Back to history: As stated, we didn’t know much about building before moving to the island, but we knew that we had to do some.  So, before anything significant was undertaken but after many materials had been purchased, it seemed like we should get at least a level surface built.  Ya gotta start somewhere.  We planned a deck at just above the high water level.

A level surface is a wonderful thing...

To do a deck on the island meant – at that time – purchasing all the materials from the local supply store, hiring a barge to bring it all over and then for us to be there to schlep all the stuff up onto the beach – the 30 degree beach without a level spot anywhere.  Ideally, all the tools I would need would have been delivered in advance (by me, of course).  And, of course, all the tools delivered needed a safe, weather-secure enclosure to be in place before even that.  Step one: tool storage on site.

I bought a large steel locking box from BC Hydro Salvage (Surrey) and delivered it to the nearest loading ramp on the next island with my car and trailer and then put it in the 11 foot inflatable dinghy we were using as our commuter boat.  An 11 foot dinghy has about 7 or so linear feet of floor space.  The box took five feet of it.  It also loomed four feet out of the boat and was two feet wide.  It weighed 400 pounds.  And it literally filled the boat completely.

When in place, the box looked like the conning tower of a just-submerged submarine.  My steering position was one of stretching out one leg along a pontoon and scrunching the other into the same space as the outboard engine steering tiller and the gas tank.  And, of course, I couldn’t see directly ahead nor to port which was completely blocked by the steel box.

When it was loaded the boat floated a smidge low in the water and I was positioned like a trailing fender on the starboard side.  “I think there is room for you, sweetie”, I said to Sal.  “Just climb on and stand with your feet apart at the bow like Leonardo on the Titanic (poor choice of analogies) and hold onto the box.”

Sal just looked at me.  She didn’t move.  “David, it is starting to blow up out there.  I don’t think you’ll make it.  And I sure as hell am not going with you!  We’ll die.  You can’t go.  And, if you go, you can’t take that box.  You can’t see where you’re going and the whole load is way too top heavy.  Don’t be insane!”

She had a good point.  But men, eh?  I mean I had struggled like hell to get the thing this far.  I needed it.  And delivering unwieldy stuff to our property was supposed to be part of the plan.  I couldn’t wuss out just because of an impending storm and the need to be a contortionist.  This was a test!  “No, I can make it.  You comin’?”

“No.  I’m sure you’re going to die.  I’ll drive up to the closest point I can get to and hike to the beach. If you get that far, I’ll climb on for the last few hundred yards.”

“OK.  Help me tie this thing down.”

“Are you mad!?  If you tie it in, it will flip you over.  When the seas fling it  overboard, let the damn thing go!  At least you’ll be alive and I’ll have somewhere to sit!”

“Good thinking.”  And I headed out.

The seas were two foot swells until I got out of the harbour.  And it was pouring.  Just about then the wind got up, too.  And it felt like all hell was breaking loose.  The boat was definitely top heavy and I was describing arcs with the top of the box that had to be eight to ten feet in distance from one side to the other — maybe more.  It seems like I got to the tipping point at every wave.  I slowly headed up coast with my body straining to keep the huge box in the rolling and rocking dinky boat into which I had squeezed myself like a pair of socks in a drawer.  This was not turning out to be a good day.

Of course I got soaked.  Immediately.  But that wasn’t the real problem.  The real problem was that I couldn’t turn back.  Turning the boat sideways into the seas to effect a reversal of direction would have definitely sent the box over the side and, since I was into it this far, I wanted to make every effort to keep the damn thing.  But Sal was right: tying it in would have been suicide.

Even though the wind got up to the low twenties and the seas were high enough that I disappeared deep within each trough, I seemed to be keeping it all together as I slowly motored up channel to the pick-up point.  It took about three hours to get there, maybe more.  When I got to Sal, she was standing on the shore looking amazed.  I was shaking like a leaf I was so cold.

“Wow!  I never thought I’d ever see you again.  Which didn’t feel as bad as I thought it might, you idiot!  I really thought this cabin madness would be over, settled by your early demise at sea.  I’m shocked.  Can you get us over?”

“S-s-s-s-ure.  P-p-p-p-ice of c-c-c-ake.  J-j-j-ump in!”

An hour or so later we arrived at our beach.  The waves were breaking on the unwelcoming rocks.  Somehow I had to get on to the shore and lift a 400 pound steel box out of the boat and up the beach.

“So, what’s the plan?”

Time to get a plan.  A bit late in the day, perhaps.  But I needed a plan and I needed one quick.  Otherwise I might look like a fool!  “It’s high tide.  I’m going to get as close to the beach as I can and then we just tip the sucker over the side – into the drink!  It will sink a few feet and catch up on the rocks below.  Tomorrow we’ll come back at low tide and it will be high and dry.  Then we’ll drag it up the shore.”

Tool Locker as it stands today

We shoved it over and it rolled out of the boat amazingly easily.  Our inflatable dropped down on the starboard side as it tipped and, as the box left the boat, we shot to port like a watermelon seed.  There we sat – looking at the beach.  No box in sight.  It was underwater.  Davey Jones’ locker – literally.

And Sal had doubts!  Can you believe that!?

Bit o’ politics………….not much…..  just a bit……sorry…………I’ll keep it short.

Liberals got crushed in the two byelections (Port Moody & Chilliwack) – both held by them previously.  The people are still mad, it seems.  Rolling back the HST wasn’t enough.  And the way cutey-pie Christy is handling matters, I don’t see the mood of the electorate changing much.  The other day she announced consideration of cutting some old growth forests to keep a certain sawmill going.  It didn’t occur to her to stop shipping raw logs to China as a better solution.

Well, for that matter, it doesn’t seem to occur to Harper to refine the oil at the tar sands site and ship it to eastern Canada where oil is imported from the middle east either.  I gues he is too busy wondering where to deploy the fighter jets this party is still considering.  You really have to wonder about these people.

Our politicians lie, cheat and are corrupt.  No doubt.  But, OMYGAWD, they are also so incredibly stupid.  Danielle Smith of Alberta’s right-wingy party just announced that exploiting the tar sands was OK since there is “still debate in the scientific community about the cause of climate change.”

Did some lab somewhere start cloning Sarah Palin?

Oh well, I will stop.  I apologize.  I have learned that people do not change their politics.  Nor do they ‘get’ that the party that calls itself the name they most relate to is not necessarily oriented that way.  Conservatives are not conservative and Liberals are not liberal.  Neither, for that matter, are New Democats new or even newly Democratic.  Mind you, Wild Roses are pretty wild so…………

On a brighter note, we relaunched Sal’s boat yesterday.  It went well.  The old log slides (ramp) allowed it to slide down to the rocks from the deck, held in check by me working a block and taykle.  There it sat until the tide came in and floated it off.  Sal then got in and rowed it around to the dock where we will re-install her engine and miscellany today.  Cap’n Sal will once again rule the high seas.  All is well in Sal’s world.

And so, all is well in mine.

Friend of mine brought me a magazine.  Western Living.  We cracked up!  Neither of us have any idea of western living by the standards promoted in that magazine.  It might as well have been the Robb Report for all the relevance it had to us.   Who are they kidding?

“Hey!  Didja see the piece on cutting boards?  Page 26.  Not gonna believe it!  hahahahahaha”. 

Page 26, Western Living, an article titled Chop Chop shows ‘designer’ wood cutting boards.  Designer Christian Woo has a slab o’ wood in ‘his customary rectilinear style’ priced at $210.00.  It’s a short plank, fer Gawd’s sake!  Another hunk of wood was $260.00!  A dinko piece we would burn because it was too small to use was fetching $49.00!

“Hey, this is good.  We’ll cut planks and make a million bucks!  Fuggedabout skill, style and workmanship.  I can do that with a chop saw and a sander!”

“No, Dave.  You missed the marketing angle.  That one was made from the joists and rafters of an old horse stable.  That kinda cachet is getting harder and harder to come by, ya know.  Adds to the cost, don’t you know?  And the other one came from a family-owned sustainable woodlot.  We’re talking history, ecology and family values, here!”

“Sorreeee….I thought one was a piece of wood and the other was another piece of wood.  I had no idea of the significance.  No wonder it is priced so high.  Still, I may just use only sustainable, west coast, heritage, first growth, family-loved and cherished wood myself when I cut slabs.  Got me a pile of it sitting under the house.  Sorry, I meant to say: ‘shaded and matured in an au natural air-dry, no-animals-harmed environment’.  Surely people can’t be that stupid?”

“I dunno.  Look at page 44.  See the bathtubs?  There isn’t one there that doesn’t cost more than the cars we drive – yours and mine combined!  Consumerism is attaining new heights in the city!  By the way, didja know that a cord of wood delivered in Campbell River now is going for $200.00?”

“Wow!  Didn’t know that.  Got me a grand’s worth of wood sittin’ down on the beach!  Yikes!  May have to hire security.  Sheesh.  Mind you, I bought soup and a sandwich for my friend, D, and I the other day down south.  It was a trendy, funky kind of place but still the kind where you go to the counter and order off a chalk board.  Bill came to $54.00.  Small soup each.  Nice cheese sandwich.  Two cups of tea.  Good thing Stats Canada assures me that overall the cost of living is still only rising at around two percent, eh?  Musta accidentally ordered one of them fancy cheese sandwiches.  My bad.  I woulda worried about the bill but I was buying gasoline a bit later at $1.40 a liter and nothing seemed to make sense after filling up anyway.”

So, I won’t go on.  You know the spiel.  What started out as a joke on silly consumerism became a bit of a lament about the rising cost of living.  Maybe it’s a habit.  I dunno.  Costs always rise, it seems.  And I always complain about it.  But I am now largely a non-participant in that madness most of the time, thank God!  I do, however, feel sorry for young people, single parents, the working poor and those who still believe in a system reliant on inflation.

I am glad there is real growth in the forest.  At the very least I will always be rich in breadboards.

“Hey, R!  You goin’ up to work on the kitchen this week?”

“Nah.  Too frustrating.  There’s no plan.  No direction, ya know?  I like to have a specific task assigned and the materials and a set of plans nearby and then I’ll just get on with it.  But this project is too loosey goosey.  I don’t know what I am supposed to be doing.”

“Yeah.  I know.  But that is the only way it works.  No one will work if anyone is in charge.  And all the plans are changed by the one doing whatever it is they choose to do.  It’s all very organic.  You just gotta go with the flow.  The good thing is that it is working.  It is coming along nicely.”

Every Wednesday is community work-day and people show up as their schedules, hormones and whims dictate.  Once there, they decide to stay or leave as their mood determines.  Sometimes the mood is affected by who else is there or who else isn’t.  You never really know who the crew will be.

And then they do what they do depending on what tools someone else may have brought, if someone was kind enough to bring some lunch or whether the work is going according to their personal standards.  It is hard to know what the crew will be at any given time and it is just as hard to determine what they will do next.  It is all pretty fluid.

Plans change, too.  Our community has a very dedicated designer who almost always strives to provide an overall plan on paper and it is usually deemed to be pretty good once presented.  It is what the schedule, budget and decision to proceed is based on.  But available materials might change the plans.  And who is willing to take on a certain part (framing, drywalling, etc.) is a definite game/design changer as some guys only know how to do things a certain way or because they just think they know better and do it the new way because they can.

Materials and tools are also huge variables.  Sometimes we ‘just have’ a spare five gallons of paint – and that might be the colour decider right there.  Other times, we have someone choose it and buy it and that kind of commitment is sufficient to constitute the decision making process all by itself.  This time a paint store donated some paint and so they decided the colour.

Other times we have a lumber supply of certain dimensions and that might influence things.  The kitchen, this time, has dry wall in no small part due to a recent neighbour bringing in more than they needed and willing to part with the extra.  And the stove is a generous contribution from another neighbour – style and size decided by the price!

Tools are a real bugaboo.  Some people bring ’em.  Some don’t.  But everyone working usually needs a tool of some kind so that means we are usually in a tool shortage situation.  Two weeks ago I was instructed to bring a hose and air-nailer.  Along with the other tools I brought, I had a good schlep from the dock getting to the site.  When I got there the requester of the tool was working along fine without it and so it wasn’t required.  But another fellow working on cutting lumber was without a pencil and a tape measure.  So, my trip was useful after all.

That week I was not required to actually work as all jobs were adequately staffed.  So, I left my tools as my contribution.

And, so it goes.

When you see a school of fish, like herring or smolts, zipping in unison one way and then another, each movement a brilliant display of instant choreography, you might think they are pretty marvelous.  I do.  What coordination!  What unity!  What kind of communicative and cooperative genius!

We’re not like that.

We’re more like a hockey riot.  ‘Cept we seem to get things built rather than destroyed.

It’s a miracle.

Doggin’ logs.  Finishing Sal’s boat.  Fixing the sailing dinghy.  Helping a real estate deal get done.  Preparing for the season’s first woofers next week.  Startin’ the garden.  Consulting on a mediation.  Lookin’ for a new boat or at least a new boat design that I can easily build.  Planning the new work shed.  Schlepin’ in windows and skylights for it. Getting some more stuff done on the funicular.  Contemplating the pile of logs gathered at the beach and…….well…..that is only about the half of it!  There is so much more!

I can’t honestly say that I work harder now that I am retired because I work at my own pace and, because of that, things just don’t get done as quickly.  And I do enjoy doing them more, which is nice.  So work piles up and I just look really busy. “Image is everything!” (Andre Agassi)

When I worked for or with others, the pace was quicker and the work less fun.  Had to be.  Time is money!

Now no one will work with me so I get to set the pace.  A plethora of riches but without the money.  Ironic, eh?

I remember distinctly hearing: “If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it!”  And it is true. Sal gets stuff done.  Because I can pace myself, well, I pace myself………the truth: I have a lot of things to do but I am not that busy doing them.

I’ll have to get them woofers on it.

I’d like to use the excuse that I am gettin’ on.  But Sal’s dad, who is 88, does twice as much around the house.  So do a lot of old guys.  Met a guy the other day who is older than I am by four or so years and he was heading up the coast to rebuild a crumbling dock!  That involves huge creosoted beams.  I don’t think I can deny it, I am soft.  Round people often are.  Maybe I should have been a chef?

Actually, I am still somewhat busy.  Just not as busy as I should be, I guess.

Maybe.

The best part of my day is writing the blog.  I just sit down and ‘kill an hour’.  It’s fun.  I also read for about two hours every day.  Maybe three.  Amazing how many books you can get through with a reading time allocated.  I get through two ‘heavy’ books a week and often two light ones as well.

‘Course my retention level is waning.  The books blur into one another.  That is not so good.  I am basically attracted to social trends, politics and economics.  The not-so-recent economic crisis of 2007/08 has spawned a lot of post analytical financial books and they are fascinating to me.  Ooohh, I know so much more about liars and cheaters and greedy pigs and how the system is designed to breed more. 

You have to wonder if that is not akin to some kind of porn fetish, eh?

But it has occurred to me: I could be barking up the wrong tree.

Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden; or Life in the Woods.  Somehow he knew of the difference between living and existing for trivial pursuits.   Pacing myself is living properly.  So, that’s good.  Some of the pursuits, however, may be trivial (skylights in the new workshop?).  I am going to have to read Walden again.

The authors of the books I read, however, seem to have missed the essential point of living altogether.  And those they write about are actually heavily invested in the opposite.  A lot of people are.  Maybe we should all read Walden again.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

— Henry David Thoreau

…..bit of a tangent…………you may wish to skip this…………..

Things change.  Generally, things change incrementally.  Little changes year after year.  Neighbourhoods change.  People change.  Cities change.

In nature, Darwin called those baby-step-changes evolution.  In culture, we call it fashion.  Basically, it just means that a small amount of change is actually the status quo.  “Change is constant.”

But things occasionally change significantly.  Huge change can happen now and then.  Massive.  Catastrophic at times.  Even social change can be a major upheaval in the status quo.  There was the ‘Peace and Love phenomenom’ of the 60’s.  There have been major medical breakthroughs, like penicillin, the X-ray or the birth control pill.  There was oil and the internal combustion engine.  Airplanes.  And computer technology.  BIG CHANGE happens……….(stay with me.  I’ll get to the point.  It is a question, actually.)

N. Taleb calls change like that a black swan in his book by that name.

And big change makes for paradigm shifts.  Big change changes lots of things. And then we think differently.  We are different after BIG changes.

For instance, climate change will not only change our climate but, very likely, it will also change everything we do, everything we use, everything we are.  IF we still are.

‘Course, you know all that.

My question is, do you feel it?  Do you have a sense of it?

The possibility of change on that kind of scale (BIG) usually brings about a sense of fatalism.  And fatalism is close to apathy.  We get numb to the possibility of such a thing.  And then we don’t feel it.  We then don’t even worry too much about that kind of change.  Too big.  Too much to grasp.  Impossible to deal with.

My friends are likely saying: “Oh no, not this again?!  Look!  There is nothin’ I can do about it.  I don’t even want to waste time thinkin’ about it.  Let’s talk about something else.”

Those statements make me think they do feel it but don’t want to admit it.  They don’t want to make it a conscious thought.  They might have to do something and, of course, they don’t know what that might be.  Too hard.

I remember (way back) when we were all worried about a world that might fully engage in a nuclear war.  “May as well run toward the mushroom cloud as away from it.  It’s all gonna get us eventually.  Better to end it quick.  And not waste time worrying about it.”

I am not so sure that BIG change is ever really a sudden surprise.  I think some people can see ahead to the BIG change around the corner.  We may not be able to foresee the date of the tidal wave washing away the nuclear reactors at Fukushima or a huge earthquake dropping California into the sea but we know of those potentials.  We know they can happen.  We can move from LA to Wisconsin (mind you, if you are silly enough to live in LA, then maybe you don’t know….?).

Anyway……..the point is: it feels like BIG BIG change is in the air.  To me, anyway.  And I mean bigger than Obama-change.  Bigger than any one election.  Bigger than all elections combined.  It feels like a massive, socio-cultural, people-based unconscious shift of some kind is either happening already or it is primed to happen.

Paul Hawken writes about that kind of change.  But he hasn’t really identified it except where it is small and local, albeit spread quite internationally.  I talk about it but have no idea what I am talking about.  There is a huge industry in books about various types of change in economics, education, climate and that sort of thing.

But that is not it.  Those books have an ‘inside-the-box’ view.  It feels like something bigger.

I have no idea what I am talking about.  Do you?  Does anyone who reads this have a sense of BIG change pending?

A bit more history…………

It may seem silly to gather bits and pieces of equipment and materials for a project that I hadn’t even identified or planned.  And, I suppose, in many ways it was.  But I was pretty sure the dream would eventually involve building a cabin of some kind.  Something quirky.  Or a nice big deck at the very least.  And it was likely to be on the property we had.  ‘Surely‘, I thought, ‘we’ll be building something there?!’

I mean, I hate tents.  And we no longer had a big boat and, basically, there was nothing there to receive us – not even a flat surface.  One has to sleep somewhere.  Right?  Wasn’t it obvious?

I’d have to build.

So, I gathered bits and pieces.  And tools.  It all made sense in that ‘buy-it-all-first, then-you-have-to-do-something’ way men have.  Like barbecues.

If you gather supplies in a goofy, whimsical, bargain-if-you-use-it-waste-of-money-if-you-don’t-kinda-way, you can save a lot of money.  Or lose it, depending.  I lucked out.  I went with the whimsy and we eventually used it.

Savings?  In the tens of thousands.

One of the things you can be sure you are going to use when building is fasteners.  And fasteners are something I know a bit about.  When living on a boat, (three different boats over a period of eleven years, actually) one becomes fairly familiar with fasteners, glues and big metal things like chain and pipes and such.  I knew we were going to need such stuff.  I just didn’t know exactly what or where.

Worst place to purchase such stuff?  Home Depot.  Best?  BC Hydro salvage yard (unfortunately no longer in operation).  Second best?  Normal, basic, junk and metal salvage yards.

And if you know you are going to need chain or pipe, you may as well get something big and strong enough to do anything you might need it to do.  Bigger is better.  Even if it seemed a bit much.  So, I jumped at the chance to pick up some 8′ lengths of 6″pipe.  I eventually got half-inch chain, some 3/8″ cable, lots of 3/4″, long, heavy galvanized bolts and tons of heavy, hot-dipped galvanized steel beams.  Not to mention hundreds of assorted screws and smaller bolts.  I even got a bunch of very heavy-duty, industrial grates about three feet square and weighing 200 pounds each.  “What was all that for?”

At the time of the purchase?

No idea.

When things began to fill up the driveway, Sal was not amused.  I really needed to get an idea.  Even getting a clue would help.

Of course, I had plenty of ideas but none of them would strike Sal or some other confidant as plausible or likely or, in some cases, do-able or livable.  Interesting?  Not even a little bit.  They didn’t even want to think about it with me.  Not really.  I was starting from a completely blank slate and quite ‘by myself’.

Which is good.

I contemplated a huge tree house – one slung from a metal collar on a huge tree with cables hanging down.  Kind of an industrial Robinson Crusoe-type thing.  A friend of mine in Oregon makes the hardware for that.  “No way!” said Sal (she didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, either).

I envisioned utilizing shipping containers (I had this idea before the craze hit, I want you to know).  I was going to re-do the interiors and place three or four on foundations joined by a huge deck……..“No way!” said my closest neighbours a quarter of a mile away but in a direct line of sight.  They, too, didn’t hesitate with the nixing.  They just lacked the vision, I guess.

I thought about building a small 500 square foot building designed to incorporate an anticipated exact-sized extension.  And that building would have another natural place for a further addition and so on.  Sorta like a planned-expansion design.  A cabin concertina.  The idea was to be able to frame and close each ‘box’ in a weekend.  I called it the Weekend Warrior cabin.

I even had that one professionally designed.

John Robinson now has it featured on his website.  He has embellished the original idea and I am sure for the better.  http://www.robinsonplans.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=208&Itemid=126

But the more I dreamed and designed in my head, the more I realized how little I knew.

I whined and complained one day at dim sum (fitting, in a semantic kind of way, don’t you think?) to a friend of mine about how stupid I was.  “I  already know that!” he said, not in the least bit sympathetically.  “But I own Linwood Homes.  Did you know that?  Anyway, why not go to work there.  Learn.  Share some of your stupid ideas with my partner, B.  He’ll fire you pretty quick, I”m sure.  I hope.  But, in the meantime, you might learn a bit about building”. 

I worked there for a little over a year.  Bill was more than patient.  I just wasn’t useful.  Not really.  Too much of a learning curve.  But, for me, it was better than taking five years of the building trades at BCIT.  I learned a lot.

Linwood makes a great product.  They also provide a fantastic service to go with it and they are worth what they charge.  I am a big fan of Linwood Homes. 

But I didn’t buy one.  I wanted to do it myself.  I wanted to design it.  I wanted to do the organization and the purchasing.  I wanted to build it.  I appreciated their expertise and I borrowed from it liberally.  And it was generously offered.  But I wanted to do it all.  With Sal too, of course.

It was a primal kinda-thing, ya know? “A man should be able to build his own house-kinda-thing.”

So, the dream was taking a bit of shape.  It was primal.  It was building.  And it was all about me.

But it had some fits and starts.

I started by wanting to do timberframe.  So cool.  But a friend of mine in the timberframe design business, Nick Kokas, talked me out of it.  “Dave, if you are building all by yourself and doing so in the remote woods, you need to use pieces that you can lift.  Trust me, even 4x4s get heavy when carted up hill.  I love timberframe but if you do not have road access, workers and a crane, fuggedabout it.”

I learned a few years later how right he was.  I thought of his words with every 2×10, every 2×12 and every 6×6 I lifted.  I am glad he advised me to go ‘stick-built’ rather than timbers and I am even more pleased that I listened.

But I am ahead of myself.  All that was part of the learning process.  And there was so much more to come.

More history will continue after a brief interlude……………

Home!  Thank God!  Omygawd, I love being here………..my own bed, my own chair, my computer works properly……………a crackling fire warming me up………boxes of supplies all over the place (feels like security, in a weird kind of way)……..dogs are happy, Sal is ecstatic. 

“Why the hell do we ever leave this place?”

It’s a schlep, tho.  Left Victoria at 9:30 am and phoned Sal’s parents to report that we were safe and sound at 9:00 pm with all of the stuff still to unpack.  Almost 12 hours in transit what with shopping and schlepping and such.  Unloaded at low tide, of course.  Rule of living on the coast: when arriving home in the dark with a heavy load, the tide is low.  The bigger the load, the lower the tide.  It’s the law.

We’ve pretty much adapted to the ‘loading’ and ‘unloading’ thing.  We try to ensure everything is in a plastic tote and we try to limit the weight of each tote to twenty or so pounds.  But sometimes, it just doesn’t work that way.  We can easily have six or seven totes, a few coolers, luggage, building supplies and another 30% in loose bits and pieces.  A box of wine.  Couple of boxes of dishes or glasses, fifty pound sacks of this and that.   All in a 16 foot boat.

This trip we also have several hundred pounds of glass and skylights in the utility trailer to come over.  We’ll get to those another day.

The worst: Reddi-mix cement and wet peat moss.  Wrestling wet peat moss into a boat and then up a rocky shore really brings up the value of a bag of peat moss I can assure you.  It is worth ten times what I pay for it by the time it is in the garden.  Same for cement.

Sal and I are also trying to increase our locavore-ness.  We want to buy locally.  And there are plenty of places along the highway that provide.  But damned if I can find them.  These small-time local producers are well known to those who frequent them but they do not make much of an effort to attract new customers.  As a consequence our conversation goes something like this (while driving at 80 km/hr, towing a trailer and in a line of speeding vehicles).

“I am pretty sure H said that the farm was around here.  You see it?”

“No.  Is there a sign?”

“I don’t think so.  There is an old red tractor but it is in the neighbours yard and that neighbour is on the other side of him, I think.  By the time you see the tractor, you have passed it.”

“I saw a red tractor a minute or so ago.”

“Damn!  OK, who is next on the list?”

“Well, there is the duck lady who lives down on some beach but she doesn’t have a phone.  Is there a sign?”

“Geez, I didn’t ask.  Who else we got on the list?”

“Well, there is the chicken place…..OOOHH!!  OOOHHH!!   That was it!  That was it!  We just went past!”

“Damn, damn, damn.  Can’t stop here.  Can’t turn around here either.  How bad do we need chicken?”

“Oh, we are good for a bit.  We can try again next time.”

“OK, what do we have next?” 

“Well, I was going to stop at Save-ON”. 

“OK.  I can do that.”

We are still working on the locavore thing.

Sal’s parents are of British origins.  English, don’t you know?  They claim not to be anymore because they are so very proud to be Canadian and choose to identify with ‘us’ rather than ‘them’.

Right.  It’s like an orca claiming to be a salmon.

Sal’s mother has the manners and the mannerisms of the Windsors.  More so, I suspect, since I am sure the Queen (Elizabeth) occasionally plays hall-hockey in her socks or air guitar when no one is looking.  (Well, so rumour has it, anyway). Sal’s mum, on the other hand, is the queen at all times.

She really is quite regal.  Sal comes by it quite honestly.

Today we and her parents celebrated Sal’s birthday (’cause we were in El Salvador when the day truly arrived) at the Bengal Room at the Empress.  We took the Indian curry buffet complete with large gin martinis and a polite nod and acknowledgment to the senior waiter (over 20 years) who knows them well and seats us at their favourite table.

“Ya know…….?  This is all very, very nice.  Extremely so.  Really.  Thank you.  But you have to admit it, don’t you?  I mean, this is veddy, veddy British.  Don’t you think? 

“Don’t be daft, silly boy!  Martinis are Italian.  Of that I am quite sure.  And if they are not, then they bloody well should be!  And curry, of course, is Indian.  Everyone knows that quite thoroughly.  No contesting that, eh, what?!  We are not in the least being British.  What poppycock!  We are Canadians.  And I do not wish to hear another word on the matter, if you please.  Tut tut!”

I guess I mention all this because we also saw my friend, D, who normally lives full-time in Hong Kong.  He is Chinese.  Quite, actually.  And we really enjoy discussing our respective cultures.  He, of course, is civilized.  The Chinese truly are civilized.  Read Confucius.  I am, sadly, just a barbarian.  Worse, I can’t really argue with that.  Comparatively speaking, I am a barbarian.  The more I see of Chinese high culture, the more impressed I am.

Don’t get me wrong – I can argue well the flaws in their larger culture.  We all can.  And ‘D’ wouldn’t argue back.  But, honestly?  If we simply put ‘civility’ at the top of the priority list, they come out leagues ahead.  Think about it: 1.6 billion people!  Cooperating!

There is a price for that social attribute (civility) and it is paid by the sacrifices of the individual for the greater society – something we barbarians are not always prepared to do.  Still, harmony, good manners, order, respect, obedience, hard work, harder study and humility make for a very civilized environment.  They don’t do hockey riots in China.  They don’t do random mass shootings at schools or fast food restaurants in China (unless it is government sanctioned for the greater good, of course).  Basically, they get along to get along.  And they get ahead as a result.

I am not so sure that we really have a culture in Canada.  Not high culture, anyway.  We got the CBC, beer, hockey and trees and stuff.  And lots of immigrants to provide some real spice and colour.  We now have First Nations prominently adding something to the picture, too.  I understand how Canada plays out differently than most other places.  But a unifying national culture?  Some kind of ‘linked-together’ bonding thing?  I don’t think so.

I don’t think we even have any ‘real Canadian’ meals, do we?  Poutine is French Canadian.  Beef is too international to count.  Salmon too BC.  Wadda we got?  Wheat!?

I dunno……I am not complaining.  Not really.  I mean, who wants to identify with fried bread, bangers and mash and squishy peas?  Who needs too much civility, eh?  I’m OK with being a bland barbarian, I guess.

Just sayin’………

Here it is: I am in a city (Victoria) getting a few chores handled and I can’t write.  That’s right…a ‘writer’s block’  kinda.  So, I think about it……..

Wait a minute……..there’s no block!  The reason I am not writing is that there is nothing to write about!  There was traffic.  There were stores.  And then there was more traffic.  Now and then we went into a sushi place for sustenance and then went back into traffic. Wahoo!

What’s to write?

You want dull?  Go to the city!

OK, I am being a bit ‘snarky’.  I know that.  But, honestly, being snarky is about the only thing I got going for me down here.   I get to see my family and some friends and that part is good. Fabulous, actually.   I get a needed part for a doo-dah.  Great!!   But I am now grossly ill-equipped for tolerating the madness that passes for normal life.  Hours of my day in traffic!  How stupid is that!?  Ten minute line-ups to buy a loaf of bread.  Signage.  Rules.  Prices!  The gestapo that is the BC Ferry service.

It feels even crazier to me when I am back.

Last night a Korean Air jetliner had an ‘ incident’  aboard and the flight was redirected to Comox air base.  It was accompanied by two US fighter jets.  All the passengers were subsequently screened and released.  Prssumably the flight continued.  Eventually.  The official spokesperson said, ” All emergency assets were deployed.”

Emergency assets, in this case, were US fighter jets!  Their assistance?  They could shoot the plane down.  Some assistance!  Some asset!

Oh, I could rant some more but traffic beckons.  Chores are calling.  Gotta get going to get into some line-up!

More irony?  Yesterday I was in dolphin traffic and it was OK.  Today I am in human traffic and it is not!