A view from my new office, Nov. 5th. It sure beats the white stucco wall I stared at from my last desk.If in fear or in doubt, flap your ass and get the hell out.
A grudging smear of grey begins to appear outside. Those glorious summer mornings of soft light and singing birds are over. It is an autumn dawn. Our Thanksgiving weekend is over. The emergency sirens down on the highway are quiet now, the carnage has ended for the moment. It was constant all weekend-long. There is a threat of rain and we know that, of course, it will be bucketing down on Friday, our moving day. That forecast hasn’t flickered. I am beseeching the weather gods otherwise.
The control center, Uhuh!
We walk around in here sideways, between the stacks of boxes. Jill has done a magnificent job of extricating our possessions from under beds and out of cupboards and shelves. Each box even has a printed label which notes the destination room. We inherited our daughter’s belongings. She seemed to have a fetish for suitcases. I muttered this morning that we have more of those than a train station. They’re all bloody full! I swear that this will be the last move of my life and that I may as well try to enjoy it.
In Chemainus, our neighbour community, I discovered this. For a moment I was back in Foshan, PRCDowntown full moon. Itis called the greasy lens effect.Clearer now?Dunrovin? Why someone burned a backpack has got to be a good story.
A week later. We’re still walking sideways between the stacks of boxes but they are diminishing. I, of course, am finding things to repair and adjust. We’ve both had extremely nasty colds and there is little happiness in our new camp. But it will come and the dogs are thrilled. They seem to love the space, especially in the back yard. They race about as if they’ve grasped the notion that it is all theirs. There have been spectacular moon rises and I am sitting at my monstrous new free desk looking at my spectral image in the window’s reflection. It is nearly 7am and once again there is the faintest glimmer of grey dawn over the harbour. It will slowly evolve into an overcast morning but even that view is a huge treat to me. So long as I can see the water and boats going about, my world is fine.
At the end of October, beds of these beauties still bloom as they first appeared in August.The last California PoppyAnother type of California Poppy. It is often called the ‘Fried Egg’ flower.Moving Day. This single shot says it all. We did have a fantastic moving crew from the “Take A Load Off” company. Thet certainly impressed this old grump.
The days rumble past with an endless plethora of odd jobs and eternal unpacking. There is an occasional frantic about something misplaced but then it reappears. There are also a load of handyman jobs. I’ve been horribly ill for the past three weeks and every tiny effort is massive for me. The grudging dawns continue. I enjoy being up in the inky black pre-dawn and watching the sky lighten. There is what appears to be a large beautiful Krogen yacht anchored in Dunsmuir Bay. It has been there for several days. I can see its anchor light, a tiny speck in the blackness. How I wish that was me out there. Life without a boat is terribly dry but I do have this wonderful new office, something I’ve dreamed about for years.
Today is finally the one when we are promised to learn the outcome of our Provincial Election.
Ten days after the polls closed, some ridings are within a handful of votes between the two parties, it is that close. I, for one, am happy it’s turning out like this, political arrogance cannot continue to run this wonderful province into the ground. Either the NDP or the Conservatives will be just as bad. So long as they get on with the business of government instead of throwing poo pies, we’ll be all right. At least, for once, there was an enthusiastic voter turnout. The teeter-todder of democracy was tipped with twenty-seven votes in our provincial election. Getting out to cast your ballot does make a difference. Then, on November fourth, an uncounted ballot box has been discovered!
Imagine the T-Rumping coming up south of the border.
Hallowistmas. I’m sure the Easter Bunny is lurking somewhere in there. Nothing is sacred!Our resident stinkbug.The house spider. This wee cutey was about two inches long.
And that’s it for October. I’m now sitting at my desk and making faces at the reflection in my black, black window. I went to bed too early. Time has just tripped over midnight and fallen into November. It is tweak the clocks back weekend. Wasn’t it bend them ahead time just a few weeks ago?
THIS is what time it is!A river runs through. It is always uplifting to see the annual drama of the salmon.A bouquet of morts. Salmon soon expire after they spawn. The cycle of life is done, a new one begun. Their remains enrich the streams and forest. A dubious aroma fills the damp autumn air.My two splendid wee nurses. What amazing friends!Dawn at the writer’s desk.
“Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time’ is like saying, ‘I don’t want to.’” – Lao Tzu
Your funnel’s rusty. Detail of an old steam locomotive in Nearby Duncan.
I watched part of the televised Provincial political leader’s debate. Ho hum! Frankly if those characters are the best we can do for leadership, we’re screwed. I shut off the television in despair. Cream may rise to the top, so does scum. What more is there to say? Life goes on regardless of who is in the saddle. I am not at all politically astute but I’ve been watching the game for a lifetime. I’ve learned that seldom does a candidate get elected. It is usually about someone being voted out. I have also come to believe that it is usually those who do not vote who decide our political future.
Other countries have massive violent protests for the basic right to vote freely and without intimidation or corruption. They die for that freedom. We live in such a broad comfort zone that many of us can’t even be bothered to participate in the democratic process. Today is the first chance to vote in the advanced poll. I’ll be there, if only to renew my license to bitch.
You’re scaring me! So tempting but I just can’t be sure which is safe.I’m sure that some readers have had enough fungal photos. They fascinate me obviously and are within my range at the moment.Crusing the fast fungus food strip.
It is moving time. The burly men will arrive in a week. We’ve busy packing boxes until the place is stacked nearly to the ceiling. Where the hell did we have it all squirrelled away? What did we use it for? Do we need it? Why are we determined to hang onto to crap we didn’t even know we had? I’ve written essays about owning “stuff” and here we are hard at it. I’ve been busy building fences for our dogs at the new home. I’ve also been hauling over ancillary possessions that can sit out in the rain. Fortunately the previous owner has graciously allowed me to do that and also given me access to the workshop to store the tools I need.
I’ve been fighting issues with chronic fatigue so I’m most grateful to have this opportunity to do important things, but at my speed. There is no way we’d have accomplished the change of nests within the tiny time window allowed before we had to be completely moved out. I watch the evening TV news and realize that a Palestinian or a Ukrainian would love to have my problems. There are millions out there who can’t even imagine a conundrum such as I have. A place to crawl under a tarp and a drink of water for their children is a high hope. And I’m pissed off that at two in the morning I can’t sleep.
A half-inch wide ball of wonder.New blooms in October.
I did go and vote today. The line of voters was long, apparently all day. It kept moving and more kept coming. What a wonderful thing to see such communal enthusiasm! It is said that change only occurs when the fear of the future is exceeded by the pain of the moment. Has the price of living here finally got our wheels turning? We’ll soon know. At these words a volley of fireworks has just broken out on the street. It’s the revolution!
You’re new in town. Nice textures!Shroomy way.A mid-fifties Studebaker coupe. So ugly it’s beautiful.Trent River, Vancouver Island. No salmon just yet. Maybe one more rain will swing the deciision.
So, it’s a Halloween election. Trick or treat?
I was impressed. Halloween fun at the Duncan Logging Museum.
“Not voting is not a protest. It is a surrender.” Keith Ellison
Blooming in the rain. Blackberry blossom in late September.A souvenir, but I drank it.Thai apple drink in a Creston restaurant. It was good.Pub special. Chicken breast in buttermilk batter on a candied dougnut with fries. Bluuurph!
I was out the door and walking across the parking lot when I realized I had no limp. Wow! First time since my knee surgery three months ago. Funny what happens when you’re distracted from your problems. Swimming some lengths in the local pool fixed that limp; it’s back. I drove home from the pool into a cloudless sunrise. On the corner an old man with a lab pup signalled which way he was going so as to keep me from waiting for nothing. A considerate citizen! He got a thumbs up from me. My morning medication routine produced a blood sugar reading which was lowest ever. Incredible! A perfect morning.
Decisions.They’re back! Sept. 21st. First day of autumn.These beauties always appear at the end of summer.Arbutus trees, a favourite of mine.He was the black toadstool of the family.
We’re deep within the rushing current and back eddies of selling and buying homes. A building inspectors is coming in a few minutes to look at our present abode, Monday repeats the process on the new one. Well, it IS 67 years old. Properly built with old growth full dimension wood, (A2x4 is actually a full 2” by 4”). Floors are built with diagonally-nailed planks. Nothing but solid lumber everywhere.
I prefer that to the new slap-dash houses which are built entirely from OSB board, stapled together in the pouring rain and then put up for sale at an unbelievably high price. When we arrived on Vancouver Island forty years ago, houses sold at an average price of $40,000. Now the number has risen to $750,000. Has our money become worth that much less? I guess there is no point in asking questions that have no clear answers. The people we’re told to trust can’t, or won’t, answer them either. I still choose to believe we live in one of the best places on the planet. We’re still free to leave. Nobody is shooting at us yet.
A fashion statement? I have little idea of which fungi are safely edible, so I don’t.Munch brunch. Before the slug came, a deer has taken a few bites. Interestingly they never eat the whole thing, choosing to take a sample of each. It must be nature’s way of leaving the fungi to survive.Another peek at the huge microscopic world of the forest floor. There is always plenty going on.Change of season in a domestic garden.
This morning the rain is hammering down. Someone must be building a house out there. Haar! The moving process goes on with one more thing and then one more thing. The tedium builds. There are a few more days until both the sale and the purchase “close” and the agreements are inscribed in stone. Then we sit and wait until moving day when “possession” occurs and we then have a few hours to move our stuff from beneath one roof to beneath another. In the meantime boxes of stuff rise. We’re moving about three blocks. It is as much work as moving across the country. Bets on which day it will rain?
There was a time when all I owned fit in my backpack. Then it got to be the back of a pickup truck and half of that was tools. We’re like crows sitting on a wire. Too busy looking for something else shiny to peck at, we’re completely unaware that fifty thousand volts are running between our toes.
From whence we come.It’s still a jungle out there.A solid union.
Finally the macrame trail of paper work is complete. I’m now sitting at my desk in someone else’s home. My house is now around the corner and down the street. It is still almost a month until we can make the move. Hurry up and wait. Somewhere in that time there is an election but there is no-one I want to vote for. But I will, if only to renew my bitching license.
Both deals are now fully completed. “SOLD” stickers are on the For Sale signs out on the street. Let the packing begin. What’ve we been keeping these for? Stuff!
Truffle hounds. Hey, what’s a truffle?Ever get the feeling that you’re being watched?
Home is where the heart is…even if you can’t remember which box you packed it in.
It is a beautiful September morning. I’ve been on the phone for a very long time working on my insurance claim for a replacement drone. It seems the people who sort-of interact with you turn ying to yang and then back again. Long pregnant pauses precluded more new instructions about how to upload flight data went on forever. First I needed a special cable to connect my cell phone to the drone remote control, then I did not. It went on and on. All’s well that ends. But…I’m not sure it has. Two weeks later, my replacement drone is supposed to arrive today; but now it has been delayed. But what’s more persistent than an old man with no place to go?
Making beaver cookies. This will upset the tree huggers! Developer beavers!The intrepid explorer.Fire Moon. Passing through the Kootenays last month under a smokey sky. (Not a bad photo for a hand-held cell phone)
Losing that drone skewed my entire prairie trip. I wanted to teach myself to fly it well and record some good drone footage. Nothing was life or death but someday it might be and I want my flying camera ready to rock. Hopefully I’ll be entirely on cue. Of all the airplanes and other machinery I’ve operated I have never needed a mobile phone or a QR Code or an Asian accent to make things work. I am missing something in all this AI gobbledy goop. ( By this computer’s AI, AI is not a spelling error, gobbledy is) Perhaps I should return to Drumheller AB and find a job as a dinosaur. “Alive! Living and breathing just as it came out of the swamp: Phredophartaus!”
Old growth in the forest.
Home again I find our local world immersed in a provincial election circus. This has become a two-pony race. The incumbent NDP party seems determined to run a shit-slinging barrage against the provincial Conservative party. They respond in kind. In my opinion, if a political entity starts muck-raking against a political opponent it has dismissed itself. If you cannot build a platform based on your positive aspirations and what you intend to do for your constituents, then go to hell. It demonstrates a lack of integrity. You have nothing of value to offer anyone! The conservatives emailed me today to ask who I was voting for. I replied that it was none of their damned business and now they were down a vote for Rustad. BUGGA!
Here today, gone tomorrow.Oregon Grape. This has been a fantastic year for these berries, but like this year’s blackberry crop, most are unpicked. I hope they’ll be winter food for the birds.
Our home selling and buying endeavours are a confusing muddle. I’d much prefer to haul my wee trailer over the horizon and not look back. All this manoeuvring for much more room than you need to live. The rest is to store, or display, all the stuff you don’t really need. I presently have rented a 20′ shipping container to re-move a load of stuff. I’m OK, I have stuff. The storage yard bulges with folk’s belongings that are rotting into the ground. There are RVs there which have not turned a wheel in years. I wonder at the devilish simplicity of that industry. No sales force, no financing, no warranty, low maintenance, and if a client walks away, you now own their stuff. It is a perfect capitalist storm.
Ram Rough. No air bags but I’ll bet it’s almost paid for! Note the original wheels and daily driver license plates.My shamrock plant at night time.Same plant in the morning. It happens every day.Snot funny. More autumn fungus.Stone Face. There is a phantom carver who goes about etching selected rocks. They’re subtle until eventually they jump out at you.
Meanwhile the tedium of buying and selling a house goes on. Each day another potential buyer wants to see our house near mid-day. The remains of the day become collateral damage. We fuss about cleaning the joint yet again until it is tiddly spotless then bugger off out to waste some time in the midst of another beautiful day. It’s tedious. We now know half the houses for sale on Southern Vancouver Island. The quotient price is near a million. Few vendors do much to enhance the “curb appeal” of their property. Take it or leave it. My instinct screams to move back onto a boat despite all the dark logistics of that lifestyle. What a strange culture. We constantly struggle with an obsession of becoming rather than cultivating the wonderful art of being. Dogs have it all worked out. We just have to pay attention.
None of these here. Yet! This was happening in Manitoba last month. Perfect for the crops.THEO. A new friend on the trail. He was giving me some bark therapy, What a beauty! He is a corgi/chihuahua cross and about the size of the latter.Artificial Intelligence replacing the human unit one treat at a time.
Today is our most precious possession. It is our only sure possession.
Ya missed it. By 40 years! It is hard to hold a sense of time, and of infinity in this vast place. Here on the coast, where land now seems valued by the square inch, it’s hard to comprehend the openess even when you see it.Abandoned bridge for sale. Well not really; it’s just sitting there. Once an engineering feat, now it is someone’s nuisance.An abandoned railway trestle. Can you see steam locomotives chuffing across this amazing structure? The photo shows about half of it. I mentioned beautiful air-dried old growth timber. Here’s some. It looks as if the post in the foreground is propping the whole thing up. The trestle is somewhere east of Sakatoon.
Boom, boom, boom, boom. The noise came from far away. I didn’t know or care where. I just wanted to stay deep within the sleep I’d been enjoying. Then I remembered. I was on my bed in my trailer. I was on a ferry boat. Oh shit!
I’d driven from Salmon Arm, planning on stopping for the night somewhere along the way. I knew a place but drove on by, then another until finally I was in Hope. No campgrounds appealed to me. Now the gauntlet of the Fraser Valley Trans Canada Highway lay before me. I remembered the ordeal in getting out of the lower mainland. Reasoning that if it was that bad during the day, then in the morning when the whole world was rushing into the city area it would be very, very bad. Westward I went and soon enough the traffic was bumper to bumper, lurching forward up to 100kph then slamming to a stop. There were the usual idiots trying to weave in and out and the worst were the heavy trucks. Then the rain became serious. It poured. I hoped the thick layer of prairie grasshopper DNA on the trailer front was softening.
The rain continued as I boarded the ferry at Tsawassen. There was room for only one highway tractor behind me. I slipped into the trailer for a wee nap. Two hours later, boom, boom, wake up old man. The poor buggers must have been wondering what they had on their hands. I stumbled out groggily to find myself and the truck stuck behind all alone on the vast emptiness of the lower vehicle deck. There was a tribunal of unhappy deckhands standing with arms crossed. Then my key stuck in the ignition and would not turn. Finally the nightmare ended as I drove off the ferry and into the cloak of darkness. In the morning I discovered that despite nineteen feet of metal trailer to pound on, one star had decided to break a window. Collateral damage for my stupidity. The truck stuck behind behind me on the ferry passed without a friendly toot, toot. All’s well that ends.
Lenore Manitoba. Skyline.Lenore, downtown. All of it. Typical of hundreds of small prairie towns desperately clinging to life. I was inclined to join them. There is a certain peace knowing what is not coming. Amazingly, many of these communities have memorials going back to WWI. This one had a monument flanked with genuine vintage Lewis guns.
I include a motley collection of images from my trip. In retrospect I should have continued in my meander mode and not rushed home. There were no events I could change in person, I simply needed to demonstrate that I cared. They knew that and the world turns just fine with or without me. I’d go again in a flash, the leaves were just going into their autumnal tones and a spectacular photo season is about to begin. I regret not stopping in so many places which held some great photos. I have long looked forward to exploring Drumheller for example, but the pretty town in a lovely valley seemed like a bizarre Disney effort with people swarming everywhere. The Rv campground I saw looked like a version of hell. I did not stop and dragged the trailer up the steep hill on the other side of the valley. My recently rebuilt knee did not feel like it wanted to wander far on foot.
“Son, here’s a tire gauge. Go check those tires. There’s only fifty of them.”Here is the pusher truck hooked to the back of that trailer. I could have used it at times!I don’t know what these enormous tanks are but I wouldn’t brake-check the trucks carrying them.Yeah, yeah just another shot of my little rig. Now look out on the highway behind. That is one rotor for a windmill. Compare the blade’s root to the tractor carrying it. The trailer is clamped on far behind. Whoosh! That thing twirls around like a kid’s toy. It puts things prairie in perspective.
The outskirts of Calgary are a sprawling urban mess with mega houses (Note I don’t say homes) up long lanes behind hideous gates. If it is an impression they’re trying to make, they did and it wasn’t positive. Banff has become a hideous neo-faux attempt at a glossy Western theme with waves of tourists wandering everywhere and sipping sexy little coffees in outdoor bistros and wondering what in hell they paid so much for. At a gas station there, I discovered a bidet. In a gas station! Imagine going to the attendant and complaining that the bidet was malfunctioning. “fired me right up against the ceiling!” I also remember being stuck in rush-hour traffic on the “Circle Drive” around Saskatoon. It was hot and the air reeked of hydroponic marijuana smoke. Not a stereotypical home prairie moment. Well, maybe these days it is!
Ya missed it. By 40 years! It is hard to hold a sense of time, and of infinity in this vast place. Here at home on the coast, where land now seems valued by the square inch, it’s hard to comprehend the openess.
Much of the old prairie has disappeared. Old homestead buildings and machinery are mostly gone. I’m told they are often simply buried. Whole little towns are gone or going until at times there is only a name board left on the roadside. Train stations and the metal rails have vanished and the nostalgia days of the prairie pioneers are forgotten. One lady, whom I flagged down for directions, know nothing of the old Miner Creek school. It turns out that her house was built on the exact same site of the historic one-room school building.
Agriculture has become an industrial monster which sits in the same show circle as mining, oil/gas, transportation, neo energy. The romance of any of it is lost. It is an industry. Art has become science. Soon the entire Trans Canada Highway will all be a four-lane hurtle-shute and with our modern vehicles, folks won’t even need to look out their windows.
The bright lights of Manyberries. An old stock yard, a few houses, no post office, corner store or gas pump. The wind whistles through it. The station is now someone’s house but nobody was home.On the broad lawn of the Orthodox church near Smuts, thousands of these beauties sat in the grass and trembled in the wind.
There were copious motorcycles on nearly every road. It seemed that black-clad riders sat on bellowing black Harley Davidsons and rocketed along in small groups. It looked glorious. I did wonder at the riders with no face protection and what taking a grasshopper in the eye, at ninety miles an hour, was like. It must certainly deplete one’s testosterone level. I repeat that if you find the prairies flat and boring, you are flat and boring. The nuances and visual dramas are everywhere and the beauty is overwhelming. I can also say I met no-one I disliked.
Due South. We can fly, the grader’s just been by. He’s a smooth operator.It’s amazing how buildings begin to crumble once they’re abandoned.The ubiqitous prairie slough. If only you had one of these! Can we call this waterfront property?Times change.1″ clear cedar tongue and groove in the ceiling! You cannot find lumber like that anymore.Despite all the work, the dreams, the suffering, all things eventually return to the earth.CadillacA bee falls in lust with its reflection in a screw head on my kayak.A public school. Can you smell the dusty books?Smoke, heat , dust and wind, It was a prairie summer day.Floating carsIsn’t it amazing how this all works? These grain cars will probably end up in Vancouver and their cargo will go on around the world.A small private grain elevator. Could it make an interesting house? Good views!It seems solidly built.Sweat equity.Another token of the prairies. Horsehead oil wells bob their heads in herds all over the prairies. The arrangements are complicated. Don’t assume the farmers are making a high return from having these on their land.A classic prairie image.There are thousands of prairie sloughs, small and large, natural and man-made. With all the grain fields it is heaven for waterfowl… and, for hunters.Home on the range.
Are you drinking enough? That was the sign above the toilet in the tire shop at Tisdale SK. Bemused I discovered a colour chart which showed what your urine should like if you consume an adequate amount of water. Humour, don’t leave home without it, it helps keep you alive no matter where you are.
Farm repairsNo flat tires yetIf your dog runs away you’ll be able to see it for the next three days.
All’s well that ends. I’m home again on Fraggle Rock, with twenty-five miles of Pacific Ocean separating me from the motherland. Vancouver Island is a wonderful place to live but I ache to be on the road again.
Wow! After weeks on the prairie mountains are especially breath-taking.A bridge in the Kicking horse Pass. I thought it was brilliant. Look at the constant grade it joins.My greeter. This Pileated Woodpecker dropped by to say hello where I stopped in Salmon Arm. He’s about 18″ long. You never know who or what is just around the corner.
Marcel Proust
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
Icon of the praires and sometimes a curse, in large numbers they can morph into locusts and destroy crops. In places I could not travel with my hand out the window. They hit like bullets.They also tried hard to plug my radiator.
The artillery began just as I started to cook supper. It cracked overhead and all around. Lightening, pink blue and white, slashed in evil forks. That wonderful ozone aroma rose as rain turned the mud to dust. A little Asian boy in the camp site next door screamed in terror. Then rain hammered biblically and became mixed thickly with hail. The RV park was awash. The ripe grain is taking a beating.
The harvest is on, fast and furious. A whole year’s crop can be destroyed by a storm in a few minutes. Farmers are natural gamblers.In days past this tiny contraption is what you rode night and day to bring in the grain. No GPS, no A/C, no stereo.My aunt has stories of driving a grain truck through the night after a days work in the house and barnyard.
I have been here all day. I have not turned a wheel but still feel exhausted. I’m going to bed as new thunder rumbles and approaches. Rosetown Saskatchewan has a great municipal campground, many prairie communities do, but it’s westbound for me again tomorrow. I was going to simply park for a few days but I have a sense of urgency about things at home. This blog will be a photo essay. It is impossible to convey the vastness of this place. The land holds a magic and beauty I try to convey. I hope you can sense it.
Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen.On top of everything else you had to obe able to fix it too.Inc luding welding. It looks like hell but it held! The ubiquitous farmer weld. i’m told that at times pieces of fence wire were all there was to use as welding rod.Back in the day.A quiet industry. It was very peaceful. Each photo has the background music of wind.They were happy bees and tolerated my intrusion.Can you hear the faint echo of children playing? Perhaps the slam of a door on a dark winter night? A cloud would form inside the door when it was opened at low temperature. Can you smell wood or coal smoke, perhaps the aroma of baking? There might be a whisper of snow blowing past in the eternal wind.Always a view. There is a story about an old prairie farmer who did not like his vist to the West Coast. “Couldn’t see anything for all the damned mountains in the way!” Beyond the slough a church stands on the ridge.This church! The nearest community name is Smuts.Family and church is what made the whole story work through some very hard times.SwallowsAnd growing all over the grounds.In downtown Hudson Bay. A few doors away was the town funeral service…in a mobile home.In downtown Alvena. It is sadly crumbling.Did the priest have to get up early on Sunday to light the stove? Did the elderly get to sit closest to it?Yet another.It has been there a while.
Even death didn’t part them.A peak through a window.The bell tower, after renovations.Inside the original log structure. Note the welding repairs on the bell’s clapper.Clearly hand-made. You can see the axe marks. Everything is assembled with mortise and tenon joints and pegs. I believe the wood used is poplar. It is a testament to old-world skills, fortitude and belief in the future.Still cherished today. I am not at all religious but I admire a communal faith which continues to sustain these hardy people.
Sunday morning finds me waking up in Cochrane Alberta, It was a long haul to get across Saskatchewan and Alberta. There was a vicious SW gale blasting on the nose. Walls of dust rose in the fields. If I were on a boat I’d be sailing on a storm jib but we weren’t and gas consumption was atrocious bucking into that wind. I pulled into one gas station with the low fuel light on. The station was closed. Thank goodness for the jerry can I insist on carrying. We staggered into Hanna on fumes. It kept this old pilot on edge. I’m turning my determined meander into a marathon. Next weekend is Labour Day and BC Ferries will be a hellacious five day gap to try and avoid. This morning I can see mountains. The ocean is just over on the other side. I’ve backed the trailer into a spot fringed with signs forbidding parking. I’ve left my tracks in the mud, so find me if you can.
I cannot help but try to imagine the wide open prairies before we white folks invaded them. Imagine the sense of unbridled freedom. No wonder the first nation peoples felt a little pissed off.
I end up in a campground in Salmon Arm, a long weary day complete. The traffic was horrific but smooth. The Trans Canada is being widened. Completed sections are fabulous with four lanes of whoosh. I prefer the low slow way but that’s my problem. Imagine if old Colonel Rogers could see it now. As I sink into a weary sleep a train passes. I wonder if it is one of the same I heard from my bed in Virden.
Canadians love to brag about their distant exotic vacations. They often tell me how dreadfully boring it is crossing the prairies. Then there is the endless arboreal monotony of Northern Ontario. I guess you have to want to see your country and if you won’t look, well…! I didn’t see half of the place, west to east. If I ever made it all the way across to the East Coast, our country also runs as far north and south. We’re free to see it all. It is ours, the whole place.
A dip in the crick. A lovely pastoral view among the eternal undulating plain. More photos next blog.
No matter where you are, it is important to remember that you are “Almost there!”
(And the wonderful family I didn’t really know I had)
Auntie and meThe family farm down in the Pipestone River Valley. This photo hangs in the hall by her door in the senior’s home where Aunt Florence now lives and is well-attended by three generations of descendants. I photographed that image. I’ve been there and it really is beautiful.A view from Butler Hill Farm; yep that’s the same beautiful barn. My cousin divided his parent’s farm with a daughter and her husband. What a feeling it must be to carry on a family business and a tough but fine way of life.Near the farm is the little community of Cromer and its church which is clearly dear to my aunt.“Bringing in the sheaves” Auntie calls the emergency monitor around her neck her “cowbell.”It’s worth reading.
I have decided to post this blog in honour of my dear Aunt Florence with whom I have spent the past too few days visiting. Getting to know her, her sons, her grand children and great grand children has been very uplifting. I’ve learned much and am delighted in meeting family who are outstanding and all are people to be cherished. I hold my head a little higher.
A beautiful example of a stone house in downtown Virden Manitoba.It looked like a piece of England.There was once a brickyard nearby. I am not, of course, showing the humbler clapboard homes on the same tree-lined streets. This one’s for sale, but let me tell you about the winters.What would Virden be without the railway? Just another bit of prairie?Got beaver?The way we wereLast train to WinnipegMy other cousin’s house in Kenton MB. It is over a hundred years old but is solid, and very cosy and homey. I instantly loved it. He bought it for $10,000! It needed a few renovations but… he owns it. Outright!
Sadly it was time to go far too soon. Leaving Virden was not a happy event for me. I drove as far as Yorkton and then turned due North. I decide that while miles out of the way, after all that family business, I’ll probably never be back this way again. I’d better go and try find my mother’s childhood haunts. The scenery changed to scrub bush and swamps. I began to expect moose to leap out in front but I saw none. Finally, a few miles before the town of Hudson Bay farmland reappeared as a mixture of rolling fields and and forest interspersed with plenty of waterways. The area must be a hunter’s delight. It is beautiful to my eye. In the Co-op store I ask an old man if he’s lived here long. He nods, but when I ask if he knows anything about the Eldersley area he says he’s never heard of it. I explain that it is the next town down the road but he’s stumped. Now that’s parochial! Uhuh!
Weyerhauser has an OSB plant there and now on the road, logging trucks compete with all the grain and oil heavies. Roads in swampy land roll and pitch, driving require full concentration. I discover another damned flat tire on the trailer. I change it but cannot find a tire shop and decide to just go find a place to sleep for the night. I was stung on the shoulder yesterday by a tiny wasp. It is still swollen and painful, right up my neck as well, so a good night in the rack is just the ticket. I’ve found a clearing tucked back in the woods out of sight from the road. It has been a very long time since I’ve been in a black spruce forest like this. Short with thick limbs, a whole industry has been built around this forest which sprawls across the entire Canadian Shield.
Best logged in sub-zero temperatures, when the ground is frozen, they have several months of that here each year. It is no country for this old man anymore. But the mosquitoes still like me.
A prairie bush berry. Folks may call them soap berries. They make a lovely bit of colour within thickets of spruce trees.The apex of my odyssey. The land adjacent is where the one-room school once stood. Nothing is forever but this marks where my moom and all ten of her siblings attended. no-one seemed to get beyond grade 4. Most proved to be clever people who went on to lead interesting lives. I asked a lady but she didn’t know a thing. It turns out her house is built on the ruins of the old schoolhouse.
I drive west and finally see a sign for Miners Creek. This is the site of the schoolhouse which the whole immediate family of my mother. My mother and all her brothers and sisters grew up in a homestead shack within walking distance. The nearest townsite is Eldersley. It is almost completely gone. A few miles west is Tisdale where I stopped for a new trailer tire. One geezer, when queried if he lived here long, replied that he was a newcomer. When pressed, he told mine that he’d only arrived in 1939! Another old fellow replied that he vaguely recalled the family name but nothing more. He did know about the old schoolhouse and confirmed that the site was now a farmer’s house and yard. My family mission was accomplished as far as possible. Home calls.
The Eldersley train station is long gone. I think the small elevator was there. I vaguely remember that from my last visit 69 years ago. My mother probably boarded the eastbound train to Toronto from here with a gleam in her eye. Guess I’m the result!That old building sits beside the tracks and may be from my mother’s time so long ago. It looks as if there may have been a baseball field there at one time.Westward!Miners Creek trickles on. Some day it will arrive at some ocean. The name remains a benchmark in my sense of family history.Somewhere in a near radius of where I stood to take this photo is where my grandparents, and all their chidren, tried to carve a homestead farm out of the forest, one tree at a time. They did not know it couldn’t be done but perservered. It took the next generation, and the next, to find a foothold. Life goes on. When it rains, these dusty prairie roads become muddy trails the oldtimers call “gumbo.”Tisdale. A priaire landmark. i don’t how old this water tower is but it marks what were the bright lights of town for the surrounding farmers. I’ve repeatedly heard a lot about going to Tisdale. I vaguely remember the broad main street of the old town. It wasn’t paved back then. While I waited for a new trailer tire, I ate at Tim Hortons, then headed west.
I should mention all the splendid photos I’ve had to drive by. Shoulders on prairie highways are narrow, steep and soft. It was too dangerous to stop and capture spectacular sights when dragging my trailer. Today finds me in a RV park just on the outskirts of Rosetown Saskatchewan. Morning light sifted through a heavy fog and I drifted back to sleep. I awakened to the music of snarling crop dusters taking off from the nearby airfield. I’m staying the whole day as the warm prairie wind rises now and begins to moan. It was a near-incessant sound which, apparently, drove some of the homesteaders insane. Others endured quite nicely.
A girl on a swing. Still looking good at 87. Her life as a prairie girl and farm wife (67 years) deserve a book. Wow! the things she knows! The hardships and triumphs and surrounding family leave me feeling humble and very, very proud. I love you all.
“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.” ―Frida Kahlo.
A prairie schooner was apparently the name given to the covered wagons and carts used by the first white settlers. Apparently, from a distance, they held the appearance of white boat sails. It sounds romantic. Uhuh!
Aliens! If I saw one of these on my lawn I’d come out with my hands up. They are appently called air seeding drills. the discs furrow into the ground then compressed air blasts in seed, Beats hand-casting I guess. Not cheap I’m sure.
Yesterday was weird. The day began with a missing pot of margarine. It had utterly vanished and I cannot tell what happened. Just a crack of senility I guess. Then I hit the wee deer. To ice my cake I lost my second drone. I drove on into the gathering darkness and rolling squalls until I finally found a level paved place. I settled in as a dog barked in the distance. ( Next morning there are two pots of margarine in the fridge! WTF?) Is this senility or just stupidity?
Winnie, a new friend.Another one, Dixie.
As I finally drifted into sleep, a raucous chorus of deep barking broke out right outside my bedroom window. Two big white dogs had appeared and seemed determined to roust this interloper. They spent the night laying beside the trailer and taking turns re-waking the dead. Dog-lover that I am I was not about to go out into the dark and try to make friends. This morning they lingered until I opened my door. Gone! I am knackered. I’m starting the day with a stout coffee as I write this. There is some tinkering to do on the truck, a bath and some breakfast and then my little wagon train will lurch on eastward. Actually, by morning, I realized the dogs were barking at coyotes who lurked all around within the wandering herds of cattle.
Maybe they were guarding my trailer.
When I stepped out of the trailer there she was! The big girl was there, all wiggles and waggles. She’d been there a long while. I have the suspicion that she had been abandoned. Bits of her fur hung in the fence. Was she waiting for her last human to return? The other dog must have gone home to some distant farm. This beauty was gracious, sweet and completely endearing. Lame in one foot, covered in dreadlocks, emaciated and begging for love she had found the king of the dog-lovers. Damn and double goddamn! How I wanted to bring her along. I fed her and petted her.
My heart throbI dared not name her.Where we met.
I rationalized my conundrum both ways. Ultimately, cold practicality won over passion and even our instant bonding. She is a big girl and there is not enough room for her in the passenger seat. We already have two dearly loved dogs. I have a long trip ahead. I can only pray that someone will open their heart as she waits at the turnout. Driving away from where my drone had hidden itself was not at all as heart-rending as seeing this beautiful girl in the rear view mirror. I shed tears and will wonder at her fate for a very long time. Wot a sop!
Yeah? Well you might have a hot tub in your RV but I’ve got a sandbox! This is the second cleaning.
I drove onto a gravel portion of highway, dog thoughts overwhelming me, I forgot to close the roof vents in the trailer. They very efficiently inhaled what seems like a bushel of dust. It is insidious stuff and I’ll be cleaning it away for months ahead. But what’s a little dust to this incredible open land. Wildlife abounds here. From amazing flowers and birds to pronghorn antelope and deer, I even saw a huge black cow moose! As I write this I am beside an old corral where I’ve spent the night. The prairie wind moans softly through those roof vents. It is very peaceful. I fight the urge to turn back and look for my dog friend. Here, I am endeared by a tiny ground squirrel. Sop! East, old man, east!
A sqinny, also known as a thirteen-striped ground squirrel.Can you see the Pronghorn antelope?How about now?
I am overcome with a sense of wonder at the vastness. It is very much like being out at sea. It is endless. I swear I have passed through a trillion acres of fertile open land. How we humans have fought to conquer it. I see the remnants of homestead farms, some abandoned entirely, some have clearly prospered through the following generations. Everything is huge. The machinery, the homes, the size of the farms. How did anyone think they could prosper with a quarter-section of land and perhaps a horse? But they took joy in their freedom and never looked back. Nearly everything was done by hand. That’s one reason families were so huge; manpower! It also was a good way to stay warm on a bitter cold prairie night and what the hell else was there to do?
Goodnight
My musings shifted and I looked at all this land. You can drive all day and it stays the same. Vast is such a tiny word to describe something so incomprehensibly huge. Then it occurs to me that all this land is broken, tended, seeded, harvested, then shipped. The product is distributed globally and processed so that some green-belly self-proclaimed environmental fantasist can go into any corner cafe and have a muffin! All of that industry requires the consumption of incalculable amounts of diesel fuel. We are ALL part of the problem. DO NOT start talking about electric tractors. It won’t happen, not even with ten times more windmills planted out in the fields.
How do! Downtown Maple Creek Sask. after a cloudburst.
Bear in mind also that this massive hairball of food production is utterly dependant on the whims of nature. One badly-timed severe storm, a drought, a too-wet season, a wildfire, the dark possibilities are endless. Yes even locusts and grasshoppers. As I drove along with my hand hanging out into the rush of warm air it began to be bulleted by these flying protein bombs. I’m told they’re tasty fried, and crunchy. They hurt like hell too! This year is very dry so the wheat is now at its peak. There is a massive frenetic effort to get the crops in. Often at about this time of year, there are a few minutes of devastating hail or rain. Then it is zero for the home team!
A surprise in the prairiesIt was as if I’d landed in small-town Quebec. Tabernac!
Finally I have arrived arrived in Weyburn. My truck died here. I went skidding sideways through a highway intersection, the trailer trying to pass me. I’d blown out a brake component. I am sitting and writing in my bug-spattered trailer, the truck is in the hospital. The town has a wonderful municipal campground, easily located and adjoined to a huge playground. All the folks I’ve met are lovely. The internet is pathetic and I cannot check my e-mail or post a blog.
It is cool-my-jet time. I need it.
Doiwntown Weyburn. Tommy Douglas and always the wheat.
One of the things I wonder about in the south of these Canadian prairies is lumber. There are obviously no forests here. All the boards for the houses and barns and train stations and grain elevators had to be imported. Probably most of it came from Northern Ontario and British Columbia. It would have been expensive. Some old places I’ve seen are built of logs. Where did they get them? The buildings as they were abandoned were generally left, it appears, to fall down and rot. If nothing else they were a good source of dry firewood. That lumber, aged old growth dried planks, surely was precious to someone. It sure is now. Prairie folk are noted for their thriftiness but then they also clearly abandoned their redundant machinery. It is a question I wish someone could answer to my satisfaction.
The wind moans incessantly, but there are no answers blowing in it.A root cellar, meat locker , and storm cellar.A bird and a barn
Day two in Weyburn dawns with a clear yet smokey sky and a gentle wind. Just me and my resident houseflies in this small trailer. Damn they’re irritating! I’m waiting for my truck to be ready. While I wait I’m going to exorcise some more dust, the bathroom is loaded with it. I began to understand the prairie dust storms of the 1930’s! It is rich stuff if you can nail it down. This afternoon I hope to do some laundry and be on the road first thing tomorrow morning. I’m a day’s drive away from Virden. Meanwhile incredibly long trains gently rumble through town day and night. There is something reassuring about their steady throb and heavy clatter as they flow along the arteries of the nation’s commerce.
KAL Tire, Weyburn. Those folks were excellent! That’s my front ball joint. I wonder if my old knee joint looked something like that? It looks like it had no more potholes in it.
I met a couple from Victoria. They’ve followed the exact same route which I have and pitch a tent each night. They are not youngsters. We all marvel at the vastness and compare notes of wonder at the pioneers who first came here. What they went through on their odysseys from Europe can only be a speculation. Just to spend endless weeks in the guts of some sailing ship would be a lifetime adventure; and that was just the beginning. There would have been a bone-wracking railway journey through a huge landscape far bigger than any imagining. Then they finally arrived to confront this vast unknown. You’re here! Oh yeah, winter’s coming.
Manyberries Sakatchewan…what’s left.
Few of us today would have the physical or mental stamina to begin, let alone endure, the ordeal. I find the simple effort of driving wearing enough.
Checking the weather this morning I realize that I am presently equidistant from Hudson Bay, The Great Lakes and the Pacific. That is one very long way from the ocean. What a huge country! I’m still not halfway to the Atlantic. I marvel that we are known as a nation of snivellers and bend-overly polite people. I’ve previously hitch-hiked across this expanse, travelled it by train, flown over it in big and little aircraft and still can’t grasp the magnitude of our country. With our tiny population and huge resources, we should own the planet.
Yeah but…..!
Is this anywhere near Kansas, Dorothy? Hello…hello Dorothy?OK!Ubiquitous prairie landmarker.Just imagine it!Who Has Seen The Wind?
“He had seen it often, from the verandah of his uncle’s farmhouse, or at the end of a long street, but till now he had never heard it. The hollowing hum of telephone wires along the road, the ring of hidden crickets, the stitching sound of grasshoppers, the sudden relief of a meadow larks song, were deliciously strange to him.”
I got up early to catch the ferry. With the wait in the terminal it took half a day to get across to mainland Canada. I spent the actual two hour crossing in my own dark, cool, comfy bed in my trailer. I have my own bathroom so there was no need to go to the upper decks for anything. What they don’t know won’t hurt them or me. The drive eastward was hell. With clear blue sky above It was hot and smoggy. The traffic was horrific as I drove through the murk. There is random construction. The roads were clogged both ways. Nearly everyone is a road warrior and recent gruesome fatalities on this highway slowed no-one.
A clever homebuilt expedition vehicle from Nevada. I had to stop. SWB, 4×4, diesel, someone smart fitted a trailer to the flat deck to make this beauty. Don’t laugh, she’s paid for!
So, finally I made it to Hope. Now all fuelled and grocery-ed up I’m parked in the bushes beneath the Hope slide. Odds are, all those car- sized boulders perched thousands of feet above me will stay put for one more night. If not, well it is meant to be and it probably won’t hurt a bit. I am just off the highway but well hidden. The flies are bitey friendly and it’s toasty warm (31C) but once it cools down I’ll go to bed in hope of an early start. My little truck clearly does not like dragging the trailer up long steep grades on a summer afternoon. Even the front fenders were too hot to touch.
Faces in the rocks above at the Hope Slide
My early start shuffles past eight o’clock. Rain spattered sweetly on the roof through the night. Now thunder rumbles and echoes between the towering cliffs above me. The purpose of this frivolous trip is to visit a dear old aunt in Manitoba. I am doing this on the generous means of my dear wife. I have to remind myself that I am to meander, there are no deadlines and I need to restore my soul which has suffered after two dreary years of death, illness, surgery and poverty. Just be, old man, just be and remember, how you once travelled with a backpack and your thumb. Best years ever. As for Jill, getting me the hell out of her face must be a reward on its own.
Forest fire smoke has proven to be a constant all the way across the prairies.
Yesterday’s inferno has passed for the moment. There were spatters of rain through the night and at the break of day it was gloriously chilly. I ( had hoped to drone the Hope Slide but the wind was gusting and there were squalls of rain, neither are good for the drone, especially at the hands of a rookie. I headed east and groaned up one long, steep grade after another. The engine wanted to overheat on each one and I stopped more than once to cool things down. The worst was the zigzag crawl up to Anarchist Summit from Osoyoos. All the day long the temperature was as hot as yesterday and thunder rumbled overhead. Finally, nearing Greenwood the truck began to steer oddly and once in town I discovered a nearly flat rear tire. I changed it myself as thunder-rain spat down. A lady stopped, but not to offer help. Her dog was missing. Gabby the collie had run off. I hope that girl is home safe and healthy.
The grind up from Osoyoos called Anarchist Hill. “Oh Lord, your hill is sooo big, and so is this damned trailer!”
Now in Grand Forks, I am parked in a large feral field beside a fleet of logging trucks. A young boy is riding his tiny motorbike, with training wheels, round and round in a cloud of dust. A friend tries to follow on a small electric John Deere tractor. I’ve been told that I can stay here by the folks at KAL Tire. I wheeled in there with my sick tire just before closing time and wholly expected to be told I’d need a new one. They could have, I wouldn’t have known. It was simply a bad valve stem. They refused to charge me. It follows that I inspected the other three tires and they need the same treatment. I’ll go back in there asking about the problem with being nice to a pain in the ass. Of course the answer is: they come back! I have a friend here whom I’ve known for fifty years. A visit is due. I already like this town and mucho kudos to the tire shop boys.
A smokey moon over Grand forks.
The next night finds me parked in a gravel pit beyond Yahk, which is not at all romantic as it sounds. My poor little truck staggered up the numerous long steep grades. If it were a mule it would be on its knees with tongue over shoulder. It is frustrating when you cannot go over 50kph whenever and wherever you’d like just like all the folks passing you at 140 kph. I just don’t want to cook my motor. There was a car and then a motor-home burned to a crisp along the roadside. I got the warning. Haste makes waste. In days past, even at my trundling speed it might have taken two weeks instead of two hours. From the top of the passes you can see valleys and mountains stretching into apparent infinity. The smoke adds a mystic touch to the scenes. It is still hard to grasp how big our single province is. There are all those others beyond. The grand thing was being able to smell the fragrance of the sub-alpine forest at the summits, those indelible aromas of balsam and spruce and buck brush that waft out into the summer air. There must be an air freshener called ‘Alpine.’ What memories those aromas bring!
You just never know what you’ll find. This delightful fusion of odd bits is in the lovely bakery in Greenwood.This one too! A twang for your coffee.
In the morning it turns out I’ve backed into a spot on the edge of an impromptu fire-fighting depot. A helicopter comes and goes and I remember my heli-days so long ago. One whiff of jet exhaust and the clap of rotors brings so many recollections. That was me? In a single life?
Still a thrill for me. Helicopters have always amazed me and later ones are an incredible blend of technologies.
The day wears on. Leaving Cranbrook, a lovely spotted fawn suddenly appears in front and there’s no chance to stop. There is the expected sickening crunch and I bound out to have a look. The fawn has disappeared and truck in not damaged. It is not my fault but I feel sick for the rest of the day. I wonder what happening to this once great white hunter.
Finally at the Frank Slide, just into Alberta, I stop and get out the drone. This is where an entire half-mountain crumbled and buried the town of Frank. Itis horrific. I’d promised myself to make this my first good drone footage, so first a test scan. Out a hundred metres, up fifty then I press a wrong button. The drone lands instead of returning home. The last image I receive is a bleary view between rocks. I activate the “Find My Drone” and go hobbling down between the treacherous rocks with my cane. I slip and fall, loose my glasses, manage to retrieve them from a narrow crevice. By the time I clamber over to where I think my drone is, my controller has a message that says a rotor was jammed so the drone has shut off its power to prevent overheating. No more homing signal. Then came the return clamber, empty handed and feeling like a very stupid old man.
The Frank Slide. There is an entire little town, and its inhabitants, buried beneath that crumbled mountain.I don’t know the story but it looked to me like part of a building sticking out of the massive lumps of rubble. Can you see my drone?It is a place that leaves one completey humbled.The limestone rocks are house-sized and smaller. Jagged, sharp, loose and dangerous it is no place for an old man with a walking stick.
Fortunately I’ve bought some insurance for just such an event but I do not feel any better. I was not employing my own advice about caution and certainly feel the diminished rookie.
Drive on old man, drive. Eastbound was a spectacular show of wondrous clouds, rainbursts, lightening, brilliant ladders of light between the clouds onto the foothills. They were all juxtaposed over columns of massive whirling windmills. I could not photograph any of it. The rocketing traffic made stopping too dangerous. Tonight I am parked on the side of the road at the former townsite of Whiskey Gap. It was a smuggler’s town in the 1930s. Now there are only cows bellowing from the ridge at the top of the coulee. A few miles back was a signboard noting the location of Aetna. But it’s not on the map either. This will be the norm I think.
In Fort McLeod. There’s a definite flavour of the old west.In the Silver Grill. A Chinese menu with margaritas.We’ve got your back!DRAW! Downtown Fort McLeod on a Sunday evening. “Git his boots.”
And so I progress into the prairies. I will meander along the southern roads and explore the beauty of this vast and windy land. It’s a long way from the sea.
” A ship is safe in the harbour, but that’s not what ships are built for.”
It’s gone. No doubt about. My first wee drone is buried in the jungle just above the beach. I know about where it is but I’ve looked for hours. Unless I know exactly where it is, there’s no hope. My bush-ape eyes are really good at seeing things in the wild but this little devil is about the size and colour of a fallen arbutus leaf. I could be three feet away and I not see the damned thing. There are millions of those leaves, the bushes and underbrush are thick and for all I know my little flying machine is stuck up in a tree. Damn me! I knew better.
The virgin drone pilot “He sat on the edge of the field looking like an old man who had lost his drone.” A drone’s eye view of the nut holding the controls.My home as seen from my drone. WOW! I live here!
I’m taking my expensive lessons and am turning them into something more valuable: what not to do! It is a bad habit I learned as a farm boy from a poor family. In an effort to save money I habitually go to what appears the cheapest route. Over a while, I end up spending far more than simply buying something good in the first place. It is said that to buy good clean fresh oats you must pay a fair price. Ones that have been through a horse cost slightly less. I thought I’d beaten the system by buying a slightly used virgin drone. Ha! The price of that is gone. There has been a lot of frustration and I have no drone. This behaviour is what keeps poor people poor. Buy one decent car every twenty years, or buy inferior ones before the last one is paid off. A quote I never seem to listen to is “If you can’t pay for it once, how will you pay for it twice.” Uhuh!
“I’ve got it up!” First flight of the new drone.Drone School. I actually bought a copy of ‘Drones for Dummies’ The foam was my innovation to protect the control sticks and the screen.Someone else’s toy. Prices start over $160,000 An Audi R8With a V10 engine in the back seat there’s only room for two people. OK! No roof racks please.
I’ve since learned that the first one I’ve bought has a wee habit of zooming off on its own, especially in the hands of a rookie. So, I’ve been wandering around with a look in my eye like an old man who’s lost his drone. Thazme! I’ve now gone and bought a brand new one for a tremendously good sale price, too good to resist. It is a DJI Mini 3. This manufacturer seems to hold a lion’s share of the drone market. When I first turned on the controller a screen appeared entirely in Chinese. My heart sank. I did not know what to press next. I’ve persevered and now bought the manufacturers insurance in event of damage or “flyaway” loss. I’m progressing slowly and have to admit that I’m a bit frightened of screwing it up again. But, there is an excellent manual written in proper English and there are several online video tutorials which actually show you good things to know. This wee flying computer has amazing capabilities. Samples of video footage taken by this product are stunning and I am actually a bit excited.
Teamwork.
Now get this. I’ve just watched a video that shows how to use the “Find my drone” feature. If I loose this expensive new puppy there is a mode which allows me to track down the lost bird by tracking it with an onboard GPS map and compass. There is also a button to push which activates an audio alarm in the drone. This klutz can’t ask for more. No it doesn’t work if underwater.
I’m determined to beat this flying brain. It may be artificial intelligence but it is smarter than my genuine stupidity. I am humbled but I am learning to trust its capabilities. In the meantime, I’ve posted my latest photo of a flower on my page on Fine Arts America. With over 700 images posted I am quite capable of posting my own descriptions. This time it wrote one for me in thirty seconds and was very articulate. Death of the writer approaches.
The seasons progress.July
While watching a video taken in a Mexican dance hall I noted one lady twirling about in the arms of her partner. As they danced her mobile phone rested on his shoulder while she texted someone with an ubiquitous thumb. Really! I can’t help but wonder what happens when she’s making love! “ Honey look, they’re having a sale!”
No! We have not abolished slavery! Our world spirals on. Black hole or toilet bowel we have to stay away from the edge.
