The
Squamidian Report – May 25 / 13
Issue #574
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Last weekend was a long weekend, the infamous ‘May 2-4’. Places like Squamish get inundated with ‘long weekenders’ coming to or passing through. The highways become very unpleasant places as the masses madly dash toward their destinations. The traffic enforcement people are kept very busy dealing with speeders and distracted drivers and other imbeciles who have managed to somehow be included in the human gene pool. The RCMP around here like to use a helicopter to monitor and clock speeders. It is very effective because the speeders in question, sorry, the ‘alleged’ speeders, don’t know they are being followed and therefore don’t start doing even dumber things like trying to evade the cops. They simply come around a bend in the road and run right into a road block. It is always interesting to see the number of high end, high performance cars that get impounded. In BC the cops can impound a vehicle for a week if it was going 40k over the limit. It is not uncommon to catch them doing 2 or 3 times that much over. The owner is stuck with towing and impounding fees over and above the obvious speeding ticket and subsequent insurance increases. Another thing I like finding is the road side checks for drinking drivers. You’d think that after decades of educating the masses and decades of road checks that the average moron would get it but they don’t. The road side checks are still nabbing driver after driver for drinking. I’ve always thought that part of attaining a driver’s license should include a psychological test but that would probably be a violation of someone’s right to be a moron.
Then there are the campers. The local grocery stores become clogged with people picking up supplies for their stay in the wilds of a commercial campsite. I was in the grocery store that I go to (my grocery store as opposed to Sue’s grocery store, we don’t like each other’s choice of store) to pick up some bananas and orange juice. As usual, I managed to pick the line that while appearing to be moving was actually grinding to a halt. I found myself stuck behind 4 young women preparing for the weekend of camping, with a heaped cart, full of all sorts of silly thing, from Jiffy Pop popcorn to cup-cakes to wieners to beverages to, well, on and on. My frustration turned to entertained curiosity as I watch their bill climb higher and higher as the teller rang the stuff in. Just as she was about to hit the final enter button one of the girls grabbed some magazines off the rack to be included in with the rest of their ‘can’t do without’ necessities. The amount total was now just over $400, $408.36 to be exact. I was chuckling quietly to myself. Then I noticed that the 4 of them were trying to decide how much each of them owed, what each person’s share of the cost was. One of them pulled out her smart phone (I’m starting to understand why so many people need a SMART phone these days, something has to do it for them) so she could divide up the 408.36 on her calculator app. It made me wonder if they’d bought enough bread crumbs to leave a trail so they could find their way back and forth from their camp site to their car.
Once I’d made it though the checkout line I made a hasty retreat to the piece and quiet and sanity of my home where I spent as much of the weekend as possible insulated from the insanity.
doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
Well, I gotta say that the hands are getting closer and closer to
normal operation these days! Not only can I type with both of them and not feel
much pain at all but I can do quite well in the manual labour
department as well. These past few days, Adam and I spent full days installing
a new retaining wall around Carole’s front garden. We had a row of granite
rocks about the size of 5 pin bowling balls along the perimeter of the garden
out front and back for about the past 13 years and they were getting tiresome
both in looks and in their functionality. The garden soil was working its way
between them and dropping lower in level over the years so Carole decided to
make the change. She came up with the idea of building a retaining wall out of
custom blocks in place of the row of rocks and filling up the garden behind it
with about a foot of fresh soil. So we did the research and picked the style of
stone from a source that sells custom wall blocks. Adam had some time off so he
offered to help me build the wall this past week. We tried digging the trench
for the footing by hand but with two large trees in the front yard, it was
nearly impossible to dig through the root system that’s grown throughout the
front yard over the years. They say that the upper branches of a tree represent
the shape and size of the root system that’s underground beneath each tree and
now I’m a firm believer that that is the truth. It was unbelievable how many
roots there are woven throughout our front lawn! We gave up digging with
shovels and went to Home Depot and rented a power “Trencher”. Adam had used
these units before in his job so he knew how to use one. The plan was to dig a
trench approximately a foot deep and a foot wide across the width and then some
of the front porch and then make a 90 degree turn toward the rear of the house
for another 12 feet with a second 90 back to the side of the house just past
the porch. Well, he managed to cut a rough trench of only about 8’ after having
the machine do nose stands and snags on the roots for about two hours. We had
rented the machine for a 4-hour period but it broke down after only 2hrs. The
control arm for the front digging mechanism literally snapped in half after
that short period. The rental agent promised the machine would eat through the
roots and all with ease. Well, we managed to load it back into Adam’s pickup
truck and take it back to HD. Upon showing the problem to the HD employee, he
trashed the contract and didn’t charge us at all for the time we had the machine.
This monster really did look like it would do the job with no problem at all
but, it failed miserably. As we drove into the HD lot there was a brand new
Kubota “Mini Excavator” or backhoe on a trailer for rent. The agent told us
that it was brand new and we’d be the first to rent it if we wanted to use it
for our trench. So, the following morning at 7am we rented it for only $50 more
than the trencher and hauled it home to see if it would do the job that the
trencher had failed to do. I had
commented that if Doug were still in business here in KW he’d most certainly
have had a job digging this trench for us! However, he’s no longer available or
in the business so renting one and having Adam operate it was the next best
thing. Adam had operated these machines before as well so he had no problem
doing the job with this little beauty! He managed to dig the trench in only one
and a half hours and I was impressed with the accuracy of his operation and the
clean job he did. The Kubota was very strong but even this machine had to grunt
a few times to break through the web of tree roots in it’s way. After he had
the trench dug, I had to get in the trench and use my electric “Saws all” to
cut the roots from either side of the trench walls to clean it up. Then we poured
in fine crushed granite pebbles for a stable base for the wall and then put the
wall up like a jigsaw puzzle. We glued each row of blocks together with special
caulking and after handling 175 thirty-pound blocks several times we finally
finished the project. The three of us then spent the next two days working
between thunderstorms to shovel the soil back into the garden and around the
wall and cleaning it off the lawn. This afternoon we finally finished the
cleanup and the new wall looks amazing! What a project to tackle but now that
it’s finished it was all worth the effort. My hands didn’t let me down so it
looks as if the surgeries were worth every painful moment! I haven’t taken the
bike out for a test run yet to see if the hands work well on the clutch and
brake levers but after the workout I just gave them, I’m sure they’ll find
driving the bike a breeze!
Now all Carole has
to do is decide what plants and shrubs she’d like in the new garden and we’ll
get into replanting them where they belong. I had to use the Jeep with a chain
and large rope to yank the old bushes out of the garden. Once again it was a
major challenge to uproot these 14-year-old shrubs because of the huge root
system under each of them. It was nearly impossible to dig them out with a
shovel so one more time, “mechanical advantage” became my best friend! I think
Carole has in mind to replace them with some sort of dwarf shrubs that won’t
require any trimming as a reward to me so I won’t have to trim them now that
I’ve built this new front yard for her. What a lovely way to say thanks! Even
if she does pick shrubs that require trimming, I really won’t mind! Its all
part of keeping one’s home looking good and giving one a sense of pride! She’s
the designer and I’m the project manager! What a team! Oh yah, and a big thanks
to Adam for his skilled machine operation and accuracy in laying the wall
puzzle perfectly straight and level! What an accomplishment by all!
That’s it 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
PS: Something To
Think About>
When you get a bladder infection, urine trouble!
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Have a good one..
the doug
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