The Squamidian Report – April 22 / 06
Issue #203
Also in this issue:
Hi All,
Well, I finally broke down, and took down the outdoor Christmas lights. Always seems kind of silly to me. They weren’t hurting anything hanging up along the eves, heck, they have to hang somewhere. And in the blink of an eye I’ll be under pressure again to put them back up. So when that time comes they will be all tangled, some of the bulbs won’t work and it will be cold out. All that could have been easily avoided just by leaving things as they were. Once, back on Hidden Valley, I managed to procrastinate until mid June, and I think there is still a string of lights hanging in that big old maple that stood at the corner of the house. But, so far I haven’t been able to get away with leaving them up all summer so they are now down and in a big tangled ball in the corner of the garage. Probably take me till July to actually put them away.
Editor’s Note: That house was demolished a few weeks ago in the name of progress!
*
Every once in a while you run into something that is so dumb it makes you just shake your head and laugh. And often it is something that is supposed to be important or official or serious. We ran into such a situation at the job site in the Squamish Business Park development. The environmental engineers swooped down on us when they found we were installing a storm drain that would empty into what they described as an important fish and wildlife stream. We had just set a concrete headwall with its four-foot diameter pipe outlet to empty into the watercourse and begun to extend the pipeline out into the development when they descended on us with cameras, maps, two-way radios and the obligatory white hard hats and safety vests.
After some rather excited and animated conversations with our foreman we were permitted to proceed but under some rather strict rules. For one thing, we had to control all water coming out of the pipes. It had to be captured and pumped away (out into a field where it would just turn around and run back into the watercourse but that didn’t seem to matter). Thing is, as we were trenching though soil that is below the water table, the water we were picking up was pure and clean. Then, if we were pouring any concrete, which we do when setting manholes, they had to be notified so they could observe and police our activity. And as a last order, we were not to touch one single branch on any tree or shrub near the watercourse.
Sounds logical so far, but here is the actual situation. The ‘watercourse’ is a highway drainage ditch that is dry most of the summer. Currently there are only brackish puddles of water and iron stained weeds in the ‘watercourse’. And to top that off, the highway is being widened and part of that contract is to re-ditch the whole thing and even move it over in some spots. So much for protecting an important habitat. And as the environmental engineer was issuing the order about not disturbing any of the vegetation along the ditch, a loud crunching and crashing sound began right behind where they were standing. Another part of the highway contract was the removal of all those trees and shrubs. Those very trees were being knocked down and chewed up by an excavator as we were being chewed out for working too close to them. So much for the credibility of that engineer. She hadn’t done her homework, all this work had been planned and approved long ago.
doug
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Adventures With Jack And Jim!
Hello everybody! It's been a long time since I sat down to write an update for the squid. Our winter certainly provided plenty of fodder for writing but unfortunately, it also left very little time and energy to do much about it. Winter in the country is an entirely different experience than winter in the city. And although many of you in southern Ontario have talked about how little snow you had, we, on the other hand, had record snowfall. I don't know what the accumulated amount was, but we had about 4 to 5 feet of it on the ground at any given time.
But that was then and this is spring! We've had beautiful sunny, warm weather with temperatures as high as 21C. Our grass is green even though there are still large pockets of snow back in our forest trails. Best of all... it's this beautiful and the bugs are not out yet! I hope everyone had a lovely Easter weekend. I decided to follow family tradition and colour easter eggs on Good Friday. For as long as I can remember, various family members and friends have gathered at my grandparents house on good Friday to do the colourful deed. Of course, I loved decorating eggs when I was a kid, but I enjoyed it even more after I moved away from Kitchener. Many good conversations and silly jokes have been shared over mugs of dye and cartons of hard boiled eggs.
I limited myself to just 18 eggs and dipped and soaked until each was a unique work of art! Eggs like these need an audience, so I took my creations next door for neighbours Bob and Shirley to pick their favourites to keep for themselves. We also had one guest over the weekend and I put the eggs out for her on Sunday morning. They made a nice splash of colour for the table setting. Easter Sunday turned out to be...memorable. After our guest checked out, Jim and I decided we would do a little exploring around the region, try some hiking trails north of us, and get some ideas for places to send our guests. When we saw Bob and Shirley that morning, we told them we were off to have an adventure!
We started by heading west to Seguin Falls, a ghost town which is not really anything to see, and a water fall which is quite lovely, if a little awkward to get to. From there we headed north on Old Nipissing Rd., which is also part of the Trans-Canada trail system. That was a lovely rural drive up to the town of Magnetawan. There we stopped for lunch at the lakeside park and looked over the map to plan the route we would take further north and east to a series of hiking trails. The map showed Old Nipissing road continuing straight up from Magnetawan to intersect with a road I know to be well-traveled and maintained. From there, it would be just a short detour to a place called Rye, which I believe is the town where my great grandmother was born. So it was settled, that's the route we would take.
Heading north after lunch, we meandered our way along. The road was pot-holed and bumpy but we were in no hurry so the necessary slow pace didn't bother us. We had left rural farm fields behind and were in thick woods on either side of the road. There were few homes or cottages along the way, even. We were about 35 km out of Magnetawan (I was noting driving distances all along for future guest reference) when the road went from poor-but-passable to logging-road to glorified-goat-track. Knowing the road we were aiming to intersect with is a good one, we kept going instead of turning around and backtracking all the way back to the town. After all, what's the worst that could happen, right?
Well, as anyone could guess, the worst did happen and we wound up stuck in deep mud. I think this mud is the closest I have ever come to experiencing quicksand. There was no getting our little Saturn SUV out. We were by now at least 40 km from town, in the middle of undeveloped forest, and probably 15 km from the last cottage we passed. What to do? Call a tow truck to haul us out. Of course, we didn't have any tow truck numbers handy, but we had something even better: Bob and Shirley! I've mentioned before that our neighbours have practically adopted us, helping and teaching us all sorts of things about country living and taking care of our woods and property. Well, they may disown us if we keep this up!
I called Shirley and Bob, told them our predicament, and asked if they knew who we could call to get us out. I guess we still have some of the city mentality in us because we automatically thought we could just call a tow truck and presto, one would come. After all, they line the highways down in Toronto just waiting for someone to have a flat tire or fender bender. People up here have a different take on life. Sure, there are a lot of folks around here that have the kind of equipment that could get us out, but they're not necessarily going to give up their Easter Sunday afternoon just for a spot of business.
So Bob and Shirley started working on finding us a tow. It didn't help that they weren't sure exactly where we were. Bob's map was for a larger area and didn't even show the road that we were on. In the meantime, I received a call from a local lady that works at the visitor info centre and she said she'd see what she could dig up. Just to keep it interesting, the battery indicator on my cell phone was down to just one bar, which meant we could be cut off from the rest of the world at any time. We started to think we should have a Plan B in case nobody came and our cell phone died. How soon would we have to start walking if it came to that?
It had been a little before 2:00 when we got stuck and it was about 3:30 when we got a call from a tow truck driver asking how he could find us. Hooray! It took him about an hour to get up to us after that. Unfortunately, it didn't take him long at all to get his truck good and stuck as he tried to turn around in a logging clearing to back in to us. Ack! He drove one of those "tilt and lift" kind of trucks with the flat back, so it's a pretty big and heavy truck. It had a winch and cable on the back but not a lot of well-placed trees for positioning it. It took the driver, Scott, and Jim almost an hour to work the truck free. To Scott's credit, he didn't bail on us after that. I thought he might decide to just give us a ride home and leave our vehicle to the forces of nature. But no, he backed down the road toward us, got stuck again, got unstuck (just 20 minutes this time) and was able to link enough chains to his winch to reach our car without getting too close to the mud pit that had us.
He had pulled our car just about out of the mud when who should come walking along but Bob and his cousin, Jack. I had called Bob and Shirley earlier to let them know that a tow truck was coming, but they wanted to make sure we didn't get stranded in the woods in case the truck never arrived. Do we have great neighbours or what?! And it's a good thing they came, because Scott managed to damage his truck somehow. If I'm explaining this correctly, the pistons under the truck that do the tilting and lifting were bent and unable to retract, which meant it was like a big anchor under the truck, embedded deep in the mud. In other words, the tow truck, with our car on it, was not going anywhere.
As I said, it was a good thing Bob and Jack were there because there were tools in Jack's truck that were used to ultimately fix the tow truck (along with a couple hours of working). Plus, Jack hitched his four-wheel drive truck up to the tow truck to help it get up the little muddy hill it was stuck on. Finally, we all made our way out of that muddy logging trail and back to the real road. Over six and a half hours after first getting ourselves stuck! From there, it was an hour's drive home and our adventure was done. There's a whole whack of lessons to be learned in that one little expedition. But for now I'll just say: 1) thank goodness for good neighbours, and 2) we know where NOT to send our guests for a little country drive!
Take care, folks!
****
Hello
everyone!
Well,
after telling Doug about the new gummy street tires that I received from Adam
for Christmas and was amazed how secure they made the bike feel I had an
interesting experience with them today. I had parked the bike in the lot at St
Mary’s hospital while I visited my brother in law. When I came out and was leaving
the parking lot, I followed another motorcycle through the gate. After checking
the traffic and seeing it was clear I began to pull away from the ramp of the
entrance onto the street. As I started to accelerate I was shocked to suddenly
be banging the forehead of my precious new helmet on the surface of the road.
The next thing I knew an elderly gentleman was asking if I was ok and I was
getting up off my back. I said “Yes, I think I’m ok but I’m not sure what
happened!” He said he was about 100’ down the road and it looked like my bike
had just slid out from under me. Now having these gummy, new and extremely
expensive tires on the bike, I thought there was no way this was the case.
However, on closer investigation I discovered an 8 ½” x 11” piece of ordinary
white paper on the ground beside the bike. I placed my foot on it and pushed a
little to the side and I slipped immediately along the surface of the driveway
ramp. Seeing this, I put 2 and 5 together and got 4. Made sense to me that I
had probably had my front tire on this piece of paper as I leaned to the left
to start my turn and this allowed the tire to slip out from under me. It’s a
good thing I wasn’t traveling at a quicker rate of speed or I might have been
joining my brother in law in the hospital. I couldn’t believe how quickly it
happened and how quickly as well I had dropped to the pavement. In the blink of
an eye I was on the road flat on my back after rolling from the bike. I
remember thinking as I toppled to the ground “What th………..??? “ and BANG, my
bright shiny new helmet impacted the pavement directly on the forehead about
two inches above the visor. At that point I had mixed emotions. I thought
“Shit, my new helmet!” and also “Geeze am I lucky I have my helmet on!” In
reality, it is much better to have a chip out of my new helmet than a chunk out
of my old coconut! LOL! Something like this attracts a lot of attention in a
short span of time. In no time, there were about a half dozen vehicles on the
scene and everyone was asking or looking to see what happened and also if I was
OK. I thanked a couple of drivers for asking and assured them that I was just
fine. I mustered my manly pride and strength and grunted as I picked my
motorcycle back up onto its new “Gummy Tires”. Not one of these “concerned
citizens” would exit their vehicle and offer to help me with the task of
lifting it. I guess they figured if I dropped it I could darn well pick it up!
LOL! Oh well, the lesson here I think is to avoid driving over anything I might
see on the road surface in the future. I promise to do that IF I see the
“whatever it is” that’s on the surface of the road! LOL! I was very fortunate
to have sustained a minor injury to the right shin and a minor ding to my new
helmet and nothing else.
As I rode
home, I noticed that my handlebars were slightly askew. When the left end of
the bars hit the pavement it must have knocked them crooked. I rode home and
told Carole and Adam about the incident. We were all smiling a tad as I
recounted the happening. Carole said she thought maybe the motorcycle wasn’t
such a good idea but I assured her that the damned piece of paper was to blame
and not the motorcycle. It was plain and simply an accident! She asked me if I
was injured and I said I did notice a slight discomfort to my right shin area
so I lifted my pant leg to take a look. As I did so, Carole let out a shriek
and said “Oh my Gord, look at your shin!” I guess as I dropped my feet off the
pegs of the bike to try to maintain my balance I raked my right shin down the teeth
of the steel peg itself. I now have several gashes on the shin bone from just
below my knee to just above my ankle. It was bleeding a little but was lumpy
and bruised more than anything. Carole took me to the first aid room (the
kitchen) and proceeded to clean up the wound. After the first aid was complete
I sat with an Ice pack on the lumpy mess until the swelling went down. Carole
dressed the leg to keep it covered and clean and I was on my way once more.
Adam and I went out to take a look at the bike and discovered that there was
only a scratch on the left back signal light and one on the left clutch lever.
Other than that, the bike was just fine. The handle bars were slightly askew
but that was remedied in short order. Adam asked me to stand with the front
wheel held tightly between my knees while he twisted the bars back into
alignment from the rider’s position. One quick snap and back they went.
Everything seems to be ok but I intend to take the bike to the dealer just have
it checked for mechanical fitness. No need to take any chances with something
being loose or cracked or whatever. Gotta be safe!
As most
bikers like to say “Keep the rubber side down!” and I’ll talk to you all again
next week in The Ontarion Report!
Thanks
for tuning in!
Bye for now!
PS:
Something To Think About>
Experience
gives us the tests first and the lessons later.
Naomi
Judd
****
The Family and the Squamidian sites:
http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b/ and http://www.thedougsite.ca
Have a good one..
the
doug
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