I think I am corrupted. At least my computer is. Can’t get on the (%$!*@ blog! This is being written from Sal’s. She’s able to access MY blog. But I can’t! I mean, I know everyone likes her better but this is ridiculous! Now my computer prefers Sal!?

But that’s the least of it……..Seems I am regarded as a bit odd in the eyes of the neighbours these days anyway. And that is some standard to violate, believe me!

I have always asserted that I am normal and sane. In fact, I asserted that even when acting somewhat eccentric in the moment. The rationale: ‘people who don’t act a bit abnormal now and then aren’t normal!’

The argument has it’s weaknesses. I admit that. I may be demonstrating one as I write this. Ya see, I have a bad case of winches (sounds a bit like a skin disease, don’t you think?). It should be so simple. No, I have winches. Literally. And it is a bit embarrassing.

I have my main funicular winch. Then I have my secondary funicular winch. Plus I have the ol’ ‘pull-toy’, the chainsaw winch that no longer works. I also have the Xmas winch, the one I just used to haul logs this week. It was great!

But, it looks weird and I wasn’t sure it was going to be all that great so I went looking for another (words I remember hearing once from an old girlfriend when she dumped me for another. She was talking about me!).

Anyway, I found one. It looked good. I made an offer. He said no. So, I kept looking. Found another and sent my friend to go see it. He liked it and bought it for me. In the meantime – while the friend was awy – the other guy called back and said, “I’ll take it, after all.”

So, I bought that one at the same time my friend was buying me the other one.

Now I have winches up the ying yang. Five tons of winches up the yin yang, and that is just counting the marvelous Marpole Mohawk Bulldog winch that garners admiring glances from all the old guys around here.

The other one is no puffter, either. “Got yer winch — it looks like a “ballbreaker.” Glad I’m not planning on dragging around what you want to play with!!!. That guy runs a tugboat. Honest!

Other guys: “Great winch! Use ’em on the government wharves. Ya can still get parts f’er them babies. Ol’ Beebe in Seattle copied them, ya know. Great winch. Pretty sure I got one back in an old shed someplace. One on the beach in front of Gary’s ya know. Great winch. Bit rusty, tho.”

“Wow! You got one? Gary’s beach has one?! These puppies are hard to find. Aren’t they?”

“Nah. Not really. Hard to find ’cause no one is lookin’ too hard for ’em eh? I mean, there all over but they weigh a hunert pounds and waddya going to use them for, anyway? An anchor? Hah hah hah!”

“No. Going to pull up logs. Get an electric motor and pull up logs. You know?”

“Thought you had a winch that just did that?”

“Yeah, well, I got me another. Seemed like good insurance.”

“Pretty strange, Dave. Guy’s gotta working winch and gets one he don’t need. Sounds a bit odd to me.”

Yeah, well, let me tell you about the third one I just got yesterday.”

A man has to be known for something and, it seems I am well on my way to making a name for myself in the old winch market. Kinda odd, don’t ya think?

I have some heavy batteries to get up the hill and the winch had worked quite well on the wood gathering so it was time to employ the highline once again for the big 8-Ds. I was looking forward to it.

Each battery weighs 150 pounds and there are three to come up and 8 to go down (I am swapping out some new for old). The plan was to load the batteries in Sal’s boat (it draws the least water) and float the little ‘barge’ under the highline at high tide. High tide is at noon today.

Then we’d use the big ol’ swatch of fishing net I scavenged a year or so ago to bundle the puppies up and haul ém up the hill using the winch. The hard part was going to be the two of us on Sal’s tiny boat balancing like ballerinas while we loaded the net with 450 pounds of lead and acid. I was looking forward to that, too.

Sal weighs 125 pounds. Her outboard another 150. The batteries 450 and there is maybe 50 pounds extra in ‘stuff’ on the boat as well. Her little eleven foot, shallow Whaler was carrying close to 800 pounds and did not have a lot of freeboard showing as she made her way carefully into the lagoon.

Well, noon came and went and the batteries went back to the dock. We didn’t get them up. Damn tide was about six inches too low! ‘Course you could say that the batteries made the boat draw an extra six inches so that the boat was too low! Either way, we couldn’t get in close enough to use the highline, the winch or our remaining-but-fading back muscles.

Still, all in all, it was a good day. We finished up the wood (always bits and pieces and, of course, stacking) and pulled up crap and junk and let other junk and crap go down. Lots of heavy lifting and moving of ‘stuff’. Sal hates a messy yard.

And no matter how you ‘cut it’ this wood is neat and well stacked! I have never seen a tighter stack job. You can see why we came up a row short – it is because the rows there are are so tight!

Lindsay-from-Chicago did it with Dave-from-Chicago’s chopping.

When I say, ‘finished up the wood’, what I mean is: we aren’t finished yet. We finished what we had collected in logs-in-the-lagoon but we are still one row short of a full deck in the wood shed. That means three more 12 foot logs, maybe four have to be found, captured, wrangled and processed. But there is no doubt; we have enough in for the year. The pressure is off. The extra row is really just that – extra. I will have plenty of time to find the logs, haul them up, cut ém in to rounds and split them while Sally stacks some day in the future.

Or, maybe………….we do have some guests coming later this year…………hmmmmmmmmmmm…….

Well, not really. I am done, tho. D-o-n-e! All logs up. All cut into rounds. Finito! Thank God! But Dave is still chopping and Lindsay is still stacking so we are not quite done yet. We will likely end up a bit short of a full load (don’t say it!) and may go get one or two more logs to ‘top up’ later. But, for now, I am done like burnt toast and so we will quit for lunch!

I am sitting down now. Lunch is over. It was very nice. Writing the blog contribution today is a welcome respite from wrangling logs and listening to the howl of the chainsaw. The bed looks good, too.

Whack! Thunk! Whack! Thunk! I just looked out the window and Lindsay is practicing her best Paulette Bunyan impression. She’s back at chopping! Lindsay is young, strong, healthy and has good timing but the wood is tough and good technique only comes with practice. She hasn’t had much. So there are more swings and effort required to get through a round. Doesn’t seem to deter her, tho. She is definitely not done! Whack! Thunk!

The Orcas came back today. At lunch. That’s nice. Not often do you get to see whales two days in a row. The pod was 7 or more strong and this time heading North. It is always a treat to see wildlife and, for some reason, the bigger the better. And these guys are big.

Hmmmmmmm…..(same window)…Dave is sitting, too. He looks done. I understand completely. After awhile, it feels like it will never end. Every time he split a round, I rolled two more up to the pile. The more the pile was split and carted away for stacking, the more it grew. It can be dispiriting. He looks a bit dispirited.

Lindsay looks determined. We will definitely get the wood in this year. Lindsay will see to that!

I have to ask…………..where have you gone? The weather is good and that means more outside time. I know that. The days are longer and that means less computer time. I know that, too. But, was it something I said about winches? Last three posts – not so much as a ‘peep’ from the gallery. Is describing wood gathering dull? Hmmmmmmm…………I suppose it is, now that I think about it. Sorry.

Good day. Lots of wood in. We are 1/3 of the way to full. Dave is a chopping machine! I only have to cut rounds with the chainsaw and I have to go pretty steady to keep him supplied.

And Lindsay is some kind of stacking genius. Really. I swear this woman has a unique ‘spatial ordering’ skill that allows her to ‘finely’ stack wood better than 99.9% of the population. We are stacking – easily – an extra 10% per row. That means: In a ten row wood-house, we will have eleven rows (almost an extra month of burning). The wood fits like jigsaw pieces. It is marvelous. Weird. But marvelous.

After a hard five hour day, the ladies went down to the lagoon to gather up dinner. 30 oysters, a whole mess of mussels and a bucket o’ clams! The clams are for later. A clam chowder may be in the offing.

While this was happening, I trimmed the dogs and bought a new winch from Craigslist. The dogs lost a bag full of hair and still look like dogs that need a trim. Damn.

How the hell I am going to get a 100 pound winch from Powell River is beyond me. But it will happen.

I may also buy another old, rusty one in Victoria. I am on a winch kick. It happens at log gathering time.

And then the Orcas came!

We all went to the deck to watch a pod go by. Pretty neat.

A few minutes later our friends on the Columbia lll steamed by. The Columbia lll is a beautifully restored old yacht that takes groups on wilderness and kayak ventures up and around our area. Google Mothership Adventures, The Columbia lll. Definitely a voyage worth considering for anyone wanting a closer look at this part of the world. Ross and Fern do a phenomenal job. They are very popular and getting a booking is not always easy.

Think about it.

Today: more of the same. Hard to get too much of a good thing. Impossible to get too much wood chopped and stacked.

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.’