There are not just a few academics and journalists out there studying us.

Well, by ‘us’ I mean those of us who endeavour to live off the grid.  Seems we are considered numerous and peculiar enough these days to study and analyze.  Not like your basic lab rats, so much, but more like something a bit more unusual, like lemmings, perhaps, or Kangaroo rats.  We ‘bunch up’ some (enough to be considered social animals) but are still individual enough to warrant being different from the larger species.  We off-the-gridders are clearly a sub-species of homo sapiens to the academics and they are trying to understand us.

I like it.  Mostly.  It is fun.  Firstly, I like getting the attention without actually being one of the studied rats.  You have to understand: off-the-gridders want their privacy but everyone likes attention.  I do, anyway.  So how do we reconcile that?  Get a professor at a university to study other off-the-gridders and then bask in the feedback and limelight by association. 

Kinda sick, I confess, but fun. 

Professor Phillip Vanini of Royal Roads University in Victoria is, it seems, a recognized observer: (the following is a series of excerpts from an article in the Calgary Herald by Jamie Kormanicki in interview with Professor Vanini)

Back to normal.  Life is good.  January 03 and all is well, quite quiet on the western front. Quiet on the eastern, too.  And north and south.  Blessed silence is the norm.  You can just hear the occasional wing beats of the birds flying by.

Well, Sal is on the computer upstairs.  The rhymic thumpity thump of her hitting keys is the loudest noise by far, followed by the crunchity of her repositioning in her chair now and then.  Me?  I am downstairs just listening.  And thinking of art pieces.

As you know, I am building a deck (with too much blood and tears but not enough sweat to be getting anywhere right at this time – but it will happen).  The deck will eventually accommodate my studio.  I want to call it a workshop but Sal is trying to encourage my ‘artistic side’ and she thinks that if we call it a studio I will use it in that manner.  She may not want to do much in the way of actual construction but she is willing to support me in any psychological way she can.

“Just think, sweetie.  When you have your studio you can come out here and make stuff, paint and do sculptures.  Oooh………it will be so much fun!”

“I am not so sure.  I did artsy stuff mostly when I was young trying to attract hippy chicks who liked that sort of guy.  I also did sports for those athlete-preferring girls.  Neither tactics were overly successful.  And I just lied about stuff for all the others.  I was never any good at any of it.  Mind you, my lying got better and better.  I was at the peak of my deceit skills when I met you.  Hmmmm…..maybe that is why I write, eh?  You know, to keep the fabrication skills up?  Fallen for anything lately, have you?”

“You are not as good a liar as you might think.  Trust me.  And anyway, you are not half bad at some of that artsy stuff.  I like the paddles you paint and you still have some soapstone under the house.  C’mon, let your inner Michelangelo out.”

“And there is the added benefit of my being out of the house for hours on end, eh?  You gotta like that!”

“Denying is lying.  So, I admit it.  But I still like to see the artwork.  Honest.  Getting you the hell out is just a bonus, I swear.”

“Well, maybe.  I admit that I am looking at that rock under the house in peculiar ways.  I am starting to see something in it.  Maybe by the time I get the workshop……oops, studio…….done, I will be inspired.”

“Great!  And while you are at it, why not install a bit of heating for the colder months.  Maybe a small bathroom?  I’d also suggest a modest kitchenette for making a bit of tea, ya know?  You like tea.  Are you capable of constructing a Murphy bed?  Just askin’?” 

“What can I do to help?” asked J.

“Well, we have a couple of females here that need to go back and then there are all the heads that have to be tossed.  Wanna go down to the beach and free the mamas and the heads?” 

(Sounds a bit like a 70’s rock group, don’t you think?)

One of our guests went to the beach with a couple of prawn-mamas in one hand and a small container of prawn heads in the other.  The rest of us were back at the house cleaning up after prawn-ripping.  We were putting the tails in small bags and splitting them up. 

If you come across a female with eggs, you let her go.  Everyone else gets their head ripped off.  Kinda like life-in-general…….. 

She came back a few minutes later.  “Wow!  All hell broke loose!  I tossed the heads and freed the mamas and a flock of gulls came swooping in followed by a big eagle.  And then a huge sea-lion cruised by watching it all while Fid checked him out.  And then the ravens came in to see what all the fuss was about.  Sheesh!  One minute it was quiet and calm and then there was a wildlife melee going on.  Pretty neat.”

“Wash your hands.  Eat your breakfast.  You have to get moving if you are going to catch your ferry.  We gotta leave in 15 minutes.”

“I can’t believe it.  We were here almost three whole days and I was sure I was gonna spend most of it reading.  And I haven’t read hardly anything.  Is it always so busy ’round here?”

“It is with ol’ Sal running the show.  If it was me, you’d have read and then napped.  Maybe a few extra snacks.  But that gal is a hiking, kayaking, prawn-setting maniac.  Here it is January second and you are out in her boat pulling traps before breakfast.  Yesterday was climbing the nearest mountain. Day before that, hiking in the forest. The woman is mad!  Mad, I say!”

“Well, we had a lot of fun.  Thanks.  It was a great New Years.  Just great.”

And so it was.

Our last guests of 2012 and our first guests of 2013 have parted.  It was good.  It would be even better if they came up to settle in the area or, at least, came by more often.  Being with good friends is a great way to start off the new year.

When your basic inspiration for writing is to compare off-the-grid living to urban living it seems a basic requirement that you actually know something about the two lifestyles.  And I do.  Or, better put, I used to.

I am not so sure anymore.

It is true that I lived urban for over 55 years.  And hardly regretted a minute of it until the last ten or so (even then I couldn’t put my finger on it).  It is also true that I used to think that camping was simply a form of masochism-in-dirt-with-bugs and that everything not a Xmas tree was likely just more dirt and rocks with a bear thrown in for colour and mosquitoes for additional aggravation.  I didn’t really appreciate the nuances of nature.  Not at all.

But, as you know, I do now.  Now I am a country guy.  Not a particularly good country guy but I am learning.  And I am enjoying the learning even more than the actual rocks and Xmas trees.  I am still mostly a cerebral country guy.  Real country guys kill things and don’t shower.  I don’t expect I’ll ever get that country. Yuck!

And that, I thought, would be the basic story: country enlightenment for the still-urban-afflicted.  Poor innocents learning from the overly enthusiastic newbie-of-the-glen.

Now, I am not so sure.  It is true that I am learning country and it is also true that I am willing to share it but I have learned that the urban playing field is changing faster than ever.  I may not have enough of an accurate perspective on the city anymore to do a fair comparison.  The city is moving too fast for my comparisons to be worth the pixels I am expending.

This is a surprising turn of events.

For instance: I really hadn’t grasped how ‘smart phones’ had infiltrated modern life.  Of course I knew of them.  I see them.  I have even used one or two.  But I was somewhat shocked to see them everywhere all the time when I was last in Hong Kong.  It was amazing to see millions of people associating but NOT in person.  Millions of people removed from one another despite being pressed together like sardines.  I thought it weird then.  But I thought it an Asian phenomenon.

It is not.

Last night six mature (over 50) people had a quiet New Years Eve going on at a remote island up the BC coast.  Think- Dan’l Boone and friends plus dogs.  No one else around within a five mile radius.  Halfway through – a cell phone rang.  Two of the people made automatic moves for their hip pockets.  Like gunfighters in a saloon.  Both resisted the urge.  We all looked at each other.  I could almost hear the theme song from the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.  Doo dee dum!  Eyes whipped around.  Hands remained frozen.  And then they both decided to ignore it.

Conversation resumed.

The ghost cell phone rang again…………………….doo dee dum………the two phone owners locked eyes.

“You on call?”

“I am always on call.” (ooooh…shades of Clint Eastwood)

And I was thinking:  I am never on call!  Hell, no one even calls me regular-like!  I am no longer one of them.  I am different.

So then we had a quick chat about smart phones and their features and ‘what kind do you have’ and ‘do you have wi-fi here’ and all that sort of thing.  And I was thinking………..”It is New Years eve.  Nobody is a doctor here.  And yet, my friends are still in touch.  They are still in touch even though they can’t see another light for miles and they are not needed by anyone.  They are connected despite being remote.  But, more to the point – this is now normal!”

I know, I know……….there is not a helluva lot of difference between that and  e-mail.  I know that.  But it struck me that the real difference was one of altered realities. I am truly living in a different reality.

I came to live out here and was eventually pulled back ‘down to earth’ from my previous madding crowd mind-set by the sheer physical-ness of what my life had become.  From not actually even seeing them before I moved up here, I had come to know and like the different rocks and Xmas trees.  I had even come to know that not all Xmas trees are alike.  Not all rocks are alike.  Even the dirt was different in different places.  I was like a young Inuit being taught the various kinds of snow!

I had come to feel a new reality and I was quite amazed at how insulated I had been from all this.  But part of that new awareness of the country was by way of a new awareness of the city.  Urban, for me, was starting to look more like fantasy.  It was, of course, more managed.  Less wild.  It was just more artificial in some kind of way.  The city no longer struck me as real.  Not really real.  Not physical.  Not hands-on.

But now I think that the last ten years has made it even more unreal.  It is now even more invested in fantasy.  People in the city are more insulated and, in a way, more isolated from the real and present by yet another ‘grid’, yet another way of demising, yet another way of insulation.  They seem to live in layers of veils.  Now they can actually live on and in their pixelated screens.

“So what!?  Modern life.  Technology.  Things change.  Life evolves.  Get over yourself, Dave!”

OK.  Sorry.  But it is just that all this technology is mostly a kind of magic that obfuscates what we really want out of life.  I think.  We want to communicate with each other and so we develop communication devices and, in so doing, seem to end up not communicating as well as before.  I would argue that a tweet is not as communicative as an e-mail which is not as communicative as a phone call which, in turn, is not as communicative as a conversation.  Somehow our new, magic technology seems to be missing the point.

Like Monsanto misses the point of agriculture.

I guess what I am saying is this: technology is, for most of us, a form of magic.  And a weird by-product of this magic is that we are living more and more in a fantasy world.  Coming out here is, I think, more real.  More of a grounding in a personal-sized reality, anyway.  Maybe it is just the physicalness of my new lifestyle but I think it is more than that.  I think it is the physicalness on the one hand coupled with the opposite force of increasing the fantasy on the other.

One thing is for sure – one feels more alive out here than one does staring at a screen in the city.  That has to mean something.  Doo dee dummmm……………doooodleeeee doooooooooo…………

This year is almost over.  Will be by tomorrow.  And so I really should do a review.  It’s what media do.  But, honestly, my year and the one before it would read mostly like an emergency ward medical record.  “How many band-aids?  How much blood loss?  Ooohh….that must have really hurt?”

I don’t think we need to spend any more time there, do you?

For some reason year-end tends to steer toward nostalgia and I am feeling a bit that way, I confess.  It might just be the arrival of our two friends who Sal and I have known for over forty years.  We lived on sailboats when we were younger and they were liveaboards, too.  Our neighbours.  Been friends ever since.

But, more than that was the call I just took as I was writing this.  My father’s best friend, John, called. He was missing my dad (long deceased) and I benefit from a weird form of hereditary closeness from that old frendship.  John is 90. And so we spoke for awhile, cracked jokes, caught up and made promises to get together next year.

I dunno……….there is some kind of magic in all that, don’t you think?

But that is not what an off-the-grid blog is about.  Let me give you an update: Sal and guests are out hiking in the woods.  Maybe they’ll set a prawn trap before they go.  Took the dogs.  Except for the phone, I am alone.  Quiet and living without expectations for the first time in weeks!  Who woulda thunk that solitude would be one of my best friends as I got older?

I don’t need a lot of nothing but a little now and then is quite delightful.

Tonight, a six-person New Years Eve party is planned.  Subdued, I hope.  We’ll keep the noise down. But, ya never know out here.  Last year a passing boater had her motor quit and so, in the middle of the evening, a dark, wet, somewhat distressed figure appeared at the door and made the party larger by one.  She ate and drank so much she promised to break down again this year.

I’ve been looking ever since on Craigslist for a cheap used 9.9hp hp outboard I could buy just in case.  I swear my intentions are good.  Just being helpful.  I swear.

Another neighbour was having battery-inverter-power problems yesterday and I was summoned to commiserate and wonder alongside him.  We hmméd and haaa’d and scratched our heads and came up with things to do but, really, if your batteries and inverter are down, whatever you do will take hours of genset charging to check.  He’s been running the genset since then.  So, we’ll see.

Weather is calm.  Relatively warm.  A bit of sun now and then.  Pretty good for the last day in December, actually.

I wonder what 2013 will bring?

None of the following should be read as complaints.  I don’t have any.  But I am trying to convey what living off the grid is like and, of course, some it is chores and routine.  To tell the story as it truly is means including some stuff that may suggest complaint.  Honestly, it is not.  We live in paradise.  And I live with an angel.  Bottom line: it does not get any better than this. 

Opened the water system, serviced the genset, turned on the propane and lit the appliances.  Everything was working again and tickety-boo (although it is amazing how inneffective a pilot light is when the appliance is ice cold – it seems that pilot lights help keep the gas warm and working better, too, as well as being a convenience for lighting).

Lit the fire in the stove.  Stoked it up and made it rage.  Stove thermometer soon read 600 degrees (a hot stove helps heat the house of course but it also ‘blows out’ any creosote in the chimney so it is a useful thing to do every now and then). 

“Pretty chilly.  But we should be warm and toasty in a few hours”.

Batteries were good at 49.6.  Always a good sign.

Temperature inside was 4 degrees C.  It took over six hours to get the temperature up to 15C!!  The cold N’wester was just sucking the heat out.  Didn’t hit 20 til the next day.

And the next day was spent getting the boat back in the water, putting things away and finishing a few undone chores from before we left.  I’d estimate about three to fours work that, somehow, took all day.  Mind you, all wood (decks and docks) surfaces were pretty slippery from frost and slime and so we took our time doing everything that needed doing.  Plus we stopped for a few hot chocolates and that is a surprisingly time-consuming respite.

Getting home is a two-to-three day affair for us.  It is the traveling and shopping, of course, but it is also the re-establishment of systems, relaunching of boats and the putting-away of stuff.  I am still amazed at all this, this grand logistical exercise whenever we go anywhere.

We used to do this sort of travel-visit-thing in the city in minutes and hours.  Last minute preparing, racing for the car, tearing down the road and just making the event by seconds was the norm.  Now, of course, the logistics are huge and that last minute ‘scheduling-brinksmanship’ is just way too edgy, way too much of gamble, way too likely to fail.  Can’t do it.  We just need more time to do anything.  Extra days as opposed to extra minutes.

Being in our 60’s must be part of it, I guess.  That must be slowing us down some.  But it doesn’t seem that way.  It just seems like we are doing more, being more careful and detailed when we do it and, to be fair, stretching the chore sometimes to fill the time allocated (Or sometimes accelerating it because the ferry influences everything.  Race and just make it or take your time and get the next one?).  I might call it being sensible if I didn’t know the two of us better.  I think I will have to stick with just getting older.

Neighbour needed a ride over from end-of-the-road this morning.  Sal went.  We have guests arriving this afternoon.  I’ll go.  We don’t often get sleep-over-guests in mid winter.  Or New Years Eve guests.  My plan is to re-set the clocks four hours in advance.  We’ll celebrate the passing of 2012 at 8:00 pm and be in bed before ten.  No one will be the wiser, I am sure.

See?  You just have to plan and take your time and even New Years Eve can be handled! 

It’s 10:00 pm.  We are finally home!  A day of driving, stocking up, buying another boat, dropping it at the mechanics and getting ourselves out of the madding crowd and over the seas has taken the whole day.  Left the city at 8:00 a.m. and sat down, finally, at 10 p.m.  “Hey, Sal, it’s late.  Maybe time we turned in?  Sal?  Sal?”

She was asleep.  It was a tough week.  

We both love our families.  We have very good family.  Both of us.  Lovely.  Nice.  Good.  But this Xmas thing is getting out of hand.  I calculated that I drove an average of three hours a day for every day of festivities.  Definition of ‘festivities’?  Sitting bloated on a couch in a room too hot catching up on the lives of cousins and partners whose names I can’t remember.   

I was also full with turkey and stuffing and all the trimmings the whole bloody time.  I was outside walking around only for the time it took to walk from the last house to the car.  I actually enjoyed none of it.

And not one minute of it was spent in any way related to Christ’s birthday. Or anything else to do with religion, for that matter.  And we all tended to gluttony even tho everyone was ‘holding back’.  It is just that the activity-of-the-day is eating. “If they cook it and you come, then you have to eat it!” (WP KInsella – from an early unpublished novel: Field of Food) . And there is no question that we seemed to worship at false idols (Apple Ipods and smartphones for starters).  A lot of people focus on them at all times.  Not good.

Well, we were nice to each other.

It wasn’t all bad.  I did enjoy the people.  And we honoured our parents, like the bible says.  There may have been a bit of coveting going on but I didn’t see it.  There was no stealing, that is for sure. Murder?  Maybe a random thought or two.  Nothing out of the ordinary. Well, one brother-in-law is a bit too poised for Armageddon in my opinion but, other than that, no homicides are being planned.

And I confess that the first martini on the first night after a long day of driving is a real treat.  And the food over the next seven days is incomparable (volume and gastronomy).  But, what is also true is that it soon becomes too much.  Way too much.  Analogy : like taking a thirsty man out of the blazing desert and waterboarding him, ya know?  I mean; that first bit of water is great!  But, like, couldn’t we spread the water (love and the turkey) out a bit?

I’ve been saying this ‘humbuggy’ thing now for a few years.  But I haven’t done much to fix it.  Don’t know how.  How do you tell people you love that you are not going to ‘bother‘ to visit them at Xmas?  Doesn’t sound very nice, really.  Does it?

But, when I tentatively brought the subject up, just about everyone felt much the same way.  The Xmas thing isn’t working for anyone.  We need to change it.  What we need here is real leadership!

I’m chicken.

And, anyway, the women seem to run Xmas.  Mostly.  I drive a lot and eat a lot  but that is largely my only contribution.  Well, I buy the tools if they are planned to be in the gift inventory.  And booze.  I buy booze.  Merry Xmas!  I am just not in a position to take the lead on this.  It has to be a woman.  “So, Sal……………maybe we should, you know, convert to Islam or maybe Judaism so that we can get all ‘uppity’ about Xmas and then not have to ‘do it’?  Waddya think?”

“I think you have been saying this for years.  And I am not wearing a hijab or burka!  And just because you are circumcised does not mean you are half Jewish!  So just suck it up!”

“Hey!  Was it good for you?”

“No!  It goes on too long and it is just a lot of work, really.  We are still talking about Xmas, right?”

“Look…..we could just leave in November and come back in January.  Or, if we can’t afford that, we could just say we did.  Who’s gonna come up here and check?  We could send a Xmas e-mail ostensibly from Guatemala or China, even.  We’ve been there.  We could fake it.  No one has to know.”

“Hmmm………..November to January, eh?  We could say we are volunteering at an orphanage or something, eh?  I mean, who would lie like that?  Who could be so mean-spirited?  So awful to family and orphans?  At Xmas, fer God’s sake!!??  You are horrible, you know that?  Despicable!  But, I must admit………….it just might work…………”

” I think I should go interview the turkey.” said Sal’s mum (85) as she rose slowly to her feet.

“For what position?” 

“Excuse me?” 

“Well, when interviewing, one expects that the interviewee has applied for something.  You know, in this case maybe the dinner centrepiece or perhaps, vice-centrepiece?  Maybe executive assistant to the centrepiece?”

“What are you going on about you silly fool?” 

“Who interviews a turkey?” 

“Well, I suppose it is an old term no longer in everyday use, now that you mention it. What a cheek!  As you will, then.  I will go and see to the turkey.  How’s that?” 

“Jolly good.”  It’s a tradition.  I tease Sal’s mum on being so veddy British.  She claims to be a Canajun, eh?”

I turn my head. 

“So when the natural disaster hits, eh, and like all the people are like starving and crazed with fear, like, waddya gonna do, eh?  Share your food?!  I don’t think so.  It’s judgment day, dude.  Time to break out the heavy artillery, man.  You are gonna have to kill people to keep your family safe, man.  I say ‘be prepared’.  So said my brother-in-law as we resumed our conversation on the pros and cons of having assault rifles.

“Well, t’is the season, isn’t it? Ya got your school massacres and all this time o’ the year.  Rapid-fire season, I guess you’d call it? “

“Exactly!  Get ’em before they get you!”

“Yeah.  Keep a happy thought.  But you make a very good point about the natural disaster.  Inevitable.   Articulate, too.   I’ll give you that.  So what are you recommending?  50 calibre heavy impact slugs or a storm of high velocity small rounds?  And, more to the point, does any of this stuff come on sale Boxing Day?”    .

And from across the room.  A cousin read out loud his party favour joke.  “What do you call a multi-storey pig pen? …………………………….. A styscraper!” 

” I don’t get it?”  Said Ellen, a niece somewhat reknown for not getting it.

“Why did the man sleep under his car?  ……………………………….He wanted to get up oily!” 

” I don’t get it” ……said Ellen.

“Why does a sea gull fly over the sea?  …………………….Because if it flew over the bay it would be a bagel!”

 ” I don’t get it”…….said Ellen

A somewhat familiar face approached.  “So how was your trip over?  Ferries crowded, eh?  Sailing wait?”

I smiled at the cousin going through the motions.  Nice in an obtuse-haze kind of way.   I have been coming down island for the last eight years instead of coming from Vancouver but, what the hell, eh?  Asking about the ferries is tradition.  I just said, “Yeah.  Pretty crowded.  But we had reservations.  We were good.” 

And so it was.  Sugar plums, egg nog, annual face/name recognition-testing and another family Christmas with relatives began…………Ho Ho Ho

A month or so ago, I bought those expensive, knubbly, macho-tread tires for the truck.  We needed them.  But they are proving to be the thin edge of a weird kind of wedge.

The slope at the end of the road that goes down to the shore is illegally steep and gravel-muddy.  It is a hard scrabble up and down – worse when wet and impassable with any kind of snow or ice.  Our old tires needed replacing anyway and I felt as if we needed better claws.  I bought BF Goodrich BIG BUTT GRABBERS (or something like that)….the kind that seem like they belong on WW2 jeeps or on trucks that work up north.  These tires bite!

And they give you a free ball-cap with them that you can wear backwards if you want.

Sally: “Wow!  I can’t believe it!  Consider those tires my Xmas present!”

“Yeah.  They are good, aren’t they?”

“I’ll say!  I beached the boat at the bottom of the hill and it was snowing and cold. I could hardly even see!  I hiked up the hill barely making it.  It was so slushy and wet.  Then I got the car and put ‘er in 4-wheel drive and crawled down the steep hill over the dug-out potholes and down to the beach.  I loaded the car and drove it backwards up the hill with the falling snow obscuring my vision.  But it went up like a cat!”

And that is how Sal managed to get all our stuff over to the other island the day before our departure.  She likes to pre-pack the car before we leave so that our departure in the morning is seamless.

We leave our car over on an adjacent island that has ferry access.  A neighbour gives us a lift over.  What with us and two dogs, it seems only considerate to spare them all the luggage and crap.  And in that way we just jump off with them hardly having to stop.

But, with my butt injury being exaggerated and exploited as fully as it is,  the loading job fell to Sal.  She is normally a bit hesitant about driving the hill in the snow. She thinks she may slide right into the sea.  When the tide is up in the winter months, it is a distinct possibility – one that has been proven in the past by overly brave and less-skilled drivers.  The conditions can be pretty extreme.

It is funny how the situation in which you live changes you.  I’d now like a bigger truck with bigger butt-grabbing tires.  I can now see the logic of a gun rack.  Having a barrel for fuel in the back makes sense, too.  I already wear big ol’ plaid shirt-jackets and heavy boots and I hardly ever shave.  I even play the harmonica a little – a little more if I have had a few drinks.  And I am glancing at banjos now and then, too.  Jeans, of course, are de rigeur and most of mine are ripped and stained.  Got two dogs, as well.  I may even add a twang to my speech and start spittin’.

I guess that is how pit bulls, tattoos and voting Republican happen…………..

But, in the meantime, the butt-grabbers are Sal’s Christmas present.  And mine?  She got us tickets to the Big Monster Truck rally, of course!!  Yee Haw!

Shopping ain’t easy out here (which is mostly a blessing) but it is definitely more interesting.

The regular shop is do-able enough, of course.  We go to town, buy cheese and wine and bolts and paint and then head home.  It has it’s logistical challenges but, basically, it is just like shopping in town – only more physical and time-consuming.  Usually more hurried, too.  A smidge more of an element of danger, too, I guess.  Especially in the winter.  But, still, our shopping is much like you’d think shopping out here would be like.

But not all shopping is ‘regular’ shopping.  Some needs have to be met by hunting farther afield.  And this is especially so with regards to many off-the-grid-type products such as pumps, winches, etc.  The 7/11 just won’t do it for for us.  In fact, in some cases, Home Depot won’t even do.  Believe it or not, Home Depot is too ‘lightweight’ for much of the stuff we need.

I can buy a shackle at Home Depot.  Maybe even get one that is designated 3/8″ (thickness of steel and pin) but, for me and my neighbours, 3/8″ is not a serious shackle.  Serious starts at 1/2″ and goes to 1″.  Even bigger shackles are made, of course, but we are not that serious.  Docks held by chains to the shore will be considered secure with a one-inch shackle.  The thing is: anything over swag-lamp specifications and Home Depot is inadequate for us.

So we have ‘accounts’ with companies that serve industry.  We all do.  And, in the spring and summer, it might even be argued that we shop more at such ‘industrial-level’ stores than we do at ‘normal’ stores.  Hell, sometimes I shop more at the scrap metal/salvage yard than I do at Save-On.

Another way to ‘try‘ to shop out here is by way of the Internet.  Natch.  But that doesn’t work like it does for urban people.  Shipping can be prohibitively expensive for us.  Sometimes artificially so.  Postage is crazy-expensive but sometimes the companies shipping charges make it even crazier.  Plus we can’t get a heavy object by mail because things come in by float plane and say, a two hundred pound winch with cable would be as much to deliver as it would be to buy.  More, in fact.

Good example: a neighbour wanted to ship a largish cardboard box that was fairly lightly packed to Toronto and the cost was going to be almost $500.  It didn’t get sent.

Another example: I ordered a small box of special tape from Toronto (24 rolls – in a box about the size of a couple of pounds of butter) and the shipping was $3.00 to Campbell River, $30.00 to our island.  The box of tape was $18.00.  We had it shipped to a friend in Campbell River who was good enough to bring it when he next came out to the island.

But, by far, the weirdest way to shop is by way of Craigslist or Kijiji or some other ‘net-based classified ads’.  That requires a lot of hoop-jumping.  You’d be stunned at how many times I have responded to an ad and told the seller that I live remote and can’t get there for a couple of weeks only to be met with silence or an e-mail accusing me of running some kind of scam.  It seems that, if a seller doesn’t understand where or why you live outside their neighbourhood, you are likely a crook trying to cheat them.  Very weird.

The counter to that, of course, is the seller who somehow relates to our situation and makes an effort to accommodate us.  I suppose it helps that I rarely dicker.  If I find something that I need for $100.00 and I am going to have to ask the seller to wait until I come to town in a few weeks, it is only fair to pay the going rate (given that it is close to fair in the first place).  So that and the fact that they can relate has made for some interesting transactions.

In one such case I bought a box of silicon bronze screws from a guy in Victoria.  But I wasn’t going down for months.  He was OK with that.  As it turned out my son was able to get over to his place a week or so later and the guy was so pleased with meeting him and the fact that he had sold his screws to a guy up the coast that he ‘threw in’ a few small tools to ‘sweeten the pot’.

Some people just ‘get it’.  And that is great.  Some people ‘get it’ and do something helpful just because and that is even more great.  And some people have been so good that we have become friends. Yes, Gail.  I am talkin’ about you.

And I am talkin’ about a few others, too.  Mountain Equipment Co-op is by far the best ‘big company’ for this.  Their shipping is accurate, prompt and no more expensive because we live remote.  In fact, their shipping costs are relatively low. There are a few other good ones but MEC stands alone as the best so far.

We have met some pretty nice people shopping on Craigslist for weird things.  It isn’t always perfect but the good ones are frequent enough to keep me going back.  In fact, I have to admit that I actually kinda like shopping this way.  Not a lot.   But a lot more than dragging my sorry self through malls.