The Squamidian Report – Aug. 1 / 09
Issue #375
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
The west coast has been having its THIRD official heat wave since 1880. We just don’t get it this hot and for this long out here. Environment Canada has passed judgment but we all knew it was hot before they told us. Our normal mid summer high temps are about 22, not 35 or higher. In fact, given our normally moderated marine climate, this heat wave has been deemed a ‘once in a lifetime’ event. I’m quite happy to be off work right now. We are a bit slow and that’s just fine. Sitting on 20,000 lbs of hot hydraulics is no fun in these temperatures. The machines all have AC but it simply cannot keep up with the internal and external heat. Like I told Greg, it is even too hot to go out on the motorcycle during the day. Its great in the early morning and late evening but it feels like a blast furnace by about 10am.
On that line of thought, we did a nice ride up to Whistler for breakfast last Sunday morning. Gary and Owen Sound Sue came out a week ahead of the reunion and we made the old Yamaha Virago available to them. They have never ridden in the west coast mountains and aside from being a bit intimidated by the hills and curves of the highway, thoroughly enjoyed the experience. But by the time we got home it had heated back up and had become too hot to do much more outdoor stuff.
Another thing that is very rare around here is thunderstorms but we had one of the wildest, most powerful thunderstorms I’ve ever seen. The storm went on for almost 8 hours in the Vancouver area. The Coast Mountains took thousands of lightning hits. The rain came down so hard we could hardly hear anything else. I expected to see smoke rising the next morning but luckily that rain doused most of the hits and fire crews put out the rest. There were over a hundred fires started in the Interior and most have been put out or went out. When the storm was over we had an incredibly spectacular sunset. It all made for a pretty entertaining evening.
That’s not to say that the big, out of control fires have backed off even a tiny bit. They are way to big and hot to be effected by a few downpours. And with temps hitting the low 40’s in the Interior, some of them are literally uncontrollable. There’s a fire ban blanketing the province but like I mentioned last week, some will ignore it and end up causing a lot grief.
Oh yes, one more thing. On Wednesday, July 29, Vancouver recorded the highest temperature it has ever experienced (since humans have been recording such data). For the first time in Vancouver’s history the temperature broke the 100-degree mark (100+ F sounds hotter than the 38.7 that they had).
That was also the day that Lorne and Vivyan, and Ed and Ev flew in for the reunion. And as luck would have it, their connector flight from Calgary to Vancouver was cancelled. Of course the airline didn’t bother to inform anyone so Gary was waiting at the airport for them with no information as to why they didn’t come in. Eventually he found that they would be on the next flight from Calgary, and they were but that put everyone about 3 hours behind where they expected to be. The up-side was that the travelers ran into Nova Scotia Sus in the Calgary airport and they were all on the same flight to Vancouver. So they got up to our place late, tired and hot…. and with no luggage. It didn’t get here until 5am the next morning.
And then the next day, Thursday, the new all-time heat record was set again. It was supposed to have cooled off a few degrees but instead it got a couple of degrees even hotter. Thursday was also the day that a lightning strike set Blackcomb Mt on fire. Both Whistler and Blackcomb mountains had to be evacuated as the fire spread and grew to over 185 acres in a matter of a couple of hours. The village was put on evacuation alert. However, politics wins over prudence… hell would have to freeze over before Whistler Resort would be evacuated. Politics also won again as the powers-to-be pulled the water bombers that were fighting a forest fire in the Pemberton Valley and re-assigned them to fight the Blackcomb fire leaving the residents of Pemberton Meadows to wonder if they even mattered.
So, on with the weekend and the get-together. Lets hope the heat lets up enough for us to enjoy it.
doug
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Hello everyone!
Here we are in the middle of summer and it’s still not really looking like a normal summer. Oh well, it’s at least sunny for the next few days. They say that August won’t be any better weather wise than July was but I think “They” are wrong. I can smell warmer and sunnier weather in the air for sure.
With all the hot weather out in BC and all the participants in the Brubacher Reunion there as well, I feel left out in more ways than one. Carole and I want to wish you all a Happy Reunion and we hope you all enjoy your week in the west.
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Last week, I had a most unusual occurrence happen and not just once but twice. Then it happened once again today. For the life of me I can’t figure out for sure what caused it but I can make an uneducated guess. I was outside just before supper last Sunday evening and everything seemed normal. I didn’t notice anything different about the yard or the driveway. I decided to go back inside and collect the household garbage and bring it out so I could place the cans and recycle bins at the curbside for pick up on Monday morning as I usually did. So, in I went and gathered it from each collection spot in the house, the washrooms, the kitchen and my workshop in the basement. This took me about 10 minutes tops and I was back out in the garage stuffing it into the garbage cans. I then picked up the two plastic cans and walked them out to the front boulevard and placed them in their usual spot. I turned to walk back into the garage to get the recycle bins and was surprised to see a mess on the driveway. Way back when I first met Doug, he was at our house to do some excavating to widen my driveway. He dug out a 4’ wide section beside the present drive and I framed it so another friend of mine could pour a matching concrete pad next to the existing driveway. This was finished a day or so after Doug did the digging. Of course my friend placed a piece of tentest expansion material against the original concrete to allow for expansion between the two pads come the cold weather. The tentest has been in that joint for at least 10 years and has never moved.
When I walked over to see what the mess was that lay on the driveway last Sunday evening, it was pieces of tentest approximately 6” long each. Adam had his car parked on the joint and his back tire was about 10’ from the sidewalk. Something or someone had pulled the expansion material out of the crack from his back tire to the city sidewalk and scattered it on the drive on either side of the crack. At first I though it might have been kids chipping it out of the crack and leaving it there but the more I thought about it, the less likely that scenario seemed. So, bewildered, I picked up each piece and placed them back in the crack and went on about my business. The next day I went out to bring the garbage cans in after the pick up had been done and darned if the tentest pieces weren’t scattered about once more! Sheesh! What the heck is going on I thought? I even asked the neighbour beside us if he’d seen anybody or anything messing around on our drive and he said no he hadn’t. I showed the mess to Adam and Carole and we each had different ideas of what or who might be doing this dastardly deed.
To the best of our brainstorming, we figured there might be some sort of animal digging out the pieces of stuff to get at the bugs and ants that might be in the crack. What else could it be???
Today, almost a week later, it happened again. The driveway was clean most of the day and about 4pm this afternoon I walked out and found the mess scattered once again. I have seen several big crows sitting on the light standard out front of the house over the past week or so and I figure it must just be the crows doing this digging. So I decided to go to Home Depot and buy some new pieces of joint material and repack the crack with one long piece rather than these short ill fitting pieces. They were just too easy for the crows to dig up! I headed over to HD and brought home a pack of 4” x ½” strips of expansion joint. Before I opened the package, I measured the crack and it was only 3/8’s of an inch wide at best. The strips would never fit so I returned them to HD and bought a can of low expansion foam to spray into the crack in place of the tentest. Of course I followed the directions to the letter. It said to spray in ½ the amount needed to fill the crack and it would expand to the right size. Well, this “Low Expansion” foam expands a heck of a lot more than they claim on the can. I wound up with a bead of foam sticking about 2” out of and five times wider than the crack. I let it harden and cure for about two hours and then went at the excess with a utility type knife and trimmed it off the driveway. It was supposed to be beige in colour which is about the colour of our driveway. However, it turned out to be bright yellow!!! LOL! I sure hope it will fade in colour after a while and match the driveway better than it does right now.
What the heck! At least the crows won’t have any difficulty finding it when they want something to peck at again! LOL! I hope they leave it alone when they find out how well it’s stuck to the concrete. The type I used is supposed to be pliable and spongy so it moves with the change in temperature. If it keeps the crows away and stays in place for a few years, it’ll be worth all the hassle!
If it doesn’t ward off these critters, we could be feasting on crow next time round! I’ll have to get out the trusty Red Rider BB Gun and ward ‘em off myself! LOL!
That’s it for this week folks!
Thanks for tuning in and I look forward to talking to you all again next time in The Ontarion Report!
Bye for now… Greg
PS: Something To Think About>
If 4 and 20 black birds fit in a pie, how many crows would it take to fill one?
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Have a good one..
the doug
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