We’ve been picking at our woodpile these past three weeks or so.  No real ‘burn’, just a few ‘take-the-chill-offs’.  But, as you know, each little piece detracts from the pile and today, when I went to fill the in-house-cradle, I noticed that the first of our twelve rows was 2/3 gone.

“Sheesh, Sal.  Wood pile is a-dwindlin’ already!  We were so happy to have that woodshed full and now, in a blink, we are almost down to eleven rows.  I’d say we used close to 5% of the pile already and we have yet to have a full day’s fire.”

“All the more reason to make plans to go south.  Seems everyone up here, when they are talking about getting away from the winter for a bit, throws out the line, ‘and we’ll save some wood!”

That’s pretty funny.  Spend a week or so traveling and a few thousand dollars and the first goal of the trip is saving the woodpile!  But, it’s true.  You see, you can’t buy the wood.  There is no one to go get the wood but you.  Wood is all about you working hard and very little else except a bit of danger and a lot of sore muscles.

The wood has to be processed from standing or wind-fallen logs to trimmed and lengthed.  Then it has to be hauled and floated and hauled again.  Then you lift it up the highline on the winch to get the wood length (about ten-footers as a rule) to the ‘bucking’ cradle.  And from there you buck it into ’rounds’, split it, carry it and stack it. 

We try to do that when we have Woofers or young, strong people to help but most of it is done by me and Sal. 

The hardest part of the job for Sally is setting the chokes on the 10-footers I have cut and deposited at the foot of the hill we live on.  Our ‘living level’ or elevation is about 75 feet up and about 125 feet from the lagoon where the logs await hauling.  Sally has to wrap a choke (heavy nylon belt) around each one, attach it and then haul on the block and tackle (each log length weighs between 200 and 400 pounds) until the log is clear of the ground and hanging at a 45 degree angle.

Sal weighs 125 pounds – give or take – and if the log is too heavy, she is just left hanging in the air and swinging back and forth.  The log doesn’t move despite the 4 to one ratio of the b&t.  I then have to go down the hill and cut that one into two shorter lengths.   

When that is done and the log is cinched off, she gives me a sign sorta like the whistle-punk she is acting like and I haul it up on the gas-powered winch to the top, disconnect it, roll it out of the way and send the b&t back down for another.  We have to do about 50-60 10-footer logs each year, sometimes a bit more.  Sal is pretty tough by the time we have the logs up.

We are very fortunate.  The house is well insulated and the stove is ideally placed.  I researched the stoves quite a bit and decided on a great little Pacific Energy Artisan model (out of production now) and it is very efficient and attractive.  We use – maybe – a wheelbarrow full every two days at the coldest time of the year.  We have neighbours who use two a day when it is cold.  Three to four cords will last us as a rule.  Most people plan on 6.  Many use much more.     

It is a very simple concept, wood heat.  But it is not so simple to do.  They say wood warms you at least twice – when you are getting it in and then again when burning it in the winter.

I’d add a third time: sometimes it so beautiful and comforting that the heat does not seem like the prime reason for having a fire.  I am embarrassed to admit that I have spent more than just a few hours staring at the fire after a long hard day and somehow feeling real good about it.

That part of wood heat is easy to do.

One can buy a 300 amp hour battery for anywhere between $100.00 and $500.00.   The discrepancy in quality can be greater but I choose not to think about it beyond $500.00.  Makes my head hurt. 

You see, I have a 48 volt system and no ‘ordinary’ battery comes with more than 12 volts so I have to marry up four batteries at the very least to get 48 volts.  And 12 volt batteries are the lightweights of the battery world.  They are the ‘disposables’.  If you want ‘hardy and durable’, you drop down in voltage.  A 6-volt battery of similar weight to the 12-volt is twice as long lived.  And you’d need two of them to replace the 12.  Ergo, if you follow the logic, two-volt batteries are the best. 

Add deep-cycle to the specs and maybe a few hundred more amp hours and one can easily spend the $500.00 on one battery and have only 1/24 of the batteries you need to fill out a 48 volt system.  Do the math – that is $12,000.00 for the right batteries for my system!  And I know that one can spend double that quite easily depending on the size of your amp-hour capacity. 

For a really good, heavy duty, long lived, guaranteed, 2-volt based system for a house our size at say, 1000 amp hour rating (modest), you can easily spend $20,000.00 not counting HST.  That batch of bats would occupy the space of a small bathroom and require proper ventilation and insulation and monthly maintenance (not because they really need monthly maintenance but rather because one feels the need to fuss when one has spent that much money on batteries).  They would last maybe twenty years.  

I mention all this simply to vent my spleen.  I need to get it out, to share, to vent my gases, as it were.  You see, the bats are just, maybe, (depending on how committed you get to the amp hours and the quality of the bats in the first place) not even 33% of the cost of the electrical system.  After you build the appropriate buildings to house everything, add an appropriately sized diesel genset, the right electrical interfaces (inverter, charge controller, panels, etc.) wire, attachments, solar panels, wind turbines and towers and a simple off-the-grid system can easily top $50,000.00.  And all that is before you get to wiring the actual house! 

Living off-the-grid is not cheap electrically speaking.  Not really.  Who woulda thunk it, eh?

But let me reveal the most salient point: it is well worth it.  WELL worth it.  Would I pay an upfront cost of $50,000 vs a minor urban monthly hydro bill of only $300 to live out here?  ABSO-bloody-LUTELY.

Who woulda thunk that!?   

Everybody has a battery in their life.  Computer.  Car.  Flashlight.  Batteries are ubiquitous in today’s world and I have my share.  Maybe more.  Definitely more than I want.  The reason I feel this way is simple – batteries are very, very complex.

I know what you are thinking, “No, they are not.  They are simple, you dolt!  Just put ém in right and all is well until they die.  Simple as pie!”

And that would be your first mistake.  Of course the typical battery user is blissfully ignorant and kept that way by the ease of switching dead-for-live and the cost of same.  A flashlight battery is five bucks and five minutes.  Things get a smidge more ‘challenging’ for some when the car battery goes on them but, even then, most people can swap over one cheap, light battery for another from Costco and, once again, life is good. 

Off-the-grid batteries are another beast altogether.  I have 16 of them as the foundation of my electrical system.  Eight of them weigh 125 pounds each.  The other eight are half that.  Remember: I live on a remote island.  125 pounds is heavy.  Together, I have about 500 amp hours of batteries at 48 volts weighing in at a total of 1500 pounds.  That is three banks of battery groupings wired into the inverter and the various charging sources from the generator to the solar panels to the wind turbine.  And that’s where the simplicity ends and the complexity begins.

One of the terminals in the mid-battery bank went all ‘flaky’ on me.  Imagine ‘flake’ tuna.  You can take a fork and flake off pieces of it simply by touching and prodding.  That is what was happening to one terminal in one battery in the middle of the battery bank.  Go figure.

So, I did try to figure.  I read and asked and investigated and the answers were all the same: “No idea.  Neér heard of such a thing.  Neér happened like that ever before my whole life and I been handling batteries since I was kid.  You sure you weren’t pokin’ at some tuna?”

“Geez.  Can’t really say.  I thought it was a 125 pound battery but you know how they all look like tuna in the dark, eh?  I’ll go back and check.”

It wasn’t tuna.  The battery terminal was all goofy and so I went to Vancouver where I get my batteries but it was too heavy to take so I just went with pictures.

Ernie runs Davidson Batteries on Broadway and I’ve been buying batteries there since I was 16 and had my first car.  Those guys are great.  Honest.  Fair.  And the benefit of the doubt always goes to the customer.  “I saw the pictures of it.  Don’t think it is the battery.  I think the terminal clamps are too loose.  Ya gotta tighten them clamps tighter than a tuna sandwich, you know?” “Yeah.  I know.  I tightened them.  Honest.  I think the battery is goofy.  Waddya wanna do?” “Well, we’ll replace it.  No problem.  But check them clamps.  Let me know, OK?”

So, I got home and checked the clamps.  They were tight.  But the more I looked, the more it did seem like the clamps were at fault.  I bought battery clamps at Lordco and ‘made in China’ jumped to mind.  I now think the metal the clamps were made of was the goofy part.

And therein lies the purpose of this story.  Something as simple as a battery not only has characteristics to it like the specific gravity of the battery acid, differences in similar batteries, peculiarities of charging cycles and ad infinitum but, when you add in all the bits and pieces that are involved in the system and the almost-always made-in-China-ness of the materials, something as simple as acid on lead gets complex.  Plus they are damned heavy to carry around.

Batteries; chapter one.  Expect more.

“Happy”, as you know, is a relative term.  One can be happy when the hammer stops beating them on the head.  And so it is that I write this, the ‘happier’ blog.  The hammer has stopped.  It’s not that bad, really.  I am definitely happi-er.  I can breathe once again.  The cold is passing.  Thank God!  Life is good again (relative to what it was on Tuesday when life flat-lined for the better part of the day).  The poor old pudding is more like the poor old bowl of phlegm but at least the consistency is the same.  Gooey. She’ll firm up after a few days, I am sure.

I was thinking of what I am writing in this blog (a bit overdue don’t you think?).  So far, it has just been a daily journal of our living off-the-grid with a bit of a rant or philosophical view thrown in for variation now and then.  But there is more.  I could add extra stuff…………you know………like, off-the-wall as opposed to just off-the-grid…………..?

I.e., there is the spiritual aspect of it all………….(weird, eh?).  A kind of ‘change’ from living in the urban so-called here and now to the rather airy-fairy idea that there is more to it.  Life is bigger than that.  Somehow.  I have few ideas as to what that phrase, ‘more to it’,  might mean but there is no question that I now have a stronger sense of the mystery of life than I once did.

There is the ‘outside-the-box’ view of what is going on, too.  Once you live outside the boxes of the city, you tend to see things differently.  Especially political, economic and social things.  I suppose that accounts for much of the weirdness that passes for political or social discussion out here but there is no doubt that rural people see the world differently and they do so simply because they are far away from the centre of it.  There is a rural tangent to the theory of Relativity at play here.

Put another way: rural people don’t believe anything the media says.  Nothing.  They trust the government as much as a chicken trusts a fox.  They have, for the most part, given up on institutions and social systems and attempt to rely entirely on themselves and their immediate neighbours.  And yet they follow the news (from the sources they don’t trust) and have strong opinions.  Some of the opinions are crazy.  Some are not so crazy.  Some feel right on.  My point: I have changed with them.   Not as fully.  Not as dramatically.  But definitely I have changed my point of view of ‘our world’ as a result of living remote.  So has Sal. 

Different topic: I have a job I have to attend to.  It will pay.  We need the money.  So I will be gone from the island for a bit (not from the blog).  But, last night we heard the weird little ducks screeching and wailing like wounded mountain lions (a very strange phenomena) and we stepped out onto the brightly moonlit deck to hear them better.  The fog was rolling in low and the water was like glass.  The moon was casting shadows.  It was mystical in the extreme and, with the weird, crazy ducks a-howlin’, pure Halloweén.   I almost decided not to go. 

But I will.  I will leave paradise and put on a suit and live in a hotel and make a few bucks.  I am doing it for two reasons: the client needs the help and I think I need the money.  The first reason I am sure of.  The second reason is like happiness – it is relative.  We are fine.  A little more ‘fine’ must be better so I need more.  I guess. 

I have my doubts about reason #2 but reason #1 is enough.  I’ll be in Vancouver in November, I think. 

In more ways than one: both Sally and are operating with brains in a fog and the clouds outside have decided to camp out on our doorstep.   We can only see about 25 meters.  Oh well, it is just a fog and a cold and we’ll live.  Into every life a little plague must be inflicted, eh?

Speaking of which, a good friend has an incapacitating disease.  It was one of the reasons for us going to town on such short notice.  This man, amongst the strongest and healthiest I know and who has always treated his body as a temple, is fading before our eyes.  They don’t even know what it is!!  Man, oh man!

I often chant from the wooded pulpit the blessings bestowed on those who grab life by the horns or, at the very least, have Sal grab ém and share them with me.  You know, carpé diem.  And this just reinforces that.  He deserves more.  His wife deserves more. Everyone deserves more than just work, work, work and then a dinner party.   I confess to being a bit bummed out by it all.  NOT for me.  I am a lucky one.  But I feel very sorry for those trapped by the rat race and not having a chance to live fully. 

Most of those reading this are my contemporaries.  The 55+ crowd.  We’ve covered a few miles, we have.  Sometimes traveling together for a while.  So, anytime spent writing about the capriciousness of life is wasted on us, really.  We know how fickle it can be.  We’ve all been fickled a few times.  Still it bears repeating: life is not a recipe.  You can’t win at it.  Nor does accumulating stuff give life meaning.  The magic of our existence is just that – magic!  And it has to be enjoyed and fully experienced to get it’s meaning.  To do otherwise is a waste of opportunity.  I have no idea what dreams you may still cling to but I urge you to manifest them as much as you can as soon as you can.  At 62, life is not quite yet short but long term planning is no longer much of a topic for Sal and me. 

The end of October represents the onset of winter for us.  Didn’t use to.  When I was living in the city winter always happened without me noticing.  One day I was driving in the rain and the next, I was driving in the snow.  “Wow!  Winter!” I exaggerate a bit, of course, but I was definitely not in tune with the seasons back then.  Out here, it seems, you can tell the very day it shifts.  There is a ‘nip’ in the air.  For us, it was around October 10.  One day, we were in shirt sleeves and the next we were setting the fire.  We are definitely feeling the onset of winter nowadays.  Once again: it all happens so fast!

I’d prefer to keep this blog all about my daily life out here but phlegm production has little to offer in literary terms so, if you’ll forgive this minor rant – what the hell is wrong with this picture?

Some old granny, admittedly a cross and angry woman, gets ten months in jail for civil disobedience protesting highways, the felling of old growth forests and the like.  She may be grouchy but I like her values.  Anyway – they sentence her to ten months in the slammer!  She pays her dues and then appeals the sentence (they can’t give her the time back) on principle.  She thinks she was done wrong.  The Crown compares her to a serial pedophile, a criminal who is so habitual in their misbehaviour that she may have to be regarded as incorrigible and locked away forever.  Imagine what our justice system would have done to Ghandi?  Their reaction is a smidge of an over reaction, it seems to me, but that ol’ Crown can get pretty testy itself.  Hell, show some contempt for the system and you can be put away for being ‘rude’ to the judge.  Such a justice system requires careful watching.  Even more so nowadays.  Walk tenderly on those eggshells, my friends, Big Bro is watching you a lot!

And so I watched them.  Loved to watch the Basi-Virk trial.  A farce of colossal proportions.   These two low-on-the-pole minions of Gordon Campbell facilitated the corruption of the sale of BC Rail.  They were on trial as the minor scapegoats and that was bad enough.  Of course they plead innocent (and they are in the sense that that they were just doing their bosses bidding).  Half-way through this multi-million dollar trial, the government decided to promote the judge sitting at the time and so they had to start all over again.  More money, more time.  The trial was finally getting near the end and, when it appeared that the prosecution was about to call the minister responsible to the witness box and, likely, the premier as well, Basi and Virk ‘cop’ a plea.

Typically when a plea is offered, it is a reduced charge type of compromise.  Not this time.  Basi-Virk confessed fully.  100%.  “We are guilty as charged.”

All the investigations and all the trial time was for nought.  They did it!  They were bad.  They took a bribe.  They facilitated a deal that was dubious at best, nefarious by confession and most likely corrupt as all hell and they had cost the taxpayers millions in the process.

The judge’s job was made easy.  Only sentencing remained.  “You have to pay back the bribe and you are under house arrest for a year.” 

“Huh!?”

Basi-Virk pleading guilty to a crime that harms the public and they get nothing!?  Granny goes to jail for sitting cross-legged disrupting traffic?  What about the all the money Basi-Virk wasted?  No fines?  No jail time?  How about paying the court costs or should I pay for that like all the other taxpayers?  House arrest is a joke!

So is our justice system.

Honest – happy blogging next.

Satellite’s been down.  So have I.  Sally is toppling as I write.  We both have the ‘cold’ from Hell and the satellite has somehow become misaligned.  So, we are just ‘making do’.  My transmissions are either mucous-based or misaligned.  Either way, communication is ‘spotty’.  Yuch!

We went to town to get this disease.  Can’t get sick on the island.  Too clean.  Too lovely.  We stay well here.  Gotta go to the city for this kind of assault.  I suspect that I contacted it in the bathroom of the BC Ferry.  They have all those little signs warning me of the transmission of plague and, despite washing my hands as instructed, I may have made the error of breathing while in there. ‘Course, it could have been anywhere – the restaurants, the hotel.  Any public place will do now. 

We have less resistance to the germ-pool these days, you see.  Our immunobodies have just had it so lax for so long that they are simply overwhelmed when immersed in the cauldron of disease that has become the modern urban environment.  We can’t hack it.  Trust me, I am hacking and hacking and not getting anything but the aforementioned phlegm.

We went to town a bit unplanned.  I knew I had to go but I just didn’t know exactly when until the planets aligned and it was time to go.  You know……an appointment, a person to see, something to purchase…….all this had to be arranged and when it came together, we just went.  I was going to contact all my friends but he was out of town.  So, we just went.
It is just as well we hadn’t arranged anything else.  As it was, I got busy.  Very busy.  Too boring to explain but I may be obliged to go back to the city again fairly soon.  I am not looking forward to it – staying in the city, I mean.  But it is nice to do a little work.  So, I am happy about that.

Anyway, the blog of happiness will resume tomorrow satellite and internal organs willing.  Allahu Akbar!   
 

I love evenings with the kids.

Thanks, first, to the weather.  In the midst of predicted daily storms, we have had a reprieve.  It is gorgeous.  Bright, sunny and just a bit o’ nip in the air.  It’s like a Norman Rockwell painting only better.  Way better.  ‘Cause it is real.

Seems ol’ Norm used to paint with artistic license (according to the Smithsonian).  He’d take photographs and paint-copy them adding whatever ‘cute’ and ‘American’ he could to get the right effect.  We don’t have to do that.  We have ‘cute’ up the wazoo and enough natural beauty to make your eyes hurt.  Makes me want to smash a squirrel with a splitting mawl now and then just to get some gritty reality into the picture.  But, so far, I have resisted.  I am starting to get more comfortable with the Disney version of reality anyway.

I half expect friendly bears, noble wolves and funny, courageous raccoons to come dancing out to greet us sometimes.  Sick, eh?  Maybe a catchy little tune playing in the background?

But, honestly, it’s almost understandable.  Especially if the deer are anything to go by.  They stand on the side of the road and just look at you if you are driving by.  If you stop, they may move on.  They may not.  They sure aren’t afraid of you.  Some of our neighbours have to ‘shoo’ the bears and the deer out of the garden.  They aren’t frightened, they just make some noise and ol’ Pooh or Bambi just amble off.

Cougars, it seems, are a treated a bit more circumspectly but I am afraid we are becoming just a bit disrespectful of the wolves.  A couple of months ago a couple of wolves grabbed the mid-sized dog of a friend of ours.  Bella yelped.  Paul heard it and jumped to her rescue kicking and chasing the two predators away in the process.  Bella survived.  So did Paul.  We’re starting to think our wolves are just a bit on the wimpy side, tho.  “Pshaw……..just an old pack o’ wolves…….”.

Yep, lots to be thankful for.  And we are.  Hope it’s all working out for you, too.

Went to town yesterday.  Needed Brussel sprouts for Thanksgiving.  My son is coming up this long weekend and he is very traditional when it comes to Turkey dinner.  No variations on the theme are tolerated.  White sauce on the sprouts, two cans of cranberry sauce, real stuffing and, well, the specifications list is pretty detailed.  We even have dessert specs.  We find it easier to comply even if it means an extra trip to town.

It’s funny what a ‘trip to town‘ means.  When we first planned on coming up here, I used to say to my Vancouver friends, “Hey, don’t worry.  We may be moving up there but I’ll be commuting down here all the time.  Monthly, probably.  Definitely every two months.  Can’t imagine not getting to town every two months.”  Well, building took a lot of time and habits changed somewhat.  More to the point, urban life lost all it’s appeal.  We now haven’t been to town in 18 months. 

Of course, ‘town’ also changed.  Vancouver became ‘the city’ and ‘town’ quickly became Campbell River.  We fully expected to go to town in Campbell River every week.  Had to.  Shopping.  But, after awhile the trek became a bit arduous and the ol’ homestead had more allure than did the ferry lineups and Save-On.  Our rhythms and habits changed some and, next thing you know, we are going to Campbell River every two weeks.  Then, with a bit of a 7th inning stretch thrown in, we started to make it three weeks.  We fully expect to go to town every three weeks at the very least.

It’s been over a month since we actually went.  Yesterday, ‘town’ was Heriot Bay on Quadra Island.  I confess: if I never went to Vancouver again, it would be fine by me.  If I went to Campbell River no more frequently than every three months – maybe four – it would even be better.  I like it here.  I may even like it here a bit too much………..

One of my neighbours is so reclusive, he rarely leaves his place.  He gets out now and then but it is clear that he prefers staying home.  He has plenty to do.  Things to build.  Books to read.  He even has a computer.  But, if he had his way, he’d likely never leave except to get more building materials and books.  He’d buy beer, too.  I am not so sure that that is 100% healthy but I must admit to understanding the feeling. 

It’s a weird kind of protective device.  Very primal.  When I was hit by the outboard motor and the blades cut into my scalp, I felt pretty wounded.  Hot gooey liquid squirting from the top of my head didn’t help.  I wanted out of the water and into the boat shed where Sal and I were staying.  I remember distinctly saying to Sally, “Never mind calling the Coastguard.  I don’t need them.  Just let me get back to the shed and I’ll just stay there”. 

Of course, Sally did the right thing and I was attended to quite properly by all involved.  Being hit by a 20 hp outboard motor in the head as it traveled over me at close to 20 knots has had no measurable or lasting effects whatsoever.  Honest.  I am almost 100% sure.  Kinda.   But the basic instinct was to ‘hunker down in a cave and lick my wounds’.  It doesn’t get more primal than that. 

I just might have a bit of ‘hunker residue’ left in me.  

We have some people up here who hunker.  And I get it.  It’s not quite healthy but I get it.   

She did it!  Of course.  She had to get out of the kayak three times and scramble around the kelp-covered rocks dragging her vessel because of impassable currents, but she did it. 

Sal left at about 6:00 am (I am guessing since all I remember is a kiss goodbye) and loading her kayak into her little Whaler, set off for the rendezvous point with Renate and Roger, the other two maniacs.  Then, with the morning fog barely lifting, they headed North up White Rock passage and rounded the end of Maurelle into Calm Channel heading West with the tide behind them. 

Another left turn into Hole-in-the-Wall, the narrow passage separating Maurelle from Senora and they were heading South, just as the tide began to change.  This was not good.  Good planning determined that rounding the Southern entrance in the ‘hole’ would be best attempted at slack water and they were at least ten minutes late. 

Time and tide wait for no man or woman.  They headed into the treacherous Okosollos with the 8 knot current against them and the wind starting to kick up from the East.  The water roared around the point creating a disparity in levels.  It was a foot higher on one side of the rocks and the current was like a river.  R&R have done this before and just leaned into it but Sal did not have the right approach angle nor quite the right read on the whirlpools, rips and chop that she faced and so, with Roger’s coaching, she chose discretion over valour.  Three times.  And thus the three mini-waterfalls caused by the reversing tide at Hole-in-the-Wall were averted by a quasi portage. 

“I wasn’t sure I was going to make it.  In fact, without Roger’s coaching, I wouldn’t have.  It was pretty exhilarating but at times it was a bit scary as well.  I am in no hurry to do that one again!”   

They then pounded Southeast into the chop until Claudia’s Maurelle cabin where they were greeted, warmed and fed.  A quick visit to her neighbour, Doug, making a 28 foot boat from the raw materials around him and then back into the water for the final two hour stretch through Beasley Pass. 

She got home late in the afternoon and was pretty tired.  I finally breathed fully, relaxing for the first time.  Sally hit the kip early.  She was asleep before her head hit the pillow. 

I am not so sure I can take much more of this.