Cheap Richmond hotel. Alarmed awake each morning by jumbos taking off directly overhead and traffic screeching and roaring nearby. Grab the schedule and pick up the pace while merging into pedestrian and vehicular traffic and trying to remember landmarks. Can’t see ’em. Everything has changed.

Breakfast is a hotel lobby buffet blur of tastlessness and foreign strangers subtly competing for the few five-minute sit-and-chew chairs. The streets of Richmond clogging the arteries to the Vancouver cubicles-in-the-sky with the desperately working-to-keep-up with their property values.

Lots of new cars, tho.

The commuters stay awake by listening to the radio shows pump lies, propaganda and ‘traffic-on-the-fours’ (which means the traffic news is updated every ten minutes at 4 minutes past the hour, fourteen minutes past the hour and so on). Everybody is late. They all seem anxious.

What’s not to like?

Admittedly this bleak view of city life is partly just my own perspective. I haven’t had to move this fast in years. Well, months anyway. I was down here in the land of industrial hockey last November but I must have had some latent aggression to work out because I tended to merge better, drive faster, park quicker and hear less of the din back then. Today? Well, today is a bit like sensory overload. Gotta hone some skills. Fast.

We’ll adjust. It will just take a bit longer I guess. Or maybe I’ll try to find a friendly drug dealer and score some ‘speed’. Shouldn’t be too hard judging by the few face-averting pedestrians who are loitering and not zipping about. Most of them wear ‘hoodies’ and stand at the junction of several streets and lanes. Must be like a secret-language sign that says, ‘Get your red hots here!” But I could be wrong. There are too many of them to all be drug dealers. Some must be buyers.

But urban adjustment is necessary. Really. Put another way: When I checked in two nights ago, Maggie the receptionist said, “Oh HI, Mr.Cox. Nice to see you again.”

“Well you’ve stayed here before and you and your wife are amongst the only ones who ever talk to me. You know? Like a person. It just doesn’t happen much at all anymore. People just exchange their names and Visa numbers. So, I remember the few who actually talk with me very easily.”

Harsh. This lady must see hundreds of people every day. She is young, Chinese and very pleasant. And no one, it seems, takes the time to talk with her. What has it come to, eh?

I guess I’ll never adjust. I talk too much.

I prefer option B, anyway. Sal is on the phone booking a ferry for later today. Retreat is a perfectly honourable course of action when faced with overwhelming force and we have always believed in discretion being the better part of valour. Now we know what it means.

Translated: get out! GET OUT NOW!!

AAAAAaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

Before this blog I would occasionally write a long e-letter to my friends updating my current state of existence. Nobody asked for it and in one case with a close friend of mine who is a busy lawyer, I was specifically asked to stop doing it! I ignored him and still send to his ‘spam filter’ instead.

Still, the e-mail letter seemed like a friendly thing to do and it helped keep the e-mail tubes well-lubricated even if some of them were just: “Please remove my name from your list” messages.

I’m not fat. I just have thick skin.

But even amongst the still-friendly, they were not always well received. “Geez, Dave, got your e-mail. Pretty long. Read some of it but decided to call you instead. I’m worried. What were you saying in that diatribe anyway? By the way, how’s Sal? The dogs? Did you know your last missive on the China Monologues was 54 pages?

So, I got the message and made them shorter. But that didn’t always work either. “Hey, Dave, got your e-mail. Didn’t say enough. Which is a good thing, actually. What’s up with (fill in the blank) and when you comin’ down? I’ll probably be out of town then.”

So then I figured I’d keep it short but frequent by way of a blog. “That oughta keep ’em happy!”

My father in law told me he wasn’t happy.

“When you wrote the long e-mails, I would print them out and pretend they were like personal letters, ya know? But then you went all ‘sound bite’ on me and we just get these snippets. Doesn’t feel as personal. No intimacy. Where’s the love, man?” (OK, I am playing a bit fast and loose with my 87 year-old father-in-law’s steeped-in-Stilton, British-ships-captain way of speaking but you get the idea).

The point: seems size has something to do with it after all. Too short seems less than satisfying and too long seems a bit tedious. Hard to get it just right. (double entendres intended)

It is hard to keep even some of the people happy all of the time. So I am hoping to just keep some of the people happy some of the time. Push comes to shove – I’ll accept just one of the people happy enough to stick around (Sal) most of the time.

And, if politics is anything to go by, I only need 40% of the people onside once every four years. And bald-faced, non-stop lying will do that for you it seems.

Maybe I am in the wrong line of business………………..?

Came south a couple of yesterdays ago. Campbell River to Victoria by way of Lantzville and Duncan. Felt like a trek. Weird. It used to be that I’d drive as much as 500 miles in one long, hard day. Now, four hours on the Island Highway feels like a major ‘haul’. Age, eh?

Stayed at Patti’s Oceanfront B&B the night before last after leaving the island that day. Patti’s is located on the entrance slope of the lower Island highway leading into Campbell River just before the public wharves. Patti is great (and so is the breakfast)!

The B&B overlooks Discovery Sound and is beautifully appointed. Plus she likes dogs and seems to tolerate me well enough. Tís a rare establishment that welcomes us as warmly as Patti does.

Oceanfront is highly recommended although she is threatening to close up this year. After 12 years of hosting the road-weary, the business has lost some it’s luster and she is contemplating freedom.

Can’t blame her in the least.

As you likely know, I am not pleased with the election results. In fact, I am appalled. And I confess to having been slightly ‘bummed’ by it until we arrived in Lantzville, the little hamlet just North of Nanaimo.

Went there for the soap. A British importer there brings in Imperial Leather at exorbitant prices but Sal won’t use anything else and her lovely complexion proves her point. So, we drive for four hours or so and buy Imperial Leather soap in Lantzville. Now THAT is love.

Just before we got there I was at the gas station getting ready to fill the car when a woman around 45 or 50 presented at the pumps wearing an old brown, shapeless, puff-ski jacket like the kind we used to wear in the seventies. She was the owner, very pleasant and offered to pump the gas for us. This was a full-service station despite having only two pumps (one of them diesel). And she asked ‘how I was’ in that typical way store-owners greet customers.

“Bummed all to Hell. Bastards got in. This country is mad. Harper is a totalitarian dictator whose last acts in power gained us a 35 billion dollar fleet of fighter jets and a citing for contempt of parliament. This country is going to hell in a handbasket with that George Bush clone at the helm.” And then I frowned at her to show my displeasure.

“Well, she said, it is a lot better than where I came from. Just be glad the socialists didn’t win. Can’t have that! That’s just a step away from communism!”

“Whoa! Where did you come from?”

Romania. My husband came here years ago and had to dodge bullets in the process of leaving. No passport. No visas. But he got here. Finally he got enough to send for us and we came to live in Canada about twenty years ago. It is heaven here. I can buy fresh produce any time I want. We raised our kids here. Own our own business. It is safe. Canada is way better than Romania and any communist country. But I see it getting more communistic every day. We have to be careful not to let that happen!”

We talked for awhile. She was very nice. Their story was a hellish one involving near starvation, police state bullying and all the crap we read about. But they lived it. She had ‘cred’.

“OK”, I said. “I’ll shut up. You win any political discussion. I am basically happy and content and also spoiled rotten. Romania is too harsh for me. No more complaints!”

Some perspective gained in Lantzville. Who woulda guessed?

But the lessons didn’t stop there. Dropped in for a quick visit to a friend living near Duncan. He’s not working much due to a few health issues but his mind is still extremely creative and inventive. He likes to create quasi-practical things that serve his living needs. Some are his own idea, some are ‘cutting edge ideas of others’ but mostly it is a mish-mash of both.

His forte’ is applying scientific principles and processes to made-from-scraps-and-garbage-prototypes. He makes Rube Goldberg seem like a precise engineer-cum-technician! He is currently distilling Buytenol (spelling?) from grass clippings by using special yeasts and algae brewing in old pails and salvaged pipes and tubes. The goal? To power his own vehicle! And not to get kicked out of his neighbourhood by the neighbours……….

Don’t laugh! He have me a liter bottle of fuel! Value: $1.30 by Esso standards. Cost to him (other than the scrounging) $0.00! OK, maybe the gas to run the lawn mower. But, still…………

Man, I have great friends!

“C’mon, man. Fess up. Can’t be that great all the time!?”

No. Of course not. We have our troubles, our times of strife. Sal and I – like everyone – have walked barefoot on the sharp rocks of hardship and pain. There’s a dark side to our story. It is only natural.

She burned the toast once! (Swear to God!) The really hard part? She didn’t seem to care that much! It is at times like that I wonder who I married?

But we got through it.

A few times, I have been less than joy personified to be around. No, honest. Word up! Really. But, that always passes. Now? Now I am like sunlight in pants!

Of course there are the to-be-expected disappointments one simply can’t avoid: a clam shell with no clam in it, a picture in the camera that is too blurry to make out, a scrape or a bump on the knee. But, into every life a little clam has to come up empty now and then. Know what I mean? We can handle it.

With a little help from our friends.

The key: focus on the good stuff. Let the little stuff go. And put a sign on the fridge that says, ‘watch the toast!’.

Sal finished stuffing the chicken, put it in the oven and grabbing the timer, came outside with me. It was about 3:30 pm. Two minutes later, she was down on the beach choking logs. We pulled up five before the timer went off and she climbed back up the hill, went in the house and checked the chicken. Twenty more minutes were put on the timer. Down the hillside she went and another log came up.

Now THAT is multi-tasking!

A few blogs back somebody (anonymous) asked, “How come Sal comes out best every time?”

Now you know. A dozen Julia Roberts can’t compete with that. Hell, Paul Bunyan can’t compete with that!

When the logs were done, we went in, had a nice glass of wine and Sal served a lovely roast chicken, potatoes and Greek salad.

It does not get any better than that!

The old, Rube Goldberg winch is great! Slow……damn slow…….but great! Takes 20 minutes to pull up a log. Somehow Sal and I stay busy while a log is slowly crawling up the hill but don’t ask me what we do……

Sal (between log #3 and #4) went over to our neighbour’s dock and checked on their boat to ensure that the recent rains hadn’t added too much to the bilge. After that log was unloaded, she dragged a couple of distant logs (by water) to the ‘lifting’ area while I rolled a couple of others from the land into the water that a higher tide had lifted dry).

We are just ‘busy’. Hard to explain.

Up comes the logs. Little things go wrong. We fix ’em. Or we do a small chore. Grind, grind, grind………..unload the log. Wrap the lines, send the hitch back down……..head off to ‘do something’ while Sal sets the choke and up comes another.

Cook dinner. Add wine to taste.

Repeat as necessary.

A recipe for happiness. Serves two very well.

Meant to tell you: I posted pics of the old winch assembly I spoke of two blogs back titled: Junk.

Finished the concrete work today. We built the ‘wall’ on the flat strip of ‘footing’ you saw in the last blog. The wall is only 14 inches high but it is 31 feet long and so we mixed and poured a lot of concrete. Everything is now setting up for the structure that we will build a week or so from now. It is good to see the little foundation done. Not a BIG deal but it is really the BIGGEST part of the project.

We hope.

The roof tie-in is still a bit of an unknown but we’ll figure it out.

The mail plane came late today so even tho I quit the job site at 3:00, I had to wait until the mail was sorted out at the floating post ofice before coming home. I waited in the floating freight shed with a dozen floating others. So, we hobnobbed for awhile.

After a bit the school was let out and so we watched the young moms and their kids pile into small boats and head off in different directions. Kinda neat, really.

Then I came home and fueled the boats and came up to the house for a cuppa tea. Fed the raven. He took cheese from my hand this time. I was sitting on the deck in a chair with Megan-the-lamb-who-was-born-a-dog sitting to my immediate left. The raven approached cautiously on the deck. Walking sideways and keeping a wary eye on Meg, he sidled up and snatched the cheese from my fingers. Twice. Meg didn’t move.

I would have liked a picture of that.

The raven doesn’t like cameras. Can’t get a pic if the raven sees the camera. We can’t even get a pic if the raven is outside and the camera-person is inside taking it. The raven knows.

It’s Friday night. The week is over. Work is done for awhile. Tomorrow we start pulling up logs from the beach. TGIF!

Back up to the ‘bunkhouse’ for work today and, of course, the Wednesday gabfest at the ‘dock luncheonette’. Not the best turnout. Only about ‘half’ the regulars showed up. Weather was a factor.

It poured.

We did OK, tho, on our work schedule. Got more form-work done and even poured some concrete footings.

Work proceeded apace. A pace not dissimilar to that of the old geezers we are starting to look like. Hardly anyone stands up really straight anymore and, if they do, they take a while to get there. Then, when they start to move, they do so with just a little too much hitch in the gitalong. Oh well, at least we all ‘git along’.

When the day was over (a bit early), Sal (who had yoga’d and lunched and chatted) and I decided to head home. It was raining heavily. We were in our own boats. Open boats. I took off first and looked back to see if she was following OK and could barely make her out in the pelting rain. It was ripping down at such a rate that I simply could not see nor could I even look forward and so had to steer with my head turned away and only my slitted eyes turned right. It was practically hail. It hurt. Harsh.

I have simply not gotten hardy yet.

Sal was fine.

So there was some hesitation in my going back up to work today, I must admit. The weather was the same and our work is supposed to be ‘fun’ not w-o-r-k. Had enough of work in my life and now I just wanna have Cindy Lauper-type fun. ‘Cept not quite so girly. You know, hammers and saws-type fun. And not so wet!

It’s strange, tho. And I’ve mentioned this before. We live so much more ‘outside’ than we did. Ever! No offices. No stores. No cars, buses, or elevators. We have our homes, of course, but that’s it, really. Even the Wednesday ‘lunch’ is outside. It’s subtle but it’s a real difference-making way of living.

Today at work, I was carrying some 2×4’s from the bunkhouse to the Q-hut, a distance of about 100 yards. To get to the Q-hut, I have to walk over a little 15-foot bridge spanning a small creek and then proceed across the school playing field. As I approached the bridge I noticed a fairly plump, fully grown, slightly darker-than-typical doe standing just a few feet in front of me and staring. She didn’t move.

I stopped. I have two 16 foot 2×4’s balanced on my shoulder. She must have seen me from yards away. We stared at one another. I began to move forward and talked to her while doing so. She didn’t move. Then another doe moved into the picture. Not OUT but in. She moved in to join us!

There we were – the three of us – all within a 20 foot radius. And I occupied 16 feet of it (with the lumber) and it was just ‘another day at the Q-hut’.

Yin and Yang. Outside is cold and wet and all………….but where else ya going to meet a couple of good lookin’ does?

Wférs left. And I am glad. NOT because there was anything wrong with them. They were great, a lot of fun and they were interesting people as well as good washers-of-dish! It is just that having guests for longer than a couple of days begins to feel like a bit of an intrusion. Crazy eh?

The main reason is that I forget how much I ‘live’ in my own house. I walk around naked (gasp) or just in shorts! I might burp or otherwise be ‘unpleasant’ company sometimes. OK, there is no ‘might’ about it. I’m a pig sometimes.

I am me uninhibited, unabashed and sometimes a bit unhinged when it is just the two of us and I am comfortable at that level of primal-ism (Sal seems a bit less comfortable with it, to be honest).

But, when guests are present – no matter what you may think of me and my behaviour when you are around me – I am trying my best to be ‘nice’ and ‘acceptable’ to the people around me. Honest. Mostly. Well, definitely most of the time.

I try.

OK, sometimes!

Poor Sal. I don’t try that hard when it is just her and me. We have been together forty years and, well, my standards have slipped some. OK, my standards are at a stinkin’ new low level! I know that! And I really know that when we have guests. I can tell by the expressions on their faces.

I really should pick up my socks.

Literally.

I mean: actually! Sometimes my socks are on the floor! And so are other things. Unmentionables, maybe. I should pick them up and put them where the belong! (nag, nag, nag, blah, blah, blah)

Sheesh. I am not so sure that confession is really good for the soul!

Anyway, Wférs are guests and one can’t leave one’s socks on the floor when there are guests, can one?

And it is getting harder and harder to keep up appearances as I get older. Even compared to the rotten appearances I used to keep up. So, it is a relief to see guests leave. Isn’t that terrible?

It is a real joy to see guests arrive. Honest! But, as I get older, it is almost as good to see them leave.

Well, NOT you, dear reader. Not you, of course. You are always loved dearly. You are sorely missed the second you are out of sight.

Honest!

But I can tell the truth about Wfer’s.

A year ago last Christmas I saw an ad for ‘an old boat-haul winch’. It was in Victoria. I called the guy and we did the deal over the phone (and I mailed a cheque). He said, “I’m going out but I’ll leave it in the garage/carport. When you come over just take it. It will be under wraps”.

We drove over after visiting my brother for Christmas (it was late), pulled down the empty-but-snow-covered driveway and found the carport. Ben and I lifted this ugly, rusting contraption consisting of an old winch, cable, a series of gears and shafts and a 1/3hp electric motor into the back of the Pathfinder. It weighed a ton or about 250 pounds without the hyperbole.

Man, it was a ‘contraption’! I can’t honestly say it was well received by anyone at the time. Not even me. Sally was definitely not amused! There is something singularly unappealing about heavy, greasy, rusty ‘junk’ sitting in the back of a carport under a tarp in the dark (on Christmas eve). Ya know?

But I hauled it home, dragged it up the beach and left in on the deck thinking, “Sheesh, I don’t even know how it works! All those little shafts and things…..I am going to have to sit down and figure this out some day.”

That day came a few days ago due to the failure of my other winch and the process of ‘figuring it out’ and ‘making it work’ just finished today.

This old, home-made ‘contraption’ works like a hot dam! Yes, it is a bit slow at only 6 feet per minute (meaning: it takes 20 minutes to haul a log up the hill vs the 6 or seven minutes the old winch took) but this one is electric, it is quiet and it is a lot stronger. Wa-bloody-hoo!

John came over and marveled at it. He helped figure it out and ‘made it go’. “Geez, the old geezer (it just has to be an old geezer) was some kind of genius, eh? I mean, look at that junk! He used a pulley off an old washing machine, made handles out of old pipes, lined it all up on a home-made wooden, adjustable frame and it works as good today as it did when he cobbled it together at least 60 years ago.” (it has to be that old at least, maybe older).

We tried it out and it pulled up a couple of logs without breaking a sweat!

I am very pleased.

There must be something ‘wrong’ with a guy who gets that much pleasure from making old junk he found in scrapyards and carports and garage sales work. Some kind of retarded childhood development thing, I guess.

I like Lego, too.

Mind you, the Wférs leave tomorrow so the timing is still bad but you know, it still feels good.

William and Max are from the Netherlands. 26. They speak fluent English and are good workers and pleasant fellows. We have them as ‘volunteers’ for the week. This is the Woofer program – Willing Workers on Organic Farms. Or: Will Work for Food-ers.

We rarely work our Wfers very hard and the rules are half-time anyway. We can work them all day and then give them the next day off or work them two half-days. The latter suits my own pace better. Actually, a combination of the both suits me best but Sal has her own agenda.

Yesterday we heaved the huge galvanized rails down from their position on the beach to their new position as an integral part of the lower funicular. The 6 x 21 foot rails are for 63 feet of track on which to carry a ‘cart’ big enough to lift a boat up the beach. That ‘placing-of-rails’ was a good job.

These puppies are really too heavy (225 pounds and awkward) for Sal and me to maneuver over rocky terrain at a 30 degree grade and bad footing. We can do it but we suffer afterwards. We really need several strong, agile young people now for this kind of work.

Now that they are in place, we’ll spend the next few days cutting steel and fabricating fastenings to hold them. When that is done, it is only building the carriage and ‘wiring the system all up’ that stands between us and no more lifting and carrying up the slippery, barnacle-encrusted beach. Wiring is Bill’s department. I am looking forward to his next visit.

The original motivation for receiving Wfers was for wood-getting but I am winchless at the moment and we can’t get the logs up the hill. I am going to address the issue again today. I may be able to cobble something together. Sadly, by the time I do that, their stint with us is over and they leave to help another neighbour for week. In wood-splitting as in life, timing is everything.

Our web access is by way of satellite. We are customers of Galaxy, the Canadian agent for Hughes Satellite. They provide internet but, because it uses satellite time, they limit access. Like all dictatorial corporations, they call restricting access, the Fair Access Policy. There is nothing ‘fair’ about it. Download a ‘byte’ too many and they shut you down. Hard! No warning. Just wham!! You are prohibited from access for 24 hours.

William accidentally downloaded too much and we were shut down. Such is life. Then, after a day, we were allowed ‘back on’ presumably suitably chastised and rehabilitated.

Boom! Shut down again!

I contacted them. “Sorry, sir, but it seems according to our records you overdid it again the next day between the hours of 9:00 pm and midnight. You really should get this handled.”

“But we didn’t use it then. In fact, everyone claims they didn’t up or down load. E-mail only. All day.”

“Sorry. Our computer says otherwise. You are toast!”

The only explanation I can think of is that one of our contacts sent us a giant e-mail, full of pics and pdfs and all sorts of stuff. HUGE e-mail. H-U-G-E! So, that may have kicked us out of the sky for yet another day. We paid $89/mo until this last contract which reduced it some. Americans pay $19.95. We have no ‘leeway’ for accidentally running over. Americans have a couple of ‘free passes’ for accidents and such. We don’t. The cost of delivering satellite service is the same whether the satellite beams a few hundred miles north of the 49th or a few hundred miles south.

As in the rest of life, being Canadian costs a premium.

Given that books cost more (even when they are printed in Canada), cars cost more and gasoline that is made in Canada also costs more (like everything else) can someone explain NAFTA to me?