Dolphins go by all the time.  I don’t always write about it.  They are like a pack of kids in the neigbourhood, they are noticed but just at a glance as a rule.  Mind you, when the ‘pack o’ kids’ numbers in the hundreds, well, you notice and you watch.  Could be a Marine Occupy Movement forming or something.

Sorta like when the Orcas herded a couple of dozen into our bay last week for a mid-day luncheon.  Now THAT was worth watching.

Truth is: dolphins, as a rule, are not much to look at.  They are pretty in a sea-full-of-life kinda way but, face it, the visual presentation is much like seeing rolling bowling balls half submerged rolling along.  Neat but not spectacular.  Bigger numbers help make the sighting more interesting but the overall feeling now is, well mostly, seen one dolphin, seen ém all. 

Not yesterday.  Yesterday was different.  I watched a few dozen dolphins coming up channel and was just about to turn away when one of the little torpedoes launched!  And I mean – up!  Way up!  This little bloke flew completely out of the water by several feet and then ‘whomped‘ belly-flop-first.  Made a huge slapping noise.  This behaviour seemed to prompt others and after a bit, there were several dolphins in the air at a time all ‘a-whomping‘ their way up channel.   I got sight and sound from the pack o’kids this time.  That was neat.

Neat, but not enough, I am afraid.  I feel the cold hands of death reaching out……

My blog is still being hijacked by the Google Warning team and it seems there is not much I can do about it.  Seems some ruskie hackers planted a bad seed somewhere and Google’s ‘police’ have it surrounded and guns are drawn.  But the seed won’t come willingly.  Even the private security force, the ‘twat’ team, can’t seem to budge ’em.  I am held hostage and my chances are slim.  I can feel the sniper rifle on the back of my neck as I write. 

No joy from my friends.  Humpty Techie and all the Geeksmen can’t seem to put my site back together again.  All indications so far indicate that the operation was a failure and that the patient is only alive by artificial means.  Worse, Google has it in quarantine.  They have Guantanamoed my butt!  I may have to pull the plug on this.

Would it be the end of the story?  Well, not really.  I have a lot of stuff already written that needs fleshing out before being put into book form.  So, the writing will have to continue and so will the editing.  But that work will not be ‘upfront’ like it has been for the last two years.  It will have to be done in the background, as it were.  Real life rather than virtual life.

And, of course, there will be the rest of the books in the series – if the first issue is well received (more than ten).  And those stories have to come from somewhere and so I may just have to start another blog somewhere.  Sometime.  But not for awhile.  One needs to grieve.  So, we’ll see.

“Dave!  Is this goodbye?”

No.  Not yet.  I am still raging against the night.  But it is day to day.

Malware warnings still reign supreme on the site.  Sorry.  Can’t seem to fix it.  This may be God’s way of telling me I am boring and should take up a new line of work but it feels more like vandals.  Team of techies on it.  No joy yet.  End of week one.

Is it me or have techies lost all sense of time?  I mean, here I am on island time and, honestly, I now have the patience of Job. Well, more to the point: the energy of a sloth so I am more than willing to rest a lot.  I am not so much on island time as I am on sloth time, I guess.  Still, even for sloths, it seems as if techies get lost in time and space.  Like Godot.  They live in some kind of virtual time.  I dunno………..maybe it is hard work with heavy lifting but zeros and ones don’t weigh much.

On a brighter note; my boat is up on the hard and phase one of the ‘rebuilding of it’ is about to begin.  I suppose phase one has already been completed.  Buy replacement boat.  Pay money to people.  Work on replacement boat.  Pay more.  Work more and then ‘settle up’ accounts some more.  Then disassemble old boat by removing all equipment and other accouterments until I am down to the bare hull.  Then tow that hollow shell up to the public wharf.  Employ winch and crane to lift subject boat (Freelance) to new heights seldom attained by such small craft and plunk said vessel on friends flatbed truck.  Then up the hill on the truck to the back of the Q-hut.  Then three of us tugged, pulled, jacked and come-alonged the puppy on to the ground and ‘voila’- boat on hard!

So we had a phase or two already (let’s call the pre-phases A, B, C and maybe D)  but the real phase one is cleaning and that has to be done soon and, it seems, without water.  Because we don’t have water to the Q-hut yet.  So maybe phase D or E will be to ‘plumb’ the Q-hut.

Interesting, don’t you think?  No such thing as a simple chore.  Not in the least.  Ten steps before you start, then a two-one-two dance step going back and forth as you do the job and finally ten steps to finish up.  Then cleanup!  Sheesh.  We need servants!

No sense in writing much.  Not really.  Gotta get the Malware warnings to end……….hmmmmm………is that two steps forward now?  Or one step back?

It’s like a spy novel out there in the ether.  Intrigue, passwords, skulduggery.  This Siberworld is some kind of den of iniquity in the classic sense.  Bad guys doing bad things.  It is surprising.  I had no idea that the web went evil so fast, so far, so deep.  It is like Marine Dealerships Mark 2.0 – the virtual sea .

Because of my recent home-invasion of the virtual kind, I have been looking deeper into this than ever before.  To get to my site host, I had to phone a 1-800 number (so I looked that up before doing it).  Nice site.  Looked bona fide.  They gave me the choice of a live-chat and I took that instead of calling.  “Good evening, I am Badabudingsinghaddoooo andhowcanIhelpyoutoday?  What is your account ID?”

“I dunno.   Could it be Dave123?  Am I Dave123 or am I coastal hermit?  I can never remember when I go coastal. Unh, by the way….you said good evening and then asked about helping me today…………..what time is it there?  And where is there?”

“I am sorry, sir.  No time to chat.  Calls waiting.  I need your weird, secret account number..well only the last four digits…….or, I suppose, I can use your last four digits of your credit card…….do you have that?”

“Yeah, just a sec………..”  I mention to Sal that some guy with a 1-800 number and a heavy accent wants the last four digits of my credit card number and she goes hysterical…..“Oh my God!  Don’t be a fool!  They’ll rob us blind!  We’ll have our identities stolen!  Don’t do it!  Don’t do it!”

And then she just screams and runs for the closet, “Why me?!  Why me?”

“Sal, relax.  Four digits isn’t enough for anything.  Nanu doesn’t even know what card I have.  He’s just looking for a unique number for identification is all.”

“Do you know that for sure?  Do you know how these crooks work?  Do you?  Well, DO YOU, PUNK!?”

“Sheesh.  Good Dirty Harry impression.  Now just put the gun down, sweetie.  We can work this out……and, unh………….I called him.  He didn’t call me.”

She cocked the hammer back and her eyes narrowed.  The colour from her normally rosy cheeks chameleoned to grey-green.  Shadows formed on her face.  Trigger finger looked tight.  “OK, OK!  Whatever.  No numbers.  I swear.  Maybe just one.  I’ll see if ‘8’ works.  Howzat?”  She relaxed her finger but not her eyes.  Colouring remained shades of Bogart.

I return to the phone.

“Unh, I appreciate your help Nehru, or was that Sidhu?  Anyway, my wife won’t let me talk to you anymore.  She’s freaked.  Women, eh?  So, will one of the numbers do?  I’ll give you an 8.  How about an 8 and my mother’s maiden name?  And don’t you always want my postal code?  I’ll give that up, too, no problem.  I mean, c’mon…………..who else but the real me would know 8 and the postal code and my mother’s family name?  That do it for you, Badu?”

“Sorry, sir.  Company policy.  Can’t help you………………………………………but, umh……………I have this cousin, right?  And, like he’s got twenty million dollars in a suitcase that we need deposited in a first world country…….you seem like a nice guy…………don’t tell your wife, eh?  She’ll just worry………………now if you just send me………”  

I got some warnings from you guys.  Thanks.

Did you see this warning when you logged on?

I am pretty sure it is a hoax.  I checked my page on Google diagnostics and they said it was clean.  See:  Safe Browsing diagnostic page.  But I am still jumping through some more hoops to make sure.  I hope to be 100% sure within a day or so.

Sorry.

Seems some ‘Ruskies’ decided to infect my website with bad-stuff-ware.  Probably because I wrote about Siberkrime (misspelling on purpose to ‘trick’ their search and destroy algorithems).

Wow.  Doesn’t take much to get the forces of eeeevil against you, does it?  I wonder if they know this blog is harmless?  Probably don’t care.  ‘Sic ém!’ is likely their intent and a softwear robot has been sent out to do the dirty.  You know, like politicians sending out the cops.  “Send out the guys who don’t think!”

‘Cept this time it is a program that tries to arrest you…………….brave new world…..

I figure if ‘warning’ pop-ups are being sent out, that may be a reason for less hits.  So, I am presently doing what I can to rid myself of this rash.  Sorry.  I guess that is another topic that is too dangerous to touch.

Between Harper and Ruskie bad boys, methinks freedom of speech is in dire straits.  Be careful out there.  Even the good guys are bad.

I bought a small 5-ton splitter.  Works great.  This is my first real concession to ‘getting on’ (not counting regular meds).  The funicular was supposed to be the first but, if any one ever asks, “Which came first?  The funicular or the splitter?”  Now you know…the chicken got old first, the splitter came second and the funicular has still yet to be completed.

“Why did the old chicken cross the road?” He didn’t.  We have no roads up here!

(yes, I know chickens aren’t ‘he’.  It is just a story-telling device)

We usually find and haul logs under a foot in diameter, 14 inches tops, and this little one-toothed wonder splits them easier than a mother does a pie.  I assembled it and fired it up and it worked!  Needs mods, of course….like longer legs, a one-handed turn-on (instead of having to use two.  They did this for safety reasons but not having a hand free to guide the wood is unsafe…I really hate these ‘safety features’ that make the work impossible but you try anyway and hurt yourself in the process because of the safety feature!) and a ‘spacer’ so that I don’t have to wait so long for the ram to get to the log but, those are easy.  This is gonna work!!

I love it when a mechanical purchase from China actually works!  Even if it does instill a bit more guilt.  You’d think I wouldn’t have any room for even more guilt but I do!  I really should have no guilt since no one in Canada or the US makes these little splitters (they make lots of big ones, tho), but I have pretty much tried to avoid Chinese ‘mechanicals’ because they are bad for the planet, bad for our economy and they just don’t work (as a rule).  And, if they do, they don’t last.  Too bad, really, as I have a Chinese-oriented budget.

Ravens have fledged!  Yesterday Jack and Liz introduced us to a couple of ‘sweet young things’ and they had them on the deck perch teaching them to squawk at us for food.  The young úns picked up on the technique pretty quick.  Had Sal cutting up a new block of cheese for them……….(we didn’t have any off-cuts piled up at the time).  Sal is such a patsy, sometimes.  Ravens have her wrapped around their beak.  I am just glad she didn’t thaw out and cut up a steak!

Prawn season is over today.  The factory ships clear out.  Poor market this year.  Average haul, low prices.  Buyers offering under $7.00 a pound.  Couple of years ago, the rate was $8.00 a pound.  That’s over a 12% drop in revenue with fuel and everything else on the expense side going up.  Where the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has failed us, the market may just save what remaining prawns are left.  Typically one good boat will haul out between 15 and 30 thousand pounds of prawns in their 2-month season.  And there are boats everywhere.  And we wonder why our oceans are suffering.

Which reminds me – I have a business deal to offer (details to be worked out) – a guy has a boat.  Great boat.  Huge.  Worth: about $2M.  He’s gonna sell shares in it.  It will ‘work’ when the season is on (he has several quotas so he’ll have several seasons) and it will ‘charter’ now and then.  It will also take out the shareholders on these working junkets.  So, an investor can get a return, get a working holiday and, at times anyway, get free fishing junkets whenever possible.  The guy is honest.  The boat is phenomenal and the opportunity real.

Perfect investor would be a couple in their 40’s or fifties, active, healthy and who love the sea.  Share price?  No idea.  Depends on the response.  But I can’t see it going for less than $200K.  So, it is a big dog’s opportunity (unless you see it as your summer cabin?).

“What’s in it for you, Dave?”   Nothing.  I just like the idea and I like the guy.

I may go on a hiatus of sorts.  From writing the blog.  Numbers are dropping a smidge so readers are sending a message……..“ho hum, yawn”.  I am gonna have to give it a rest, I think.  Come at it from another angle, maybe.  Take up knitting instead.  I dunno…….

I’ve written close to 600 entries so far.  Sal is compiling them into categories.  ‘Course the largest category is ‘Nonsense, gibberish and political rants’.  So, I may have only 400 or so relevant ones from which to really compile a book about living off the grid.  We’ll see.  Not enough for a compelling story but I am hoping for a comic book or a long magazine article at the very least.  Like an Archie’s Digest, maybe.  We’ll see.

I may carry on typing.  I need the exercise.  But I am definitely going to change something.  I think I have to.  I’ll let you know.

But, before I go……..(and remember, the boat, the Q-hut, the funicular and summer guests will still be written about.  Oh, bloody Hell!  OK.  I will still do the ravens and the whales, too.)……..

I just wanted to add that the masses are warming up……seems the people may not be just the walking dead, after all.  Bill 38 (Omnibus bill) will ‘gut’ our Democratic processes and push us even closer to a totalitarian state.  And there are a lot voices trying to be heard on that.  And the provincial Liberals just ‘sneaked’ a bill in during the last 30 minutes of this session so as to make a Provincial Park available for another private run-of-river project.  They’ll get away with that one, I am afraid.

But the student movement in Quebec (not a sympathetic movement at the beginning) prompted yet another fascist-like response from Big Brother and, in the aftermath, the people have rallied in Quebec over the erosion of their rights and freedoms.

I guess what I am saying is this: I could write more on politics but it’s a mugs game.  It all goes into the Nonsense and Gibberish file, anyway.  But, right now, that is where my head is at.  Mostly.  So the only thing that makes sense to me right now is reduce output.

If you are in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging!

Wouldn’t ya know it……?  Just when I get old enough that I don’t care if my bum is hanging out, the X-ray department of the hospital provides a pair of full, light-cotton trousers instead of the half-cover, open-at-the-back Mr. BUTT smock of yesteryear.  I was surprised at how disappointed I was.

I came out of the dressing room to be greeted by two young and one mature woman who took me down the hall.  One of the young women was behind me.

“Sorry.  Nothing to see anymore.”

“Pardon?”

“You know…….in the old days………we used to get those revealing little smocks and would have to walk around clutching it closed with our arms behind our backs for modesty?  Did you guys get them changed to trousers or did the patients finally rebel?”

“I am sorry, sir.  I don’t know what you are talking about.”  And she looked at me as if I were mad.

The X-ray technician was older.  I asked him.  “I can’t remember when we changed over but it doesn’t surprise me that you are at that age where you just don’t care anymore.  A lot of people would get like that as they got older.  We’d have old people wandering around with both arms free and the smock acting more like a loin cloth than anything else.  Had a few doofuses who put it on backwards with the opening in the front.  Did it on purpose, I am sure.  Old guys.  Some of them smiling, as I recall. 

“I think the change must have come from staff.”

I hurt my back last year and finally decided to get it X-rayed.  Firstly, I thought it would heal on it’s own but as much of a factor as my optimism is, my pessimism about hospitals is probably greater.  I hate ’em.  So, I waited a long time to get it checked out.

Honest to God – medical facilities all look and feel dirty to me.  Like cheap motels in bad parts of Southern California.  Unclean in the extreme.  And usually the service is abysmal and way too many friends of mine have come out worse than what they were going in.  And that kind of generated fear and revulsion is not the feeling you want to have when they are poking and cutting and probing you.  In motels or in hospitals!  ‘If I am gonna get probed, damn it, you better be really damn nice and really damn clean! And that goes double when in a health care facility!’

That’s my new motto when speaking with Health Care professionals now:  ‘When probing, be clean and gentle’.  And I start with that spiel at reception!

I used to run a medical clinic in skid row, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.  Our clients were the ‘rubbies’ and ‘detritus’ of society.  The dregs.  The forgotten.  The untouchables.  But we’d touch them.  And we did so gently and with respect.  Admittedly, it was not always reciprocated but, by and large, the Downtown Clinic was a very important part of the lives of the city’s sick and rejected.  We did good.

But one of the ways we did good was by being service-oriented and knowing what each patient needed.  One of those things – needed by all of them – was cleanliness and simple but attractive decor.  I had a guy full-time on washrooms and door stoops, stairs and railings.  Lots of horrible stuff would accumulate there if we (he) wasn’t on top of it.  Today’s hospitals aren’t so careful.  The last one I was at, the washroom looked like it belonged to a non-chain gas station on a bad highway.  I try to make it a point never to touch anybody or anything when in a hospital.  Especially washrooms.

Honest, I’d wear a hazmat suit if I could.

We’d also paint the clinic every year to eighteen months.  Helped keep the feeling of clean anyway.  The doctor’s offices and the hospitals I have been forced to visit now and again are always the same.  No paint job.  Ever.  Smears that were on walls last year are still on the walls this year.

My current doctor’s office also has no windows.  Not one except the front door.  Nothing opens to fresh air but the door.  There is a huge maze of little closet-rooms all along dirty-smeared walls without a window to open.  It is literally a horror show.  I stand outside in the rain until it is my turn.

You might think me mad or hygienically obsessed.  I am neither.  But here’s my point:  When I lived in the city I got the usual flues.  I got an occasional cold.  Caught a bad burger-on-the-go now and again, too.  I’d estimate I got sick, on average, three times a year.  I felt ‘bad’ but still productive another three times at the very least.  Even though I was as healthy, it seemed, as the next guy, I could also rely on being sick every year for one reason or another.  Sal and I have been here eight years and have never been sick.

Well, we have been sick.  I could be lying.  But I don’t think so.  Whenever we are ill it is always after having been to the city or on an airplane.  If we don’t go to Vancouver, if we don’t set foot in a hotel or an airport, if we don’t rub our presence up against the hoi polloi, we remain healthy, unsick, vital and even suffer fewer less-energetic days.  OK, we get tired more easily but fatigue ain’t illness.  We are, in my estimation, 5 times healthier living here.  I swear.

Only exception: going in to see my doctor or going for a test at the hospital.  Makes me sick just thinking about it.

Weird eh? Those are the three most ‘looked up’ words that Google users employed that ‘ended up’ finding my blog.  Well, retirement, too (at #4), but that is not such a surprise.  Not really.  Boomers are gettin’ on, right?  But still lookin’ for answers.

As if I might have an answer for DFO, Robocalls and Enbridge?  Hmmmmm, I think I do……………..but……….it is not legal, moral or easy, I am sure.  Otherwise it would have been done by now.  A thousand times over!

On average I have 300 readers a day.  But they come and go in bunches.  So, who really knows?  For instance, most of my friends (they all lie, of course) say, “Oh yeah, I read your blog.  Honest!  Yeah…..loved that one on….what was it…….ravens!  Yeah, that’s it.  Love those ravens, eh?”

“Geez, that’s great.  Thanks for the feedback.  But….ah…I don’t think I have written about ravens for a while.  Didja see the one about the whales?”

NO!  Wow!  Whales, eh?  Wow!  I will look it up.  What was the name of the blog again?  Something about islands or something?”

“Off-the-grid-homes.org.  It’s about living off-the-grid.  Me and Sal.  I’m Dave, your old friend.  Remember?  You still taking your meds with a glass of scotch?”

“No.  Look, I read it.  Honest.  It’s just that, well, I get busy, ya know?  And, like, I prefer to read it in batches.  Like ten or so at a time.  So, like once a month or so I sit down and catch up.  It’s easier.  I like it.  Honest.  But sometimes I just don’t have the time.  But I sure do like them ravens!”

“That is OK.  I mean, who the hell reads the paper every day, eh?  Or watches TV every day, ya know?  I understand.  I even liked just seeing my kids five out of seven, ya know?  So, I get it.  No problem.  Just glad you like ravens, eh?  ‘Cause, like, I am leaning heavily on them now, ya know?  Like I do ravens every other day.  Can’t get enough o’ them blackbirds.  Can I?”

(I may have to kill myself!) 

Anyway, I promised you a quick thing on ‘Friends: better than fish’.  The reference is to Ben Franklin’s quote that ‘guests, like fish, begin to stink after three days’.  Mind you, they did not have indoor plumbing in his day but I am pretty sure that he was speaking metaphorically.

B & A came to visit.  Stayed two days.  No smell.  Rained most of the time.

They are good.  Real good.  B likes to tinker and potter and his specialty is electrics.  And I really like to see him now and again having fun.  So, I invite him up when I have electrical problems.  Happy to help out.  It’s great.  He has lots of fun and I get to enjoy him having fun.  Plus my electrics get sorted out.  Win-win.

A is an ex-librarian.  Likes the blog.  She is encouraging.  It is great.  I ply her with liquor, keep the topic on me and my blog and she is usually good for an hour of positive input.  Mind you, I can see the strain sometimes.  It is hard to stay pleasant while under the influence of scotch and a narcissistic personality but she copes well.

Funny, tho.  She must have read Ben Franklin ’cause they used to stay for three days……..

The morning started well.  Great, actually.  Went out on the deck and watched a school of Pacific white-sided dolphins on parade as they headed north.  Pretty neat.  There were close to 100 of them and they were leaping and swooshing at a rapid rate, doing their leaps-in-the-air in groups of eight to twelve.  They were close in and so close you could see their eyes.  It was a veritable march of dolphins.

Then, after watching them roll on down the channel like a herd of bison on the plains, we went about our morning business.

An hour or so later we boated over to unload the contents of our car which was parked on an adjacent island and came back to our beach for further ‘schlepping’ of supplies to the house.  Then Sal headed off to tie her boat up at the dock.  She was just out of sight.  Then the walkie-talkie………….

“Wow, Dave!  Dolphins just flying by!!  All around the boat!  Holy……….”

I grabbed my walkie-talkie.  “Where are you?”

“I am just around the point and…….OMYGAWD!!  OHMYGAWD!!!………Killer Whales!  Killer Whales!!  Holy………..you should see this ………………………OMYGAWD!!!  They are chasing the dolphins…………No!………..No………..wait………….”

I wait.  Nothing.  I wait.  More nothing.  “Sal!?  Sal!?  What’s going on?”

“Unh……..J & J are coming out and……OMYGAWD!!!  There are tons of Orcas……I think they have trapped a bunch of dolphins in our bay…….OH-MY-GAWD!!!  They are hunting!  You gotta see this!!”

(cackle….psssst……..static………….cackle……….) The walkie-talkie crackled again…”Dave, this is R.  I’m getting my boat!  I’ll pick you up as I go by!”

And R picks me up a few minutes later.  We go around the point.  Sal is there.  So are J and J.  We look around in amazement.  There are half a dozen Orcas swimming all around us.  They are mostly swimming back and forth in front of our bay.  We look into the bay.  There are few more Orcas further in.  We look past them and see what turns out to be about 20 or so smaller fins (dolphins) herded up at the shallow end.  They are clearly panicked.

For the next hour or so we watch from our small boats, our motors off, drifting with the wind and current – as close as fifty feet at times – as the dolphins feint and swerve in an effort to get to open water and the whales swoop in and – well, we never actually saw them succeed – to get one or two.

We think.

Then the trapped group would swerve around in retreat and head for the shallows again.  Now and then we saw a dolphin ‘get away’ but, of course, we never saw the ones that got caught.

All we really knew for sure was that the number of dolphins still corraled at the head of our bay was getting smaller.  And we watched until the whales had had enough.  The surviving dolphins hung around a bit longer and then took off when the coast was clear.

Eating on the run, eh?  And sometimes being eaten on the run.  Sheesh.

(A shame we didn’t have a camera with us but check out page 10 of the May 2012 ‘Harbour Spiel’ for pictures of a similar event:  http://www.harbourspiel.com/files/harbour-spiel-may-2012-issue.pdf

Took motor to marine dealer last week.  My ‘usual‘ guy works full-time and does repairs part-time and he was just too swamped so I ‘went conventional’ and took it in to Guido.  ‘They sure know how to make nice, those ‘marine mafia guys’, and I confess to thinking as I left it, “These guys aren’t so bad. Man, I have got to curb my bad attitude!”.

So, they clean the carbs and charge me $700.00.  That is close to theft, that is.  I mean…….(don’t get me started)…………still, it was done and so I picked it up and paid my bill.  And then, afterwards, stopped in to pick up Lolita, the little interim boat I intend to use while I ‘fix up’ my old boat .  Lolita, the little cutie!  Her inner power was weak (dead Polly, deceased, terminated, no more) and so I took her it to the same guy who was too busy a week ago.  God can be cruel.  But J is good.  Reasonable.  Honest.  Pleasure to deal with.  Just for fun, he asked to look at the Honda that was sitting in the back of my truck.

We hauled it out of the truck, stuck it on a stand and stood around like guys do when there is an engine in front of them.  You know?  Hands in pocket………….mumbling…………….eyes roaming over everything………..

“Hmm……no diffuser ring, Dave.  What happened to it?”

“Wassadifoozering?” He pointed to a spot on the leg that seemed to be absent a part.  “Geez, Dunno.  Maybe I lost it.  Maybe they lost it.  I dunno.”

“Never mind.  I’ll find one.  Put it on.  No problem.  Say, where’s the rubber plug for this hole?”

“Geez, dunno.  I never saw that hole before…………”

“Never mind.  I got a plug.  Sheesh, what kind of dipstick is this?”

“They said it needed a new one.  So they put one in.  What’s wrong with it?”

“This is a Yamaha dipstick.  It doesn’t fit.  And what is this green guck, eh?  I thought you said they just cleaned the carbs?”

“That is what they said.  Ya know, I feel like an idiot right now.  I prefer to feel merely ignorant but this is a notch lower down.  Awkward.  I didn’t ‘pop’ the hood when I got it.  I just packed it in to the back of the truck.  I guess I shoulda looked at my dipstick, eh?  But, what-the-hell?  I mean who just looks at dipsticks, ya know?”

He stopped, rubbed his chin and seemed to be mulling that question over.  Then he just stared at me.  Hard.  I think he was looking at a dipstick and showing me how it is done.

“Never mind.  I got a Honda dipstick.  Let’s look at Lolita.  Hmm………..nice little boat, Dave.  You knew the engine was toast, right?”.

“Yeah.  I was gonna put the Honda on it.  Take off the tiller and swap it over for steering.  You up for that?”

“Yeah.  Leave it with me.  You won’t mind if I just check out the Honda before getting it all put on, will ya?”

“Absolutely not.  I am afraid my confidence level on it right now is low.  Guido is lower, but , because of him, it is not giving me joy either.  Go for it.”

I left the motor and the boat with J.  Went to pick up Sal.

“You didn’t leave the motor with J, did you?  Damn.  I shoulda come.  I knew you’d cook up something goofy.  Damn!  We need that motor.  We have to pick people up!  You promised me!”

“Relax.  It will be done in time.”

“…….I never should let you out of my sight…………”

“C’mon.  It’ll be OK.  Have a little faith.”

“Faith?!  Marine stuff!!?? FAITH!!??”

“Well, you do have a point…………”