Dinner out last night.  Jumped in the boat and took cheesecake and wine to the other side of the channel where P&M and their crew awaited us at anchor with a full-on turkey dinner ready.  It was great fun.

P&M have Canadian Shores, an 85 foot aluminum, ocean-going, fish boat with luxurious accommodation for crew (four) and guests (up to six or so).  What a boat!  They come up every year to prawn-fish and generally enjoy the area.  But, make no mistake, it is a working boat first.  They catch fish.

P has been a fisherman all his life and this boat is the ‘ultimate’. He fell in love with it and bought it last year and is now in the process of getting to ‘know the gal’ and find it’s rightful place in the food chain.  That place is going to be near the top, that is for sure.

They can go all the way to Hawaii in it if they had to.  They can easily travel all over the BC coast.  Last year, they took a BBC television crew up the coast looking to film wolves and other wildlife.  Ya wanna see the wildest parts of BC?  Book a charter on Canadian Shores.  http://www.vancouverseatours.com/departures.html

I am tempted to join him when he goes fishing for tuna.  Sheesh!  I must be losing my mind…..

I guess the point of this blog is simply to illustrate – once again – that life is different out here.  Going for dinner by boat to another boat is something Sal and I have done numerous times.  But arriving to an 85 footer with crew to assist with dock lines is somewhat unfamiliar.  I like it.

(Hmmmmmmmmm……..I may have to cultivate a whole new crop of friends…………starting at the RVYC, I guess…………..hmmmmmmm…………I wonder if any of them vote Conservative?) 

Guess I’ll have to stick with the motley flock of friends I already have that couldn’t get into the RVYC even if they had jobs in the kitchen!

Which reminds me…………I actually have friends that vote Conservative.  They would have voted for Thatcher, Regan and likely Mussolini, too.  But they are good people.  Really.  Deep down.  Somewhere.  I think.

This is how I rationalize it:

I said to one of my ‘corporate’ executive buddies who votes Conservative when he was complaining about Harper and his encroachment on our rights and freedoms as well as the sell-out of our resources, “Well, don’t beat yourself up too much.  You voted Conservative because you are conservative, right?  You hold traditional values and mores, right?  You think that, because you are conservative in your values, you should vote for people who call themselves Conservatives, right?”

“Well, yeah.  Of course.  Is that wrong?”

“Kinda.  The name Conservative doesn’t mean that they are conservative.  It is just a brand name.  It’s marketing.  It doesn’t mean anything except that they are smart enough to take a name that resonates with you.  But, the Liberals aren’t necessarily liberal.  The Greens are probably all sorts of shades of white through brown but I doubt that any one of them is actually green.  You can’t make voting decisions based on the brand name now, can you?  Do you really think that a bunch of neo-Fascists will call themselves that?  Not if they think about it and hire some marketing folks.”

“Oh, my God!  No wonder my party always disappoints me!”

“Yeah.  If you really are a conservative, you would have to vote Green now wouldn’t you?  It is they who promote conservation.  It is the Green Party that extols sustainability.  The current Conservatives promote non-sustainable exploitation of resources, they want to limit people’s rights and freedoms and they have no interest in the same values you seem to represent.  For instance, you may be as dumb as a stick but you are honest and you care about people.  You spend prudently and you work hard to help keep your family.  And you give to others.  You don’t even have a gun!  So what is it about jet-buying, oil-exporting, lying, manipulating and inconsiderate pigs-at-the-trough that you relate to?”

“Unh………I don’t relate to any of that.  But I am pro-business.  Doesn’t that make me Conservative?”

“Crooked, selfish, unethical and unsustainable business under Orwellian control?  If so, then I guess they are the ones for you.  Honest, sustainable, non-polluting, fairly-practised business…….?  Well, your guess is as good as mine.  I am not so sure I have found the good guys but I know Darth Vader when I see him.  So, now who you gonna vote for?”

“I dunno.  I guess I will just not vote next time!”

For the record (according to a reader), in the last federal election only 61% of eligible voters exercised their franchise.  Almost 40% stayed home (or were purposefully misdirected from their polling station).  Of those who did vote, only 39% voted Conservative.  That works out to 24% of the eligible voters who chose Harper.  One in four!  And at least some of them voted that way because they were led astray by the name!!

Sorry………ravens and dogs tomorrow.  I promise.

The following came in from Alex Morton, one of the few true heroes of our country in my perspective.  Hers is a voice, a real voice, a courageous one.  More than that, she gets her hands dirty and her feet wet.  And I was just writing about oppression…..

Alex wrote: In two weeks the Province of BC wants to make it illegal to talk about reportable diseases in animals destined for human consumption http://www.theprovince.com/news/information+farm+outbreaks/6657194/story.html They also seek to amend the Offence Act so that the punishment can be maximum for talking about reportable diseases in animals/fish people are going to eat. I am in shock.(you really should click on the link….dave)

(Note to readers unfamiliar with Alex: she has singlehandedly opposed the irresponsible behaviours of salmon fish farms on our coast.  Over the past few years she has taken the government to court – and won!  She has changed the way governments work.  And she has found unreported disease in farmed salmon in addition to the sea-lice problems they create for wild salmon.  To restrict reporting on diseased animals is bad enough, but this law could rightfully be called the Anti-Alex Morton Law.)

Last night Anissa and I went to observe the offloading of the OCEAN KING mort packer for Mainstream. They are moving the viral infected fish through the most productive wild salmon waters of the west coast of Vancouver Island – Alberni Inlet, avoiding every fish farm. There was no containment around the vessel as they pumped, the trucks were dripping bloodwater as they drove to the nearby Land, Earth and Sea “organic” composting facility between China Creek and Port Alberni. There is concern this will leach directly into the Inlet. People do not understand why this facility was used and not the much more secure mass mortality compost facility in Parksville. These fish should be removed before the next big rainfall.

We contacted Local First Nations who were not notified. DFO was called but they were not visible on scene, the mayor showed up but did not speak with me. The boat left and will presumably be back late today.

We have posted videos at Salmon Are Sacred facebook page and a posting on my blog alexandramorton.typepad.com

So folks this may be the last chance the people of Canada have the opportunity to be vocal about highly infectious diseases in Norwegian feedlots, leaching into BC. Christy Clark, premier of BC is taking us into Dark Ages. Mainstream is telling the world I breached quarantine at the dock, but there was none when we arrived and once there was I never stepped inside.

http://www.twitter.com/CTVNewsGord

If you want wild salmon – this is your last chance to protect them from viruses in salmon farms. I have no reason to trust that is IHN in the Dixon fsih farm owned by Cermaq which (is) largely owned by the Norwegian government. If it is IHN we don’t know what strain and IHN epidemics in Atlantic salmon is not natural to BC waters. The doors on free-speech are slamming shut if you feel like using democracy to try and stop this now would be a good time.

Alexandra Morton

Last year we had the Occupy response to ‘the Establishment’.  Before that, we had the Arab Spring and Summer.  Sometime during the Occupy movement, Greece split a few seams as well (many more to follow after their next election).  Today, we have Quebec, Montreal and the student protests.

People, it seems, are revolting.  Yech!

But, really, face it.  Revolution is long overdue when you think about it.  Putting aside any one issue – each of which was large enough to warrant protest – there is an underlying frustration almost everywhere and that frustration is just waiting for a local cause around which to coalesce.

Typically and historically, major protests resulting in revolution were and are rooted in economic unfairness.  From the peasants in the French Revolution to the students in Quebec, it is usually about money and how the lack of it makes everyday living too difficult. I would even posit that the riots erupting after the Rodney King beating in LA were economic at the root.  Mr. King’s brutal treatment (he was not the first peasant nor the last to be beaten by the police) was just a catalyst for ghetto frustration not just directed at the police but also at their ‘everyday living’ situation.  People riot in Watts and South Central, not Beverly Hills.

But that is not my point, really.  Poverty causes discontent.  We all know that.

My point is that it is all on track for only getting worse.  There has been a rapidly growing-larger disparity between the rich and the poor for some time now.  Economists claim two decades.  It has been noticeable to me since the turn of the century. Some disparity is normal (people are disparate).  But this recent kind of incredibly vast, completely unjustified disparity is abnormal and a major step in the wrong direction.

It indicates the system is broken.

There has also been an attendant and increasing government oppression of the people even before 9/11 when it got kicked up a notch or ten.  More and more, governments rule by dictate and oppression.  That is another major strategic government error.  It indicates that the keepers of the system can’t do the job.

I guess they just don’t get it.

And why should they?  Politicians have voted some pretty comfy benefits for themselves.  They, generally speaking, come from a privileged place even before getting elected.  They live and work and think in a gilded bubble.  They are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Do you really think that John Duncan (our MP, the one whose limousine driver made $22,000 in overtime over four months waiting for John to finish his meals at fancy restaurants?) has any idea of what it is like to live at or near the poverty level in his riding?  The man is completely clueless.

He is not alone. It would seem they all are.  Bubble-living does that to you.  See: Marie Antoinette.

I wouldn’t have thought it so before – not in these modern democratic times – but there are no leaders!  No leaders heading for resolution anyway.  There are plenty of leaders heading for the trough.

There have to be some good, sane, rooted-in-reality politicians out there…………?  Right?   Nowadays, I am not so sure.  There sure as Hell aren’t any in Canada, that is quite obvious.  Even that bright spark, Elizabeth May, seems to lack the charisma, the dazzle, the ‘star-quality’ that we seem to require in our leaders.  We need someone whose inner glow radiates brightly outwards.

We got nothing…….

Well, we have dictatorship, the dark lord Harper-types extinguishing any light like a monstrous black hole.  How else to explain the corruption of the electoral system, the increasing restrictions of rights and freedoms, the squandering of our resources and the escalation of rule by fiat?  And hardly a peep from anyone?

I hear Harper is shopping for colourful epaulets to go with the billion dollar fighter jets.

Where are our strong, creative, positive, wholesome voices of dissent?  And by ‘our’, I mean ‘adults’.

Students?!  Are Quebecois students my new leaders?

I don’t think so.  But God bless ’em for trying.

Advisory panels, investigative and review committees, local governments, popular opinion, even the rare and endangered voice of a contrary media report have not altered the dictatorial, totalitarian, Draconian responses of government oppression of the people.  Not lately, anyway.  Now the students in Quebec are giving it a shot.

It is not going to be enough.

Quebec just took this all-to-universal Orwellian-style authoritative knee-jerk response one step too far. Charest slapped the students across the face.  So it became personal.   Gordon Campbell insulted the people of BC and we revolted.  Now it is Quebec’s turn.  But we were mollified and now it is only Quebec.

Our problem: we are not united.  And student tuitions in Quebec are not going to unite us.

You can do a lot to oppress the people.  And they have.  Kill the salmon, pollute the oceans, spill oil all over the place and monitor our every move and we bend over for more of the same.  We are sheep who don’t peep.

Be careful with tuition fees or sales tax, tho.  We only seem to revolt if it costs us a buck!  Boy! Talk about getting the government you doeserve, eh?  Those pigs-at-the-trough reflect our values!!!

Quebec may or may not be reflecting the greater frustration that I believe a lot of people in many nations are feeling.  But, like the Occupy movement, the opposition to Enbridge and Kinder Morgan, the various protests against the WTO and other sociopathic entities, they have my support.

I’d like to see it gel as one, tho.  To make a real difference, it can’t be sporadic and localized.  They have to go BIG.  It has to be one voice.  One issue.  A leader would help.  It would also be nice if we could get united behind something more noble than the almighty dollar, tho.  Don’t you think?

You’ll understand if I remain somewhat distant from it all.  I think it is only going to get worse.  You reap what you sow.

Looking back on the building stage……..well, it’s not so clear, really.  The memories kinda blur.  We remember things, of course.  Our memories are still largely intact.  But a lot of the stuff of ‘small stories’ has largely been forgotten.  I don’t know why.  Age, I guess.  Perspective, most likely.

Sally got out some of the old photo albums to prompt some anecdotes and they were mostly of times when guests would drop by and we would take pictures of their visit!  Crazy, in a way.  But, really, who stops pouring concrete in the middle of the job to take a picture of it?

I recall a lot, of course.  And a lot can be made into stories.  But much of what might have made a story back then has now been integrated into ‘ordinary life’.  What I thought was wild and wonderful is now commonplace.  Well, some of it, anyway.  I guess what I am saying is this: we have a new perspective on what constitutes a story now.

Small example.  I recall a small delivery done by a local guy.  He had offered to pick up some building materials for $80.00 the next time he went to town.  When he dropped in with the goods, he had arbitrarily raised the price to $110.  I said, “No.  The deal was $80”.  He accepted that and dropped the supplies.  No rancor.  No bad feelings.  Just a little hard cheese.  And our relationship over the last eight years has been largely established by that.  It might have felt like a story at the time (neighbour vs neighbour) but it never went anywhere.  So, it’s just an odd little memory, really.  Not a story.

I also recall the time my ‘crane’ on the dock seemingly collapsed.   It was holding about 700 pounds of lumber I was loading up from the beach at the time.  And the whole bundle came up to a point and then the crane slowly slumped over, tumbling the load back to the beach.  That was a slo-mo surprise!  But the crane was intact!  I stood there trying to figure out what had happened and it finally hit me.  The support leg had been bolted to the rock and the rock had separated from the larger rock (the planet).  The crane was fine.  It was the planet that failed me.

That might have been a story had I written it up at the time.  But now, equipment failure is just part of the way it is out here.  Things break.  We have gotten used to it. Not a story.

There are dozens of stories (or non-stories) like that.  Events.  Some of them even regarded as extraordinary at the time.  They were often initially deemed extraordinary because, in fact, they were out-of-the-ordinary for us.  At the time.  But, in retrospect, they weren’t big deals.  They were ‘ordinary’.  Just little anecdotes of no particular significance, humour, tragedy or disaster.  Just ‘stuff’.

But it is that stuff of which the larger memory is made.  Mostly.  And that is the real story.  It is a big story made up of little lessons in a new way of life.  It was and still is, for the most part, just a huge learning curve for us.  If moving out here is anything, it is about learning new things.  And that includes all the little incidents as much as the big eventful stories.

Mind you, some stories are a bit larger than everyday and yet still not large enough for a whole post.

Here’s one:  I wrote a few months back about hearing on the radio of a boat sinking.  My neighbour and I grabbed a gas-powered pump and raced up channel and jumped aboard a commercial urchin-picker and set the pump to work while we assisted the captain and the crew rescue their load and equipment.  I guess we worked to save their butts for a couple of hours and then we returned home just before dark leaving them to be towed to Campbell River by the then-arrived Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard returned my neighbours pump a day or so later.

That was a story.  And I wrote it up.  So far, so good.

But not really.  It didn’t ‘end’ right.  Out here, ‘good manners’ always shows up in some sort of ‘consideration’.  You know…….the next time the urchin-pickers were in the area they might drop off a salmon or just stop by to say, “Thanks.”

But this never happened.  And I always wondered why.

Yesterday I asked my neighbour about it.  “Well, I wondered, too, Dave.  Seemed odd.  But I later found out that, while the boat was on the hard being repaired, the Department of Fisheries showed up.  Seemed the urchin-pickers had taken their catch from the nearby marine park.  Seems they took way too much as well.  They broke more than a few things that day besides the boat.  I doubt that they were fined or jailed.  I doubt that they see us in any way except as we were – good Samaritans.  But their accident was worse than just almost sinking.  They also got caught red-handed with an illegal catch.  Somehow I don’t think we are on their Christmas card list even tho they were saved from sinking and getting wet.”

I guess one person’s minor incident can be another one’s convicted felony.  Maybe it’s all in the eye of the beholder?

I mentioned that I have tools I hate and it follows that I have some that I am fond of as well.  My penchant for winches is inexplicable so they fall into a special category reserved for psychologists.  We’ll leave that discussion for a later time.

So, let me start with my favourites.  It is hard to beat a good chop saw well-established on the proper level (about 3 inches down) from a long, very stable work bench on either side of it.  What a handy way to cut lumber!  If there is one tool in the ‘essential-when-building’ category, it is that one.

That’s about it.  The rest suck.

Well, jury is still out on the cement mixer.  I don’t have one but the wheel barrow-as-substitute definitely sucks………

I mean, of course I like my chainsaw………….duh!  But, honestly?  We all know it is really just a cross between a weapon and a tool and it is the potential havoc that it represents that appeals to me mostly.

Chainsaw.……Chaos………kinda similar words because they come from the same Latin rootwords: I can sow havoc!  (it’s an anagram, silly………almost).

Actually working with a chainsaw is hugely dangerous and usually quite difficult.  And, face it, not very much of the work is constructive, now, is it?  No, I like what chainsaws represent as a deterrent to civilized behaviour more than as a tool.  In that regard they are on a parallel with guns.

Can you imagine trying to get a chainsaw approved if you had just invented one today?  Not a chance!  I am still surprised that there was no chain-saw registry proposed.

And I suppose I have a love-hate relationship with portable drills.  They, too, seem kind of macho.  More than once I have ‘drawn’ on an imaginary gunslinger while pulling the trigger on my drill.  Whhiizzzzzzzzzz………….

But they seem to quit on you, ya know?

Big, wired, half-inch drills, on the other hand, are lethal.  They’ll ‘turn on ya’.  Break your wrist.  Flip you over.  Hurt you bad.  Big drills are the tools that ‘get ya’ when you least expect it.  One minute you are drilling into a thick heavy piece of steel and the next, you are doing pirouettes in the air held in place by the ever tightening cord around your wrist.

But the ubiquitos skill saw is a really nasty piece of work if you ask me.  In fact, it seems to be the mother of all nasty pieces of work as well.  It is next-to-bloody-impossible to cut a straight line with the dam things and even if you manage to get in a position to attempt it, there is that irritating blade guard that seems to catch and stop you just as you get started.  Is that what they mean by a safety guard?  It stops you from cutting?

I used to like rock drills.  A little too much for my own good, mental health-wise,  if you ask Sal.  And I suppose the reasons are obvious…….including those that already spring too easily to mind…………but I am getting on now and well, drilling into rock has lost a little cachet lately…………ya know?  Just not as fun as it used to be.  I dunno……….maybe it’s just me.  Could be an age thing.

Mini-grinders?  Can’t live with ’em……..can’t live without them.  Certainly can’t remain unscathed messin’ with ’em.  Mini-grinders will ‘get you’.  If not soon, then later.  They are the weasels of the tool world.  Slimy little rascals with a nasty bite.  ‘Course, I took the blade guard off… ….that may have something to do with it, I guess.  Like playing with a pet Ferret.

Table saws have a bad rap.  Seems every ‘stubby’ handed fellow you meet, left his fingertips on a table saw.  I dunno.  Table saws don’t intimidate me.  I ain’t afraid of no stationery tool, really.  Maybe a lathe.  But as long as it can’t get up and chase me, I feel OK about it.  As a rule.  I may not like it (I don’t) but if it can’t chase me, move or jump around, I don’t have strong feelings about it.

I distrust anything that moves with me though.  And that includes hand tools.  Especially sharp hand tools like knives, chisels, planes, saws, even rasps and files.  To me, that kind of ‘attached-to-my-hand-tool’ means that we may not be able to part company fast enough for my liking.

And I distrust ladders for the opposite reason – they tend to try to escape being close to me by darting off when I least expect it.

As you can see by that short-list, I am not a friend of most tools.  I’d prefer to let sleeping tools lie, quite frankly.

Having said that, there is a certain beauty and appreciation for a simple tool handled by a skilled craftsman.  It’s delightful.  And there are fewer things more disturbing than a skill-requiring job in the hands of a simple tool.  It is just plain scary.  But the best of all is when an idiot has a lethal tool.  There is a you-tube on one such example – some blithering imbeciles trying to take down a tree with a chainsaw.  These guys are soon to be entries in the Darwin Awards.    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz0rbuBk8pE

I may have flirted with a nomination myself now and again.

A reader asked if I had considered blasting the site level instead of building on an incline.

“Of course I had considered it!  Hell, that would have been fun!”

But the government wouldn’t sell me explosives so that made it a bit more difficult to plan – though, not impossible.  After all, if terrorists can get explosives, so can I!  But Sal kiboshed that idea, too. “I will not have you negotiating on the black market for explosives, you fool!”

And, truth be told: I am alive today as a testament to her good sense (the fact that she is still here with me, however, is a testament to the limits of her good sense).

Altering the granite terrain in other ways also crossed my mind.  And so I made some inquiries.  I could make my own explosives like the Amish do.  You mix some sort of ammonia and iodine into small BB-sized crystals and place them and then run like Hell….or something………my source in Virginia was not overly precise on the matter.  “That’s how we kill rats!  We soak these chemicals in crystals and then let the crystals dry.  When they are very dry, we pick up each one and place them on paths that we know the rats use.  The crystals act like little land mines.  Blows them suckers to Hell and back!”

And you thought the Amish were nice……..!?

Then there is the ‘expanding goo’ method.  First you buy a bag of powder from China.  I think it is called Golden Expanding Imperial Dragon Goo or something.  Mix the powder with water and make a slurry.  Pour the slurry into pre-drilled holes drilled along a line on the rock you want to crack.  Then leave it.  Come back after a time.  The slurry dries, expands and, like ice, breaks the rock along the desired line.  Brilliant!

So, I got some.  Did it.  And left it for awhile.  Two weeks later, it still hadn’t cracked.  And so I abandoned the idea.  A month or so later I was walking past the ‘experimental crack’ line and, sure enough, it had worked!  But, as marvelous as it is, my attention span is barely long enough to finish dinner (I never have dessert) and waiting two months to crack rock is just too slow.

Plus, there is no big bang.  I mean, really. Where’s the fun part?

Then there is the feather-and-wedges technique.  Again: you drill holes along the desired crack-line and push two special ‘feather’s of metal into the hole.  The feathers are like half-rods.  Then, placing the wedge in between the two feather/rods, you hammer it down about an inch.  Do that equally all along the row of holes (which requires at least ten sets of feathers and wedges) and leave it.  Then the next day, do it again.  Maybe a few times.  After awhile, the force of the wedge drives the feathers apart enough that the rock cracks.  Brilliant.  But slow.  And the holes have to be perfectly placed.

And, well, I didn’t do it right and got frustrated.  So, I put my feathers and wedges in a pouch and left them to rot in the tool box (don’t worry, they were not lonely.  I have a section of the toolbox for unloved tools and they lay amongst many.)

A month or so later, I was mentioning my ineffectual feather-and-wedges idea to the 5-foot-nothing woman who ran the store.  “Oh, gee!  I’ve been looking for a set.  Got some rock work to do.  Can I borrow them?”

“No!  You can have them.  They don’t work.  Drive you nuts, they will!  I’ll bring them up next week.”

Four or so months later, one of my neighbours said, “Have you seen the road that T built?  Amazing!  The woman built a road of granite bricks she carved out of the rock and laid down without mortar to make a roadway about eight feet wide and fifty feet long!  And she is still at it.  Now she is making stone walls!”

I went to see it.  It was flatter, smoother and better founded than the old Roman roads I had seen in Europe!  The woman was like John Henry (a steel-drivin’ man) and she made roads and walls!  All with a small sledge and MY feathers and wedges!!!

I avoided the store after that.  Too humiliating.

No, I do not have a set of feathers and wedges you can borrow!

Not really the first day of building…..but it seemed like it. The school crew that had done the first floor and then abandoned us were home having tea.

And there we were.  Alone but for the two of us.  The first floor was up.  The perimeter walls were up and mostly clad.  And there we stood: lookin’ at it.

“So, where do we start?”

“I dunno.  Wadda the books say?”

Sal looks down at the boathouse and asks, “Should I get them?”

And I think it over…………  First off, we have the first floor up but we have to access it by way of a skinny ramp made up of a long 2×12.  The first floor sits about four feet off the ground at the back of the house and all of 16 or so at the front. It was daunting to say the least.

I know how to build decks (now that I had made a schmozzle of the first three) and so I said knowingly, “Ya know, gettin’ stuff up and into the house is going to be a chore using just that little ramp.  Why don’t we build the first deck first?  In that way we can join the stairs to the house and have better access”. 

Sal looked at me like I was a MENSA member.  “Right!  Fuggedabout the house for now.  First we build a deck!”

And so we did.  That deck is about 48 feet long and, tho irregular in design, averaging about 12 feet in width.  It bridged the space between the top of the stairs and gave us access to the complete south and east sides of the house – all at the same level.  We would have to access the other sides from the inside or, as I later determined, by scaffolding.

And therein lies one of the odd little eccentricities of house building on an irregular, remote, no-road access site: you almost have to build the equivalent of a house to build the house.

Sorta like almost building a funicular so that you can install your funicular.

So we finished the south and east deck and then began to build the interior walls of the house.  The floor plan, as it were.  By the time we had the walls framed in, it was pretty apparent…………the north and west side decks were going to be needed.  It is hard to install windows (weighing about 30 pounds and being awkward), sheathing, paper and cladding from the top of a ladder on irregular ground.  Trust me.

And so we built another large section of deck.  This one was much harder.  You know why?  Because the west side is 16 feet off the ground.  And more poles had to be erected.  And that required scaffolding and, well, you know……..

I have no recollection of that time.  Not really.  Just little ‘flashbacks’.  All I remember was getting up, eating a quick breakfast and following Sally to the work site.  We’d break a few times, argue a bit about what we didn’t know, crack a few jokes and just plain plug away until about 6:00 pm at which time we would quit, strip and immerse our sweaty, dirty selves in the sea for a nano second or two and then rinse off with a solar shower.  After that it was wine and dinner on the deck and a bit of chit chat about the way things were turning out.

That was in the beginning.  After a few months of that, we worked just as hard but we chatted less, drank more and went to bed earlier.  We had started in May.  By October the house was ‘done’ to lock-up and I was barely able to get up.

And the Energizer Sally was starting to drag a bit, too.  We need to quit.

Any lessons in all that?  Yes.  Here’s an important tip: find a cooperative wine-making store and lay up a couple of batches months before you begin.  Tell the operator to put another batch on every six weeks – more or less depending on your tolerance for pain.  Forget the expense.  It is way cheaper than Morphine or Demerol.  Don’t even think about building until your first batch is at least three months in the bottle.

Anything else?  Yes.  Put the wine in plastic silver pouches.  Dropping a bottle of wine on the rocks after a hard day building is much more traumatic than you’d think.

Oh yeah!  This book is going to be full of useful tips……….

May 18th

There is a kind of magic that happens out here.  It is hard to explain.  It seems whenever we need a little help, it just appears.  It’s weird.

Yesterday we needed to move some equipment/furniture/stuff to the Q-hut (the last leg of the last delivery from the woodwork shop purchase).  We took the boat -filled to the brim – to the dock and unloaded it.  Afterwards we got in the boat and headed home.

That part did not go well.  The engine ‘missed’.  And it continued in that hesitant staccato noise that missing engines make all the way home.  It was horrible.  And, of course, I was imagining the worst.

You see, I had earlier changed the filter and the boat ran fine on the first half of the day.  I thought I had ‘solved’ the problem (you know, the problem that I had described a couple of posts ago?).

Seems I was wrong.

Frankly, I had very few tricks left up my sleeve after that first one.  If the fuel/filter wasn’t the problem, (and it wasn’t.  When I emptied it, the fuel in the filter was perfect) then what accounted for the ‘miss’?  I dreaded the thought that it might be electronics.

We stumbled and hiccuped into the dock and were just about to tie up when a familiar green boat sidled alongside.  “Hey, Dave!  Hey, Sal!  How ya doin’?”

“Hi, D!  You just snuck up on us.  Didn’t even see ya comin’!  I’m good but my motor is missing.  No, you fool, I know it is right in front of me but it is not runnin’ right.”

“Oh.  OK.  Let’s drain the carbs.  Always drain the carbs first.  It is often that.  And if that is not it, then we’ll take the cover off and cover each of the carbs with our hands to see which one is not working.  Or I could go to my place and get my carb synchronizer and we can then recalibrate them.”

“Great.  But I don’t have my tools.  I’ll do it tomorrow.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a Swiss Army knife, opened it up to the ‘screwdriver’ blade and said, “There you go.  Let’s do the carbs now!” And so we did.

And it seemed to run fine!

“You coming up for a beer or something?”

“Nope.  Just came to say hello.  I’m off home to make dinner.  See ya!”

So – get this – there we are in the middle of pretty much nowhere.  All alone for all we know.  No one in sight.  And the carbs act up.  We limp home and just as we get there, a ghost-angel-outdoorsy-mechanic-type-guy just ‘appears’, diagnoses the problem, fixes it and leaves.  And, if we needed carb synchronizers, we would have had them.

Whatever the Hell carb synchronizers are………..

It’s magic, I’m tellin’ ya.  And it is a magic we seem to encounter every time.  Bloody amazin’ it is.

Blowing about 25 right now.  Has been blowin’ in the 15 to 30 range for the past three days.  To say it is ‘brisk’ is an understatement.  But I kinda like it that way.  Cool, clean, bright.  It’s a lovely day for me to get on with a few chores.  And so I will.

What I really I mean: I’ll get to work as soon as I have a few cups of tea, some breakfast and a bit of computer time on the ‘blog’ first.  I should get out there in a couple of hours.  Maybe.  There’s no rush.

I’ll lube up the rebuilt winch and reassemble it, mount it on the winchbed and maybe even pull up the last two tardy logs left from a couple of weeks ago.  Probably break for tea somewhere in there.

Then I’ll take apart my little gas-powered winch – the Pull-toy – and replace a gas line that is currently leaking.  Maybe.  If I do, I will definitely break for lunch right after.

Outboard is ‘missing’ a bit in this choppy weather and so that suggests draining the water filter and replacing the cartridge.  I just may get to that…….

And then I will drain the ‘bad gas’ from the now-repaired chainsaw and put in some new stuff, fire it up, cut a few things and then go in for bandages and more tea.

Depending on blood loss, I may just call it a day right then.  Maybe feed the raven, feed the dogs, pour Sal some wine and maybe stare at a paddle or two in need of some paint.  We’ll see.  Can you find the stress?

Me neither.  There isn’t any.

Not bad.

Mind you, I know stress is a relative thing.  One can get stressed out living the life of Riley and others can do patrols in Afghanistan and keep it together.  It’s attitude mostly.  I know that.  But NOT having the Taliban trying to blow me up is a good start to having a better attitude and feeling relaxed as far as I am concerned.  And hangin’ in this area is another positive step.  Highly recommended.

A nap can also be beneficial.  Hmmmmmmm…………

…..I’ll have to get back to you on this…………………………………………

and…………….later that afternoon……………………………

As it turned out, the day was wonderful!  Old friend dropped by and we ‘did tea’ for awhile.  I really used to like that guy.

He told me that I should lose a little weight.

After we buried the body…………..

………..we also got to some chores.  I did the chainsaw work and escaped unscathed.  No blood.  Not mine, anyway.

I had to put in a new fuel line for the Pull-toy (chainsaw winch) and that required taking the whole thing apart – right down to the bare pieces.  Sheesh.  That took awhile.  But, it got done.  Put back together.  No extra pieces (a first!).

And I also got to the log winch.  That took forever!  And, of course, I have a couple of extra pieces (my reputation back intact).  Still, it all works and I now know it very well – practically in the biblical sense.  That winch and I became one!

Dogs fed, dinner is on, Sal’s in the kitchen, got the wine………….just wrapping up the day…………”..it just doesn’t get any.….”……..well, you know……..

When you do stuff, things wear out, require maintenance and sometimes, just break.  When they break, you fix ’em.  If you can.  Some things can’t ever be fixed.

There is a glitch in the fix-process and it is this: the person who broke it is not always the best person to try and fix it.  By the time we were scheduled for a town day, I was ‘down’ two major tools.  I need the winch.  And I need the chainsaw. They were both broke.  And I couldn’t fix ’em.  I wasn’t even sure if they could be resurrected.

I took the winch to a guy who is hobbyist machinist.  I’d never met the guy and he wasn’t there when I arrived.  But we had spoken on the phone, my neighbours knew him and, well, a broken winch was just weighing me down, so I left it all in pieces in a box by his back door and went about my business.

The chainsaw was with a friend.  He had already fixed it.  So, it was mostly just visiting and ‘catching up’ on that one.  When we were talking, he was also working on his motorhome.  ‘Cause it, too, was broke.  “Best part of this rolling palace is that my wife can make tea as we barrel on down the road.  Man, it doesn’t get much better than that!”

After we left with the saw, Sally turned to me and said how nice it was that they enjoyed motorhoming together, making friends-on-the-road and seeing the countryside.  “But, well…………..geez………..that motorhome is 40 feet long!  Hasn’t anyone ever told his wife about a thermos?”

As our day was winding down and we were driving our packed little SUV with the equally loaded-to-the-gills utility trailer (we had just picked up the last load for the woodworking shop) I was saying to Sal, “Geez, ya know…….he’s right…it just doesn’t get much better than this!  I mean, really!  This is great.  You and me.  Doin’ stuff, travelin’ around and then soon to be home in paradise.  This is just great!”

We were happy.

And we smiled at each other and gave each other a mutual hand squeeze.  And then the phone rang.  It was the hobbyist.  He had managed to fix my winch in record time.  I said I’d drop by.

I dropped Sal at the store to do some last-minute shopping and went over.

When I got there, I saw his little shop, met him, chit-chatted for a minute and it was clear that I was gonna like this guy.  He was very interesting in a hobby-machinist kinda way.  I guess the feeling was mutual so we passed a bit more time, gave brief personal histories, shared a few generalized points of view and basically created the beginnings of a friendship.  And then he mentioned that his wife had just recently passed away.

And it seemed the world just stood still…….

His eyes went down.  His voice faltered.  His shoulders drooped and he seemed to sag at least a foot from his previous height.  I was going to throw my arms out to catch him.  Maybe I should have.  But I didn’t.  And he semi-recovered.  Face still looking down.  “Geez, I said,  I am sorry to hear that.  Really sorry.”

He couldn’t answer.  The silence was painful.  And so I added in my usual semi-stupid, fill-the-empty-air kind of way, “Geez, man.  We’re supposed to go first.  Not them”.  To which he nodded  and said weakly, “Yeah.  It was not supposed to be that way.”

After a time, we managed to get back to general guy-talk.  Machines.  Pin-ups on the wall.  Salmon fishing.  Different metallurgy in different winch components.  You know?  But we had shared a moment.  And it was a tough moment.

“Ya wanna stay for a beer?”

“Love to.  Can’t.  Wife is in Save-On.  Gotta get her in a few minutes.  God help me I should leave her standing waiting for me.  You know?”

“Yeah, I know”.   But he said it with a smile.  That was good.  And then I left.  Told him I’d be back.  Maybe stick around for that beer next time if there was one.

“There will be.  See ya!”

When I say that it doesn’t get any better than this, I mean it.  But what I really mean is that it is best doin’ it with Sal.