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Dharma
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Happy Birthday Don!
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August 26th, 2004, 9:52pm
Today I woke up at about 12:30pm or so... My dad & I had headed for Vancouver Tuesday morning, hoping to get some appointments and errands done, and be back down to our place here by a reasonable time in the evening. The trip takes about two hours each way if things go in a decent way. On this occasion they didn't.
Yeah... so we got to the border, North-bound at the truck crossing, and happened to get a fellow who my dad had dealt with on another occasion. See, there have been some issues to be considered and dealt with in regard to where my dad "lives" (Canada or US), where the vehicle is registered (same), and also weighing in there somewhere was the nationality of the driver's license being used. So, the fellow asked some questions, wasn't particularly satisfied with the answers, asked some more questions, and because things weren't resolving too quickly, directed us to park the vehicle over yon. Over the next... oh, hour and a half or so he asked a lot more questions and eventually called an RCMP officer to come explain some related laws and regulations. The RCMP fellow came, explained, removed the (California) license plates (leaving the truck uninsured and undrivable), and had the truck towed to Surrey. The tow-truck fellow, Chris, had been doing that line of work for 17 years, he told us. He likes it a fair amount, and makes a decent living. I asked what he liked about it and he told me he likes pulling cars out of ditches, sometimes they're flipped over so he has to flip them back - all that sort of stuff. He likes meeting people. He said that he's met guys from the Canucks, the Grizzlies (before they moved to ...Memphis or wherever), football players, and people from all over the world. He seemed to focus on those aspects of the job - meeting & helping people. The worst part, he said, accidents where people have died. Right.
So, we spent the rest of that day getting the truck road-legal again. I spent the night at my mom's place, and my dad stayed at my brother & his wife's place. Props to mom & Yvonne for the fine soup & delicious blackberry & peach pie - that really hit the spot! :) Oh, and I picked up the camera that my bro had offered me - awesome...
We spent Wednesday doing our errands, making up for cancelled appointments of the day before, and having more work done on the truck, getting it all inspected and insured. The red tape we had to wade through was really amazing. Anyway... we wound up pulling out of Vancouver, bound for the US border, last night at ~11:00pm. The border was a breeze this time, as I had felt it probably would be - what with us having already gone through just about everything I figured god or the universe could reasonably throw at us in two days. The ride home was actually pretty enjoyable... Mom had made me a nice mocha, and it was raining - at times very lightly, and at times like a mild monsoon. I drove, and we got free popcorn at the gas station we filled up at after crossing the border, and by the time we were driving down the last 10 miles or so, we both agreed that we were feeling a lot better than we had the two days previous. "Quiet" was the way dad had described it I think, and that had sounded about right to me. We arrived back at the ranch (as I call it) at about 1:00am, and like I started out saying, I slept nearly 12 hours.
Today we saw a great big owl fly by our shelter area and land on a branch, so I jumped out there with my new camera, and spent some ~15 minutes creeping up to it until I was but a mere arm's length away, taking pictures all the way. As soon as I get a memory-card reader and somewhere to put pictures, I'll try to link them into my journal. We also finished cleaning up the trimmed branches from the two trees we'd felled on Monday. Oh yeah, I haven't had a chance to write about any of that. Oh well. :) For the record though, we wound up having to fell two fir trees in order to facilitate the building that we're going to be doing. "C" did the cutting - very daring of him as it can be a rather deadly affair, and I walked down the largest of them and measured it at 76.5 feet, and counted the rings at 25 years of age.
Well my dad has just shown up and is interested to check his email and so forth, so the timing's pretty good, I'll sign off. Take care everybody!
* Don's birthday, and fantastic birthday desert
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| August 28, 2004 | 10:48 PM |
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Today was mainly another trip into town...
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August 19th, 2004, Night-time
Having had a good sleep, complete with some pretty bizzarre dreams and a couple trips out under the stars at various points, I wandered up to the cabin, made some tea, eggs and toast, and sat down with my book (Zorba). That's a nice way to ease into the day.
We already knew that we had to caravan into town today in order to leave "L"'s van at some hotel that the airporter will drop her at, so the plan was set. Running water out at the tent is a major priority, so Dad & I made a big list of things we 'need' from town: 1"x4"x10' wood, 300' of 1/2" pvc pipe & all the necessary connectors, hose clamps & so forth, sink... and as long as we're there, laundry, a couple books I want to pick up, some more 'personal' food for me, 100' of rope, tarps, another fire extinguisher... uhh... well the list is downstairs, but you can see why we make one. Especially when going into town basically writes off the day so far as making significant progress doing anything around here.
So, into town we go... I got to drive their Wesfalia style van, very nice... experimented with the cruise control along the way to keep myself amused, and made our first caravan stop: the laundromat. There we made our plan to meet again there at 13:15. I would do laundry, go to the bookstore, and get food at Terra Organica. He would take care of as much of that other stuff as he could, and we'd finish it off together after that.
Alright, laundry in, and I walked the two blocks to Village Books. I knew I wanted to get a particular book of poetry (a gift for a friend), a little do-it-yourself plumbing booklet, which I only wanted because I need to be able to search for more booklets from that old and hard to find "Do It!" series, and to check out guitar books - I'm wanting to get into classical picking. Well... as it will sometimes do, time flew, and soon (or not so soon as it was) I was walking out with my picks:
Poetry: You Can Never Speak Up Too Often For The Love Of All Things by Paul R. Fleischman
Plumbing: Fix Your Plumbing by... Chronicle Books, I guess.
Music: Rise Up Singing: The Group Singing Songbook edited by Peter Blood & Annie Patterson.
Now that last one looks like a real gem. It's got an introduction by Pete Seeger, and has a feel of something genuine. I played through The Rose, So Long (It's Been Good to Know Yuh) - which Utah Phillips sings sometimes when he's at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, and a few others I can't remember right now. Words, chords, and sources to 1200 songs!! Wow...
Ok, anyway, my dad's up here tonight since "C" & "L" are out of town, and he's in bed beside me, so again, I have to knock off with my key-clattering for now. I'll add a little more tomorrow if I can.
G'nite! ...I think I'll go watch the stars for a few minutes.
* bats flying in the porch
* water line run
* brother has offered a camera!
(ps. those point form notes above are things I'd hoped to expand on later...)
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| August 19, 2004 | 12:00 AM |
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The kitchen is coming together...
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August 17th, 2004, 5:52pm
Well, last night we (myself, dad, and Don) prepared and ate our first meal in our kitchen area... BBQ'd chicken & local corn on the cob. Mighty fine! Dad had made a really nice kitchen counter with about 3.5' of counter on either side of the stove, and shelves underneath, and got the stove and a lantern connected to the propane tank. Today we (primarily he) continued work on the kitchen, making additional shelves above that counter area, all very tasteful & practical. We also set up a table on the opposite wall of the structure, and he built some shelves underneath that - that's where the canned (and otherwise mouse-impervious) goods are going for now. We mouse-proofed an old clothes dresser, and those drawers now house many of the things mice would easily & happily get into, and there's more storage areas on the way. Meanwhile Don's spent the last two days single-handedly cutting a new driveway through the forest so that we won't have to drive back and forth through the meadow all the time. What a lot of work! I really wish I had a digital camera to be able to show what I'm talking about. Hopefuly in the not too distant future I will.
I've been reading a fair amount since I got here as well. The first book, I had started while still in Vancouver, Lila by Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintainance, was really fantastic. It covered so much ground - biology, society & culture, intellect, and morality, and the evolution of those things, and offered [me] an expanded and articulated vocabulary with which to be able to see the relationships of those subjects with eachother, and how they relate to all things including people and human civilation. All of that within the context of a story of sailing southward down the Hudson river. It gave me tremendous food for thought, and since I finished it those concepts and articulations have risen again and again in various contexts each day. My own thoughts and observations of the world around me, conversations I have heard & had with others. Need I make it more clear - I highly recommend reading that book. It's rather... dense, but if you begin reading it, I would suggest just ploughing through, even if you feel (as I did at many times) that you're having a hard time keeping up with him. :)
Having finished that though, I've moved on to a very old copy of Zorba The Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis. Now that I've mentioned its age, I don't actually know when this copy was printed: "mcmlxv". But the name written on the inside cover is Siri Ram Singh, which puts it in the context of my family for some ~30 years, and it was evidently purchased as a second-hand book. My first impressions: wow - such clear and powerful images & emotions are conjured in my mind by his style of language. I guess I haven't come across such a style before.
Oh, before I forget, I wanted to say to my friends at Radiant: I've been using the flashlight I was given as a parting gift, and very often when I do I think of you all and am thankful - for more than just the light, but it's that which keeps bringing it to mind.
That's it for now. If I keep up like this I won't have time to get anything done around here, and I'll only be talking about the exploits of others!
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| August 17, 2004 | 8:43 PM |
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Of Mice and Mildew...
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Saturday, August 14th, 8:56pm
Ok, well, this is the second time I've found myself able to sit down at the computer, and just when I want to go online... the "error 691 - invalid user/pwd" and I don't know what the freakin password is!! Anyway, not that big a deal, I'll be able to ask my dad in about 45 minutes.
The past week we worked on our common area that I'd mentioned previously. By the end of Thursday we had the frame completed, all the windows, screens, and plastic sheeting in place, and a door - and we put together my futon couch and put it inside. So we now have a reletively insect-free area to hang out. The next steps there will be getting the propane stove set up and working, get some propane lamps burning, etc, etc. THEN we'll be able to start thinking about the actual house we're going to build.
As for my trailer, the mildew smell is mostly gone now ...thanks to a stick of incense and I dunno what, maybe just having someone in there living and breathing. The scratching, bonking, and nawing sounds from the mice in the walls - well I'd finally gotten 'ok' with that, at least they're not inside eating little bits of my belongings right? Three a.m. this morning... who should wake me up but some little kangaroo mouse... on goes my flashlight, and there it is - inside. God almighty... it just doesn't stop, if it's not one thing it's another. I was hoping maybe sometime things would just be ... you know, I mean... fuck! Mice, mosquitoes, heat & related rashes - can't it all just fuck off and leave me alone? So anyway, I restrained myself from killing the little bastard after it'd scamped up my scarf and sat on the stove, presumably unable to see the monster (me) looming behind the blinding light I shone on it. And then it disappeared down through a burner and into the stove. I don't know if I'll be able to restrain myself next time. That left me stringing rope around and hanging as many of my belongings as I could bother myself to, in plastic bags, from the rope. I then took some very large cans of beans and placed them on top of the burners to try and keep the mouse from coming back in via that route. So now what... I don't know. It's unlikely that these folks are going to be 'ok' with mouse poison... it's totally against their sense of morality and values to 'kill' other creatures. They'll buy and eat ones that are already dead... but don't want to kill anything with their own hands, and would prefer that such intimate interactions don't take place on the property. They don't hassle me for swatting mosquitoes though... so... who knows. Maybe I should just quietly do it without asking or saying anything.
Today I finally got to do my long-anticipated day-of-exploring-bellingham-by-bike. It was HOT... there was a farmers market, sidewalk chalk murals - very nice, and all sorts of community minded stuff going on, which was nice, but it was on the edge of being too hot to enjoy much of it. I did enjoy stopping at The Malt Shop for an avocado & bacon burger, fries, and a large chocolate/bannana malt though. I also did enjoy the sight seeing, and just being on my bike again (first time in nearly two weeks). And the heat did seem to abate somewhat eventually. Yeah, it was really nice to get a good long ride in.
Ok, I got distracted looking for free web hosting, trying to get logged on to MSN, and checking to see if anyone's emailed me - nope. Now it's 10:54pm and I'm feeling very tired... so it's off to the trailer.
Good night! Sleep tight! Don't let the bed bugs bite! Hmmmm....
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| August 14, 2004 | 12:00 AM |
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First entry...
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Sunday, August 8th, 9:36pm
Dear everyone...
This is the first time I've sat down at the computer since I got here eight days ago. I don't even know what to say. The weather's been mostly hot here, with a day of rain, and another that was pleasantly overcast. Today was hot. Yeah, I feel overwhelmed by ideas & things I want to tell you.
It was hard getting out of Vancouver. Despite my week or two of time to prepare myself before the end of the month, it was still very difficult. I was short tempered & irritable... there were so many things that needed to be done, and returned to people, and gotten rid of, and... thank god for my family & friends that helped me and put up with me. Anyway, I managed to get most of my things packed - well I guess all of them, cause I didn't leave anything in the apartment, so it all went somewhere. What I kept went into plastic storage containers & eventually was packed into my dad's little pickup truck, and his old Chevy van, which had been resurrected Jesus style from its resting place over on Gabriola Island. That was quite the feat in and of itself. Once the van's eco-system (two species of ants, spiders, insects, plants & moss, etc) was in check, and we'd given it a good wash, it was driven back to Vancouver, and over the next two days packed with the help of my mom & dad & brother. The van continued to be the source of significant time, money, and work, until everthing was temporarily working, and we headed south. The hope was that there wouldn't be a need to turn off the engine until we reached our destination. "Looks like you're leaking something pretty good." said the boarder guard, in reference the smoke rising from the front end, to which I off-handedly replied "Yeah, just got a bit of oil on the engine block." I hoped that he didn't know any more than me about engines. I hoped that sounded 'right'. My dad had just finished explaining to him who we were and what we had with us, etc, so he confirmed I just had a van load of personal belongings, and finished with "see ya later". A final stop for gas - with the engine running, and soon we arrived - what a relief.
Since then I've been settling into my new environment, taking the occasional dip in the hot-tub, discovering where the bats live, making way too many 5+ hour trips into Bellingham for supplies - both personal & building related, and preparing to start building. Just getting a camp set up, and a shelter from the sun & rain under which to work has taken so much time & energy - and we're not even finished that yet. I think we might have our kitchen/hangout shelter completed tomorrow... we'll see.
This land is owned by a couple of friends of my dad, who I'll refer to from now on as "C" & "L", who live in this cabin/house which was built back ~1870 or so by homesteaders, and so we've been sleeping upstairs thus far. We've been working toward getting ourselves out of their space, and so tonight will mark my first night spent in my new digs. I'm getting to sleep in a trailer, which at the risk of sounding ungrateful, I must say is not nearly as posh or pleasant smelling as many of you might at first assume. My dad & Don - another friend of his who's here to help, are going to be sleeping in tents up near our almost completed common area. Unfortunately Don's been struck by a nasty sore throat, so he's upstairs tonight, and probably for the next couple nights, which will hopefuly help his situation. So, Don's here now, and probably wishing for some sleep. Yep, he's in bed now a few feet away, so I'm going to stop my key clattering & send this off tomorrow at some point.
Good night!
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| August 8, 2004 | 12:00 AM |
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