The Squamidian Report – July 11 / 15
Issue #685
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
As many of you know, the west is burning. Northern Alberta and
Saskatchewan are enduring massive forest fires. Most of BC is also
enduring wild fires. They are springing up all over the place at a very
scary rate. We have not had any meaningful rain in several months. The
province is tinder dry. Ad to that the record breaking heat that has
gripped the province and the almost total lack of humidity and the
whole area is a powder keg, capable of exploding at any time. Many
locations already have, especially when human activity is in the area,
mainly careless smokers and campers. One of the obvious results from a
forest fire besides burned out forests is the incredible amount of
smoke they pump out. (I wonder who will have to pay the carbon tax on
that stuff??) Due to a combination of wind direction and the fact that
the fires are all over the place, the whole south coast area has been
blanketed with choking smothering soot, smoke and ash.
The first big smoke event was back on June 15. You could see it drift
in. After a short while visibility was down and the air stunk of smoke.
That cleared out within a day or so. Then, a light haze became the norm
and we sort of got used to that. Fires have broken out in several
places around the Lower Mainland, on the Island and on the Sunshine
Coast as well as almost uncountable new ones in the interior. All the
smoke from said fires had combined to form a huge cloud that settled
over the Lower Mainland and southern Vancouver Island. The smoke became
so thick it blocked out the sun and the scenery. There are mountains
all around but you can't see them. An interesting 'aside' about the sun
being blocked, that actually helped with the oppressive heat by
lowering our temperatures by a few degrees. Kind of like a mini nuclear
winter effect but on a very minor scale. It did supply a tiny bit of
relief but certainly didn't do anything to actually help out at all.
As and example of the fires pumping out smoke, that fire I had
mentioned up the Elaho Valley was first 'discovered' when it was about
6 hectares in size. At the time the ministry decided to just 'monitor'
it. Well, now its over 20,000 hectares in size and there is another one
almost as big near by. Plus all the closer ones of course.
I was going to ride to Horseshoe Bay last Sunday morning. I would have
been my first ride since the surgery, but changed my mind when I saw
the forecast temperatures and smoke situation. That morning it was just
mildly hazy here with just a whiff of smoke smell in the air but the
temp was expected to hit record highs and the smoke was expected to
intensify. So, I drove down to the Bay. The sky ahead was black like a
huge ominous thunderstorm, but the color wasn't quite right. It was a
dirty black. The filtered sun was bringing out colors in the Sound's
waters that I'd never seem before. Almost pretty but quite spooky. By
the time I was half way to the Bay I was well under the black cloud
cover and it smelled like I was inside a chimney. At the Bay, the
tables and chairs were covered in fine soot and there was ash raining
down from the black overcast. Long before I returned home the smoke
cloud had intensified inland to include our area and all the way to the
Interior. It didn't budge for days. Under thick smoke conditions like
these you can look directly at the Sun. Its just a dull reddish ball in
the grey brown sky.
In some ways there was no point in visiting the Gondola. You wouldn't
be able to see anything and the smoke would be as choking up there as
down here. However, I decided to go anyway just to see how thing were
up there. The staff is terrified of some idiot doing something stupid
like lighting up a cigarette even though there are huge no-smoking
signs all over the place. They were even discussing shutting the whole
place down until conditions improve but of course that would be hard to
do. There are numerous tour busses booked in every day and that can't
be rescheduled. Ironically, when those tourist get to the top,
they can't see anything but then many of them are Oriental and don't
really know the difference. This smoke blanket has been compared to how
it is all the time in the big Oriental cities, only not as bad seeing
as how its just 'clean' forest fire smoke.
Being up there in the smoke was like being up there in the fog only
totally different. It was choking and hot and scary, where fog tends to
be cleansing and refreshing. At least the normal fog we get around here
does. We are supposed to keep an eye out for new fires springing up,
identifiable from the plume of smoke, but you wouldn't be able to spot
one thought the smoke, even if it were close by. I took some pics. They
don't really catch the true magnitude of the smoky conditions but do
give a bit of an idea of how things look. I've up loaded them to
Facebook and some of you have already seen them. You can also view them
from this link: smoke pics.
You know how the air quality index is based on a scale of 0 to 10 with
0 being clean and 10 being as bad as it gets? Well, according to the
local media, the air quality in Whistler this week peaked at 35. Thats
way past as bad as it gets. Needless to say, the tourists are leaving
in droves and no one can blame them. They can't see, breath, or do
anything.
An interesting and frustrating side to this on-going drought is the
effect its having on the wild life. The local birds are really
suffering. There are no bugs or berries for them to eat. Water is hard
for them to find. We've seen flickers just slowly walking across dried
out lawns. Normally they would be flying energetically. Where the
frustration for me is coming in is that the robins can't find anything
to eat and have focussed on my blueberry patch. Their hunger has over
ridden their fear of my attempts to scare them away. My CD's hanging
from the plants had done a good job until recently but now the birds
have been driven by desperation to ignore them. They are stripping my
plants of all ripe berries every morning. My bountiful crop is
disappearing before my eyes. I guess I could put netting over them
again but I also feel for the poor creatures. They are starving. Any
wild berries around here have long since dried into hard little lumps,
and worms and bugs are no where to be seem. I may have to 'take one for
the team' for the time being. But that being said, the dam birds could
at least be a bit gracious about taking my berries. They usually raid
the patch at the crack of dawn but now they are becoming more brazen. I
was minding the BBQ a few days ago and a robin landed on the near by
fence. It looked at me, it looked at Willow and it looked at the berry
patch. It then flew down to the patch and landed on the ground below
the bushes where it eyed the CDs hanging there and again eyed me. Then,
it flew up and grabbed a nice juicy blueberry, flew over and landed
back on the fence where it swallowed the berry. Then, just to rub it in
before flying away, it pooped. I just know that was some kind of
sarcastic message.
And lastly, I'm back on the bike. A little later than I had hoped but
back riding none the less. I had tried a short ride last Tuesday but
found lifting my legs onto the footboards really pulled the lower
abdomen muscles, to the point where it hurt a bit. I tried again on
Wednesday and found that by carefully planning how I pulled my legs up
made a big difference. Its amazing how much those muscles are used when
doing normal things including controlling a bike by applying knee
pressure to the tank as needed during maneuvers. Anyway, I was out for
a nice ride on Friday. The winds have picked up from off-shore,
thinning out the smoke a bit, at least enough that you can see across
the valley. Not clearly, but you can see. And the temps have dropped a
bit so its a lot more comfortable than it had been. Now we just need
rain, a lot of rain, like two weeks of it. Unfortunately, thats just
wishful thinking.
doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
Well, I’ve had an event filled week this week and it all had to do with
a city snowplow. I’m not sure if it was the fault of the one that plows
the street or the one I call a “Jigger” that clears the snow off the
sidewalk along the side of our corner lot. Back when the snow first
melted in the spring and things began to green up, I was sitting on the
front porch enjoying a tea when I noticed something yellow on the
boulevard beside our house. I sauntered down the driveway and walked
around the corner to see just what was glimmering in the mid day sun. I
walked right up to the object but still didn’t recognize what it was.
It was the size of a foolscap note pad but about an inch and a half
thick with about a 4” flange bent up on one end. It had half a bolt
rusted tightly in one of the holes in the flange and a second hole that
was empty. There was also a 3” diameter hole dead centre of the main
body of the piece. I was totally befuddled as to what the darned thing
was. As I bent down to pick it up, I was shocked at the weight of this
item! It must have weighed at least thirty pounds and it took both
hands to lift it out of the deep impression it had made in the grass. I
carried it home and wiped it off to get a better look at it. I still
had no idea what it was! After pondering the piece for a few more
minutes, I leaned it against the dividing post of the two garage doors
and went on to more important things.
About two weeks later I went to visit a friend of mine who lives
directly beside the Kitchener Humane Society up on River Bend Dr at the
end of Guelph St. River Bend Dr was formerly known as “River Rd” back
in the mid 20th century. I don’t know why the city changed the name but
I guess it has something to do with the fact that in the late 60’s
River Rd was divided in two at the railroad tracks that run along side
Victoria St N. The city changed the wooden and steel traffic bridge
that took River Rd over the tracks so it could continue across Victoria
St N and on to the Stanley Park area of Kitchener. I guess when they
made that bridge into a pedestrian overpass only, the city figured the
street that now dead ended at the tracks on the north side should have
it’s own name, hence the new name “River Bend Dr”! Sorry for getting
side tracked but at least I answered my own question on that one!
Anyway, as I was saying, when I went to visit my friend I took the
heavy yellow oddball item I found in the spring along to ask Frank if
he knew what the heck it was. Being a retired “Pipe Fitter/ Welder” I
figured he just might have an idea what it was I was lugging around!
When I showed it to him as we sat in his large garage/workshop on that
nice sunny day, he took one glance at it and said; “Where the Hell did
you get the snow plow weight?” I was right; Frank knew what it was
without hesitation. So I explained where I had found it and deduced
that it had fallen off either the street plow or the sidewalk “Jigger”.
Since Frank is always tinkering with projects in his workshop/garage I
donated the weight to his collection of metal items. He said he’d be
sure to find a use for it somewhere along the line.
As the lawns greened up I began to keep my usual routine of mowing the
grass about every three days to keep things looking nice. I had cut the
grass about half a dozen times after my visit to Frank and things went
smoothly each time. Low and behold one day after a major rainfall the
day before, I figured the grass was dry enough to allow me to mow it. I
fueled up the mower and began by mowing the back lawn as usual and then
progressed to the front lawn and of course after that, moved on to the
side boulevard. When I made my first pass directly next to the curb as
usual, I was suddenly jolted by one heck of a loud bang under the mower
that stopped the blade and engine dead it their tracks! My first
thought was that the blade had come loose from the motor shaft and
lodged itself against the underbody of the mower! I recovered from the
initial shock and turned the mower up on its side. I found a large bolt
of approximately 1” in diameter and 3” in length sticking out of the
lawn. I guess when I had passed the mower over it the blade had caught
the bolt and it jammed the motor to a halt! The blade was one of those
4-pronged mulching blades and the impact with the bolt had bent two
opposing prongs of the blade quite neatly to a 90-degree angle down
about 1” from each end. I checked to make sure the motor shaft wasn’t
bent or broken and gave the motor a pull. It started first pull and
seemed to be in good running order. I’ve used the mower quite a few
times since that day and it’s managed to continue to cut the grass just
fine. The other day I was back out, mowing the lawn once again and
suddenly as I lifted on the handle to turn a sharp corner I heard the
blade clatter as if it were hitting the side of the underbody housing.
I shut off the motor and figured I’d take it out back to the hydro
right of way and clean the underside of a couple of weeks accumulation.
As I turned the mower onto it’s side to clean it I noticed that when I
used the handle to turn it up on two wheels the body of the mower
seemed to flex at the points where the handle was attached. I proceeded
to clean the grass out from the underside and when I had cleared it I
could see that the body had some rust scale that had formed under the
grass. I guess after 15 years of storing the mower for the winter
without cleaning it every time before putting it away had caused it to
hold the moisture against the body. Now, that is not to say that I
never cleaned my mower because most times I would do so after every
third or fourth mowing. Of course like most guys, there were times when
the cleaning was not done regularly. I guess after 15 years of grass
cutting a mower is bound to show some wear and tare and my loyal
“Snapper Ninja” is no exception! I finished cleaning the mower and took
old faithful into my garage and removed the blade. I traveled to 4
different stores to try to find the style of blade I needed but the
place Carole bought the mower from when she gave it to me as a gift was
closed for the weekend. I had to take the advice of the local expert at
Home Depot and purchase a strait style “World’s Best” mulching blade so
I could finish the job I had started. I installed the new blade and
very carefully finished mowing the lawn. Of course the new blade
clattered under the mower worse than the old one because it’s length
wasn’t worn down with use yet. That was 6 days ago and I finally got
around to mowing the lawn again today. This time I made an adjustment
to the height of the mower by raising the body from the ground level. I
didn’t want to take any chances of scalping the grass with the flexing
of the mower body. It worked beautifully but still clattered a few
times as I made tight turns. I guess I’ll have to see if I can find a
used mower with a dead motor that’s still in better shape body wise
than mine and transfer my motor, handle/controls and wheels to it. This
new hybrid should give me many more years of mowing and I’ll be sure to
keep it cleaner than I did my original “Ninja”! Lesson learned!
That’s 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
PS: Something To Think About>
What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
- Edward Langley (1928 – 1995)
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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.
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