I’m not sure but I may becoming somewhat obnoxious in my old age. Well, more obnoxious for those of you who already know me well.

It would seem that getting older has it’s perks and speaking your mind, expressing your humour and going to bed in the middle of conversations is part of that.

And, I confess, I like that. Shoulda taken it up a long time ago.

Tho I must also confess to hoping for a merciful death early should I ever take up the oldster’s habit of relinquishing control over bodily functions. Running loose at the mouth, I hear, is the first of the prime functions to go.

Our W’fers are very nice, smart and mature. But still only 28 and ‘new’ to us. So my making reference to woman’s body parts and cracking jokes to them is not what you might consider polite company at the very least. And, in our modern politically correct society it is probably a real no-no.

Well, I have sensed that, anyway. I could be wrong.

Don’t get me wrong. I am no boor. I am not gross. Nor vulgar. Well,not really (maybe a smidge). But I am weak. What could I do?

Lindsay, it seems, is very flexible. Verging on double-jointed (double^jointed?). And she went to Yoga with Sally and bent herself up like a twizzler. Then she came home and demonstrated by hyper-extending her elbows so that she held her arm in the ‘Vulture’ pose. Very cool.

I’m sorry. But I just had to say ‘stuff’. Nothing bad. Not really. Funny stuff, I think. Just ‘stuff’. Like: “Ooh, Dave. Yoga is great for her. Encourage it. Very healthy for her. But better for you. He he he” (nudge, nudge, say no more, eh? Wink, wink.).

And I had a scotch or two which didn’t help the ‘image’. Plus I was tired and red-faced. I probably looked like a leering old fool. (Don’t say it!)

And then I went to bed. It was before nine and I was tired. Plus Sally was looking ‘daggers’ at me. I came out in my house coat to say ‘goodnight’ (nudge, nudge. Wink, wink, eh?)

All in all…………I am thinking: ……………obnoxious.

But it is also freeing. Ya know? Walkin’ around in your house coat, crackin’ bad jokes that seem (definitely) to appeal only to me. Going to bed when I want. Not really caring about the impression I make……….

What’s not to like?

Getting old is not so great. Not really. Lots of aches and pains. The only consolation is: I can share the pain with others by being myself.

Seems fair to me.

I kept a weird-sort-of-running-diatribe-type blog when in Hong Kong teaching English a couple of years ago. It is long, rambling and mostly dull but it does give you an idea of what we did there. So, I am including a link:

http://hongkongeslvolunteer.blogspot.com/2011/05/china-monlogues.html

Since I am so self-centred right now, I thought I might as well also include the blog on Mexico that was written even before the China Monologues:

http://hippyredux.blogspot.com/

Been awhile, eh? Things are a’poppin’ in the Spring and I’ve been pretty busy. Way too busy for a guy who is retired.

Heidi came by. Then, after she left, Dave and Lindsay came to stay for a week. While this was going on, we had a work day/market day/yoga day at the bunkhouse, a boat to launch, a dozen or so logs to haul and buck and a semi-shopping day to get in. And that is just the last three days!

Heidi was one of our volunteers in Hong Kong. She is mid-twenties, smart, attractive and has a lovely nature that would invite students and even curmudgeonish 60-year-old recluses to seek her company.

We didn’t get to meet Heidi before sending her to Hong Kong. It was an e-mail thing. It was the one exception to the rule. But she was, at the time, already teaching in Seoul, Korea and had been for a year and so it was a good bet that she could do Hong Kong. Plus she wrote well in her e-mails.

She stayed over night and we spent the evening planning and arranging how the volunteer program might re-invent itself for next year (Dennis and the school had ended the pilot program and then had a meeting about it. The early decision was to discontinue the program due to government changes in regulations and funding. The second meeting resolved to work around those changes and reinstate the program anyway. Seems the volunteers were a big hit.)

So, the Hong Kong Volunteer program is afoot again! And the new plan that was hatched by Sally, Heidi and me is pretty good. It included Heidi doing ‘dog&pony’ presentations to colleges on the island, in Vancouver and, because of her upcoming traveling months, (June and July) across Canada as well. She will eventually get as far as Montreal with her ‘presentation’ to possible volunteers for the future.

She is also casting a net for a full-time English teacher. Or two. This position is paid a full salary and requires a minimum of a one year commitment, preferably two. A young couple hoping to break into the teaching profession could do a lot worse than take this job! It would be an incredible ‘first job’ and, if HK is deemed ‘homey’ by them, there would be a lot more opportunities that came from it.

Anyone wanting to offer Heidi a place to stay overnight in any Canadian city with a college or university, please let me know. She needs billeting for a night. So far this recruitment plan is running on ’empty’ and she is unpaid. As are we. She is volunteering to get volunteers. She could use a little help. As could we.

Dave and Lindsay are the latest Woofers. They are from Chicago and they are very good. Great attitude, smart, easy-going and eager to ‘get to the job and get ér done’. This is good. We are a bit late in getting in the wood in this season and this should get us back on track.

But I had to take Dave to the work site yesterday (instead of chopping) and he was thrust into the weird dynamics of old weird, Canadian guys building a bunkhouse extension. Illuminating? I don’t know but I am pretty sure it helped confirm D & L’s choice of living an urban life in Chicago. Some of ‘my guys’ can put you off the forest like the fellers in Deliverance put Ned Beatty off canoeing.

Our materials for the bunkhouse were short and so the workers have downed tools for the day. Too bad, really. We need to keep up the momentum. But at least I get to write this blog and help get in the wood. Sal is going into town today, in part to get more plywood so we can get back at it tomorrow and in part to stock up with more food. We need two sheets of T&G plywood to finish off the back room floor and at least a case of wine.

Priority? The wine, of course.

I don’t write much about chainsaws. It is because I don’t like them. I’m afraid of them. Your basic chainsaw is the classic ‘accident waiting to happen’! And I know that.

But the reason I don’t write about it is because I get the sense that the chainsaw knows too. It’s like it has a little black soul and it wants to hurt somebody. Hurt ’em bad. And even writing about it’s little ugliness is enough to set it off. I just don’t trust the little bastards.

But they are a necessary evil out here. No question about that.  Emphasis on the word: ‘evil’.

First off, I mostly try to leave my chainsaw be. Like a sleeping dog, (one derived from the Baskervilles line) it is at it’s best when left alone.

Then, when it must be perturbed, I make sure it is fed and lubed, well-sharpened and treated with respect. The trouble is; I don’t feel any of that for the little blood-letter. I just have a sense of fear. Chainsaws can smell fear, you know. And none of that ‘respect’ is reciprocated. The chainsaw is salivating. It is lying in wait. It is nearing the kill zone. Good times are ahead.

You might think I anthropormor-something-machines. And, of course, you’d be right. Machines don’t have souls. I know that. No, they are more like sociopaths, really, and do I really care which form of madness (human, machine, animal, bureaucrat) is trying to kill me? No. So, even if I am wrong about the character of the machine, I am not wrong about it’s intentions. It was born to kill and it was born to kill indiscriminately.

Chainsaws are evil.

I am not alone in feeling like this. My friend, Bert, has been ‘with chainsaw’ for some considerable part of his life. He has a Stihl big enough to carry a 24 inch bar. But he put on a 16. And he put on a pointy bar, too, not the usual ‘bluntnose’ kind.

“Well, you need power. If you are gonna do this thing, power is your friend. Go big. Go Stihl. But the trees we are taking are usually smaller so we can gain control, get some of that power back in our hands instead of the blade with a shorter bar. And I like the pointy end kind because it gives the saw less bite at the end with which to flip up and cut you. It’s a way to emasculate the beast, you know? Geez, Dave, you gotta watch that thing, you know. They got minds of their own!”

It is not the saw alone that presents the danger. It is the circumstance you find yourself in. Rarely do you get to cut a log that is well secured in a nice horizontal crib where your feet are flat and the saw is at arms length. Usually, you are standing on a moss-covered rock in the rain trying to free up a caught snag that is threatening to fall on you or a nearby building even before you attempt to cut it down.

Chainsawing is done, as a rule, when – even without the tool – you are already in a dangerous place. I do mine most of the time on a beach, on irregular ground, littered with sea weed and boulders in a natural log collection area that has storm-strewn logs stacked up like pick-up sticks. Cut the wrong one in the wrong place and the piece you expected to fall does not but the other one slides over and whacks another so that it then falls on your head or spins and takes out your legs.

Think of it this way: you have a vicious ferret in your hands and you are being careful but you have to climb a greased ladder in the dark and in the rain to put it back in it’s cage. That’s chainsawing ‘on-the-go’.

I won’t let Sal touch the chainsaw. I don’t care how sexist that sounds. The beast doesn’t get near her.

In this new world of safety emphasis, in this mad, mad, stupid-mad world in which we live in fear of packages of nuts containing nuts and bottles of shampoo exploding on airplanes, chainsaws would not be allowed due to obvious safety concerns. Hell, I doubt that small, sharp chains would even be allowed. If these products hadn’t already passed some kind of ‘safety inspection’ at the turn of the century when regulatory boards were on Opium, chainsaws would not be permitted for sale to the general public. Nor should they be.

You can’t get a Taser off the shelf. You can’t buy a hand-gun. And I don’t think a 12 year old ballerina or a thirty-something psycho should be able to walk into a Walmart and get a chainsaw, either. Call me crazy.

I swear: chainsaws are the single scariest thing you can buy for $500 without taking some sort of safety course and registering.

It is their only appeal.

Interesting coincidence.

Six or so years ago when we were just beginning to build the BIG house and after having stayed a summer in the ‘boathouse’, I was in the market for a bigger genset than the little Coleman workhorse I had used for building till then. I thought I might need as much as 15 Kw for house power but I have since learned I really need only 5, maybe as much as 8. But, at the time, I was looking for a 15.

I am still looking for a good 5 to 8 hp diesel genset.

Through Craigslist or some other means I found a fisherman who was selling a big ol’ Isuzu powered 15 Kw that was pretty much worn out but still running and he was only asking $3,000. I went to see it at an ‘equipment yard’ in Steveston one night and found out that he went fishing for prawns up in our area every season and the season was opening in a month or so.

“Tell you what. I’ll pay full price if you take this sucker all the way to the prawning grounds and put it on my beach. How’s that?”

“Deal!” said Paul. And so it came to be. And we’ve been ‘seasonal friends’ ever since. He and his crew often come for dinner once or twice a season. We’ve met the family. We know his friends.

Prawning season begins officially around the first week of May. Aboriginals arrive around the first of April and take a goodly portion before that but that ‘breach of the rules’ seems to be overlooked by Fisheries. Well, everything is overlooked by Fisheries, actually. They don’t even have a boat anymore to go see the ocean!

Aboriginals, it seems, have no rules. They are exempt either by law or because there is no law or because there is no one to enforce the law or because there is no one to enforce the law on them. Either way, they don’t have to follow the rules.

Just so you know, I don’t think that is right. Having said that, just about everyone up here is up here so that they don’t have to follow all the rules that modern society is making up at a prolific rate. So, I don’t really blame them. Nor do they take any more than the ‘white guys’. They just take ’em first and after the estimate counts. So their catch is not used for determining the state of the fishery.

I just worry about the prawns and the other fisheries.

I think we employ some 5000 DFO employees, most of whom are in Ottawa and none of whom are ‘on the water’ around Campbell River, the so-called Salmon Capital of the world. Given their track record, there can hardly be a greater waste of tax payers money than DFO.

Well, there are the fighter jets we are thinking of buying………..

Don’t get me started on DFO. Or fighter jets. Suffice to say that the DFO screwed up the East Coast Cod fishery and are intent on a resounding repeat with West Coast fisheries of all kinds. These guys just don’t seem to ‘get it. I swear to God, a bunch of retired kindergarten teachers from Saskatchewan in plastic rowboats could do a better job!

If you want to know more about this ongoing fiasco, Google Alexander Morton at: Salmon are sacred.org. That woman does more good than all of the staff and scientists and bureaucrats and politicians at DFO combined by a factor of at least 1000. She is truly a hero.

Anyway, the prawn guys are good eggs, too. They follow all the rules and fastidiously so. I don’t think they make much money but they have a boat to run and a crew to pay so they haul a lot of prawns out of here. One good thing: they are ‘hawkeyes’ for the pregnant, egg-carrying prawns and those always get thrown back.

I am convinced that, if we left the management of the prawn fishery to Paul-the-prawn-guy and his friends, it would be sustainable and likely made healthier. As it is, it is slowly diminishing. Each years catch below last years.

Quél suprise! DFO is managing this.

I have a friend in the battery business. He keeps an eye out for good batteries that have been used a bit but are still virtually 100%. This happens in industrial applications now and then. If he can find a few, he lets me know.

We need batteries up here. They are an integral part of our ‘power’ system. The more and better batteries you have the more ‘juice’ you can ‘store’ so that you don’t have to run the generator. In the summer, with the solar panels cranked up, we can easily go a week, sometimes ten days, on just what the sun provides.

In the winter, when the winds really blow, I have a small wind turbine that does the same thing – just not as well. Smaller output. The solar panels in the summer work better than the wind turbine in the winter.

Having too few batteries means not being able to store the energy when it is available but not needed at the moment. So, you really need storage capacity. Of course, having too many batteries is not only expensive but, if my generating source is not big enough (too few panels, small wind turbine, puny battery charger for when the genset is running) then the capacity is never utilized. ‘Balancing’ your system is critical.

I needed four more to add to my 8 to get the right balance. I called my ‘battery’ friend.

I was in luck. He had 16 good batteries he was just holding for guys like me. So, I told the folks up here about the other 12.

“Yeah. Please. I need some. Could you get me (2, 4, 8 or one)” depending on the neighbour. So, I ordered all 16.

These puppies are not your basic ‘car’ battery. Each one weighs 150 pounds and is three times the size of a ‘car’ battery. 16 of them weigh over 2300 pounds. Twenty three hundred pounds is stretching the ‘lifting’ capacity of the barge we employ.

By a miracle of cooperation, kindness and professionalism (battery buddy) all 16 batteries got to the pick-up terminal in Vancouver where a ‘hauler’ then picked them up and dropped them off at the barge just North of town at Menzies Bay (Campbell River). The barge guys loaded them on and went about their ports-of-call for a few days and then dropped them on the dock at Surge Narrows.

Elapsed time: five days. Cost: a few hundred dollars. Efficiency and ease: priceless.

Once on the dock, it is every man/woman for themselves. Sal and I hauled the four we wanted down on to my boat and took them to our house. Getting those batteries up the hill will be a challenge. But I’ll rig up something using the funicular or the high-line. We are good.

“Hey! I heard you got a good deal on batteries, Dave. Man, I wished I had heard about that! I really need some. Can you get some more?”

“Well, I can try. My buddy doesn’t always have them, ya know. But I’ll put in the request. We pretty much have to order 16 at a time, tho. Doesn’t make sense due to the cost of shipping to order less. How many you want?”

“Well, uh……….gee………..like………one?”

“That’s OK. If 15 others come forward (at this writing, I already have seven more spoken for), we’ll put in the request.”

By the end of July they might – if my battery buddy has some – get here.

And that is how things get done out here. Slowly. But the slowness is at our end – not the supplier nor the carrier. The ‘pros’ in the city, in the trucking and on the barge are fabulous. It’s us. We are a bit slow on the decision-making and final-stage assembly. That is why – when things take a long time – it’s called ‘Island Time.’

Worked on the old bunkhouse yesterday. Got some good stuff done. Felt good. But pretty tired. Headed home.

“Hey, Dave, still lookin’ for high-floaters for your firewood?”

My neighbour and co-worker on the bunkhouse, Drake, had called out to inform me that he had a couple of ‘nice ones’ on the beach in front of his place. So, I drove around to have a look.

“Yep. Looks good. But I am tired now. And the tide is not high enough. I’ll do it tomorrow. Z’at OK with you?”

So the next day I arranged for Sal to come up to the bunkhouse at quittin’ time. She brought the peavey, some dogs and tow ropes and my chainsaw in her boat. We all met at the work site and then headed to the dock. Then we headed to the neighbour’s beach. Me in my boat. Sal in hers.

Of course our own dogs, Meg and Fid bounded along totally confused by having both boats present. They finally got in Sal’s little 12 foot Whaler.

The logs were about ten feet up the beach. Drake took the peavey and wrangled for a bit but eventually I cut it in half and a big chunk of log rolled into the sea. While I was standing there on the beach I saw an old sea-washed plank that had that ‘beach-look patina’ we all prize so much out here (I have no idea why). It was an old rough hewn 2 x 8, sixteen feet long. I tossed it in after the log.

“Yo, Sal, ya wanna get a ‘dog’ on ’em and stand off with your boat while we lever the next two pieces in?”

Sal was chatting with Drakes wife. Of course, they had to finish their conversation first. Our dogs were running around with their dog and had to be herded up and reloaded. Then Sal morphed into Relic the beachcomber and got to work.

She jumped in her boat and took off after the log we had just set loose. She got it. Then she leaned over the bow and hammered in a ‘dog’ (not Fid or Meg but a log dog, a thick, short and tapered spike with an ‘eye’ in the top to take a rope). After that, she tied on a line with a bowline and went for the plank. She repeated the process and had two large chunks of wood in tow.

“Let ’em float loose! We need you in close to shore now. Can’t get this one. Need you to tow while we lever it!”

So Sal let the two ‘dogged’ pieces go and slid in close to shore. She drove another ‘dog’ into the log end that was already in the water while Drake and I continued to work it from the beach end.

She tied a line to the ‘dog’ and fastened it to her forecleat. Then, slowly, she took up the slack. While still in reverse, Sally slowly cranked the throttle to full-tilt and, with our prying and levering, the big log started to slide into the water. The sea boiled as Sal’s 25 hp outboard roared for all it was worth and her boat skitted slightly left and right pulling on the log. A few minutes later we had three good logs and a big plank avec cachet all tied up and waiting for a tow to go home.

We waved goodbye and took the logs two miles down the coast to the lagoon behind our house. Sal towed two and I towed two. Took almost an hour. Once there we tied them up for later hauling up on the high-line. Probably tomorrow.

In the lagoon Sal leapt ashore and took all four of the lines. She tied them to the anchor we have and then nimbly jumped back in her boat. Fiddich mirrored her every move. We then took our boats to the dock and tied up.

“C’mon, Relic, I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.”

Community building is a tough job. Too hard for me. And community building in an area populated by individualists is an even tougher task than usual. The Discovery Sound area attracts the independent, individualist like rock concerts attracts Bic lighters. It is an area united by the principle of ‘let’s not get united!’

Lately, our neighbouring island, Quadra, has been up in arms over the moving of the old library into a new building. Fur has flown over that.

We on Read are not exempt from tempests in our teapots. We have our own community issues. But, because we are a smaller group and meetings are mercifully rare, things usually work out. The key is to let issues ‘flare out’.

The thing about these issues is that you never know which one is going to go ‘super nova’ on you. I am always surprised.

We had an issue some years back that still amuses me. “You in favour of free-range grazing or not?”

Turns out there were only two ‘domesticated’ and free ranging animals on the island (a horse and a cow) and one of them had already died by the time I was asked to state my opinion. I tried to demure but the question was still hanging in the air; “in favour or not?”

I admit to casting my vote for the remaining cow to have the freedom to mosey and moo. Fortunately, that was the majority opinion.

Politics, eh?

God! It feels good to be home!

I have never felt that way about any place before (well, a little, now and then but usually only after a long trip away from my own bed) because most places for me were just impermanent ‘apartments’ or even houses that were not accepted as the ‘ultimate’ long term residence, the real expression of who we were. Our real home had yet to materialize.

But, this loose-goosey-ness is in me mostly, not the places we were.

Sal is a bit different. She adapts and seems to be able to ‘settle in’ and make any place a home using some kind of feminine Feng Shui mysticism that is impossible to grasp conceptually or describe in words.

I swear: I could give Sal an old shipping container and put it in the local dump and within a day it would be so inviting you would want to live there! She is magic. It is truly an art.

Some of the places were very nice. I have always been a bit less than rooted, that’s all. It is in my nature.

Until now, that is. Now, my roots are deep. My roots are on a remote island. Who woulda thunk it?

I attended 13 different schools before I graduated and I skipped a grade! And that is only half of the ‘moves'(if that). That tells you something about my less-than-stable background. When Sal and I got together, we moved to live on sailboats for the next eleven years. Maybe that is not, in itself, overly nomadic but it is definitely not grounded (well, we grounded a few times but that is a whole other blog series: The Naval Years or maybe Lost at Sea).

Sally and I had ten more different homes (not counting marinas and RVs) over the next 40 years together. We must have some Bedouin blood (sounds familiar).

But it is not easy coming home. Logistics, don’t you know?

We have an old Pathfinder, one of the smaller SUVs. We packed it so solidly this trip that, by the time we left the last visited store, Sally had a huge cardboard box of groceries on her lap and a case of frozen dog food at her feet. Her seat had been moved forward so that some of the boxes of books we had for the community could be loaded on the floor behind her. I had tied most of the luggage that shared the backseat with the two dogs to the upper hand-holds by the doors so that they would not roll on to the dogs when I turned corners. Pipes were lashed to the roof. We had four large totes, a large cooler, a 50 pound bag of flour, a 3/4-size SS barrel, a Costco shop jammed in to the crevasses and, of course, our boots, some potted plants, jackets, lunch boxes and all the paper goods (TP, napkins, etc.) we would need for the summer.

We filled the boat when we loaded it at the beach late that afternoon (around 6:00 PM). Thank God the seas were calm! We had been on the road since 9:30 AM and still had two hours of loading and house-starting-up procedures to get through.

We had a dinner of cottage cheese, avocados and a quick-steak at 9:30 and then went back to packing more stuff away. The fridge is full. The freezer is jammed! The cupboards are definitely NOT bare.

Whew!

With a bit of luck we will never have to leave again.

Back in Victoria. Ben and Katie took us to Mothers Day brunch complete with flowers, tattooed waitresses and the iconic photos of Marilyn Monroe on the walls. It was a good albeit short visit but we got to meet two of their new friends, Al and Kelli. Old-time buddy, Ryan, was there, too. It was not only a time for ‘Mother’ but it was also, perhaps, the first time we were surrounded by Ben and his friends and everyone was ‘adult’. You know, mature, civilized, socially adept and very pleasant to be with. Hard to explain……

It may have been just the slight but very much appreciated ‘deference to the old people’ that I was sensing. Whatever.

Ben’s into motorcycles. He just bought a trials bike in Powell River and was leaving to go pick it up immediately after brunch. He bought an old Dodge Van to make the trip and carry the prize home. It’s second hand in the extreme. The bike is also pre-owned and comes sans lights, horn and even a seat. It is lean like a gazelle and as sure-footed as a mountain goat. It is the new model of the old Sherpa Trials bike I am familiar with. It is called a Sherco. Trials riding is all about balance and maneuverability. Weight: approximately 200 pounds. Cost:$3000 or $15.00 a pound.

The Dodge van is all about expedience and affordability. It weighs 3500 pounds and can barely get out of it’s own way. It’s a cross between a pig and a lame hippopotamus. Neither quick nor nimble, it leaks and squeals and is somewhat reluctant to get on the road. It cost $700 and that works out to $0.20 cents a pound.

Advantage: the van, of course! It already has a mattress in the back. And the bike threatens the possibility of our becoming grandparents. The van suggests otherwise. It has a tendency to seek out parking spaces. Vivré le Dodge Ram van.

I’m gonna install ‘mood lights’ under the dash!

Today is one of our semi-annual Costco runs. We get a gallon pail of Tinactin, a half a ton of rice or some ludicrous supply of something or the other all in preparation for our upcoming years away from stores. This is one of the two ‘provisioning trips’ per year and we try each time to find something to buy that will last a few years or more. At one point (7 years ago) I had more Listerine than scotch! As soon as Crest Toothpaste makes a thirty pounder, we are on it!

Some things we can’t buy the large version of – like Bran Flakes. Too light. To get the amount I need – and in keeping with our shopping philosophy, – I would need a Bread van full. Somethings you just have to buy like a normal person. Sometimes, however, we step outside the normal box. We don’t need Preparation H but I’d pick up a ten pound tube if they had one on sale. That would fit with the ‘shopping plan philosophy’, you see.

I’d prefer to shop like Ben.