nose, I watch to make sure everyone is OK.  But I can’t see around the corner.

And she seemed to be taking forever.

Sal is pretty independent (an Albatross is semi-independent by comparison) and she does not like me ‘checkin’ on her.  I do anyway but I have to be somewhat discreet.  Gotta give her her space, ya know?

So, I wait.

And wait.

And wait some more.

“Yikes, Sal!  Wadda Hell’s going on out there!!?? Can’t see ya!  Ya OK?”

“Yeah.  No worries.  Big ol’ cedar got away.  Jus’ towing it back home.  Gettin’ a bit wet.  Be home soon.  Don’t worry!  I’m turning my radio off now!”

So, I turned mine on and this is what I heard………..

Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Into this house we’re born
Into this world we’re thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out alone
Riders on the storm

Girl ya gotta love your man
Girl ya gotta love your man
Take him by the hand
Make him understand
The world on you depends
Our life will never end
Gotta love your man, yeah

Kind of fitting, in a high-school kinda way, don’t ya think?

My numbers (daily readers) dropped off precipitously the more I talked about my butt.  You’d think there’d be more interest in that, wouldn’t you?  Apparently not. I am stunned!  Maybe I should include more pictures?

The ravens have not been around much at all.  Like, never.  They seem to be avoiding us these past few weeks.  Which is fine.  I am still a little ticked over the freezer raid but I would not expect that to be conveyed in any meaningful way to the ravens.  It is not like we talk!  And, even if my annoyance was conveyed somehow, they have a reputation for enjoying that kind of thing.  So, I don’t quite get it.  Ravens!  ‘Can’t live with ém, can’t seem to live without ém.’

Dogs got shampooed and shorn when Sal went to town the other day.  Sal likes to get them ready for Xmas.  But, really!  Think about that.  Ready for Xmas.  Dogs!?   What is a sane man to do?

Mind you, I may not be so sane.  How can one remain sane these days?  Got my Gold Card yesterday in the mail.  No books.  No movies.  But I got a Gold Card.  I’ve read it front to back.  Even looked it up on the net.  It is my gold ‘officially-a-senior’ card.  Seems I can use it to get on the bus.  We don’t even have roads!

I get a free ride on the ferry on four of the five weekdays but, of course, I pay for the car.  Who do they think they are kidding?  How many people live within walking distance of the ferry?  And, of course, they keep raising the fee for the car.  How am I supposed to remain sane in light of that?

Ya know who is starting to look sane to me?  Egyptians!  Yeah, I know………I am surprised by that, too……..  Seems the Egyptians don’t believe what their government is telling them and so they are protesting in the thousands.  On the streets!  24/7.  And this after having protested the last government out of office.  These guys are saying, “We don’t trust you!”

Wow!  Who woulda thunk it?  The first to wake up and protest decades of entrenched political lies would be the Egyptians!?  Just as the BIG CONSTANT LIE seems to be the benign-but-standard ‘ BS message at the end of the day as we all strive to go forward‘, they say, “LIES!”

You’d think the cry of ‘LIE’ would come first from the Americans, wouldn’t you?  I mean the American Dream has been packed and shipped overseas.  They are left homeless with a shopping cart full of cheap plastics.  Your basic American should be ticked.  So, of course, should Canadians because, well, we are the tail on their dog and we have had a radical shift to the fascist right from decades of identifying with the corrupt Liberal left.  ‘Course we may just still be in shock.

Regardless, we should all be ticked.

One might expect REVOLUTION to have come from the Japanese……I mean, poor ol’, brain-washed corporate Japanese-man has been downsized and irradiated.  Where’s he gonna go?

Doesn’t matter where you look, people all over the world have a right to be outraged by their governments but I just never expected the Egyptians to be the ones at the head of the protest.  I am proud of them.  I am pulling for them.  They are standing up and getting counted. God/Allah bless them.

Like most Canadians (and Americans), I will just sit back on my black and blue butt and watch how it plays out.  I may be disgusting but I should be revolting.

What a gorgeous day!  I just might get off my black-and-blue butt and take some chances.  Maybe limp up and down a sloping path or something.  Cut a board or two?

Well, I am talkin’ big.  I am not quite there yet.  I am walking OK but not bending.  Not yet.  No yoga, that is fer sure (mind you, I don’t do yoga anyway)!

Damn!  The day is absolutely beautiful and we should be taking advantage of it.  Well, Sal will anyway.  She’s going up to the post office later.  We hope to get a few books today.  Maybe a movie.  The plane will definitely be flying in on a day like this.  Hopes are high.  I’ve read everything in the house with print including old newspapers and Sal’s Vanity Fairs!  I need some books!  Some real books!

Or a bunch o’ shoot ’em up, cheap B flicks.

I have likely given the impression that life is hard and challenging out here and that we have to fight off the bears and cougar-ducks, slog through snowdrifts and eke a subsistence existence from eating ferns and crap.  And, of course, it is all true!  But the biggest challenge is staying stocked up on good reading material.  I find it nigh on impossible!

Part of the reason is that I rarely read fiction.  Sometimes Conan Doyle.  Love Sherlock.  I had a thing for Ludlum’s Jason Bourne.  But, generally, fiction feels shallow to me.  I can make stuff up on my own!  So, I am restricted mostly to non-fiction and even at that, a lot of fantasy passes for non-fiction these days.  Try any of the Kissinger Fantasies for a delightful romp!

I have read just about all there is on the last ten years of the economy from Maddoff to Barnanke, from Friedman to Freakonomics.  And I have watched with fascination the spread of corporate globalization in a world not-in-the-least- ready for it.  That is an ongoing read when I can get another fix.  Add a dozen or so tomes on China’s economy, government, politics and history and well, it is an unholy mess out there.  Fascinating.

And I fully expect that Japan would be listed amongst the crippled economies of the Greek, Spanish and Portugese governments if they were not so bloody disciplined.  Japan is hurtin’.

But that is not my point.  No one cares about the global economy in my circle but me and George Soros.  And George is pretty calm about it all, really.  Well, at least according to his latest book – a series of lectures.  On himself, mostly.  Not recommended.  For a genius, he is a smidge boring.  I don’t really count him in my circle, actually (but don’t tell him that!).

I kinda count Paul Hawken.  We’ve talked.  E-mailed.  PH is another genius.  The right kind, in my book.  A green, economic, optimistic genius.  I like PH.  I also count Amory Lovin.  Rocky Mountain Institute.  I am not close to either but I like what they have to say.  They are visionaries.  They really are.

So, that is today’s plight: a blue butt, a beautiful day and no books to read.  Not perfect but not all bad from the western front, eh? 

Mind you, the western rear is still pretty sore!

Sal went to town today.  By herself.  She had to take a battery, the dogs, a bunch of things-to-return and, of course, she’ll come back with totes, coolers, food, another battery and the dogs in tow.  A few hundred pounds going out.  Almost double that coming back.  Knowing her, she’ll pick up a few off-the-list items, too.  She’ll be busy.

She dressed for it, though.  Probably got twenty layers.  Looks like a member of an Arctic Expedition.  Think: cute Pilsbury Dough-girl.  In red.

Her boat is the Miata-of-the-sea.  Eleven and a half feet long, almost five feet wide and probably only six inches or so deep.  To me, it is more of a saucer than a boat but she likes it.  It’s her size, ergonomically speaking.  She fits.  It also zooms.  The 15hp Suzuki pushes her along at a good clip and she gets that sports-car feel.

It’s mid-December on the wet coast.  Temperatures are pretty benign right now and the seas are unusually calm so she has chosen a good day.  But the key word is ‘day’.  There is not much of it.  It’ll be dark at four.  Or, at least, dark-ish.  By five, I’ll be looking into a black void.  We are both hoping she gets back before then.

Big risk?  Not really.  But then again, neither is working on a deck.  Accidents happen.  The big risk is not that an accident happens (’cause they do) but really it is about the ‘leeway’ in addressing it.  The time of day is critical.  Is there enough help at hand?  Is there enough daylight?  Will she be warm enough?  That kind of thing.  Basically risk out here goes from ‘oops’ to ‘bloody hell’ a bit more rapidly than in town.

After dark, it starts at ‘bloody hell’.

I don’t worry so much about her screwing up.  She knows her stuff.  But sometimes an accident happens anyway and requires a bit of assistance in the extrication and, out here, there are few passers-by.  Ya kinda hafta fix things yourself.  ‘Who ya gonna call?’  Nobody.  No phone reception. Who ya gonna wave down?  Nobody.  ‘Specially after dark.

Am I worried?  ‘Course not!  Complete confidence.  Total.

It is 2:30 pm.

I’ll start to worry in two hours.

Epilogue:  4:45.  She just pulled in.  Gonna wrangle a stray log and then unload the boat.  Should be warm and dry by 5:30.  Whew!

The average age of residents out here is high.  I have no idea what it is but my guess is that the median age is somewhere around 55.  Average maybe 40.  We seem to have a lot of 60-somethings.  More 60 plus than under 40, that is for sure.

Thank God we also have 70-somethings.  They are good to see.  Gives me some encouragement.  Something to aim for.

By the time one gets to 70 or so, one tends to slow down some and I am experiencing a bit of a preview of that what with my hip being all banged up.  Once again, I am projecting.  Sorry.  But seeing some active 70-somethings perks me up.  ‘Course there are 75 year-old marathoners and all that but your average doofus doesn’t do a lot very physical after 70.  Seventy, I think is the beginning of old age. OK, 75 fer sure.

I’ve been dwelling on age lately, it seems.  Sal says I am preoccupied.  She says I have been ‘sounding like an old geek’ for some time now. Easy for her to say – she could be the poster girl for Oil of Olay.  Hell, she could be the poster girl for Wilderness Yoga and Kayaker magazine!

I turn 65 in a few weeks and I guess I am just ‘coming to terms with it’ is all.  It doesn’t help (or maybe it does!) that I whacked out my hip and have been experiencing an accelerated sense of aging lately.  But I think it is more than that.  For me, 65 is a big number. A real milestone.

Last real milestone was 30.  I stopped trusting myself.

I have good reason to re-emphasize that thought: I am also setting a record for longevity on my Mother’s side of the family.  No one made it to 65.  Well, I will set the new record if I get past Christmas.  We had a few relatives tough it out into the last few months before their 65th.  But they never made it.  By Xmas, I am it.  I am #1.  Woohoo!  Still, that is a pretty low height that bar was set at, don’t you think?  Russians live longer!!

I’m not that freaked.  Not really.  My dad’s side stretched it out.  Mid 80’s for the most part.  Not my dad, actually.  Seventy-six for him.  But the rest of the family lasted longer.  ‘Course they were generally a wicked bunch and, it is said, that seems to help.  I’m counting on the wicked gene.  It’s my only hope.  I know it is there.

Anyway, this blog is about aging more than it is about me.  And here’s the point: Older people live more rural.  Younger people live urban.  It is not a hard and fast rule but I think it is generally true.  And it makes sense, kinda.  When you are young and trying to get into the gene pool, you go to where the genes are swimming.  And, of course, the more the merrier.  Ergo, the young swim in the city.

But once the genes have paired up, there is not as much reason to stay in the pool.  So, some head out to make a nest.  Some go far.  And that means some of them move out to the country.  That scenario, alone, makes for a slightly older group in the country.  Add to that the stereotypical cottagers who go to live in their lakeside home year round, the possibility of working by computer and the increasing pressures (and fears) in the urban infrastructure and there are more and more influences discharging the older into the country.

It may not show up in the numbers but I think that is because the numbers are dwarfed by the younger set still going in to the city.  The net flow of youth is in.  The net flow of old is out.  But there are more youth so the numbers don’t say it.

When you think about it, it is a reversal of the history of mankind.  In the past, it was the youth who headed out to find their fortune.  Today, it is the old who head out to find peace.  Frankly, I think fortune is overrated.  Anyway – at my age, maybe we should just give peace a chance?

I haven’t added a blog for awhile.  I have been too horizontal.  Hard to type while lying prone.  But more than that and sadly yet another tragic admission, very little is happening in the prone position for me these days. My bed is dead.  No memories are being made on the memory foam.  What’s an invalid to write about?

Well, I am healing.  And that is good.  And Sal has not left me.  Not yet.  Not physically.  Maybe emotionally.  Not permanently, anyway.  She does seem to spend a lot of time in the woods, however.  And she refuses to give me a walkie-talkie.  But, other than that, we are pretty good. She is exceptionally generous with doling out the sleeping pills, though.  That’s good, right?

And I need them.  Still can’t lie on the damaged side.  It is weird how being restricted in your movements makes sleeping difficult.  You’d think that sleeping itself was restrictive but apparently not.  I have to turn over now and then and every time I do, I wake up.  I am not really whinging, I am just surprised that freedom of movement is so necessary for me to sleep well.

Oh well, I am at least 50% healed.  I won’t be modelling swimsuits or underwear anytime soon but my public has always required a strong stomach and, preferably blurred vision. Beauty is not my strong suit.  For the next little while, keeping your eyes firmly shut when we meet is strongly advised.  And, if the situation presents itself, we probably shouldn’t shower together, either.  Trust me.

I am not so sure that this latest incident will be included in the book.  The chapter on accidents is already too big.  So is the one on being stupid.  Even the chapter on deck building is getting up there.  We  may, however, spin off an off-the-grid first aid supplement.  We’ll see.

This book challenge is starting to come together. We can see a theme.  It will be a comic tragedy with strong elements of your basic slasher/horror movie.  But we’re going for a happy ending.

Closing scene: cut to an empty bed, slowly pan left to an open window with a curtain bending in the wind.  Cue a framed photograph of a happy couple situated on the bedside table, an empty bottle of sleeping pills is juxtaposed beside a brochure for a Caribbean cruise.  And a big yellow taxi is just pulling away from the house.

“While we’re down here, we may as well measure that section, eh?”  I deadpanned.  Sal looked at me in horror……..then she broke up.  We lay there for a second laughing.  In the context, it was a good joke.

Timing and set-up is the key.

I had just slipped and fallen through the deck joists, interrupting my rapid decent for a nano second by smashing my face and hip on the lethal structure before straining my hefty bulk violently through the 14 and one half inch spacing.  24 inch centres would have, perhaps, been a better design choice.  Hard to say.

I slumped through to the rocks and mud about four feet further down and could feel the blood running down my face and the pain from what felt like a broken hip.  I didn’t think I’d be getting up anytime soon.

And Sal wasn’t going to be able to lift me. So we lay there together and cracked a few jokes.

Eventually the shock abated and, after a quick self-assessment, I managed with Sal’s assistance to get out, climb the slope and get to the house.  Awhile later I was in bed and Sal attended to my wounds.  I’d have a helluva bruise and a black eye but nothing was broken.  Turns out to be nothing more than my usual new-project blood sacrifice.

Aside: our building site would pose quite a challenge for CSI.

I am fine but, two days later, the swelling and crap has virtually frozen my right hip so I will remain bedridden for awhile except for the painful but short ambulations necessary to promote healing.  Should be back in a few days.  ‘Course by then, Sal will have left me.

Sal is not cut out for nursing. Too hard. Too  mean.  She doesn’t like it.  Neither do her patients.  She’d be better suited as a prison guard at Guantanamo.  Interrogation division.  And, I confess, I am bit of a baby.  But I am a better nurse.  Hell,  Hannibal Lechter would be better nurse!!

I soak and gently peel off bandages. Sal just says, “Oh, it’s faster and easier to just rip ’em off!”  And then she proceeds to do just that!  The trouble is, she is ripping off my bandages!

“There!  See!  All done!  Now was that so hard?”

” NOT FOR YOU!”

Sally is a lovely person and I love her dearly.  But she does tend to regard pain as an indulgence in the weak, one she has little time or patience for.  Getting hurt in an accident around here is only part of the ordeal.  After the accident comes the nursing!  She is the single greatest reason for me being a fast healer.  Convalescence is hell!

Oh, I am only kidding.  Mostly.

(I still can’t move and she does read the blog, ya know?)

Stunningly beautiful day.  Sunny, clear, just a little nip in the air.  My kind of day.  I love it!  It is especially appreciated after a night of screamin’ hell!

Well, it wasn’t hell.  Not really.  It just blew like it.  OMYGAWD!  It blew so much that the goofy little wind turbine that we erected jammed a whole lotta extra juice into the batteries for the very first time!  For our batteries to ‘open’ the day at 50.4 volts is, like, amazing.  Typically, a really good a day is 49.6.  We were both grinning from ear to ear.

“Unh, Dave.  Maybe you and Sal should get out more?  Get some kind of life, maybe?  Sheesh……..watching your battery levels?  That’s kinda sad, man!”

I confess that watching battery levels is an acquired taste in satisfaction.  You really have to ‘be here’ to fully appreciate it.  So, I won’t dwell on it except to say that everyone reading this blog who lives off the grid is saying, “OHMYGAWD!  The guy woke up to 50.4!  It really doesn’t get any better than that!”

We think differently out here.

Sal and I still think the fire in the stove is fantastic!  We still marvel at hot water in the shower.  We think we are wealthy beyond our status to eat well, drink well and have a beautiful view from just about every window.  And Sal adds some extra points for having two dogs (I subtract those points, myself).  We have a lot to be thankful for and we are.  Truly.  But, Geez, man!  50.4 volts!! 

To a lesser extent but on the same kind of metric, we see wealth in the oyster beds, the free-flowing and more-than-adequate water.  We rejoiceth in prawns, our buckets sometimes running over.  Same for clams and the odd fish we snag.  We fully appreciate free floating logs.  We could say the same for berries but we never seem to get around to picking them.  But we will.  Same for apples (lots of old orchards on the island).  If we could, we might be able to say the same for venison.  But we can’t.  Not yet.  Maybe in the future.  Sometime.  Possibly.

The thing about living off the grid is that you come to appreciate life in a whole different way.  It may sound a bit cliché and it is, but consumer/material things just don’t do it for us anymore except when they make life safer, easier or more convenient.  We appreciate our car, for instance.  And the internet.  And our boat motors.  But non-important stuff, ‘disposable-income’ stuff, (fashion, restaurants, e-gizmos, Starbucks, etc) just has no appeal anymore.  None.  We have lost the hunger for a new cell-phone!

It is probably just an age thing – not an off-the-grid thing.  I dunno.  I am just noting the changes, really.  I mean, our car is a 1996 and it seems just fine to me.  I don’t lust for a new one.  What has happened to me!?  It’s gotta be age, eh?

Last night a boat was blasting up channel at a pretty good clip.  The night was black as pitch.  The wind was picking up.  He traveled with lights ablazing.  Looked and acted like a commercial water taxi but it was the wrong time of the year and definitely the wrong time of the night.  So, I watched.

At first I used my binoculars but then shifted to my night vision monocular.  Even with that, I could barely make him out.  It was very, very dark.

There is a lot of flotsam and logs in the water in the winter.  Tons, actually.  One cannot go more than a hundred yards without seeing something large half submerged.  Reduced speed is essential.  At night, crawling is the proscribed way to go even if you have headlights as this boat did.  He zoomed.

About a quarter mile away the boat came to an abrupt halt.  All the lights went out.  Then I saw a small flashlight wandering around what I assumed was the engine area.  But it went dim pretty fast.  So, I continued to watch mostly nothing – just a blur, actually.

Boats hit stuff all the time out here.  It is very common.  Typically, the bit they hit gets caught in the prop or between the engine and the transom and the operator is obliged to stop and clear it.  Sometimes the impact is hard enough to ‘kick’ the outboard leg up and so time is taken to reset everything and check it.

Typically an impact that hard also requires the operator to change underclothes and just sit for awhile until the blood pressure and heart rate settle down.  If the engine survived the impact there is a brief conversion to Christianity and a few ‘thank yous’.  A spiritual moment is a spiritual moment.

Just as often the impact makes even more of an impression and the leg is no longer functional.  Sal once hit a heavy deadhead at a relatively slow speed and ripped the leg right off the head of her engine.  It is an occupational hazard out here made less by slower speeds but never eliminated.

Our guy was clearly ‘dead in the water’.

When such an event occurs, it is obligatory on the nearest assistance to render it.  No one needs to be left to the sea in the winter in the night.  I was contemplating my choice of layering (clothing under wet gear) when I saw the boat start to move again.  This time considerably slower.  This time without any headlights.  Our hapless boater had presumably used the kicker he had like the one most carry to get mobile again.  The kicker is the term given to a small auxiliary motor that used to be used primarily for trolling but is now often carried as an emergency back-up.  And this, he had presumably deemed, was just such an emergency.  Good decision.

I watched as he slowly made his way North.  After a few minutes he was gone, disappeared into the deep blackness of night.  All I could hear was the wind beginning to howl, the rain picking up and the increasing slap of waves on the beach.

If he was moving – even at that slow pace – he would be at the community dock before I could get dressed and out there.  So I was relieved of duty.  And I was just as relieved not to have to go out.

But, in the eight years we have been here, I have only had to respond maybe four or five times.  It’s not onerous.  Sometimes it is inconvenient and, in this case, it may have been uncomfortably wet and cold but it is something everyone out here is prepared to do.  We are each other’s back-up.  We are plan C.

Plan A is to go swiftly about your appointed rounds with your boat humming along nicely.  Plan B is to complete your tasks on auxiliary power (as he had done).  Plan C is to wave your arms, send out a message on the local VHF channel and/or hope for a neighbour to pass by.  Plan D is to phone the Coast Guard.  And, in really bad weather with your VHF radio not working, Plan E is to contemplate your likely placement in the afterlife.

Sadly, a few guys run through all their plans every year.  It can be dangerous out here.

It was 9:00 in the morning.

While I was sitting there sipping tea in my usual aprés-sleep sleep, I heard the deep rumble of big engines and I instantly knew that sound.  The barge is coming in!  Time for diesel, gasoline and propane.  Time to chew some fat with the captain and his son.  Crack some jokes.  Be guys!

And so down to the beach I go.  Capt. T and his crew deliver the goods, not a drop spilled.  Not a move wasted.  We talk, we laugh, they work and they are gone in twenty minutes, maybe less.  I’ve taken longer at a self serve gas station.  They are very good at what they do and they make it all seem effortless.

“Gotta get going!  Wanna get around the southern parts before the weather kicks up again.  Top o’ the season to ya!  See ya next year!”

And they were gone.

“Waddya wanna do?”

“He’s right.  The weather is good.  Seas are calm.  Maybe we should go up and get some of that lumber for the deck that L has cut for us?”

And so we were gone, too.  Up to the community dock, picked up the lumber and headed home all easy-peasy like.  When we got home, I slung the 2×6’s up the hill and we got to working on the deck some more.  Did enough to feel like it was a good day and then we went in.

Sal is – right now – in the kitchen making Pad Thai Noodles with prawns.  The prawns came from L (our lumber guy) and they were fresh delivered.  I will go pour her a glass of wine when it is 5:00.  Then I’ll feed the dogs.

December 2, 2012.  And all is right with my world.  19 days to go til the end of the world according to the Mayans.  I hope they are wrong.  It really doesn’t get any better than this.