After almost four months the boat is back in the water and running fine. Got the motor all hooked up today. Ran like a Deere.

I had no idea it was almost four months until Sal said, “You should get your boat going, you know. It’s been almost four months!”

“No way!”

“Think about it. We pulled it up around the first of December. It is past the idles of March.”

“Ides, sweetie. Ides. I-d-e-s.”

“Not with you, it isn’t! It is idles!”

She has such a way with words, that gal. And so it was that I was prompted to get on it and on it, I did. Once running, I zoomed about for a few minutes and appreciated the magic of having my own set of wheel (AKA ‘prop’) again.

It didn’t come easy.

Friday was the designated day to bolt on the motor and that was because the tides suited us. The lagoon dried around 10 and flooded back around noon – according to the book. It was a short tidal difference but enough. So we set the boat on the cradle and went to have breakfast and then returned to the lagoon with the water at the 8 inch level.

Perfect. It would just run out and we would have a couple of hours.

That was the theory, anyway. Either we miscalculated or the tide difference was even less than indicated. The eight inches we waded into was not us entering a receding tide but a flooding one. The water was coming in and it was already almost at boot height!

Damn.

At first we tried to ‘beat the tide’ but, of course, that never works. The tide always wins. Ask King Canute. So then we just settled in to working the bolts as the water crept up. We finished with the lagoon at crotch height.

Grand.

That was my second time that morning getting soaked through although the first time, I dressed for the occasion by wearing very little. When I put the boat on the cradle around 9:00 I had to do it when the lagoon water was high enough to get the boat on. That’s about 3.5 feet. So, in swimming trunks and flip flops I waded into it and placed the boat on the cradle including tying it on so that it didn’t float away.

By the time I was done, about half an hour had passed with me in the water and Sally clucking repeatedly that I was going to ‘catch my death’. Numb hands and feet made for awkward climbing as I left the lagoon and ascended the rocky slope heading for home, breakfast and the warmth of the fire.

You’d think after all this time messing about in boats we’d have this thing worked out, wouldn’t ya? And, in some weird kinda incompetent way, we did. I just had to get soaked twice and Sally had to get soaked with me.

It’s a great system.

Once again I am driven to make a political comment. Forgive me. It separates us, I know. But honestly, that is not the intention. The intention is to have integrity, to tell the truth. “For evil to be done, good men only have to do nothing”.

I will rant again covering the most pressing matters right now. Be assured – new matters come daily and I try mightily not to burden you as a rule. BUT OH-MY-GAWD!

Our Foreign Affairs department finally drafted a plan for evacuating Canadians from northern Japan. I quote from the CBC broadcast: “They will be allowed to board buses already chartered by Germany, New Zealand and Australia which will take them to Tokyo where they are free to go wherever they choose!”

Wow! Allowed to board buses. And that is different from taking a bus into Tokyo on your own – how?

Reminds me of the Dept. of Foreign Affairs rescuing our citizens in Egypt. “Well, the first plane went in and left because there were no Canadians there at the airport!”

Turns out the airport was blockaded (duh) and so we left with an empty plane. Didn’t occur to us to wait.

Later, when we were embarrassed by the world into returning, we went back, chartered some buses and brought the Canadians to the airport but not without charging them airfare first. Then the Egyptians extorted another $200 from each of them. Our govt. didn’t step in there, either. As long as all the costs were covered, our government came through.

It is absurd! This is a country that has recently decided to spend $35 billion dollars on new fighter jets! But we can’t afford to charter a bus in Japan? Or our own planes in Egypt? We can’t afford to replace aging, rusting, failing ferries carrying our own people in our own country but we can afford to buy fighter jets!

For those of you who don’t travel internationally, you will be surprised to know that most Canadians seek help (if they need it) from the British Consulate when abroad. Why? Because the British Consulate will do what it takes to fix the problem even if you are Canadian. The Canadian consulate never does anything.

I distinctly recall reading that our Canadian peacekeeping troops in Malta or Cyprus or, perhaps, Somalia were expected to do their patrols without ammunition for their rifles at one time. Seems we couldn’t afford the bullets. My nephew trained in the Canadian Forces in Cold Lake Alberta under the same conditions. Bullets were deemed too expensive.

US fighter jets, on the other hand are indispensable. And we can afford them! You know why? Because the Americans are getting Tar Sands oil in payment, that’s why? And water. And a lot of other things. We have sold out our heritage for, amongst other things, useless-to-us fighter jets.

Think about it: for battling whom would fighter jets come in handy for Canada? Norway? Greenland? Russia?

Yeah, right!

Our Coast Guard flies helicopters that crash with alarming regularity but we are going to get fighter jets! We can’t afford to man the lighthouses!!! We can’t afford ice-breakers, we can’t afford coastguard ships or even government wharves anymore! But we can afford fighter jets!

When was the last time Canada declared war on anyone other then themselves? We last declared martial law in Quebec, remember. Trudeau got ticked at the kidnapping of Pierre LaPorte. Or maybe the Indian uprising at OKA?

Fighter jets would not have helped.

Fighter jets help no one. They do harm, instead. It is in the nature of the beast. Harm with extreme prejudice is what they do. So, who benefits by this? Why the Americans, of course. They get $35B plus ongoing contracts for parts. Plus we are now in a position to help the US turn North America into Fortress North America. And, I suppose, we could use them in Afghanistan if the Americans gave us a lift over. And who wants that? Why the Americans of course. They are charging us $35B to protect their interests!

“Oh, Dave, you are getting carried away.” Yeah. I suppose so. So let me say something that Canadians seem to place a lot more value on – their own personal pocketbooks! Think about this, folks: 90% of US oil imports come from Canada NOT from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, the North Sea or even Iraq and the gulf states. It comes from Canada. It comes from the governments that charges it’s own citizens 30%+ more than the Americans pay for exact the same oil.

Just another way your government has let you down. And the examples are myriad. Continuous. Constant. We are the 51st state without the benefits of even statehood.

This will make you laugh – you can buy a propane freezer here in Canada that is made in Canada for $2500. You can buy that exact same freezer (made in Canada) in Colorado for $1500.00. NAFTA will Shaft ya. We pay more for the product when we have an export market (lumber, apples, etc.) and we pay more when we import it (cars, boats, etc.).

Do a vehicle price comparison. Try boats. Food. Anything but medical care and even that is damn close if you have a good medical plan in the US. If you really want a good medical plan, go to Thailand or Japan.

Canadian taxpayer? Spell us S-T-U-P-I-D.

But seriously folks, back to BC – Christy Clark’s new economic adviser wants to sell Canadian water to the US. And they have the mechanism now in place with which to do that by way of the Run-of-river permits. Rich Coleman has been given the Energy portfolio and he was the one who gave away huge tracts West Coast land to developers.

Why do we vote this way? Why do we let these rapers and pillagers, these liars and crooks, these greedy, stupid, corporate puppets control our lives?

Why?

I read on the internet that all outboards made after 1970 and over 40 hp share the same transom bolt pattern. This being a 2002 Honda 50 and the previous one being a 1990 Evinrude 45, I assumed that I was all set.

Not so. It seems I may have stumbled on the one combination that doesn’t fit the rule. MY holes don’t align.

Damn.

I discovered this when I went down to the still-raging, storm-tossed dock and tried to get some of the getting-the-boat-actually-going work done. I was almost flipped into sea. Discretion won out and I came back and had lunch. Such is the pace of progress around here.

The lower holes are also under the water line. Seems counter intuitive, doesn’t it? But that is the way it is and so one has to be very careful to seal those bolt holes. And that can’t be done while the boat is in the water. So…………….here we go again…………the boat has to come out.

Damn.

The trouble with that is the tides. You place the boat over the small boat cradle we built in the lagoon (it is under water when the tide is up) and then wait a few hours for the water to drop leaving the boat high and dry. Simple.

But the tides don’t live by my schedule. I have to be there to put the boat on and take it off and I am not keen on getting up at three in the morning to do one or the other. If I wait til Friday (the tide schedule ‘moves’ every day by approximately 45 minutes to one hour), I can do it all at civilized times. Ergo – Friday is the new prediction for launch.

I have plenty to do in the meantime from re-rigging the fuel lines to reconnecting the electrics but even those simple chores are made near impossible when the seas are flipping your boat four feet up and down while it is tied to the dock.

Friday may be optimistic.

My friend and neighbour, John, is always ‘up’ for work and chores, the more wretched and miserable, the better. John is one of those guys who likes to keep busy, dirty and ‘pushed’ to the limits both physically and in testing one’s ingenuity. Add sweat, blood, tears and lots of grease and pithy expletives and it simply does not get any better for him. And so, yesterday’s getting of the outboard was something he had been looking forward to. John and Jorge joined us at the end-of-the-road.

Sometimes I am one with a person, but this is definitely not one of those times. John’s work/pleasure/interest ratio is in direct opposition to mine but, of course, I am willing to exploit the hell out of his when it suits my purpose. Mine is so off the charts, it is unexploitable.

The downside, you would think, is that it should cut both ways – when he wants help with something grim and horrible, I should be there. Hah! I’m not that stupid! It is a small peninsula but I know the nooks and crannies well. And, even when I am there (no avoiding some things), he still attacks the job so that I am usually just an appreciative bystander. More like a recording secretary now that I see how this is coming out.

Anyway, when the going gets really tough, John likes to go it alone. Mind you, when the going gets cushy and soft and there is plenty to eat and drink, I am happy to share so it is not all bad for him. He eats well here. But I’d prefer to keep my sweat where it is, thank you very much. And I have suffered enough blood loss working as little as I do. If I worked like John, I’d be dead.

It is pouring when we get there. John is happy with that. We get the boat to the beach but the tide is where the bottom shallows off and we can’t get in as close as I should like. No problem. John wades in and half lifts the boat closer. I jump out, get the truck and back it down the hill. We unload the shopping leaving the engine for last. Then, wiggling and jiggling, we get it out of the back of the truck and onto the transom. Things went pretty smoothly, actually.

Typically, when undertaking something simple like getting six, light two-by-fours off the roof of the SUV, we encounter a knot we can’t untie, or the boat motor just threw a prop or it happens to be the time we slip while loading and get fully immersed in the sea. There is no such thing as a simple job – they all have challenges and not all challenges can be met easily although, it seems, that they can all be met eventually – so far, anyway.

The motor came down on the transom nicely but the holes in the engine bracket did not align with the previously drilled holes for the old Evinrude. That meant that the motor had to be tied on with ropes. So, we did that. Then we hooked back up to the little boat and headed home.

And the sea was getting up. A big storm was coming in.

We got back to the dock before all hell broke loose and tied up. The boats started bucking and bronking against their tethers. But they would be fine. It was the tied-on motor that threatened to leap off it’s tentative perch and sink into the black hole that formed the magnet for all things non buoyant just off the dock. So, another few lashings were applied and we went in to get warm and dry.

I checked on things later. They were still there.

The point? There isn’t one, really. People often ask, “What do you do all day?”

“Nothing, really. Just ‘stuff’. Seems to take a lot of time, tho. You know, getting the shopping, checking on things, tying up boats………..I dunno……………just stuff. But we need John to help with most of it. ”

A few months back, my outboard (an old Evinrude 45) got wet feet. A pneumonia of the mechanical kind spread upwards and the resulting congestion blew the head and did irreparable damage. It was junked.

Sometimes I feel one with my engine and this was one of those times.

But I am not yet destined for that great salvage yard in the sky and so the hunt for its replacement was begun. Last week I found a good used Honda 50 and bought it. The 250 pound, awkward shaped apparatus was deftly put in to the back of the Pathfinder by two burly, monosylabic mechanics under Sally’s supervision. “Hey! Shouldn’t that motor be sitting on it’s other side. What with the oil filler tube being where it is and all……?”

Wondering who the hell he was dealing with he replied, “Yes, maám. You are right. C’mon, Charlie, let’s take it out again and turn it around.”

Sal’s good. I arrived after doing the paperwork and payment, we then proceeded to fill the rest of the back with steer manure (bagged) and a couple of totes and a cooler full of groceries. We stopped by the wine store and picked up five boxes of wine and then stopped at the hardware store for sundries, the Japanese store for gyoza and frozen fish and then we added a couple of 50 pound bags of dog food together with two 40 pound frozen-but-raw-meat boxes of dog food added later. I guess we were carrying about five hundred to 600 pounds in the back of the SUV.

“Not as much of a load this trip. Just as well since we are using the little boat. And it is kinda blowy. Those clouds look bad.”

“We should be good. It is blowing all right but it’s a Nor-wester. We are going with it. No freeboard to speak of, tho. Glad the dogs aren’t with us.”

“I think – to be on the safe side – we’ll leave the motor in the car until I have the big boat in the water. Come back then. May as well leave the steer manure, too.”

“Good idea”.

It’s been four days and everything is still in the parking lot. We’ve been busy. The big boat got it’s bottom painted yesterday and the holes I had addressed earlier were sealed up. It should float now. Later today, we’ll lash it against the little boat and, like a tug with a barge, head over to the other island to get the stuff.

The technique is to drive the car down the hill and over the beach to the water’s edge. Then we get everything out and into the big boat leaving the engine for last. When that is done, we spin the boat around so that it is stern-to and then we ‘wiggle’ the motor out of the back and then tip it onto the close-at-hand stern. With it weighing more than me that means the placing and tipping points we choose are critical.

We can do this. Once it is on, we tighten it on using the convenient but largely useless hand-tighteners and the little boat Siamese tugs it back to the house where I will spend a bit of time bolting it on and hooking up gas and electrics.

Should get done by tomorrow at the very latest. ‘Course we will have to get the manure and stuff up today.

It is not much of a chore, really. Just a shopping trip. With a bit of boat maintenance interrupting us and the sheer bloody weight of everything. But we had to do other chores, too, like take apart the chainsaw winch for the umpteenth time, do some volunteer work, write some stuff up for a friend, entertain two separate parties and keep the dogs and homestead humming along all at the same time.

Not to mention Sal’s making every meal from scratch and doing so to a whole raft of new recipes.

A woman’s work is never done, eh? Despite my scheduling and best efforts at supervision, Sal seems to be falling behind more and more these days. But, you know, yelling doesn’t really help, does it? Mind you, she also worked the garden and cleaned the woood stove, replacing all the firebrick. I should cut her some slack, I guess. I’ll lighten up.

Her annual review is coming up in a few weeks, anyway. I hope she gets a good report, don’t you?

In theory, I work every Wednesday renovating the old Quonset hut up on the community grounds with a bunch of old geezers. I say, “in theory”, because we don’t go in if it is cold, snowy, too rainy or we are busy doing something else. It is not a job so much as a pastime (we pass-the-time semi-constructively). Nobody showed up the last three weeks. Too cold. Our working policy is: if it’s not fun, don’t do it!

It should come as no surprise that we have been working on (and off) the Q-hut for about a year now. We are almost done. Kinda. Fer sure by 2012.

We are slow for more reasons than weather delays and the desire for fun. We are all a bit eccentric, it seems. Independent. Lone wolf-types with a bit of extra ‘wolf’ thrown in now and then. Makes for interesting team dynamics.

In actual fact, each guy is a great guy and has a lot to offer. But each also has their own style and, at our ages (everyone is 60 plus except maybe a couple of 55 year-olds)that style is not particularly social or team-oriented nor is it necessarily even similar to another guy’s style. Their urban counterpart encounters dozens of people a day. Our guys encounter dozens of people, too, but it takes three months to hit those numbers. You can lose a little on the tact and diplomacy scale that way.

But the real rift in our cohesion is the simple fact that everyone but me is hard-of-hearing, deaf-as-a-post or somewhere in between. I am the leader-of-sorts for no other reason than I can hear.

So, if Bill says something like, “Hey, isn’t it time for lunch?” and no one answers, it is because no one heard him but me. So, knowing Bill wants to stop and have lunch, I go around and yell at everyone, “HEY!! LUNCHTIME!!”

Everyone thinks I am the boss.

The truth is: each guy is more skilled, equipped, experienced and knowledgeable than me by either a reasonable amount or by a country mile. One of the Dougs builds boats (that look great!) and starts by heading off into the forest to cut the tree down for the wood he is going to use! Another guy machined up his own bearings for his diesel! A third…………well, as I have said before; these guys can do just about everything a homesteader needs doing.

Except talk.

Well, they can talk. Of course. They just aren’t too used to it. When you head into the forest to get your boat building materials, you do so at the cost of conversation at the very least. Who ya gonna talk to?

Throw in deafness and you have a bunch of eccentric semi-deaf-mutes trying to ‘work together’. It’s not easy.

Well, actually it is easy. They are a lot of fun. I like Q-hut days. I just have to remember to look at each guy directly, over pronounce my words at a high volume and look like the boss.

The ones who can hear the best think I am weird when I do that.

I told you we are all a little eccentric.

As everyone who reads this blog and/or who knows us already understands, I am a huge fan of my wife. It is as it should be. She is the greatest and, employing some sort of weird angel-like magic, getting greater every day. I am very lucky. Yesterday – though not an extraordinary day – reminded me of that in an amusing-to-me kind of way.

I cut the logs for hauling up the hill in 10-12 foot lengths and that weigh no more than 500 pounds each (estimated). Hemlock weighs the most (when wet) and Cedar the least so the lengths have to vary a bit. I aim for 400-500 pounds per log because ol’ Sal only weighs about 120-125 pounds. It is all muscle and sex appeal but it just doesn’t add up to much heft. And her heft to the log’s weight has to be in the right ratio. The block and taykle gives her (theoretically) a four to one advantage so her weight is just enough to lift the log.

Most times the weights are balanced or, sometimes by mistake (mine), in the logs favour. That is where the fun begins. Sal will pull and pull and the log will slowly lift. Part of it is still on the ground or in the water and so, by pulling it up by one end, she gets an added weight advantage. In the initial pulls only. And she needs all the help she can get.

Yesterday we were doing the logs for the first time this year and I guess my estimating was not ‘dialed in’ as accurately as it should have been. She started with a particularly heavy Hemlock. My guess: about 3% heavier than she can pull.

After pulling in the slack on the rope I could see the rope tightening and the choked end of the log lifting a bit. I usually watch from on high to make sure things work out. And I watched as the log lifted higher. The higher it went, the more weight was transferred to the lifting rope and taykle. At one point, before the log was raised high enough to clear the entanglements on the hill, it seemed that a ‘stand-off’ had been reached. Sally was pulling with all she had and the log was not budging.

When that happens, Sal gets pretty stubborn. She is going to lift that log, she is the one in control , she knows that she is the Bull o’the Woods!

God help anyone or any log that won’t do as it is told!

She takes as high a reach on the rope as she can and then lifts her entire weight off the ground. The log moves upwards slightly. Not releasing the rope at all, she begins to bounce the log and herself to some sort of jolly jumper rhythm and, with each log bounce up, she tries bouncing herself down. This little bit of applied mechanical physics adds another five pounds or so to her weight and the log moves up and up a couple of inches at a time.

She keeps up this Church-bell-ringer-style strategy while she and the log slowly rotate on the the spot. Sometimes she is hanging just a foot off the ground and sometimes, after a half-rotation, she is hanging five or six feet off the ground. Swinging with a 500 pound log pressed into her face, she is suspended by a rope and holding her entire weight in her hands and arms.

This whole process is all done on an inclined slope, as I said before. With a bit more bouncing she can sometimes rotate back to solid ground.

When the log is as high as she can get it, she has to get to her feet again (slipping slowly down the rope sometimes) and then ‘tie off’ the end of the pull-rope to somewhere on the log so that it stays in place.

Like an experienced ‘whistle-punk’ she wraps the excess rope, ties it to the log and then, wildly circling her arm over her head to indicate that I should start the ‘wind-up’, she moves to safety.

I am grinning from ear to ear as I start the winch.

As a rule, I am not a sunshine-seeking guy. I prefer the shade and I have no problem with light rain – makes the air smell clean.

I am generally uncomfortable on hot, bright August days. Hurts my eyes. Burns my skin. Makes me sweaty. I associate hot sunny days with mosquitoes and the constant seeking of ‘cool and wet’. That is a drag. I actually enjoy the cold, brisk, windy days and, for me, that is the best kind of weather. Makes me feel alive, alive-o.

Spring and Fall are my favourite seasons.

I mention this because the last two days have been glorious. And they were sunny and warm. And I liked it. I think this unusual-for-me feeling is because of what seemed like an extra long winter. You’d think I’d be used to that, living in Canada but it’s different now.

When I lived in the city, I went from one climate controlled building to another by way of a climate controlled car. It could be snowing, sleeting or freezing. It could be pouring. It could be windy. Whatever. My exposure to it was minimal. I really didn’t care about the weather. Not a bit.

Not so out here. Out here, you are either deeply involved with the weather or hunkered down and staying put and watching it. Weather here is, of course, like the weather the city dwellers experience but it just feels like it is more so.

And so yesterdays and today’s Spring-like days were much more appreciated than ever before. Out here, I can tell you the day Spring arrived. It was yesterday. It was intense.

Yesterday we started to pull up logs from the lagoon. The logs come up by way of the ‘highline’ I installed a few years ago. We run a block and taykle down the line on a winch cable and haul the logs up the 35 degree incline for about 125 feet. Sal ‘sets the choke’ on the log at the bottom of the hill, pulls one end of it in the air and then I run the winch and unhook it when it arrives at the top.

Each ten-to twelve foot log takes about five minutes to ‘choke and lift’, five minutes to winch and another five minutes or so to unhook and roll out of the way. If we work hard, we can do four an hour.

We need between 45 and 60 such logs every year. Somewhere around 750 cubic feet or three cords. With ‘finding and salvaging’, wrangling and herding and tying up, the above-described highline work and then the cutting, splitting and stacking, it takes about 100 man/woman-hours. At $10 an hour, it therefor costs us (in theory)$1000.00 in labour to get our wood in. Mind you, we work slow, we stop a lot and we spread it out over months. If we lived in town and bought from a local wood-guy, 3 cords would not likely cost $600.00.

Interesting.

We are, at the same time as ‘getting the wood in’, putting in the garden and I am also doing some needed boat maintenance. None of that is much of a workload but, of course, there are the inevitable stripped threads that have to be replaced or re-cut with a die. There is the reluctant winch engine, the broken cable, the sealant that won’t set up (or which set up in the tube) and that sort of thing. Every two hour job takes us 6 hours. Two hours to prepare for it, two hours to do it and two hours to clean up but that includes two, maybe three tea-breaks and looking for stuff.

It is like we are unionized and working to rule except when we take extra breaks.

Tomorrow is supposed to be another nice day. Sunny and warm. I am looking forward to it.

Last time we were in town, I bought a mini oxy-propylene torch kit. It’s used for cutting and brazing. I think you can weld thin materials as well. I have no idea, really. I got it because it is one of those things out here that a real man should have in his workshop. John has one.

John’s is a real one. Man-sized. Big tanks. Scary flames. He whips it out, fires it up and dials in a perfect blue flame and then fabricates up a new part for his transistor radio or whatever. He never cuts or burns anything but what he is aiming at. He let me try it once and I seared the back of my left hand when lighting it and then, aiming it away from me while I examined the burn, almost set his woodpile on fire. I decided right then and there that neither John nor I could afford to have me learn this stuff on his equipment and in his workshop. If someone is going to die-by-BBQ, it should be me. Alone(maybe with the right sauce).

So, I bought one. It is little. Girl-sized, if you will. I figure to go out, fire it up and melt a few things that shouldn’t be close to an open flame, cut a few things that don’t need cutting and try to stick a few things that have no future together. In other words, ‘mess about’ while I try to get a handle on this thing.

I don’t have to be good. I just have to ‘feel’ as if I can do this. Then I can leave it alone and simply hope that I never have to reconfirm the feeling. Especially in front of anyone. In a way, it is about facing one’s insecurities. In a way, it is brave and pathetic all at the same time. In a way, it is a stupid waste of time and money. One thing is for sure: it’s a man-thing.

When I was young, I would play sports and keep at it until I was no longer picked last on a team. And that was good enough. I played chess and kept at it until I had, at the very least, memorized the names of all the pieces and how they were to move. I played and soundly defeated my young children just to hone my chess skills. I drove my car too fast (but not tooo fast). I kissed girls that were not keen on the experience. And, generally speaking, pushed my (in)abilities to the mildly uncomfortable stage in as many areas of human activity as I could. Getting good at something was not the goal. Being familiar with it was.

And, anyway, I was never really into hard training. Sweating and suffering suck. No pain, no gain is just stupid.

As a consequence of this somewhat superficial approach to learning and skill building, I can do a lot of things at a D or C- level. So, I call myself a trivial generalist with inadequate skills but with still enough to register really low on the scale.

Not even a Jack of all trades. Nowhere near a master of even one. I am like an idiot/savant with all the savant in the eclectic variety of where I am but an idiot.

Works for me.

But that is not the point. The key word for me is the word ‘all’. I need to get my fingers cut, burned, crushed and scarred in the pursuit of as many exercises as I can. In that way, I can always say, “Hey, I may not know how to use an Oxy-Propylene torch but at least I have one! I am pretty sure I know how to fire it up. Let’s get it out and start from there.”

Most people don’t even have one.

The effect of that very powerful statement of fact is somewhat diluted by my increasing reliance on Sally to tell me where these things are. Still, I have the tool and she knows where it is!

This sort of mini-macho thing plays better in the urban cul-de-sac than it does out here where the guys say, “I can help you with those logs on Thursday, if you want. The plane is bringing in the parts for my D-9 Cat and I’ll have the engine and transmission back together by Wednesday night. Gotta weld up a new blade and machine a couple of new bearings, too, but I could be at your house by noon, if you want? Just gotta load ‘er on the barge and I could be here for coffee. You gonna be up by then or would you prefer I come later?”

Pretty impressive stuff. I’m trying to keep up. The mini-oxy-propylene torch kit is just a start.

Until I feel good about it, anyway.

Had to go to town yesterday. There was a bit of concern about getting in. The storm had passed but it dropped a lot of snow and the logging road keeps its snow long after it melts everywhere else. As we drove out, we passed three abandoned vehicles where the owners had decided to walk in (or out) and keep going without the aid of a vehicle. Not an easy choice to make when you are looking a long, hard, cold trek in the face at the end of a busy day.

Case in point: A friend of mine underwent an operation in Comox. He’s mid 60’s and the surgery left him bedridden for three days. Big wound. When he recovered enough, he came home. He, his wife and their two children arrived at Quadra island late in the day. They needed to take their vehicle to the top of the island so the mother and children drove it up while my freshly-sliced-and-diced friend loaded the boat and headed out to take the boat up the coast to meet them.

The car-part of the family got stuck about 3/4 of the way there. So they abandoned the car and hiked the rest of the way in the dark. She has a bad leg and hip and walks with a cane. It is not a minor limp. Nothing seems to stop her but the hike in the snow in freezing darkness up and down hills made the going a bit more difficult to say the least.

My friend waited at the dock with worry and a sopping bandage for an extra two hours or so before he saw them coming down out of the forest.

They packed up and headed across to their truck. Their property is on the other side of the island and so they need an old ‘beater’ truck to get back and forth. Battery was dead. Too many days away. Too cold.

So, there they stood, wet, cold and hungry about six miles from home facing yet another trek in the snow. My buddy looked over, saw a neighbours truck parked there and, knowing the neighbour wasn’t needing it for a day or so, he hot-wired it and brought his family home in time to start the fire, get dinner on and in and change the bandages.

After that had been done, he called me to answer a message I had left earlier to see if he was OK after the operation.

“Yeah. Hey, I’m fine. Gotta go back, tho, ’cause they kinda botched it but they’ll give ér another whack in six months when they think I am strong enough to do it again. No, we’re fine. No problems. How are you?”

We talked for a bit and then, in bits and pieces, their story getting home came out. “Well, if you are going in to town, you might wanna check on the road condition. We got stuck last night and had to leave the car. Wife and kids hiked in. I am going in today with #1 son to get the car.”

“But, but, but…………like, you just had your guts opened up and it is freezing and there is a huge storm forecast! You are mad to even consider it.”

“Nah! We’ll be fine. Boat is good. #1 son can hike in from the shore and drive it up. I can get back to wait for him. We’ll have to return neighbouors car, anyway. And I have a new battery to put in the truck. So long as there aren’t too many trees down, we’ll be fine. I’ll have to give #1 the chainsaw ’cause that road is always strewn with fallen trees in these winds but he can do that.”

The really interesting part: none of that information would have been forthcoming had I not mentioned that I might be going into town the next day. A story from which I would have written a novel and a screenplay starring Harrison Ford and Susan Sarandon was considered ‘just another day in the life’.

And this story is like a Johnson and Johnson ad for kids band-aids compared to what happened to my other buddy a year and half ago. That one truly is an epic film waiting to be made.

They breed ém tough out here.