Town day.  So much to do.  So, so much.

“Look, I say we use our heads for once and stay overnight in town.  Spread the chore list over two days.  Waddya say?”

“Well, I have a quilting course which wouldn’t get me over to help anyway and the list is long so I am onside.  Ya wuss!  Ya gonna make a habit of this?”

“Well, it’s a coping mechanism, isn’t it?  As one gets on, one makes adjustments.  I think we should be making a few more adjustments, actually.  We could get a few things delivered by the water taxi as it goes by or by the monthly barge?”

“Won’t the milk go sour?”

“OK, a bit more thinking is needed on this topic but I am gonna plan to do less and pay more for that to happen.”

And so we stayed at Money Penny’s B&B Tuesday night in Campbell River. Had dinner out at a nice restaurant.  Very civilized.  Sal’s course had taken her late into the afternoon but I got two things done on the car, bought some materials for more slip-proofing and picked up a few odds and ends that are usually put off because they take so long to get and are only small items.  Visited a friend for a few minutes.  I also put our book in the Campbell River Museum.  By three, I had picked Sal up from the ferry and a bit later we had an early dinner.

GREAT breakfast.  The next day was then spent travelling to Comox for a mini-Costco run. Found and scored some organic fowl at a turkey farm nearby.  Hit up another organic vendor on the highway and returned in time to complete the usual ‘shop’ in Campbell River and get on the 1:30 pm ferry.  Stopped in to see a friend in need of a book on Quadra Island.  Picked up another boat like WASABI on the way home and got it stowed away nicely.  Hit the seas about 3:30.  Raining hard but flat water.  Got home and unloaded by 5:00 – 5:30 pm.

We have never done a major shop and arrived home before dark in the winter.  We have never done as major a shop so easily.  We have never had a less stressful ‘town day’.

So, THIS is the new town-day plan, town-days.

And, ironically, it is only marginally more expensive.  One night at a nice B&B and we can now accomplish about 1.5 times what we used to accomplish by beating ourselves up and getting exhausted.  Given that the tasks are more tiring as we age, that’s not too bad.  It’s not the world’s best plan, I admit, but it’s a good one for now.  And I will get on some kind of ‘delivery’ plan when I can figure out something that works.  Minimum charge for the water taxi to ‘stop and drop’ a delivery is $150.00. But it is 200 pounds, I think.  200 pounds of food (200 pounds of bottled, packaged, wrapped, frozen food is more like 150 of actual food) is enough to delay a town day a whole extra month.

Something to consider.

A friend just asked, “Is there an end-game and what else have we learned?”

YIKES!  I must admit that we have been so immersed in this experiment for so long and still feel that we are not so very far into it that contemplating an end-game has not really crossed our minds.  So, good question…..

‘End Game’ to me means still being alive but not living here.  If I die here, then there was no difference to the game and the end just came.  Ergo, no official end-game.  But, if I move and die elsewhere, then that move would be the so-called end-game.  And do I have a plan for one?

Short answer: NO.  This will likely do, thank you.  We are good here.  OTG will see me out, as the Brits say.  When that happens, Sal plans to go cruising but even she will return to here.  We may go on holiday and kick the bucket dying in a hail of cartel gunfire on a Mexican beach or get run over by a tuktuk driven by a mad monk in Thailand.  But those are not end games, those are accidents.

Almost 90% of people live out their lives at home (except for a miserable and usually short interim time in hospital).  Only 10 or so percent go to ‘rest homes’.  We fully intend to be amongst the majority of homebodies and going out in a hail of gunfire is much more likely than a retirement home for us.  Preferable, too.

As for lessons learned…other than the ones we have already shared…..?  Another good question. The simplest answer is that we have learned that we have options.  Urban life is NOT the only way.  Neither is OTG the only other way.  There are dozens of ways to live the last 25 years of your life and, tho OTG is our current focus, neither of us would rule out a dip in another pool.  I think we are good here but that doesn’t exclude trips at the very least.  We can and will likely still travel some.

But the question was deeper than that, I think.  Is there anything profound?  Spiritual, maybe?

I don’t think so.  Many, many little profound, even spiritual lessons have been learned to be sure but none of them particularly earth-shattering.  A much, much greater appreciation for nature, having personal time, enjoying the quiet, living in great partnership, these have all been experienced; greater satisfaction working on things tangible, the lunacy of much of what passes for modern life.  The absence of so much ugly.  But all those are things you have heard before and likely feel yourself.  They are as much the result of aging as they are the result of living OTG.  I think living OTG enhances and magnifies those feelings but they are not new or surprising lessons.  Thoreau wrote about them.

If there is anything new – completely new – that we seem to have learned, it would be about ourselves.  We are much happier with where we are and what we do.  But some of that might also be that we are happier with who we are.  A little personal growth through creativity and self reliance goes a long, long way.

Is going off the grid rebellion?

Hard to say.  If it is rebellion, it is passive rebellion.  No fighting is required.

Generally speaking, rebellion is defined as defiance of authority with a desire to replace it. OTG is subtly different.  Going off the grid tends to simply ignore authority as much as possible in the hopes that the favour will be returned.  No replacing required.  Live and let live.  So, there is no defiance and no effort to replace Caesar, Big Bro or Obama.  OTG is no more a defiance or rebellion than was Jesus in Judea, I guess.

In other words, defiance may just be in the eyes of the beholder.  Like being black is often perceived as defiance by the police in the USA.  Or being anything but old stock Canadian was to Harper. GW Bush famously said, “You are either with us or you are with the enemy.”  George had no room for Mr. In-between.

So, to those people, we are rebels.  To us, we are not.

To be fair, I do consider myself a bit of a rebel but rather more of a passive one than a bad guy. I am not openly defiant.  I don’t even have a stud or a tattoo.  I am actually just a spoiled-brat kind of rebel.  I pick and choose my somewhat random acts of passive defiance whimsically most of the time.  Hormonally, at the very least.  Basically, I just seethe a lot.

Aside from getting off the utility grids (power, water, sewer, gas) but exploiting them to my benefit when it suits me (roads, communications, health care), I basically just advocate for making every effort not to facilitate Big Brother or any of the holding companies in every way possible while still staying convenient to myself.  I don’t hate them.  I just don’t like them.

Which, I think, is fair.  They neither like me nor hate me.  They, and all institutions, are basically structural psychopaths who don’t care one way or the other about the people they interact with.

So, we try to avoid, by-pass, replace, recycle, do-it-ourselves and maybe even barter now and again.  We shop local whenever possible but we know that the corporate-world plays hugely in even local transactions.  My closest tire store doesn’t make tires, for example. BF Goodrich does.  EXXon supplies them.  So corporate world gets a piece of me.

I try to pay cash but resort to credit card when it’s impossible otherwise.  Like when using Amazon online.  If I pay cash, then I deal only with the human seller.  If I use a card, I involve many, many others and the government as well.  All but the seller and I acting in a very parasitic role.  We resist but we do not fight because you cannot win against the parasites.  And, because, like so many other minor ‘establishment’ intrusions into one’s life, no single trespass from a parasitic psychopath warrants much more than a shrug of surrender and frequent bouts of Head and Shoulders.

There are, however, so many small intrusions in modern life that it makes one feel like death by ten thousand cuts.  It did to me.  If one really begins to feel all that systemic violation of person, one may attempt to flee.  We did.

But, if you choose to go, I advise fleeing some distance.  Big Brother does not tolerate even passive rebels gladly in the city.  It’s even harder if you live in the suburbs.  It is against the law in many jurisdictions to collect your own rainwater (for drinking) or to turn off the power or the gas supply.  Ironically, the utility companies can turn off your power and this – even if you are in agreement with that decision – will make your home officially ‘unsafe for human habitation’ by the city and they will prosecute you for that.  Basically, you can’t win.  You can’t get off any of the grids and still live in the city.  You can try but, really, you just martyr yourself.  If you have any doubts about that, read some of the stories of the rebels who didn’t want smart meters installed in their homes.

So, back to the question: Is living off the grid rebellious?  I think not.  OTG is more like living like a Quaker or the Swiss.  It’s an attempt to stay neutral.  And healthy.  And free. But we pay our taxes.  NOT a rebellion.

Please tell them that when the SWAT team has kicked in my door and beaten and tasered me.  I was officially NOT a rebel up until that point.

*Sal’s hairdresser claims to be a sovereign citizen.  So, he should know.

Society forms for a few basic and long-necessary reasons; protection, reproduction and cooperation being the obvious big three.  

We derive some sense of security in numbers.  It’s kinda primal.  Our group vs the other one.  Bloods vs Crips.  America vs Russia, et al.  That kind of thing.  It may even be more primal than that, tracing it’s roots back to schools of fish, flocks of birds or herds of animals.  The risk to the individual is made less by being surrounded by so many just-as-vulnerable others. Playing the odds is still our primary go-to method for achieving safety.

Reproduction, it seems, is well-served by diversity and there is obviously more diversity in numbers.  If a potential father has little to offer, he stands a better chance of finding a little-to-offer but willing mother in a large crowd.  We are more like rats than bees in that regard. God bless the gene pool.

And cooperation is the magic that humans bring to the equation more than any other species.  An antelope may increase their chance to reproduce or be protected because of the herd but antelope don’t share grass.  No handsome antelope sidles up to a real pronghorn cutie with a bunch of prairie grass in his mouth to ‘help out’.  Even domesticated animals don’t share food very much.

But we do.

We have the magic of sharing, cooperation, specialization and even the systems to distribute it all.  Not only that, we have complicated production and we have even more complicated systems to get it to others around the world.  Animals generally don’t.  Some insects do to some extent.  But they are generally less egalitarian than we are and definitely more single-minded.  Ours is a major leap in the complexity of life.

And, for a long time – maybe the last few hundred years – we have become increasingly more complex, more interdependent, more dependent, more specialized and more vulnerable to the fortunes and mishaps of the group than ever before.  In fact, the modern person is, for the most part, incapable of surviving alone.  Even the intrepid, well-equipped and skilled couple would likely perish living completely isolated fr any length of time. Modern mankind needs modern mankind.

But what happens when modern mankind starts to develop lemming-like tendencies? What happens when the larger mass of humanity encounters the hard-to-see virulent disease of the microscopic invader?  Or, what if the complex and relied on life-style of the many is actually self-destructive?  Even worse, what if it is environmentally destructive? What then?

Well, the answer for the most part, is that previous survivor groups simply moved on. Nomads having herds of goats or camels would overgraze an area and then move on to do their destructive practices elsewhere.  Easter Islanders, on the other hand, had nowhere to go. They perished. Moving away to another place worked so long as there weren’t too many eaters and the main victim was fast growing grass.  Seven billion people make a much larger and more complex destructive impact and, with few exceptions, there are not a lot of places to go to next. Not for 7 billion, anyway.

But there is a bright spot.  It’s OTG.

Even though 7 billion people can seemingly destroy the environment for everyone (or so it is currently postulated) the fact is that the seven billion have, like lemmings, run to the epicentre of the problem.  They are gathering in cities.  It is, in my view, dystopic. Suicidal.

What might look like on the surface as protection (grouping) and cooperation (complex systems) is, in fact, more like a concentration of the species for exploitation.  That exploitation may come in the form of disparate economics thus nullifying the benefits of cooperation or it may come in the form of an easier-to-spread contagion.  Viruses do better in cities.

If any of the above was actually true, then a species intent on survival would cause to create contrarians.  Geneticists call them mutants.  Psychologists call them deviants. Popular society calls them rebels and I tend to ascribe the term free radicals.  Basically, it is a term for those who refuse the Kool Aid.  Those who choose a different path.

It’s a form of diversification, not putting all your eggs in one basket. In a sense, it is as inherent to survival as is the gene pool.  Sending out ‘runners’ is a survival technique.

And there is no question in my mind that OTG’ers self describe as survivors.  They may not use that term because they are not constantly faced with threat but, scratch the surface and you hear and see survival skills being developed.  They are like the ship sent into space to colonize another world except they just leave the overpopulated area and colonize another world off the grid.

There is no question that mankind is a social animal.  But there is an equal founding principle for man’s survival through adaptability.  Adaptability and group-think are not mutually exclusive but they do tend to show up that way.  Those who go along to get along are group thinkers as a rule.  Those who chaff in the cul de sac are looking for alternatives. They have to be more adaptable as a result.

“Dave, what’s your point?”

“Well, If you don’t have a ticket on Virgin Space Travel or are a preferred guest of Elon Musk, then the next best place to move on to is a remote island NOT near you.”

Jus’ sayin’…. 

“I think we should get a gun.”

“Why?”

“I dunno.  We live remote.  We have a truck.  Seems like a gun is a natural accessory.”

“That’s silly.  We don’t hunt.  There are no dangerous animals where we are.  We don’t need a gun.”

“What about the zombies?”

“What zombies?”

“When the zombie apocalypse erupts, we need to shoot ‘em in the head.  It’s the only way to kill a zombie, they say.”

“Who says?”

“The company that sells ammo for killing zombies.  They call ‘em zombie-stoppers.”

“There’s no such thing!”  (for the record: there are several brands of zombie-stoppers sold on the market)

And so the discussion went regarding having a gun in the house.  Neither Sally nor I are natural born killers but we know we have to defend ourselves as is necessary. If it is ever necessary.  No one can come to our aid in time if there is ever a dangerous threat to our well-being so we have to do it ourselves.  Being prepared means being prepared to do what needs to be done and, in some weird, Mad Max kinda way, that might mean using a firearm.

Yes, I agree.  That may mean some day needing one in the city more than in the country but so far, not yet.  Close, maybe.  But not yet.  Well, not yet in Canada, anyway.  

There is also the question of hunting.  Truly independent people are self-sustaining and, for many, that means an omnivorous diet.  Omnivorous includes meat.  We already hunt/gather fish and shellfish.  Isn’t harvesting wild game the same thing?

And what about raising domestic animals for meat?

We are not likely to ever be truly self sustaining because food production is incredibly time consuming and, to a modern palate, too limited and seasonal.  Our goal is to achieve some semblance of independence and sustainability but we know that harvesting even 50% of what we consume is an impossible goal.  We could do that for a year, perhaps, but chocolate, coffee, dairy-without-a-cow and so many staples like flour, toothpaste, sugar, and well, the list is endless, make it unsustainable over longer periods of time without hardship and deprivation.

We don’t mind simple, limited and plain but we draw the line at deprivation.  We are not trying to make this lifestyle an Olympic event nor are we trying to prove anything to Les Stroud.  We are just trying to, basically, live within our somewhat limited means but to do so with healthy, tasty and varied foods.

And, of course, wine.

Raising animals for meat is even more time consuming than gardening.  We are not inclined to keep domestic animals because, to be frank, to do that job right, they turn out to keep you.  You have to always attend to farm animals or they will suffer and, perhaps, die.  Even our distant neighbours who keep chickens are severely limited in their movements by the need to care for them.  Other distant neighbours we know with goats are even more restricted. No one we know on the remote islands keeps cows.

It is not that I am advising against raising domestic animals.  I think, for many, chickens, at the very least, are a huge asset to a homestead and so are sheep and goats and ducks.  So, go for it if you are so inclined.  Just know that they are a lot of work.  And there is no legal market for them so they are not a cash generator. People do trade and barter with home-grown but, on any scale, the authorities put a stop to it.  They have their rules and, for the most part, their rules eliminate small-time producers.

It’s for your own good.  Bless their protective bureaucratic hearts, eh?

But all that is academic.  It is simply not a pursuit of interest for us.  If I want some meat, I would prefer to buy it from the somewhat distant abattoir that handles only free-range animals.   Or, I’ll fish.  Or gather oysters.

But the question of hunting deer seems to loom every fall when it’s hunting season.  It seems a healthy, good sized deer will yield somewhere around 60-70 pounds of good meat.  That is more than enough to satisfy all our needs with some left over for special dinners and guests for an entire year.  It’s almost free, it’s healthy and it is good.  So, why not?

Well, one reason is that it is killing and I would prefer not to.  I will if I have to.  But I don’t have to.  It is also hard work and I would prefer NOT to do that, either.  We clearly do not need to hunt at this stage in our lives.   And, if society keeps plugging along, we may never have to.  We may be able to rely on the region’s specialists and buy from a butcher or farmer who raises extra for selling.

Key question: Will society keep plugging along? 

On the other hand, no one sells deer meat.  It is illegal.  It is also relatively plentiful and, when we have been served some, it was pleasant and tasty.  And, like everyone, I cannot help but think wild venison is a healthier, more natural form of meat than is feed-lot beef or warehoused chickens.

So?  To kill or not to kill, that is the question.

But before you ask yourself that question, you have to ask yourself, ‘by what means would I kill?’ And that question raises the gun issue.  Do I hunt and, if I do, do I do so with a gun, a bow, a spear or a trap line?

And, if you decide to hunt with a gun, then it gets really complicated. Different guns and different calibers of ammunition for different game.  Licensing.  Permits.  Learning and practicing.  Hunting equipment.  Butchering.  The list seems to go on and on.

I can’t imagine the complexities involved in hunting with a bow.  Or a spear.  It seems the more primitive the means, the more complex the skill set.  A guy with a spear is likely a helluva better hunter in the practice of such activity than is a guy with a high-powered, long rifle with a scope hiding in camouflage and using special binoculars.  His ATV parked nearby.  Accountants and used car salesmen can do that.

But I don’t think I can.  I do not know anything about hunting and that should be apparent from reading this section.  I include it only because the question of self protection will come up and the corollary question of hunting will follow it.  Having a gun is an issue to consider.

I posed for a picture with my wife’s shotgun but she won’t let me have one for myself.  Not yet.  Too prone to hurting myself, it seems.  But I am still considering it.  At my age, I am unlikely to develop into a hunting enthusiast so self protection is probably the only logical reason for me.  But, even then, I still have to get past Sal for that.  And she’s armed.  I am not.

Maybe I’ll wait until I see my first zombie?

“Are you more free?”

“Yes.”

“How so?”

No one cares.  The government, despite what they say, does not really care about you.  That is a hard concept to grasp after just getting a speeding ticket or even getting a government benefit in the mail or not paying your taxes.  They seem to care.  But they don’t. They don’t hate you (I hope) but there is so much work for them to do to keep everyone else in line that a stray hair is allowed to fly away.  OTG’er are like stray hairs or wild hares. We are free mostly because we are too much hassle to manage and control.

We are more free because they do not care.

But, make no mistake: government knows that and so they wrote rules for OTG’ers anyway.  They will not likely enforce any of them but, just in case they need them, they have them.  Some poor-sap woman trying to snip her tethers recently in Coral Gables, Florida, can testify to that.  

You are technically and legally not more free.  But you are, practically-speaking, much more free than the city mouse simply because they are not looking for you.  Essentially you are out of sight and thus out of Big Brother’s mind.

We try to keep it that way.

And, in some ways, you are more free.  Building codes, for example, don’t apply in the strictest sense when you are off the grid.  They were not written to protect the individual homeowner, anyway.  They were drafted to minimize the effects of shoddy construction on other citizens.  Same for all the fire bylaws.  They don’t care if your house is engulfed in flame, the fire trucks first make sure the houses next door don’t get engaged.  How can any fire department save a house from fire damage – by the time they get there, there already is some.  Fire departments are about minimizing damage to other buildings. They were created for insurance companies.  Not you.

And that lack of personal caring is also re-enforced by the fact that most insurance companies won’t insure you anyway.  They do not trust you to keep your own house safe from fire.  And there is no one else to do that for you when you are OTG.  So no policy is offered. They trust that firemen and fire-hydrants and fire-trucks will protect to the extent that less than 1% of the housing stock burns down.  Fire departments are about fire damage mitigation.  That is what matters.  Those are the numbers the actuaries are looking at.  But, without a bunch of neighbours, fire hydrants, roads, trucks and well-clad heroes, to hell with you.  You are on your own.

Which is fine.  We take care of it.  We have fire extinguishers every ten feet or so.

“I built my house to code.  Actually, I built my house better than code.”

“We don’t care. We’re never going to inspect you.”

“But, you can.  Even my electrical was done to the code and that doesn’t even apply without us being tied to the electrical grid.  But we did it.  And then we built the rest to meet or exceed common alternative energy practice.”

“Dave!  You are not hearing me.  We don’t care. Live in a yurt for all we care.  Just don’t do it in a subdivision.  We care about yurts in subdivisions.  Can’t have that!  Property values would fall, tax base would drop.  I’d lose my job.  But, when you are as far off the grid as you are, we don’t care.”

That conversation was had by me and the head of the local government.  NOT the head of the building department, the head of the whole local government.  The top bureaucrat.  Not only did he NOT care, he would not have had the resources to seek out and inspect and then follow up on all the OTG’er in the area they ‘control’.  His staff was too busy keeping the local city folk in line. (I was there for another matter entirely.  The conversation above was just said in an aside).

There’s freedom in that.

There is also freedom in NOT having umbilicals.  We do not have piped in anything.  There is no disembodied voice or impersonal notice informing me of some arbitrary decision that will affect my daily life.  BC Hydro, for instance, wants another 4% from the public.  I won’t get that notice. I am free of the invisible little bureaucratic busy bodies that interfere all the time with an urbanite’s life.  Those intrusions are not much.  And not that often.  I know that.  But we are free of them.

There is some social freedom, too.  You don’t have to dress up to go out.  Your car does not have to be clean.  You do not have to line up for anything.  There is no up-to-the-minute schedule to keep to.  There are timeliness, to be sure, but they are measured in days if not weeks.  Minutes don’t count out here.  There are health parameters to consider, of course.  But a lot of the social pressures lessen because there is no cooperation with hundreds of others required all the time just to get the bus, say, to run on time.  There is no bus.

There is a lot of freedom in that.

Are we really free?  Probably not.  I was raised in a first world lifestyle, indoctorinated with capitalist and Judeo Christian ethics.  I have suffered the propaganda machine for half a century or more.  TV is in my DNA.  I have imbibed a lot of Kool Aid.  Even if you get out of the box, what did you just step into?  A bigger box, I am guessing.  But that is partly the answer.  There is more room for you in a bigger box.  You may never be totally free but expanding the box is worthwhile in itself.

Almost everything I have said about Donald Trump so far, is something that you would expect from me.  I think he is a clown running amok.

Since I am slightly left on some things and slightly right fiscally, I have concluded that, politically, I am right in the middle.  So, my opinion should carry some weight.  

‘Course, Harper, Trump and, probably, Li-keqiang all think they are middle of the road, too, so who really knows?

But I know ignorance when I see it.  I know bigotry.  I know bombast.  I know simplistic and I know when someone says one thing one day and the other the next.  And, sadly, I am intimately familiar with arrogance and conceit.  I don’t like Trump.  He reminds me too much of me.

Of course, I am not as bad as Trump but I am pretty sure that is only because I am not as rich.  If I had billions, I would lash out with opinion after opinion on all sorts of things I know nothing about.  I already do.  And, I think it is that very aspect of the Donald that is resonating with the vastly stupid, the abysmally ignorant and the rightly angry middle and lower classes.  The Donald is channeling their anger and frustration with the establishment. For them, he does not HAVE to be right – he only has to be angry.

He seems a bit ‘outlaw’ because he rants and raves and does not speak mealy-mouth. He speaks stupid but it is NOT mealy.  Ironically, a spoiled, billionaire from New York is coming across like a James Dean (Rebel Without a Cause), a Marlon Brando (Wild Ones). He is Sonny Barger in a suit.  He is Rob Ford.  He is Jesse Ventura.  He is as close to a rebel-who-can-do-it as we have seen in a long time.

Which is really too bad.  Because there is a large appetite for a rebel in a lot of places.

I am all for rebelling, myself.  Honest.  I would invest in berets and bandoleers in a heartbeat.  I’d call myself Commandante Cox.  Maybe carry a machete.  Or an axe (it is Canada, after all). And, Oh God!  It would be great to put out a little red book with quotes!  I can see the giant posters now.  I would likely feature huge posters of my butt, tho.  It is my best feature.

But I digress.   What I am saying is that as stupid as he is – and he is – he is closer to ‘everyman‘ than is Hillary.  He is closer to ‘everyman’ than any of the other idiot Republicans.  Sadly, he is closer to ‘everyman‘ than even Bernie.

The USA is in trouble in this regard because of ever increasing income disparity.  There are a helluva lot of poor, ignorant, angry ‘everymen’.  And they are everywhere in the country; east, west, north, south and, after Iowa, centrally as well. They are, collectively, the most ignorant 1st world population on earth.

A recent poll conducted by some Ivy League University discovered that over 40% of their student population did not know when, where or who fought the Civil War.  Half of those didn’t know that ‘civil war’ meant within one country!  Americans are, by design, ignorant of the rest of the world and, seemingly, even their own.  Except for celebrity.  Those same stupid students knew everything about the Kardashians.

That does not bode well for a majority of ‘everyman’ to vote well.  In fact, it is the perfect recipe for ‘everyman’ to vote for a ‘celebrity’.

And the one thing TRUMP is, is a celebrity.

New to me, anyway…..

Sal and I have been driving a 1996 Pathfinder for the last 8 years and it has been a great vehicle.  Best car/SUV I ever had – perfectly suited to this slightly odd lifestyle.

We do half our regular driving on logging roads and some of that is in snow and ice (winter). We do about 125 feet at the last part of the journey at an angle that makes the roadway illegal.  It’s a degree or two too steep to pass ministry standards but the old Pathy handles it with aplomb.  I can usually get a dramatic gasp from my passenger (even Sal) when I plunge over the edge and down the slope to the sea as if a fundamentalist lemming.  The last bit is steep.

And we have two parking spots buried more deeply in the forest than the other 16 or so in the main lot.  Those are the least desired spots because they require some serious clambering into and not all vehicles or drivers want to do that.  Those two are steeper and even more scrambly than the hard slope.  You have to rock-crawl somewhat.  The Pathfinder does that, too.

And we never drive it light.  Every time we went out, we went out with at least half a load of crap and came back with a full-load or more.  I have driven the logging road with 300 pounds on the roof and the rest of the truck jammed to the headliner – a few times towing a small utility trailer also fully laden.   It’s rated as a half-ton but I exceeded that weight limit many times.

The old Pathy had 208,000 kms on it and, even tho they do 400,000k without much trouble, that is true mostly for their city-dwelling siblings.  The ones that work hard off-road have shorter lifespans.  I figure the old Pathy was and is still good to 250,000kms maybe 275,000 but that puts it into the need-to-have-a-mechanic-nearby mode and there isn’t one out here and I ain’t good enough.  It was time to jump ship.

We bought a 2004 Pathfinder with 160,000 pavement-princess kms on it.  In effect, it is the same car only cleaner.  And I figure it will go the same 250 – 275,000 kms that I expected from the old one.  I will get 100,000 kms.

That’s the part that scares me.

We bought the old Pathy almost 8 years ago.  It had 148,000 kms on it.  It now has 208,000.  I’ll do the math for you.  We put 60,000 kms on the old SUV or about 7500 kms a year.  We drive, on average, under 500 kms a month with maybe four or so longer trips a year to see family or go to the city.  And that frequency of trips south is slowly tapering off. It is extremely unlikely that we will average 600 kms a month or approximately 7500 kms a year but lets think that we will.  I can easily have this car for ten years and, even by then, it will still be going strong.  Most likely.

I’ll be 78.

This car may be my last.

I may have bought a hearse!

I not only write my own blog, I comment on a few others.  Mostly political blogs.  I figure if I can get my politics out in someone else’s backyard, I won’t stink up my own.

It’s dog-think, really.

Laila Yuile is a political blogger and I like her.  No Strings Attached.  She wrote recently about site C and, in her text, she mentioned the hoary old phrase, “of course, we all deserve good paying jobs so that we can raise our children.”  Or something of that sentiment.  Her point being we need good paying jobs.

And so, now to my point…

I am not so sure there is such a thing as a good paying job.  In fact, I am pretty sure there is not.  If they ever paid you what your life was worth, you’d get a fortune in pay for the first few years and never work again.  So, the amount doled out by way of the system is ‘just enough’.  You get paid ‘just enough’ to get by and keep on working.  They call that good management.  We are being managed!

They want you to eat and sleep but they don’t want you to get rich and be an influence.  Of course some of us get by with less and some of us get by with a new SUV and a swimming pool but, basically, we all just get by.  Even the guy with two Escalades, a summer cabin and a mistress is not calling the shots behind the scenes.  Chances are that guy is just stressed out of his mind.

Only one percent of one percent have a say in calling the shots.  Maybe not that many.

The point is that the hoi poloi can never be anything other than that.  They are middle upper class at best.  Most of us languished in middle class on a good year and flirted with lower class more than once.  I grew up in poverty and scrambled up a notch.  We did not throw our weight around. Not ever.  We were and are the invisible, silent and dispensable majority. We are commoners.  We always will be.

So, really?  Is there such a thing as a good paying job?  Or is there just subsistence and subsistence plus and minus?

“Dave, why nit-pick?  If ya got two Escalades, a pool, a mistress and a few big screen TVs….what more does a guy need?”

Well, therein lies the rub.  We don’t really need any of that nonsense.  They convince us we do.   But even that is not the point. The point is we think we need that crap and so we sign up.  We enlist.  We drink the Kool Aid and join the system thinking we may eventually make 4-star general but knowing that most grunts remain just that – grunts.

It is not news, I know, but we were conscripted at birth (see your SIN card) and most of us don’t even think about it.  I think we should think about it.

And the irony is that we sell out to do it.  We sell our precious lives to make money to stand in line and buy a box we have no time to live in.  We don’t follow our dreams, we follow some curriculum.  We don’t march to a different drummer, we march in goosestepping cadence and sing the national anthem.  We are small parts of a large organism that is not a good one.

Our system has lost it’s moral compass.  We have shed our ethics and our morality because, in a money-driven world, those are luxuries.  No longer are we there to do the right thing. We are there simply to ‘make a buck’.  We are here only to ‘make money’ now; not to help others.  And, perversely, we willingly sign our names on a debt for a million dollars so that we can never change our minds. Some of us even take on system-entrenched careers like lawyer or doctor or accountant so that we are additionally trapped.

The longer I live off the grid, the more like incarceration living on the grid seems.

I know, I know….‘easy for you to say, Dave.  You are free.  We are not.  Stop saying nyah, nyah to us!

Sorry.  That was not my intention.  My smugness runneth over.  Mea culpa.  My bad. Apologies.  What I really mean is that some of us want to help others and study medicine or law or just grow great vegetables.  I have no problem with that.  But when your motivation is no longer to do good work or help others because you have to make a buck, then our priorities are all wrong.  The result of that wayward path is not just your own misery.  That is how evil gets done.

I have no real idea (I have a few real biases) whether site C is needed or not.  Is it good or evil? I don’t know.  I think it’s wrong.  But I do know that, when people are trampling all over others like the government and BC Hydro are, it isn’t all good.  And when I wonder why the BC Hydro guy is speaking with contempt to the protesters and the police get ready their tear-gas and tasers, I realize that they are doing it just to keep their well-paying jobs.

And there we are again….well-paying jobs…..

Attitudes toward money, work, things, schedules, time, focus, fears, goals, relationships, needs, wants and even government all change….just to name a few.

Money, of course, is money…..uber important stuff.  But, out here it morphs into something less important.  It changes in your head.  Money is no longer the reason for all things. Money becomes an ancillary issue at best.  Money is no longer #1 on your mental hit parade. People do not talk about real estate values, for instance.  Ever.

Hell, they do not even talk about the price of fuel which you would think would be on their minds. It’s not.  “It is what it is.”

The main reason for all that is simple: you are no longer – for the most part – engaged in the workforce. And the language of the workforce is money. Of course, we are all still somewhat engaged in it but even the most entrepreneurial OTG’er can’t put in a full day chasing the almighty buck.  Just ain’t enough customers, bucks or interest to make that happen out here on a daily basis.  Slowly your mind shifts from money-hunting and saving and spending to other things – issues requiring filthy lucre looming up maybe only once every two weeks at most.  Most of the time you are thinking about employing some ingenuity to a weird OTG problem that money just can’t solve.

Seriously, when the main topic of your old modern life fails to come up in thinking or discussion for at least two weeks, it diminishes as a topic in your own consciousness. Most people out here not only don’t wear a watch, they don’t carry a wallet!  You are no longer thinking every half hour, “Geez, parking just went up!”  Or, “Sheesh, I gotta get a raise or something…I can’t make ends meet”  Or, “Jeez, I could go for a Starbuck’s coffee!”  All those constant ‘consumer’ reminders keep money at the forefront of your consciousness. When they go, the topic fades.

There are many other reasons, too.  No stores helps keeps the issue at bay.  Fewer wants.  No peer group pressure.  Advertising non existent.  Slowly but surely, the cost of things becomes a non-topic.  When that happens, money becomes less of a focus.

It’s conventional attitudinal determinism, actually.  Researchers find that drug addicts are more addicted when hanging out with other addicts.  Surround them with people who do NOT talk, think and pursue drugs and the addict spends less time on their cravings.  And the cravings diminish.  In that sense, the modern state of consciousness regarding money is an addiction.  And, with time, it an addiction/fixation/topic-of-concern we eventually have less than our urban cousins.

Work is another thing.  Maybe because there is no competition out here, any workers for hire do not negotiate.  Nor will they quote.  And, if they do, it means little.  “Well, things changed, eh?  I had to go up north for a week and that meant my neighbour’s wood supply dried up and so I had to go down the road to another guy and that meant hiring a truck and the other guy charged more for the wood so the price I quoted changed from $1000.00 to $1100.”  

But it is more than just that.  People who might seem to need the work (they are poor) and have a mill and have some logs most often don’t want to make lumber.  “Well, it’s kinda wet out and I have mostly fir in the yard.  You can use Hemlock for studs.  Plus I need a part for the machine so I may not get to milling til next summer.”    

There are maybe ten small mills out here and it takes a while to find one that is even thinking about working.  And that’s because ‘work’ is no longer customer or schedule-driven.  Work is not 9 to 5.  Work is now driven by immediate needs or boredom.  “Well, can’t do any milling right now.  Gotta fix the roof on the chicken coop and put in the garden.  But, later, I can maybe fire it up.  I get kinda bored if I don’t do some millin’, ya know.  Just don’t know when.” 

I still have the remnants of city work habits.  If someone comes for something, I get it done within a day or so.  Often they are surprised.  “Wow, Dave, you wrote that contract up in a day?  Man, that’s great. Sheesh, I don’t need it for a month or so.  Can I leave it with you for a bit. Wife and I going to Saskatchewan for a wedding.”  

“No problem.  But I thought you needed it right away?”

“I do.  Right after the wedding.  And, after I put in the garden.”