Not much to say.  Things are good.  Days getting shorter.  We are doing what we do.

Well, I am making a whale.  An Orca.

I have no idea why.  Not really.  It was raining and I didn’t wanna work in the rain and so I made a whale.  There’s a kinda logic to that.  Kinda.  I didn’t actually make the whale, I just started to.  Not done yet.  You’d be surprised how complicated a Bologna shape can be.

Anyway, with nothing earth-shattering to say, I’ll just post a few whale-in-the-making pics. I will say that carving a whale from a block of wood should be easy.  I mean, ‘just take off the edges, add a tail and a few fins’ and voila.  Right?’

But the challenge is proportions.  And how do you get proportions of whale things from a whale going by?  Or even a picture of a whale?  Pictures show black whales with black fins and black tails.  Usually set against dark blue backgrounds.  Whale pics are basically Rorschach tests!

The good part?  Only Sea World employees can criticize my whale.

I am gonna do worms next.

We don’t really rely on the barge but it makes life so much easier and we like the guys who crew the boat.  They are coming with a load of lumber and our semi-annual fuel delivery today or tomorrow.  Which is good.  We want to get back to the ‘shop’ construction and, of course, we want to continue our pampered, lush, exceptionally satisfying way of life without having to work too hard to get it.  The barge helps us do that.

The barge is huge.  A bit over 100 feet long, maybe 35-40 feet wide and it sports a hy-ab lifting arm that can drop a ton (literally) of stuff with each lift.  That is important because the company charges by the lift.  It costs about $160 a lift but I have concluded that carrying and schlepping 2000 pounds of lumber (factoring in gas and ferry and not just a little blood and sweat spread over several trips) is well worth that sum.  And schlepping gas and propane is some kind of enclosed-in-the-car hell that I gladly pay to have done by the barge.  In other words, I think the barge is a great deal.

They don’t make any money off of us or any of the local residents.  Not really.  We are break-even at best.  Our average purchase twice (maybe three times) a year is about $12-1500 but most of that sum goes to the fuel companies.  Amongst residents, we are a medium-to-large delivery.  They do a lot of smaller-earning deliveries.  It takes them about half an hour once we are ‘in their sights’ to dock, unload and head off again.  They have three crew and the boat would cost at least $5M to build if it was replaced.  Any kind of simple business math says ‘there is no profit in servicing residents’.  The barge makes a ‘go’ of it servicing the camps, resorts and fish farms along the coast.  We benefit simply by being ‘on the way’ to somewhere else.

By way of explanation: some of the more industrial customers go through $100,000 worth of fuel every month!

And we get the same considerate and prompt service as they do.  The crew doesn’t even really need us to be there when they come.  But we like to see them.  They know where everything is, how to get at it and what to deliver.  We mostly just stand around getting in their way.  But part of that hour spent is cracking a few jokes, catching up on any new neighbours arriving and learning about how busy the season has been for each other.

But the service is now threatened.  For all of us.

It is hard to argue with the threat.  We want the coast to be as pristine and unpolluted as possible.  That is why we are here, after all.  But in order to achieve that, the government has mandated that all such commercial ships be double-hulled.  They want to reduce the risk of oil spills.  And a barge full of fuel is a risk.  No question.  But to double-hull the barge will cost millions and the current customer base simply couldn’t shoulder the cost which the barge compnany would have to pass on.  Plus, they have been plying the same waters serving the same customers for decades.  They are the least likely of ships to hit something and be holed.

Makes no difference.  They will be forced to comply.  Probably.  Or go out of business.  More probably.

The net effect of this ‘better eco’ standard (again: which I find hard to disagree with) is that the service will be less affordable or withdrawn altogether.  And that will impact those who live here greatly.

The overall effect will be to further ‘push’ people from a rural environment into an urban one.  And one more indirect, subtle force will be levied that results in conformity and controlled living as determined by government.  We can’t have the barge but we can get on transit.  And we can no longer walk in the forest but we can go from one little box to another.  Working for the system that put us there.

“Dave, surely you don’t think there is a plot afoot to drive people to urban living?”   

No, I don’t.  Not really.  Not a conscious one, anyway.  But there are decisions being made constantly by Big Brother and the Holding companies that have that effect.  The desire to make things cheaper, to make people conform, to limit freedoms and to concentrate services has the effect of pushing people into concentrations and we call those concentrations cities.

I suppose we could call them camps but concentration camps has a bad connotation.

As for me, I will resist.  I will pay the barge more if they continue their service or I will resign myself to doing the hard work and heavy lifting in a fuel-smelling confined space (the car) if I have to.  It is still worth it.  I will never return to the concentrations.

Well, another apology.  A rant.  Sorry.  You know how it is.  Spleen needs venting.  I just gotta say…..

……and I would have thought a condemnation of the monetary system (last blog) would have generated more response.  Maybe I wasn’t clear?  I am saying that the system is rigged against the people.  YOU.  It is not the convenience we think it is.  It is, instead, an enslaving device.  That’s right – the system is designed to enslave and we are, in effect, indebtured by the system into servitude for life to an elite.

Sounds kinda crazy, doesn’t it?

But I think it is so.  Here’s why.  The Central bank prints money.  As much as they want.  For whatever reason.  They then ‘loan’ it to the banks and they charge interest to the banks on what amounts to IOU’s.  Unreal ‘fantasy money’.  If you stop to think about it, the Central Bank ‘print/creates’ say 100 dollars and then as soon as they hand it over to the retail banks it has ‘grown’ by the interest rate.  $100 dollars just morphed for no reason to $103.00.  (Currently only $1.00 but usually around $3.00) That is just $3.00 more of fantasy.  And – just to blow your mind – that extra $3.00 was not even printed!  It just sits there as a debt unrepresented by even printed ‘funny money’.

The banks are then allowed to loan that money and, further, they are allowed to loan as much as ten times the amount they borrowed from the Central Bank.  That is a multiplication of ten times the fantasy!  And, of course, they too charge interest. So, at this point, we have gazillions of dollars created all earning interest for the banks and yet those dollars have not done any real ‘work’ yet.  So far, no one has created anything but fantasy money.  There has been no ‘creation or exchange of real value’.  In other words, the money (at the banking level) has increased in value without creating any.

But it gets worse.

So now a company borrows some money and, of course, owes more than it borrowed because of the interest charged by the bank.  The company pays employees and buys capital goods to get started.  Interestingly, that company also pays a tax on that money spent.  So, not only has no value been created yet (the workers haven’t yet worked and the machines haven’t yet been turned on) but the so-called value of the already devalued (by interest) money is made less again by taxes.

The company has had no chance yet to create real value and yet they owe by way of taxes and interest probably half again what they borrowed.  Translated: the amount of fantasy money just grew again by 50%.  And this weird system of interest and taxes is multiplied again and again every time someone gets their hands on the original ‘funny money’ from employees to landlords to restaurants and even children’s allowances (sales tax on gumballs).

And we are all playing in this monetary game that results in the last guy in the line being the most heavily indebted.  Usually all his or her life.  And they are in debt to people who simply created the system or had the good fortune to be placed higher on the food chain.  Most of of those people, of course, worked hard to get higher on that chain.  They drank the Kool-Aid.   It is like a perverted game of musical chairs but where there are only half a dozen chairs and five of them are permanently occupied while dozens of others circle the one chair remaining open.  The majority simply cannot win.

This would not be so bad if it were just a game.  But to get into the game real people have to produce real goods with real labour.  And they do that by expending their life-force.

The lower-rung players have to make the stuff.  The bankers just made (and manage) the ‘system’.  And it is only the banks who are debt free and continue to make so-called profit from the producers of real goods and services.  They are the leeches.  The workers and to some extent the companies are the hosts to a huge and growing parastic ‘system’.

It would also not be so bad if there weren’t so many leeches.  To pay a few Swiss banking gnomes in Zurich for the ‘convenience’ of a monetary system might be worth it.  The system is convenient after all.  But we have multiple layers of leeches.  Stratas of sucks.  Piles of parasites.  Our system is so bad that it puts into debt the lowest entry players, the very students whose focus is directed on gaining access to this so incredibly corrupt system.  Student debt is likely the most cynical application of this evil system.  We charge the poor young innocents an entry fee so that they can play in a game they cannot win.

Bear in mind that I said that money – in itself – is not evil.  A token or IOU of debt is OK if it is fairly exchanged for real value.  It is only in the application of unrestricted money creation, interest and taxes that it becomes corruptible.  And that is what we have done.

OK.  No more.  I quit.  I probably don’t know anything and no one cares, anyway.  It’s a game.  We all play.  And we all lose to a lesser or greater degree (most first world people do OK).  But let me just be clear about what I think it is:  it is a corrupt system designed to exploit others for the benefit of the few.  So long as the disparity between the top and the bottom was not too great, a lot of people played.  Willingly, if not consciously.  But now that the balance of inequality between rich and poor has become so extreme, more and people are looking to exit the game.  They want out. And that is the connection to my off the grid blog.  I wanted out.  But the system is a tar-baby.  It is impossible to get out if everyone else is still in.  Why?  Because we are all in this together – whatever this is! 

Money, of course, is not evil.  It is simply a medium of exchange.  A token.  IOU’s, in effect.  Perfectly legit for trading amongst complicated social beings living and working at numerous goods and services in equally as numerous places around the globe.

But the monetary system as we practice it currently is bad.  In fact, it is so bad that it needs a grand overhaul by an ethical, moral body that restricts profligate printing, prohibits interest and strips banks of the ability to create ‘financial products’.  In fact, we have to eliminate or drastically alter capitalism as it is practised today or we will likely face more economic implosions on a more frequent and regular basis.

But that will never happen.  Or will it? 

Probably never ’cause the current system is rigged against the people who use it.  And it seems to disregard the source of all real value – the planet.  Giant leeches and other parasites live off the exchange of money (rather than the exchange of goods and services) and they will likely not want to give that up.  And, anyway, it is hard to conceive of an uncorruptible system rising and replacing a very entrenched, powerful and corrupt one.

We need a revolution but we will never get one.  Not officially.

I bring up the topic because when people come out here for the first time, they are introduced to the view of that system and a kinda different one in a new way and they see a difference.  It is not a clear difference.  It is not a shocking contrast.  And that is because the new system of exchange they are seeing for the first time is a hybrid.  It is money and something else.  Emphasis:  something else.  But this something else (not completely foreign even to strangers doing business) is on a larger scale than ever experienced before.  It takes time, but they eventually do see it.  And then they slowly start to shed their dependency on the corrupt system to whatever extent possible and or needed.  It is not a revolution but it is almost an evolution.

Or maybe a devolution?

People need stuff.  They might plan well, shop even better and work efficiently but putting together a home from scratch and having everything you need delivered to the site all in one fell swoop is logistically and practically impossible.  People need help. And so people lean on other people, people borrow, people work together.  And the first lesson we generally learn in any system of exchange is to pay back what we borrow and to treat others as we would like to be treated.

But we newbies-in-the-feral-world don’t at first, anyway, really know what that means.  Let me give an example:

A friend and neighbour building out here needed some bolts.  I had them.  I gave them.  He was appreciative.  “Geez, thanks,  Thanks a lot.  I don’t think the value of these bolts is $25.00 but here is that amount.  I don’t care if I am paying too much…just thanks.”

“Um, I won’t take your money.  Thanks but no thanks.  Just so you know, offering me money is not a fair exchange at all.  Not out here.  Take the bolts.  Use them.  Take whatever you need.  And then, when you have a chance, replace them.  No hurry.  That is the deal out here.  Replacement is much more significant than money.  If I take your $25.00, I have to go to town, pay for the ferry and then do the shopping to get my bolts back.  I want you to do all that because I have already done it once for them to be on hand for you.  Don’t give me money, give me bolts!”

Of course he immediately understood but was still somewhat confused for a minute.  This was a different kind of exchange. “Hmmm….money usually works….what just happened here….?”

I mention that story because it shows how the current monetary system is often  unsuitable for a place like this, for people doing this and for a lifestyle like this.

Of course, we all still need money.  We need stuff and most stuff comes from the urban centres (or China).  Man’s gotta shop.  But more and more of our life out here is not monetary based.  We help out a neighbour painting his house and a few years later, that neighbour comes over and helps us.  No money was exchanged.  No ‘cut’ was given to the tax man. No ‘interest’ was paid on the favour to any bank.  A value was exchanged but it was exchanged outside the current system.  And, the longer you live out here, the more of that happens.

It is not a ‘dodge’ to get out of paying the tax man and the money lenders, the regulators, the authorities and the myriad middle people, it is simply done out of expedience.  You need help and I give it and, when I need it, you give it.  Simple.  Direct.  No leeches need be involved.

Gifts of food, favours of labour, exchanges of skill.  But less and less cash.  Result: fewer and fewer leeches.

It is often a foreign concept to the urbanite.  Very foreign for the successful business-oriented urbanite.  But once the concept is grasped, just about everyone deals with local exchanges in a fair, equitable but quite unmeasureable way.  And time is rarely factored in.  It just works for us.  It works for others who live on the fringes.  It is a hybrid system.

So, if Wendy bakes me a pie as a gesture of gratitude for driving her into town, is that a fair exchange of values?  If we reduced the pie and the trip to monetary units, I lost out.  The trip is worth more.  And, if I am feeling cheated in that transaction, I am unlikely to do it again.  But we don’t do that kind of figuring.  We just do for each other.  And then no one feels cheated.  “It will all work out in the end.”   And so Wendy might catch a ride next month, too.  I might get another pie, I might not.  There is no accounting except for feeling a general sense of ‘fairness’ in that relationship.  Or not.

And it mostly seems to be there most of the time with most of the people.  The absence of leeches helps greatly.

New neighbours moving in.  Down the way about a mile or so.  Nice people.  Intelligent.  Courteous, fun.  We like ém.  They needed a bit of assistance yesterday so I went.  We got to talkin’ ’bout off-the-grid power.  The cabin they bought is pretty bare-bones in most respects and especially electrical power.  And I started by saying, “Well, there is too much to know to give it all to you now.  It is a steep learning curve that I am still climbing.  But, basicaly…..blah, blah, blah……” and I spoke steadily for at least ten minutes straight.  And I hadn’t even touched on inverters, chargers or a myriad of other related aspects of the topic.

“Whoah!  My mind is reeling.  I can’t keep all that in my head.  OhMyGawd!  We’re going to have to come to your place and take notes!”

“Well, that is a good idea.  No purpose in trying to learn it all yourself from scratch.  Trouble is, as much as I have learned, it is only half of what I need to know.  For instance, every battery system operates differently.  Yours will likely be different than mine.  Everyone has to get in synch with their batteries and, by the time they do that, they have often killed them off or crippled them and then have to get a new set”.

“What!?  Batteries?  They are pretty simple.  No?”

“No.  Operating off batteries is like raising children.  Do one thing wrong and you have a dysfunctional output.  And yet, sometimes with benign neglect, they go on forever.”

“Are you joking!?”

“Do you see me smiling?  A lot of tragedy has been inflicted on batteries.  A lot of pain.  The experts say, ‘batteries never die, their owners kill ’em.’ And they are right.”

“Wow!  Didn’t know that.  But don’t some people generate enough power to sell some back into the grid?” 

“Nah!  That’s a myth. In Canada, anyway.  Maybe in Arizona or the desert somewhere.  Maybe some super-rich guy in the south heavily invested in solar with many, many panels can do that.  But your basic off-the-gridder is – duh – OFF the grid and couldn’t sell any back if they had it.  And your basic Canadian doesn’t get enough sunshine year ’round to net out a surplus anyway.  Plus Canadians don’t get the 50% subsidy Americans get and, further, we ‘Nucks pay more for everything anyway.  Face it, you’ll be relying on a genset to some extent.  We all do.”

“Well, they are cheap, eh?  I mean I can get a nice lookin’ genset at Costco.  So the genset is not gonna kill me, right?”

“Wrong.  Chinese made gensets break down the most.  Basically you need at least two gensets.  I’ll explain all about that some time later.  But budget at least $12,000 for your genset system, maybe more.  And that may include second hand units!”

“My electrical system is gonna cost me $12,000!!”

“Nah.  That’s just the genset part.  The system in total will be triple that.  Depending on a few variables, you’ll be lookin’ at $30K to do it all right.  Or more.  It will still be small-to-modestly sized but it would be right.  Or rather, as right as any of us can do it.  But then, of course, you’ll probably ruin your first set of batteries….so…it gets worse.”

“But that’s my power, right?  Like, forever?”

“No.  That is just the lights and computer.  Maybe a movie or two?  The real heavy power comes from propane.  We use that in the range, fridge, freeezer, hot water and the old BBQ.  You could easily put $15,000 into that system, not counting the actual use of propane.”

“You are saying that we have to budget another $45,000 over and above the price of the property?”

“Well, now, that all depends on what kind of water system the house has?  Or what kind of toilet you want…..?  If you have a good nearby source of water and you do it all yourself, you can likely get away with as little as $5,000 in infrastructure.  Maybe up to $10,000 if you want it to be even the least bit modern and sophisticated.  And, if you want two bathrooms or two sinks or outside stuff……well, the credit line is the limit.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah.  That was just the equipment list.  Hiring experts to do it for you…..?  You may have to double that figure.  Two friends of mine in the southern Gulf islands just built their own docks.  Did it for under $5,000 or so with basically salvaged materials.  Another neighbour way up the way had something similar installed and it cost over $60,000.  He had it done for him.  Professional expertise is more expensive the further you go from where the professional lives.”  

“Why do you do it?!  Living Off the grid seems prohibitively expensive!”

“Well, first off – it is worth every penny.  Secondly, you do it yourself as much as possible so that you know enough look after it.  In other words, living this way is purposeful and the first purpose is learning.  Don’t come out for the mint juleps on the deck or the happy kayaking.  Come out to learn.  Come out to do.  Come out expecting to work and develop skills.  Come out to be more independent and more real in your relationship to the earth and even the house you live in.  Doing this kind of thing somehow reconnects you with the basics of life and an inner peace and contentment comes from learning to deal with what comes up. 

“Or so I have heard, anyway.  I am still learning.”

“I need to watch something highbrow.  Maybe some boring documentary or a slow paced, no-action, tear jerker with poor, abused women and children suffering in India and their dog dying slowly til the end.  Or maybe something on gay rights or gender changing.  Or gardens or something.  My algorithm looks bad.”

“What are you talkin’ ’bout?”

“Well, Netflix takes note of the movies I watch and then suggests other things that I might like.  They use an algorithm to do that.  And so the movies that pop up on my page are what they think I like.  And they think I like junk.”

“You do.”

“Yeah.  I know.  But they also share my likes and dislikes with all and sundry and so now everyone knows I like junk.  And let us be clear, I like good junk, not junky junk.”

“You like space aliens and shoot em ups!  That’s junk.  Plain and simple.  Emphasis on simple!”

“Wrong.  Good space and alien movies are rare, I admit, but when they get it right, it is great.  Remember the first Alien with Sigourney Weaver?  And slo-mo shoot ém ups with cars blowing up is about as good as it gets.  Everyone knows that.  Ooohhhhh, Jason Statham killing everyone even slightly bad…………what’s not to like?”

“You have no taste, you know that?”

“I love you.”

“The exception proves the rule.”

“Well, we watched a movie of your choice set in India about British retirees, remember?  And now, every time you open your page, you get bombarded with Bollywood specials.  That‘s what I mean.”

“Well, you have a point, I guess.  What are you suggesting?”

“Let’s create some new profile pages that defy our algo-stereotypes.  Let’s fool ém.  We’ll start and stop a bunch of so-called ‘good movies’ and then our algorithm will make our friends think we are sophisticated and intellectual.”

“But you are an idiot.”

“Right, but only you know that!”

“Not if you publish this blog.”

Just read the Unwinding by George Packer.  It’s about how America has lost it’s vision of the Disneyesque American Dream.  Hard to argue with that although a careful reading of America’s history might suggest that it is simply fulfilling it’s just-as-early darker vision of creating Empire.

The elite of the good ol’ USofA thrives off of war and that business (in a world economy gone flat) seems like it is still a pretty good one.  The military-industrial stocks go up no matter what.  And the elite in power still seem to have a very firm grasp on the reins – i.e the money, the missiles and the media.  Put more succinctly, the American Dream may no longer be working but the American Nightmare certainly is.

Peter Thiel of PayPal and Facebook fame had a good line, “It was 1973 (that the age of innocence in America ended), the last year of the fifties.”  That resident rich guy, deviant, savant, Libertarian and contrarian is so profoundly disillusioned with Mom and her GMO apple pie that he is investing billions in ending aging.  He figures that if he can live forever, he can maybe fix some of the problems eventually (but, as a Libertarian, it is not clear if he intends to live forever alone or share the technology with others…..?  I think it depends on the market.  And how weird is that?)

My own take is also somewhere in Lalaland.  I am kinda hoping for the Messiah.  A really big one.

Thiel may be right about the age of innocence ending in 1973 but it’s end days began much further in the past.  The American Revolution was about who controls the printing of money and the US wrested that ability away from the Brits way back in 1776.  Since then they have managed to control the printing of money for the entire world – for the most part, anyway, long before even the Federal Reserve and Bretton Woods.  And he who controls the money controls everything.  Unless someone or something magical comes along pretty soon, that is the way it is going to be for the foreseeable future.

And how do you change that?  The very concept of money is a huge, behemoth of a construct.  It is one that is truly too big to fail.  But it needs some changing.  It needs changing drastically.   We could use a little magic right about now.  Good magic.  The rare kind.  We need a Messiah.

But Thiel points out that the only magic we have seen for a long time is silly techie-magic and 99% of that has been for infotainment.  Technological progress is mostly manifested in phones!  He claims we have not progressed as a species but instead have regressed, in fact, because we are focused in the wrong area – fun.

Well, the mlitary-industrial guys are still focused on their business and they are more than just 1% but his point is well taken.

My problem is that I don’t see how even the Second Coming might work.  How would the Messiah get his/her mojo on without proper media coverage?  And the media is now a corrupt, hollowed out institution owned by the bad guys anyway.  Our Saviour would have a hard time getting noticed.  Or worse, he/she’d be Oprah’ed and Jerry Springer’ed into our living rooms.  Hard to get the rapture on from even a big flat screen Blu-Ray.  And, anyway, I am sure he/she’d be sued or ‘interrogated’ or otherwise occupied so that only his or her cell-mates would see the light-and-magic show.

The point of this ramble is an odd one…..

…..I am getting there…..

Despite the omnipresent gloom, I feel change in the air.  Maybe it is just autumn.  Maybe I am just aging and I am getting those disorders where old people ‘feel’ things in their bones.  I dunno.  But I kinda feel a change is comin’ on.  Bigger than the didn’t-quite-happen but promised Obama-change. Bigger than a Homeland-held Messiah-in-jail kinda change.  Something big.  I have no idea what.  Not a clue.  But I feel it (more like the beginnings of it) and one cannot ignore one’s feelings.

The closest I can come to describing this feeling is that it feels as if more voices are dissenting at the status quo of more issues.  More feelings of anti-establishment are being voiced.  Politicians are bumping into more walls of resistance to their greedy proposals.  Anarchy, chaos and dissent are more the norm around the world and the 1% are escalating their ‘forces’ to squelch it with increasingly heavier means.  Divides are widening on political levels but the ‘little guys’ are merging and compromising their differences.  Civil discourse is no longer the standard – even civil disobedience is not being tolerated as much – but personal tolerance for personal differences is increasing.  I guess what I am saying is that there are indications of social stress caused by government and industry but there are indications of greater unity amongst the people.

If the people are slowly putting aside their petty differences (racism, sexism, gay rights, aboriginal rights, etc.) and the powers that be (police, Homeland Security, economic pressures) are increasing the stress on them anyway, something is going to break.

And that makes for change.

“Southeast 30 and gusting to 35 in the afternoon!”  MARINE WEATHER

Sometimes it is a bit of gamble weather-wise to go to town or not.  Sometimes you pretty much have to go and so the gamble becomes a calculated risk.  Yesterday loomed even worse.  I had to add to the equation that I had no car when I got to the other island and had to rely on ‘hitching’ to get in.  The whole thing became a crapshoot of stupid proportions.

But, ‘what the hell’….it wasn’t like I was busy……………..

And, as luck and good neighbours proved, it all turned out great!  Our neighbours went into town a day early so as to accommodate my appointment and they also provided the car-ride in.  It all went well.  Weather remained good and later in the day my truck was working again and so I picked it up from the mechanic.  Felt good to have my ‘wheels’  back.  In the morning I felt as if I was hobbled.  Later that day, I was healed.

Weird.

‘Weird‘ because there is something primal in me and, I think, most men.  We feel incomplete without a set of wheels.  Hobbled.  Like a cowboy without a horse.  Like a Bedouin without a camel?  Or a  rebel without a Toyota pick-up?  There is a line in Jerry Maguire where the character tells his girlfriend, “You complete me.”  I can honestly say that about my set of wheels.  Sad.

When living off the grid on a remote island, the ‘extension of self’ that a vehicle provides, like an extra limb, extends further to one’s boat.  Ya kinda identify with the thing, ya know?  My newish to me, vintage boat, the 17′ runabout I call Wasabe has grown on me like that, too.  I used to relate to the stubby, white, heavy barge-like tub that is my whaler-like old Surf.  Natch.  Wasn’t much of a leap, really, given my own sense of self.  Think Brian Dennehy.

But now I am getting in synch with Wasabe, the sickly green, mushy-floored speedster wannabe that has long seen better days.  That seems to resonate with self as well.

That sounds kinda sad, too, I guess.  But it isn’t.  Old Wasabe gets around. Still gets the job done.  Ain’t pretty but still tickin’.  And Wasabe can carry.  Not as much as Surf used to but it still carries stuff…..just does it smarter.  I can relate to all that.

Any female readers are likely wondering, “What the hell is he talkin’ about?”  And I think just about every male reader is thinkin’, “Yeah.  Me, too.”

Mind you, ol’ Sal and her little boat are pretty inseperable, too, but I don’t think she identifies with it as much.  For her, I think, cars and boats are pretty much just transportation.  Makes you wonder…how could she miss so much? 

Could be a gender thing.

In keeping with the theme of the last blog, we followed the scheduled maintenance required for our wood stove yesterday.  Kinda.  You see, we skipped last year so, in reality, we were a year late.  Or were we?

Common wisdom states that you clean your woodstove every year.  If you don’t, your house will catch on fire and you will die.  Horribly.  Painfully.  Worse, you will lose all your possessions and your premiums will go up.  Apparently, that is a fact.  And there will be no sympathy from the more regulated for such wanton irresponsibility.  So, we have complied like the good woodsfolk we aspire to be despite the fact of our not having house insurance or being that attached to possessions.  Life, on the other hand, is more precious so we did as we were told.  Until last year.

Did I mention the free radical gene in my DNA?

Here’s what came up: every time I cleaned out the chimney, it was virtually clean.  Over twelve feet of flue, admittedly with only one 45 degree bend, yielded but a cup, maybe two, of soot.  ‘Surely, I thought, this obsession with cleaning flues is some weird kind of safety propaganda along the lines of Reefer Madness, bicycle helmets, seat belts and the need for security cameras at all times and all places.  The benign looking woodstove can’t be the demon lurking as publicized’.  Or can it?

Last year I took a chance.  “Hey, Sal, let’s not clean the chimney this year.  Waddya say?  Let’s risk it.  Take a chance.  Roll the dice.  Let’s introduce a little danger into our lives, ya know?”

“We just came back from chicken busing through El Salvador and that scared the bejeesus out of us, isn’t that enough thrills for awhile?”

“Well, you make a good point.  But I think it is in my favour.  What the hell is a house fire after chicken busing through an armed camp of rebels in a poverty stricken, drug infested banana republic?  Now that you mention it, why not plan on vacationing in Afghanistan this next winter?”

“Nix on Afghanistan – this winter, anyway (Sal likes to keep her options open)-  but I will admit that we never seem to get any soot from the obligatory annual dismantling of everything woodstove.  I am OK with skipping a year.  Do you think it is safe?”

So, we skipped and all went well.  Mostly.  The stove wasn’t drawing as well near the end of last years burning season but close examination suggested that the baffle was the culprit.  It was disintegrating.  This year we would clean it all up, put in a new baffle and ‘do the right thing’.  And yesterday we did it.

Here’s the result of the experiment:  This time there was a five gallon bucket of black collected.  Not much in the way of creosote but a lot more loose ash, soot, cinder and black crud.  Not enough of anything to make for a chimney fire but enough to make an impression.  In one year we got two cups of crap, in two years we got almost five gallons.

That’s surprising.  Doesn’t fit with my sense of logic.  Why didn’t I just get 4 or five cups?  Never mind.  We can go two years without worry and so we will.  I think.  Somehow wood soot grows in some odd exponential way so we likely won’t push the two year envelope but it will still add an element of adventure.

Oooooh, this off the grid lifestyle is just one long thrill-ride, isn’t it?

The weather turned yesterday.  Just like the next-to-last blog prophesized.  Sheesh.  We were just a sweater short of putting on the fire yesterday.  And today.

We try NOT to burn wood til October.  No reason, really.  Miserly wood hoarding, I guess.  Just seems like the right thing to do.  But, really?  NOT putting on the fire until some certain arbitrarily chosen date is one of those weird habitual things old people do, “Nah, never put on the fire til October.  Never mind the snow.  Put on a parka if yer cold, ya wuss!”

I have a friend who always hangs up his golf clubs on October 1st.  Regardless of the weather.  “Why?”, I asked.  “It is October first.  I always hang ém up on October 1st.  Always will.”

I never understood that.  Still don’t.

Generally speaking, I balk at such habits.  At least I say I do.  ‘Feels like living unconsciously, ya know?’  Habit, ritual, routine, scheduled maintenance…it all sucks the life out of life, I think.  It definitely shortens the golf season.  Still, I am doing it, too.  More and more.

Living off the grid requires a kind of discipline and discipline requires routine.  I watch and maintain the stockpile of food, the water system, gas, fuel and electrical sytems.  I change the oil on engines, chop and stack wood, put away tools, sharpen some of them…..that kind of thing.  Batteries alone are more demanding than were my two children!  And none of this is in my nature.  I am more of a free radical.  I think life should be more of an arcade game than a card game, if you know what I mean?

The point: if you are not careful, you can live remote in the wilderness by recipe.  Sounds kinda counterintuitive, doesn’t it?

Anyway, I have noticed that I am doing more and more that is the same and samer.  For instance, I never got up in the morning at the same time.  I could rise at 7:00 or nine.  Even later sometimes.  Rarely ever earlier.  Just depends.  But it used to depend on what time I went to sleep and I have noticed that I am going to sleep every night between 10:30 and 10:45.  That’s a routine.  I’d break it if I could.  But I can’t.  Eyes close.  Done.

Worse, I am actually rising at around 7:30 more often than not.  My world is getting stable.  What the hell!?

Of course, some things impose their routine on me.  Bowels, for instance.  They have had their way with me for as long as I can remember.  Stomach, too.  Hard to ignore one’s gastro intestinal tract.  The point: body parts impose routine, too.  And, as you get older, weaker body parts impose more and more health related routines.  And, collectively, the whole of the body demands hygenic routines.  Always has.  The way I see it, we homo sapiens are basically a routine trying to happen. All the time. “Tubes rule, dude!”

It is amazing I have any free time for my real self at all!

So, I try to resist it.  Trying to have a life, as they say.  For the sake of balance in my universe, I try to counter the tendency to routine.  Why?  Because there is a very powerful force pushing us all into routine and it is not just nature doing it.  The enemy is us!  Jobs.  Christmas.  Easter.  Birthdays.  Bus schedules.  Regular dental care.  The list is endless.  Haven’t you noticed?  It’s all a conspiracy, I say.  Regimentation.  Goose stepping.  And most people go along with that.

I try not to.

But I am losing the battle.  The reason:  I don’t have enough free time to deal with it all.  That’s why!

Ironically, Sal has always been much more comfortable with routine in her life.  Til lately, anyway.  Now she seems to be balking, too.  Nowadays the only behaviour of hers I can count on is her breaking at 5:00 for a glass of wine and yet dinner, for instance, is getting harder and harder to come by.  Unless, of course, I make it.  Which is OK.  So long as it doesn’t become a routine.

She’ll play with the dogs, go to book club and whinge about missing yoga but, generally speaking, she is rebelling at all the thngs she used to do without thinking about it, too.

Like, I am doing the dishes all the $#%$#@ time now.     

Where is the routine (for her) when you need one, eh?

You can see where this is going…..right?

Well, I don’t.  I have no idea.  Does this mean that between the requirements of the bed (and, by ‘bed’ I mean ‘sleeping’), the woodshed, the workshop, the bathroom, the kitchen and the dogs, my life is over?  Have I been subtly conscripted into a regular system of sorts?  Have I lost my free will or is it simply a function of time management with too little time?

What exactly the hell is going on?