The Squamidian Report – June 11 / 16
Issue #733
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Just a disconnected collection of random thoughts and information.....
I don't know if anyone has been watching the early night sky lately but
if they have, they have been having a front row view of both Mars and
Saturn being in line with the Earth and the Sun. That means that the
Earth is between those outer planets and the sun, making viewing of
those planets quite nice. The sunlight reflecting off those planets is
bounced directly back toward us rather than off on an angle. Oh,
Jupiter is also spectacular these days.
Next thought; While it is cool and damp here now, we had a record
breaking heat wave last weekend and early this week. It was sizzling
hot. The nights were nice and cool but the days were so hot you could
barely go outside. Glad that one is over but now it looks like this
cool wet weather could stick around for a while and we don't want that
either. We want it to be 'just right', don't we? Incidentally, a week
before the heat wave it was so cold here that the rain was snow on the
mountains and there were numerous vehicle crashes up on the Coq highway
due to slippery conditions.
Ok, now for the gas shortage fiasco that has spread around Alberta and
BC. Due to disruptions in the oil sands and the Edmonton refineries,
some Alberta gas stations ran out of fuel with no one knowing when they
might be back on line. Petro Canada was the biggest culprit with the
most stations running out and the biggest jump in gas pricing at those
that still had fuel. It didn't take long for other brands to sharply
hike their prices. Then the shortages spread into eastern BC at which
time gas prices in the Lower Mainland started to jump. The slimy thing
is, our provincial government and the fuel companies have been telling
us for years, and keep telling us, that every time our gas goes up in
price, it has nothing to do with Alberta gas supply as we apparently
get our gas from Washington State. We'd see gas dropping in price in
other parts of the country as ours went up. Frustrating to say the
least. So, it makes no sense at all that shortages in Alberta should
cause BC's US based gas supply to rocket upward, again. But, we all
know that our provincial government loves those gas taxes and probably
both applauds and encourages price increases, and those slimy greedy
oil companies use any and every opportunity to gouge at the pumps.
Thats just the way its done.
Now on to the small plane that went down on an ice-field north of here
last Sunday.... late Sunday evening and on into the night we
watched S&R planes and helicopters fly overhead. They were covering
a route from the Pitt Meadows airport to Pemberton as they looked for
an overdue plane. The plane had taken off Sunday morning with the
intention of flying to the Pemberton airport and then back to Pitt
Meadows. The pilot and passengers had expected to be back by noon. They
never turned up. They never made it to Pemberton. Every hour after a
plane goes down is very important. If there are survivors they need to
be found as quickly as possible. Minutes can make a difference if they
are injured. The search went on all night and into Monday with no
success. Sometime Monday afternoon some snowmobilers up on the
Pemberton ice-fields spotted a plane wreck. There are abandoned crash
sites on those ice-fields so its not that uncommon to come across
wreckage. Its too remote to airlift wreckage out unless it can be
salvaged. That area is 50 miles west of any possible flight path they
should have been on. Due to the local terrain, the VFR flight path any
small craft would follow takes them over the Indian Arm pass where they
pop out over Squamish at which point they turn north and follow the
Checkamuss River or the highway to Whistler, then take the next pass
and drop down into the Pemberton Valley.
The snowmobilers didn't think much about the plane they had spotted on
the glacier but when they got back to Pemberton they told a pilot they
knew and he suggested to S&R that it might be what they are looking
for even though its a long way from the search area. A helicopter was
quickly dispatched and sure enough, it was the lost plane. The
plane hadn't actually landed on the ice, it had stalled onto the
ice-field. The pilot had turned up the Upper Squamish Valley instead of
north toward Whistler. As he flew further up into the ice-fields he
knew he had gotten lost and he found himself in a narrowing canyon that
was climbing faster than the plane could climb. He couldn't turn around
due to the canyon walls closing in and could not out climb the rising
terrain. After barely missing a couple of rock ledges by a few feet, he
purposely stalled onto the ice which was coming up to meet them. A
small plane can only climb so fast and then it will stall, not engine
wise but lift wise. The same small crevasses that wrecked his landing
gear and a wing are also what held the plane from sliding back down the
glacier and over a cliff. The pilot and two passengers were fine but
had to spend a very cold night on the high altitude ice. Next morning
they hiked down off the ice after leaving a note for whoever found the
plane. They could not have hiked out to civilization, that would have
been impossible for anyone but very experienced hard core back country
hikers who were well prepared, but, once the S&R helicopter was on
site it didn't take long to locate the three and they were picked up
and flown out by the end of the day.
Hikers and snowmobilers and loggers and pilots are still finding planes
from WW2 that were lost during training and patrol flights in the
coastal mountains. Thats how rugged and inaccessible this part of the
world is. The pilot and passengers of that plane that went down were
very, very lucky.
On to a new topic; my big bad biker buddies and I decided to have a
picnic at Porteau Cove, a Porteau picnic. On Tuesday evenings we meet
in Horseshoe Bay. Often we will have dinner there, other times we ride
somewhere for our dining needs. This time we decided a nice evening
picnic was in order so we all grabbed some take-out from the various
outlets and rode along the Sound to the picnic area at Porteau. We do
tend to get some funny looks from the 'general public' who are also
there to enjoy the scenery, ocean, and camping and picnic areas.
Especially when one of our woman riders pulls her table cloth from her
saddle bag and lays out the condiments and decorations. Yes, we are a
hardened rough bunch of big bad bikers.
doug
****
****
THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
A few years ago we remodeled our kitchen and replaced all of our
appliances but the microwave. We had received it from Adam as a gift
back in 2004 and it was still working well and matched our new
appliances quite well. If most of you are like we are with a microwave,
we use it most of the time just to reheat a cup of tea so it really
didn’t see much use over the years. There are a few things that Carole
cooks in it but it’s not her primary cooking device. Asparagus, baked
potatoes and some other veggies are about the main items that see
action in the microwave. For the most part, the extent of my use of
this “oven” is to press the instant on button to heat a cup of tea for
one minute! I guess I’ve always wondered why we own such a large
appliance to be used for so little! Many times over the past 12 years
I’ve thought of what a waste of money it has been to use such an
expensive machine for such a minuscule task but little did I know how
much I’d miss it’s handiness if it suddenly up and died! Lo and behold,
last weekend, the damned thing quit working! I had stuck a cup of warm
tea in to it’s cavern to heat it up and just when I had a real
hankerin’ for a good cup I found my tea luke warm after it had spent a
minute buzzing in the Mikey!
What the heck???? Did I push the wrong button or something? SO, in it
went one more time! I waited with baited breath and when the bell rang,
I grabbed my cup and headed for the Family Room once again to watch my
favourite game show. I sat down and got all comfy only to find my tea
was still colder than a Liberal’s heart! Out to the kitchen I went to
try to figure what went wrong. I placed my tea back into the microwave
a third time and pushed the express button. The machine started to hum
as per usual and the light went on but the turntable wasn’t turning.
Hmmm…? I ejected the tea once more and figured maybe a good thump on
the control panel would bring the machine back to life. Thump Thump and
thump again but to no avail! I checked the manufacturing date and found
that the machine was 12 years old. I guess microwave ovens are like
dogs, for every year they exist, they age 7 years! So I headed down to
the basement and rummaged under my work bench to find the old
countertop microwave that we had put through it’s paces starting way
back in 1990 when we built our home in Linwood. I pulled it out and
carried it up to the kitchen in hopes that it would work well enough to
at least warm a cup of tea. To my amazement, after asking Carole how to
work the darned thing, it started working just fine! It was an old and
cheap unit we had used for 14 years until Adam gave us our “good” one!
It still worked and I was happy to at least warm my tea once again! So,
it took a place of prominence on the kitchen counter and would do until
we were able to find a suitable replacement for the now defunct “good”
one that was mounted above the stove. The defunct one had also been
doing double duty as a vent fan for use when Carole cooked suppers in
the oven below. I guess all that hot duty had taken its toll on it
after all. We used the old countertop unit for a few days and on
Tuesday we dropped into Lowe’s Store and as luck would have it, they
had a beauty of a Panasonic Microwave that mounted above a stove like
our broken one and had a stronger fan on it than the old one had. This
would be a bonus if we could get it for the right price. We asked the
salesman how much and he said it was on sale. He checked and said they
only had two damaged ones in stock but if we paid for one that night
he’d give us the sale price and an extra 10% off and he would call us
on Thursday when the new one was delivered to the store.
Since we didn’t want a damaged one we agreed to pay then and wait for
his call in a couple of days. On Thursday I called the store at noon
and he said that our new microwave had come in just a few minutes
before my call. I hopped in the Jeep and headed over to The Boardwalk
to pick up the new unit. That was around 1pm and by 4pm that afternoon
I had the new Panasonic unit installed and we were once again able to
heat and reheat our tea! Whoopie! I was happy to be able to drink hot
tea and Carole was happy to have the ugly countertop unit back under my
workbench and out of sight! It seems that women don’t like old
discoloured appliances cluttering up their new kitchen countertops! Hey
I say, don’t knock the old clunker; at least it worked in a pinch!
That’s about all for this week folks!
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!
Bye for now… Greg
Something To Think About>
I was going to wear my camouflage shirt today but I couldn’t find it!
****
Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.
|