Found key

So this morning, while stepping outdoors to empty my chamberpot, I saw my key lying on the ground right by the door.

In plain view.

I find it extremely hard to believe I could have missed it yesterday, I searched the area thoroughly several times. Very odd.

I'm off to PEI today.

A miracle story

Today it was humid, rainy and foggy, no way to avoid getting wet. I wanted to get as much glassing done as possible today, the hatch covers and lips, and the bulkheads Sheila came by with the dogs and a couple of Harbour boys, Riley and Richard. They ran ahead with the Corgi Maxwell on a long rope while Moose the chocolate lab ambled along with us. I walked with Sheila up to her back field but turned back when it started to rain.

The glassing went pretty well, I finished around 5.00pm and went home for supper.

After supper I went over to Mike and Ruth's to empty my compost bin and put some stuff in the freezer. Mike was home but Ruth was at paddling practice for the Dragonboat races. Mike told me a helluva story.

While driving his truck near Canning this morning, he somehow managed to lose control and go off the road and into the ditch. He hit the ditch going 80 km/hr and there was a hydro pole there that he hit smack on, shearing it off at the base. Apparently the pole went straight up in the air and came down again, still vertical, right beside its stump. Mike's truck went on until it hit a tree and stopped. Mike must have been in a complete daze, he got out of the truck and checked himself for blood, bruises, anything. He climbed out of the ditch and there was another truck driver standing there who had watched the whole thing happen. The driver said, You just made my day walking away from that! The driver had not been looking forward to whatever was going to remain of Mike after an accident like that.

The mountie who came to the scene said he had never seen anyone survive an accident like that without serious injury, it was uncanny. Mike remembers that his Dad died at about Mike's age now, in a similar accident. His Dad's tractor tipped over and landed on top of him. Mike didn't have so much as a bruise on him. He called his work and they said they'd send someone to pick him up.

Yes, he went to work after that.

Mike just spent a whole lot of money on new tires and brake work on the truck, it looks like it is totalled now. On the one hand, a shame to have to write off so much money, on the other, maybe spending that money saved his life, one never knows. Anyway, the garage that towed the truck away says they'll look it over and see if it can be salvaged, you never know, they said. But Mike thinks it's pretty doubtful.

Changing the subject, Mike told me a couple of days ago he had some books of fish pictures I could look through to see if anything appeals to me for the kayak. I need a fish on the rear bulkhead to keep the boat afloat. So I asked him about the books and he brought me three books of fish and whale pictures. In thumbing through them I found the humpback whale.

As it happens I have a picture of a humpback embroidered on my baseball cap from going whalewatching last October off Brier Island in the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. The most memorable moment on the whalewatching trip was a pair of whales who came right up to our zodiak, paused, and then swam off. This after a good ten minutes of swimming back and forth under our zodiak, doing flips and somersaults under the water. It was as if they were performing for us, in a beautiful underwater ballet, and then taking their bows and swimming off.

That's what I want on my kayak.

I didn't find the right picture in any of the books Mike gave me, I think I have the right picture on a poster hanging on my bathroom door back in Toronto. Fat lot of good it's doing me there. So I will have to find something else that I can copy; worse come to worst I could attempt to copy the whale off my cap. It has to be fairly simple, because I've got to draw it freehand and then burn it into the plywood with Mike's woodburning kit. I'm hardly an artist when it comes to drawing stuff freehand.

I looked for my key and could not find it anywhere. I retraced my steps between the truck and the house several times, and even phoned Carolyn to check where I was parked in front of her house yesterday, but no key. Very odd, it has completely disappeared.

Planning a little holiday

Today was a lovely day, warm sunny and breezy. Mike thought a thunder storm was on its way though.

I spent several hours in the morning and afternoon sanding, epoxying and glassing various pieces for the kayak. I glassed the second sides of the upper coamings and the first sides of the hatch lips. I sanded any rough edges I could find.

Around 4.00pm I headed into town to phone Isaac and see Fritz and Carolyn. Isaac and Gretel are now in PEI on vacation and I am going to join them for a couple of days this week. Be good to see the kids.

I hung around for a few hours, looking at Carolyn's photos of her niece's wedding on Saturday and having supper of bison burgers and strawberries. The last of this season's strawberries are being sold off in the Farmer's Markets, and the first of the raspberries are now on sale. Maybe I'll take some raspberries to PEI with me.

I am going to drive to the ferry at Caribou, and Isaac and Gretel will meet me at the ferry terminal at Woods Island on Prince Edward Island. They have a cabin on the beach for a week at Savage Harbour on the north side of the island and Gretel says it is totally wonderful (and has a spare bed for me). Most folks take the fixed link, the Confederation Bridge in New Brunswick, to the Island now so the ferry shouldn't be crowded. If you were to draw a straight line from Baxter's Harbour to Savage Harbour, it would pass a lot closer to the ferry terminals than the fixed link. It costs the same whether you take the ferry or the bridge.

On the way home at night, my keychain fell open while trying to open the house door and I dropped all my keys on the ground. I managed to find all but one key, the door key to my truck. I have a spare but I sure hope I can find the key when it is light.

The revenge of the consumer

Interesting item on The Sunday Edition today. I was looking forward to hearing Vicky Gabereau but she's not on today, it's Kevin Sylvester. Well, I like Kevin too but Vicky is one of my all time favourites. Too bad she's retired.

Anyway, the interesting item was about General Motors (GM) being on the brink of bankruptcy, what went wrong and what can they do about it. One of the things said was about GM's woefully shortsighted view of consumers, its customers. Apparently they believed that the North American romance with big gas guzzlers would never end, there would always be reasonably priced gasoline and North Americans were all about the wide open spaces and driving off into them. Apparently GM got caught out, North Americans have proved as fickle as any romantic suitor and have dropped the big gas guzzler dead. Shot down like a rejected lover, not so much as a "let's be friends."

Hah! I think. Not just GM, everybody is doing that!

Oh, the consumers, we will never wean them off their profligate ways, we just have to keep supplying them with all the godawful stuff they demand because they are just not capable of seeing the light any time soon. The doomsayers and the pushers of the status quo make the same error in judgement, they all predict the future based on shortsighted analyses of what we the consumers are capable of.

That very term, "consumers", belies that shortsighted view of people, that we are all one-sided buyers of whatever is being purveyed. Hah! Think again!

Well GM, perhaps you deserve your fate, but then so do a lot of other journalists, politicians, futurists, and economic advisors. Beware the glib pronouncements about what we the people are capable of.

Cutting and glassing

It was a lovely day today and I spent most of it working. Well, I don't mind, the Garden House has lots of windows and doors to leave open, and nice views of the woods and the sunshine from any of them. A little breeze to keep me cool, a thermos of coffee and a couple of molasses cookies, and I am happy to spend the day puttering on the kayak.

This morning I made a new list, based on looking at Ruth's kayak last night, and then a table to prioritize the tasks since there are now so many of them that don't appear to be sequential. If there were enough hours in the day I could do everything at once it seems. So I have to sort out what is sequential and what is not, and then allot tasks to days according to how long I think they will take and how long I really want to work on any one day.

Today I spent mostly cutting out bits and pieces for the kayak, hatch "lips" that will support the hatch covers when done, the forward bulkhead, and a couple of thigh braces. I had to make a template for the bulkhead before I could cut it out and that was the most difficult part of the job.

In the process of tidying up my worktable in preparation for today's work, I discovered a tool I could have used a while ago. I don't know its name but it is for measuring angles and transferring them to, say, a template for a bulkhead. Most annoying to find that after I am done making the last bulkhead template.

The hatch lips were the hardest to cut out, and there were four of them. I thought all the cutting would take a couple of hours and then I could do some fibreglassing, but I ended up spending most of the day on the cutting.

Sometime around 4.00pm I started sanding the edges of the coaming pieces in preparation for apply epoxy. The lower coaming pieces are cut from 5/8" old plywood that was formerly used as construction staging, so its surfaces are very rough and need considerable sanding. The upper coaming pieces need a bit of sanding to get their curves in line with the curves of the lower coaming pieces.

Only the upper coamings need fibreglass, I cut out small pieces from a couple of strips to cover the curves of the coaming, and then apply epoxy to the glass and wood. That goes fairly quickly. The lower coamings need some thickened epoxy to fill in some of the larger gaps that could not be sanded out.

After tidying up I go home for supper, and after supper I return to the Garden House to trip the edges of the epoxied fibreglass off the coamings. I left it a couple of hours to get tacky but I think I could have left it longer.

Either that or I should have left more scrap around the edges to make it easier to trim.

Note to self for future coaming and hatch lip glassing.

Cutting

Mike got called back to work today for a couple of hours.








So I took a couple of hours to cycle down to Long Beach and drink coffee on the rocks.








A small fishing boat went by.















On my way back to the land I saw some flowers that looked a little like the ones around Fritz's house that I cannot identify (it's a domesticated plant, I don't know my domestic plants very well at all). So I took one home to identify. At first I thought it was burdock, but it has no burrs, it turns out to be knapweed (Centaurea, probably Centaurea jacea). Funny that a very pretty domestic flower would be related to or descended from a common weed.

An Amanita muscaria has popped up in the path to my house. Also known as Fly Agaric. Poisonous or hallucinogenic, depending on your point of view. I think it is kind of pretty.

Mike brought his jigsaw and Ruth's kayak to use as a reference for how to proceed. We laid Ruth's kayak on the grass outside the Garden House and examined and measured its coamings and hatches, then we examined and measured the various pieces of plywood we had on hand. We picked a couple of pieces for the coamings and another for the bulkheads.

I check the rear bulkhead template that I made and adjust it to fit behind the cockpit, taping its upper and lower parts together. Then I trace it onto some thin birch plywood and cut it out with the jigsaw. It fits neatly.

There are two coamings, one on each side of the cockpit. Each coaming consists of two parts, a thicker lower piece and a thin upper piece which will be the lip that the kayak skirt must fit over. Using Ruth's kayak as the template, we draw the upper coamings on a thin piece of plywood and I cut them out with the jigsaw. Mike takes one of the thin coamings that I cut out and uses that as a template to draw the two thick pieces.

Mike said we could cut out the hatches any time now. This will freak you out, he said. I asked how we started the cut, and after a bit of experimenting we decided that you start the cut by tipping the jigsaw forward, turning on the blade and then slowly tipping it back to let the tip of the blade pierce the wood.

Mike poises the saw over the kayak and asks if I want him to start the cut. I hesitate and he says, Told you it would freak you out. Somehow cutting the kayak after all the work of glassing and gluing it just seems wrong. I say, Yes go ahead. So he starts cuts for both hatches. Mike takes the wood for the lower coamings over to Peter's to cut on his bandsaw and I finish cutting out the two hatches. I need to use the respirator because of all the epoxy dust.

Now I can reach the place where the forward bulkhead will be, and my template no longer fits there, the kayak has changed shape since I drew it. So I will need to redo the template before I can cut out that bulkhead.

Mike returns, Peter's bandsaw is not there so he cannot cut the coamings on it. Mike changes the blade on the jigsaw and cuts out the lower coamings with the jigsaw. It takes quite a while to do. When he is done we call it quits, it is supper time.

Over supper I make a list of the steps remaining to do. It looks like I am now down to seven days instead of fourteen nights. Finally some progress! However, I didn't know whether I needed to glass the bulkheads and thigh supports or not.

After supper I go over to Mike and Ruth's and we take another look inside Ruth's kayak. Yes, I need to glass everything. And further, I also need to glass tape the joins between the bulkheads and the kayak.

So it might be more than seven days, but surely not fourteen!

Seam done, and some history

It rained for much of the morning and half the afternoon today. I waited, hoping the rain would stop, but finally donned boots and goretex and headed off to the Garden House to finish the last sheer seam.

Things went fairly smoothly, I rolled the strips of fibreglass up before starting so that when it came time to lay it in the seam I just had to unroll it. This worked well, I had very little problem with fibres of glass coming loose and sticking to everything.




The seams are now done, I just have to leave the kayak over night to cure. The rain stopped before I finished so I walked back in relative dryness.

In the evening I went to Mike's to talk about the next step, cutting out the coaming pieces. Mike is taking some time off work so he will be available tomorrow to help me with that.

A neighbour, Rick, stopped by with a poster for a community supper in a couple of weeks. For the next couple of hours we talked about Baxter's Harbour history, and the history of some of the families that have always lived here.

Dr. Baxter built his house around 1802 (this is Peter and Nancy's house now), and set up the Baxter Mill on the brook below his house. A wharf was built in the Harbour, but a lot of shipping actually occurred from Black Hole, a little ways down the road. It had a much better harbour and steep cliffs surrounding it. Apparently they used to throw logs over the cliffs into the water and then load them from there into great sailing ships. There was never a wharf at Black Hole, goods were simply thrown over the cliff into the water.

The area has been logged over at least twice, it is in the process of being logged over a third time now. Families here engaged in logging, farming and even shipbuilding and shipping, all at once. They would load potatoes and logs onto a sailing ship and then sail down to the Caribbean to sell in the fall, certainly a dangerous trip given the kind of weather you get on the Atlantic Coast in the autumn. But in those days there was no railroad in Nova Scotia, everything was shipped via sailing ship from the many coastal ports.

The North Mountain was economically important because of all its ports, even farmers in the rich Valley below had to bring their produce up the Mountain to have it shipped out to the world. The railroad put an end to that, and the railroad was built as part of the deal that brought Nova Scotia into Confederation. Nova Scotia never saw economic good times again, becoming part of Canada was not the best thing that ever happened here.

A number of families in the Harbour have links with New Brunswick. Baxters and McCulleys are also found in the Kennebecasis Valley of NB. They sailed there from the Harbour, going up the Saint John river and then the Kennebecasis as far as the tide would allow them, and then settled there.

We also talked about how the North Mountain is considered a backwater today. Government focuses on providing services to the Valley, ignoring both the North and South Mountains. Rick decried a recent suggestion to expand the Kings County bus service into Hants County, when there was no bus service to Canning or any other town outside of the Highway 1 corridor through the Valley. He said he sees three or four schoolbuses pass his home every day, some half empty. Why couldn't the school buses be used to provide bus service to places like the Harbour? With gas prices so high, no one could live in the Harbour and hold a job down in the Valley, the Harbour is soon going to be inhabited only by the unemployed and retirees. And all work is in the Valley, there is next to no business on the Mountain. All the little general stores are closed down, the sawmills are almost all gone, hardly anyone farms any more, and nobody fishes at all.

Well I guess that's what folks do now, talk about the good old times and complain about the bad new times.

Warbler thump, drop and roll

I managed to sleep in this morning, until past 8.30am. Still tired though, I think the humidity is getting to me. Every joint feels stiff and tired.

Fortunately it is not nearly as hot here as in the Valley.

While eating breakfast I heard a thump against the kitchen window.

I went outside and sure enough, there was a stunned little bird on the ground below the window.





Very pretty with yellow and black feathers and what appeared to be yellow eyelashes, but its back was bent at an alarming 90 degree angle.

It was breathing and blinking its eyes but otherwise motionless.

I thought about picking it up and bringing it indoors, but I was afraid its back was broken and I would just hurt it by moving it.

I took a couple of pictures of it, and then it suddenly flipped itself into an upright position.

That was hopeful.









I took a few more pictures as it sat there still not moving very much.

Finally I went indoors.

After half an hour I went back out and it was gone, hopefully it flew away unharmed.

I looked this bird up in my birdbook and the closest I can identify it is as the Magnolia Warbler.

I wonder if this is the bird I hear in the vault in the evening.

Another seam another fillet

Today I planned to go to town so I tried to get to the Garden House early to fillet the sheer seam on the other side of the kayak. For me 9.30am is probably the earliest I have started yet!

To do the other seam I have to tip the kayak on its other side. I can feel the difference in weight now between the two sides, there must be a fair bit of epoxy in that seam I've done over the last two days. I originally thought the big selling point of this kayak was its light weight, 35 lbs. But now, I think I am well past 35 lbs, with more weight, in epoxy and wood, to add.

Anyway, having done this routine before, it goes a lot smoother this time than it did on Monday. I prepared by wrapping tools in plastic wrap and taping the syringe to my stick really securely. I think I probably used less epoxy this time but I am not sure, I didn't count batches the first time.

By 11.30am the job was done and I had cleaned everything up. I changed into cooler clothes since I had heard that the Valley was really hot and humid, gathered up my laundery and shopping list, and headed off.

It really was humid in the Valley! Descending the road down the Mountain I could only see white haze blanketing everything. And the humidity felt like Toronto.

I stopped in Canning to return the unused methyl hydrate, one of the dowels that I never used, and a set of eye screws. There was no problem with returning this stuff, other than the fact that the cashier had never done a return and was being coached by a more experienced worker.

After doing my grocery shopping I stopped by Fritz and Carolyn's to do laundery, have a shower and catch up on email and my blog. Fritz returned from work and Carolyn from her vacation. I talked to Isaac on the phone. Carolyn and I had a glass of wine and I headed back up the Mountain around 11.00pm.

I was so tired when I got home! But there was a half moon and the stars were out. The haze blurs the stars somewhat but I can see the Milky Way.

Glassing inside the sheer seam

The instructions say to fillet the other sheer seam next, but rather than keep turning the kayak from one side to the other to the other to the other, I think I'm going to leave it on this side and skip to the next step, laying down fibreglass in the sheer seam.

I went through all the pieces of fibreglass I have and selected a couple of pieces to cut strips from for glassing the seams. I should be using fibreglass tape for this step but I thought I'd just use strips I cut myself. Measuring roughly how far I can reach into the kayak from the cockpit, I estimate that I need 75" of two-inch strips in each seam. The instructions say two layers, so that's roughly 300" altogether. I cut the strips and set aside the ones for the other seam.

Keeping in mind the mess of glue everywhere yesterday, I cover my flashlight and headlamp in plastic wrap to keep the glue off of them. I cut several pieces of wax paper and paper towel to have handy if I need them. Once again I wrap my arms and head in plastic bags and don latex gloves and respirator. I'm ready to face the glue.

I mix some thickened epoxy to lay down another fillet of glue in the seam. I don't need my tool for reaching up into the kayak today because I am only laying fibreglass as far as I can reach without it, so using the syringe is a little easier. Laying in the fillet of glue goes fairly easily. Then I lay a strip of fibreglass down on top of the glue. This step is messy because I am not using fibreglass tape that has neatly sewn edges, I am using rough cut strips that very quickly start to shred in contact with my sticky latex gloves. There are wet fibreglass fibres everywhere, sticking to everything. The second layer goes no easier. It doesn't look like the glue is soaking through entirely so I quickly mix some unthickened epoxy and squirt that over top of the fibreglass and use a small paintbrush to spread it.

Other than clean-up, that's it for today. The rest of the day I spent reading, taking pictures of flowers and wandering around the old field near the Garden House. I was looking at the dense growth of alders on the other side of the field, it is so dense that you cannot walk in there, and I cannot see how far it goes. There used to be another field beyond this one, but it is now overgrown with the alders.

I found irises, mallow and morning glories in the field, as well as buckwheat, blackberries, blueberries and chives. Once upon a time someone planted things in this field and they have taken off on their own.

I remember when we dug up and planted half of this field as an organic garden, we used seaweed we gathered from the Harbour for fertilizer and straw for mulch. We were a bit idealistic about our ability to manage a huge communal garden, that was probably the first and last communal garden on the land.

On my way back into the woods, Ruth stopped to talk to me on her way home from work. She asked if I would be interested in drumming for her dragonboat team. It sounds interesting. You have to be a breast cancer survivor to paddle on the team, but apparently the drummer and steersman don't have to be, and they are short-handed. Of course, I don't know what kind of drummer I would make, I have hardly any sense of rhythm.

Mike has gotten some more plywood to use for bulkheads and coamings around the cockpit, I will need to talk to him about how exactly to measure and cut the coamings. Maybe there is a template somewhere for that.

I've made The List

I don't have a lot of time these days to read my favourite blogs but today I checked in on Ronni Bennett's Time Goes By, and I see that my blog has been added to her list of elderbloggers. Wow, I am honoured to be there!

I had a bit of a pang of regret about it though, since my blog right now is so focussed on the process of building my kayak. I can't imagine that this is particularly fascinating for most folks passing through from Time Goes By!

It certainly wasn't my intent when I started this blog back in January to be so focussed on the gory details of kayak building, but at a certain point I decided that I wanted to record the process and now feel like I am in too far to quit now. I originally thought this would take about three weeks and already I've been at it for six weeks, with the end still a ways off. My life seems to have been reduced to epoxy.

Filleting inside the sheer seam

The last coat of epoxy on the deck hardened just fine, although it looks rather patchy. Will definitely have to be sanded or redone, but not now.

I came to the Garden House armed with a headlamp, a flashlight, the two tie-downs and a bag of plastic bags for today's work. I swept out the interior of the kayak as best I could to get rid of epoxy shavings and dust. Then I turned the kayak on its side and anchored it in place by wrapping the tie-downs around the kayak and the sawhorses it was mounted on. The two flexible cradles on the sawhorses hug the kayak, helping to hold it in place. This was one of the ideas Chris had for securing the kayak so it would not fall over when I was working inside it.

I tried to tape the flashlight inside the kayak aimed up to the stern, but the tape would not stick to the slick interior. However I could balance the flashlight in the kayak so it was aimed in the right direction. I wrapped two plastic bags around my head, covering my hair and ears, and another two bags around my forearms. Just about then Sheila came by with the dogs so I went for a walk with her in the woods, partially "bagged".

After going for a walk, I put the respirator over the bags on my head, and then my headlamp on top of that. I must have been quite a sight! But since working inside the kayak with epoxy was how Mike's friend gained his epoxy sensitivity that makes any exposure to uncured epoxy lethal, I am being especially cautious.

Yesterday I put together a tool for gluing at a distance, a syringe taped to a 4-foot long stick and a dowel running through a couple of eye screws to press on the syringe plunger to squeeze the glue out of the curved nozzle.

I am supposed to mix enough filler in the epoxy to make it thick but not too thick, it should slump when laid in the inside sheer seam.






My first batch was too thick. It was really hard to squeeze it out the nozzle, and it did not slump. It was lumpy and my awkward use of this tool caused glue to squirt out in places I did not want it. The glue that did go into the seam was uneven and bumpy. And, I had to press so hard on the dowel, that I dislodged the syringe from the tape and it fell off the stick. My efforts to retrieve it spread glue in even more places I did not want it.

Now I had the task of retaping the glue-covered syringe back on the stick, without getting glue on myself or getting my latex gloves hopelessly stuck to the tape. Not an auspicious start!

Eventually I got the syringe thoroughly taped back onto the stick. Everything was now thoroughly slick with wet epoxy. I mixed another batch, much more runny than the first batch. I wanted to glue the seam in the other direction which meant I needed to turn the flashlight around, but I did not want to get epoxy on the flashlight. So I used a piece of clingy plastic wrap to handle the flashlight. Awkward, but it worked.

This time the epoxy flowed a bit better and was not as lumpy in the seam because it slumped and flowed almost immediately. It filled the seam quite smoothly. I still had to press on the dowel very hard and the syringe began to slip down the stick. I wasn't sure whether the tape would hold, but I really had no choice but to keep on pressing.

Somehow the tape held for the entire operation. Three more batches of glue and the seam was filled. The first part of the seam that I did does not look very good and may have to be redone, but every other part looks fine. But my worktable is awash in glue. I clean up as best I can, remove all my bags and clean up all my tools.

I hope that the syringe will be reusable tomorrow when I have to do the other sheer seam. I am very grateful that the tie-downs kept the kayak so steady and firm, at a level that was relatively easy to work with. I feel a little more confident about gluing the other seam now.

Later I was over at Mike's chatting while he stacked firewood. A family of flickers, the two parents and one offspring, flew through Mike's yard calling each other. Mike pointed out the tree where their nest was.

Mike had retrieved an old wooden eavestrough from the Garden House that he wanted to use on his woodshed. It is quite old, it has been at the Garden House for at least twenty years and was salvaged from an older building before that. There's hardly any rot in it, it is made of a very dense cedar log. Mike was impressed with how well preserved the eavestrough was, in spite of neglect and carelessness.

Apparently it was quite hot in the Valley today, hot and humid. But on the Mountain it was cool and misty, fog blowing in from the Bay all day. I was glad of the cool, being wrapped in plastic bags as I was. It is supposed to be hot and humid in the Valley most of the week, a good time to stay on the Mountain. I might sneak in to buy another quart of strawberries though, I ate the last of mine this morning.

Canada's opinion: carbon taxes

On Cross Country Checkup tonight (CBC radio every Sunday) the question was about carbon taxes, what do you think of the idea.

Gordon Campbell has instated a carbon tax in BC as of July 1, and Stephan Dion is talking about a carbon tax if the Liberals form the government (they say there might be an election in the fall). The Conservatives and the NDP are more in favour of a cap-and-trade system rather than a carbon tax, and I've heard a lot of debate about which is better or worse.

It was an animated discussion, opinions were all over the map. Rex Murphy is on summer vacation so someone else was hosting, he said in summation that it was interesting that no one talked about how this might fly in Alberta.

It seems like when the economy is good people say Yes, we think doing something about Climate Change is a good idea, but not much happens. Now that the economy is not good and one of the main reasons is rapidly rising oil prices, people are now very concerned about Climate Change and Peak Oil and how that is going change our world for the worse.

So on the one hand serious tax measures are being proposed that may actually have an impact on carbon emissions and getting off our fossil fuel addiction, and on the other people are saying, Hey wait a moment that's not fair, I can't afford this, you shouldn't raise taxes when the price of everything is already shooting up.

But if oil prices weren't rising then no one would be motivated to do something about it, we'd all be too complacent, life is going on just fine.

So lots of people are kicking and screaming about having to pay for it. I don't really blame them, I feel the same way, I don't really want to pay the price.

Several people spoke about carbon taxes versus a cap-and-trade system, and about whether or not it was fair for us to pay carbon taxes when India and China were not. Mark Jaccard spoke quite knowledgeably about the various possible approaches to curbing carbon emissions. I read one of his books a few years ago and he impresses me as a voice of reason, not particularly extreme in either direction. He seemed to be saying that both carbon taxes and a cap-and-trade system could work if done right.

But the bottom line is there's no free lunch. We're going to pay, one way or another.

I like that people can call in and say what they think and then listen to what other people think too. You're not alone. The whole country gets to participate in the debate. Two hours on a Sunday are not much, but better than nothing. And it's real people with real concerns that are talking, not journalists telling us what they think we are thinking.

Second opinion

More dawdling today, I don't get over to the Garden House until sometime after noon. I try an experiment, instead of using the roller I use a small paint brush to "touch up" the spots where the weave shows through. Being obsessively thrifty I think I will use up the last of the old epoxy, but since the pumps are no longer reliable I measure it in syringes. Sixty-year-old Brain syndrome once again, I get the ratio of hardener to resin wrong on two tries out of three. The first is too much resin, the second is too little and the third I think might have been just right. So I don't know if this experiment is going to work.

In the evening Chris comes by to say Hi. I was just heading out to the Garden House to see how the kayak is doing and he comes with. The kayak looks terrible I think. Chris doesn't think it is terrible but he does see the problems. Chris is a painter so he has some ideas about what is going wrong and what to do about it. We discuss it for quite a while.

Of course it is not hopeless, it is all fixable, but when I compare how my kayak looks with how the one Mike made for Ruth, it is much messier. Much as I would like to leave the kayak clear to show off the wood, I am also starting to feel like I would rather paint it to hide all the defects.

Chris gets a laugh out of my windshield washer story.

Sixty year old brain

Something odd happened today. I bought a gallon of vinegar to use for cleaning the epoxy off my various tools because I had found that vinegar worked better than methyl hydrate for that. Previously, I noticed that the gallon of methyl hydrate I bought in Canning didn't actually say on the label that it was methyl hydrate, it said Windshield Washer Fluid. I thought that was odd, did I buy the wrong stuff?

When I bought the vinegar I put it in the truck behind my seat. When I went to take it out to put in the Garden House, I saw a second gallon jug there, labelled Methyl Hydrate. Damn! When I bought the methyl hydrate and put it in the truck, I put it next to the gallon of windshield washer fluid, and then obviously grabbed the wrong jug to put in the Garden House. I've been trying to clean brushes with windshield washer fluid, no wonder it wasn't working very well!

I told Carolyn about this, told her this was the problem with a Sixty-Year-Old Brain, you do dumb things like that. She said I should probably take the methyl hydrate back to the store to get my money back, and tell them my story so they will get a laugh too.

City trip

As I said, I'm not good at getting to work first thing in the morning. But I really have to today if I want to get to the Market before it closes. The epoxy fill coat I did yesterday has not filled the fibreglass completely. I can see the cloth weave in several places. Apparently the epoxy is pooling in some places and running off other places leaving the weave unfilled. Reluctantly I do another coat, thinking that the same thing is just going to happen again, it won't stick where I want it to stick.

And, I am starting to run out of epoxy hardener. The pump sputters a couple of times so I am not sure I am even getting the right ratio of hardener to resin in the mix. The nearest place to get more epoxy is the City, Halifax. Mike says that he thinks Lee Valley Tools has small quantities of West System epoxy, he finds it in their catalog. The Halifax store is open today and Monday but not Sunday, so I probably should try to get there today. Going to be a busy day.

In spite of my best efforts I arrive at the Market shortly before closing time. The man selling honey was just packing up when I ask him if he has any. He has one bottle each of three different sizes, he suggests I buy the largest one, I really want the smallest one, so we compromise on the middle-sized bottle.

Next to the honey man is a couple of ladies selling vegetables. I pick out some summer squash, garlic scapes, and snow peas. I ask about bag of something green that I don't recognize. They tell me what it is (but I don't remember now) and it didn't sound familiar, I ask what it is for and they tell me it is something crunchy to put in salads. I ask what it tastes like and they look at each other for a second and then one of them says, It tastes green. I buy one bag to try it.

I run into Carolyn in the drugstore where I have gone to buy milk. She is just heading home. I tell her I want to leave my groceries at her place while I run into the City for epoxy so she says she'll meet me there.

Carolyn is planning to go to New Brunswick for a few days of hanging out at someone's cottage, and she has some chores to get done before leaving tomorrow after church. One of her chores is to buy a wedding gift for her niece. I ask her if she wants to go to the City with me, and she is strongly tempted. Chores or a trip to the City, what would you choose?

Carolyn decides that what she really wants to give her niece is a painting she saw in Canning. So first we drive to Canning to pick up the painting. It is on display there in a cafe along with several other paintings by the same artist, Doretta. Her paintings are joyful and colourful, every single one makes you smile happily. The one Carolyn wants is of a couple fishing in a little stream, with a picnic laid out beside them.

After getting the painting we drive to Halifax. It is a gorgeous day out, the scenery en route is lovely. Lee Valley Tools is in a big box store park on the outskirts of the City so it's pretty easy to get to it. I've never been to the Halifax Lee Valley, Carolyn has never been to a Lee Valley at all.

The Halifax store is quite nice, with large windows all along two walls of the very large display area. At Lee Valley they have some of their products on display but not all. To buy something you use their computers to find the item you want, fill in an order form and then take it to the counter for an associate to get it for you. Or, you can just go straight to the counter and let an associate help you, which is what I do.

Carolyn wanders around looking at what they have on display. Half the store is woodworking tools and hardware, the other is gardening tools and books. Plenty to look at.

I get my epoxy and Carolyn finds a couple of things she wants to buy and then we leave to back to the Valley.

It is almost supper time so Carolyn suggests we stop at Stirling's in Grand Pre for supper. Yippee! Finally, a chance to eat at Stirling's!

Stirling's is the restaurant of the Evangeline Motor Hotel in Grand Pre, it is all homecooked food that is fairly simple but absolutely the best. The best hamburgers, the best milkshakes, the best fish chowder, the best best pies. And this being strawberry season, they have two kinds of strawberry pie, strawberry shortcake and strawberry muffins.

1. The place is full but we find one empty table on the screened patio. Carolyn orders a big thick lobster sandwich, I have their classic fish chowder and scone. Both are delicious and filling. We really don't need anything more but cannot leave without pie. Carolyn has the strawberry rhubarb pie, I have the strawberry glazed pie. My pie is fresh strawberries mixed with a cooked sugar glaze in a homemade baked pie shell. We are both stuffed when we leave.

I manage to get back on the Mountain while it is still light out, I drop the epoxy off at the Garden House and check the kayak before heading back into the woods. The second fill coat has still not filled the weave, as I suspected would happen. Not good.

Town trip

I'm not good at getting to work first thing in the morning. I wake up early, often before 6am, but I dawdle over breakfast and coffee and listening to the radio until sometime after 11am. I'm terribly slow. So today I manage to get to the Garden House by 11am to apply a fill coat of epoxy to the fibreglassed deck. The fill coat is thin and runny, I try to keep it from dripping down the sides too much but am not really successful. I'm going to have a lot of sanding to do.

In town I have to buy a few groceries and yet another dowel because the last two I've bought were not the right size; I also have to do a bit of banking and a laundery. I manage to do all this in a reasonable amount of time, I am at Fritz and Carolyn's when Fritz gets home from work.

I hang around until Carolyn gets home and we go out for dinner at Paddy's. I had a vegetable curry which was quite good and a Pilsner beer. Paddy's is a brew pub, they make their own beer. I've tried various beers there and right now my favourite is the Gaspereau Pilsner. The tanks they brew the beer in are upstairs, they have a cathedral ceiling in part of the pub so you can look up and see the great tanks of brewing beer above you.

Glassing the deck

The kayak is now ready for its final layer of fibreglass. I ran a line of masking tape around the hull about an inch below the sheer seam (the seam between the deck and the hull).

I have two pieces of fibreglass cloth, a larger and a smaller piece, and I was hoping to cover the entire deck with the smaller piece, cut in half. It is big enough to do that, but it has a hole in it so positioned that I just couldn't avoid it. The hole would not be visible but it would weaken the deck covering.

I laid the small piece of cloth over the stern deck and trimmed it to avoid the hole and drape about two inches over the sheer seams on both sides. I taped it down to hold it in place.

I then laid the larger piece of cloth over the bow deck and cut out a piece to cover the deck and drape over the sheer seams. I trimmed the bow and stern ends to overlap as snugly as possible. The cockpit was completely covered by the fibreglass and there was a two inch overlap of the two pieces, over the middle butt seams.

For this stage I did not wear the respirator but I did wear protective clothes and latex gloves.

Once the fibreglass was in place, I put on the respirator and started wetting the fibreglass down with epoxy on a foam roller. The roller is three inches wide and the foam is only an eighth of an inch thick. I bought the roller in May and also a nine inch replacement foam roll which I have been cutting into three inch pieces to fit the roller as needed. I've used up two pieces already (including the original on the roller when I bought it) and have one more after this one.

Wetting down this layer of fibreglass was actually a little more difficult than doing the inside of the hull a couple of weeks ago, not sure why. I tried to clean up the drips on the outside of the hull as I went along and keep the extra fibreglass over the masking tape from adhering to the hull. After wetting all the glass, I squeegeed the excess off, removing as much of the bubbles as I could see.

By 2:30pm I was done, and went home to have lunch and wait two hours for the epoxy to get tacky. Good to get away from the fibreglass and respirator and gloves.

After two hours I returned to the Garden House and trimmed the fibreglass just above the masking tape line using a utility knife. In the process I removed the tape as well. Finally I trimmed the fibreglass from the cockpit. The kayak now looks as it did before I started today, except that you can faintly see the fibreglass cloth weave on the deck.

I did not wear the respirator but I did wear latex gloves. Because the tape and tacky epoxy stick to the latex I also wore thin cotton gloves over top.

Just as I finished Mike came by on his way home from work and looked at the kayak. It's nice and shiny now but you can still see the weave of the fibreglass cloth. The instructions say to add one or two more coats of epoxy until the weave is invisible, Mike thinks one more coat should be sufficient. I hope so, as each coat requires another day to cure.

Tomorrow I am going into town to pick up some more supplies and groceries, and do a laundery. The most important things I need are yet another dowel and some more dental syringes. I'll do one coat of epoxy before I go, and hopefully I won't need another. I am running low on epoxy, I don't know if I have enough to finish. I will have to go to Halifax to get more if I do run out.

Epoxy vinaigrette

I sanded one last time before applying a saturation coat of epoxy to the deck. The epoxy brings out the colour of the wood and gives a hint of what the kayak will look like when done.

I read in one of my kayak books that white vinegar was a good solvent for removing uncured epoxy. Acetone is the best but also the most noxious; this book suggested not bothering with any lesser solvents, if you don't want to use acetone then use vinegar. The author gave lots of reasons why you wouldn't want to use acetone, the main one being its volatility. Epoxy dissolved in acetone is easily absorbed through the skin, both epoxy and acetone being bad things to absorb.

Up until now I have been using methyl hydrate, it clearly is not as effective as acetone and can only be used once before it loses its ability to dissolve uncured epoxy. I am pleasantly surprised to see how powerful the vinegar is in comparison. It is unfortunate that I just bought a gallon of methyl hydrate and must now go out and buy a gallon of vinegar, but live and learn. Now my workshop smells rather strongly of vinegar.

It was a lovely day until late afternoon when it started to rain. It rained heavily through suppertime, but has now settled into a light mist or rain. The forecast for the rest of the week is hot and sunny. At some point I have to go into town again, I would like to put it off to Saturday (the Farmers Market) but may have to go sooner. Tomorrow I will fibreglass the deck if the saturation coat of epoxy cures well.

Canada Day

Wonderful wonderful day! The weather was absolutely perfect: sunny and clear with a bit of a breeze to keep the bugs at bay.

I went to Ross Creek Arts Centre with Ruth and Erin for a day of music and food and socializing.

Mike showed us around the property, nearly 200 acres of field and woods, with great views in every direction. We toured the children's campsite, the open air theatre set up for the performance of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, complete with tree houses built in the trees that form the backdrop of the "stage". A short trail through the woods brings you to the "Green Room", literally green but only figuratively a room.

Inside the main centre building are several studios for artmaking, dance and music. Some of the stage pieces used for last year's performance of The Odyssey were on display. The offices were up on the second floor, which would have provided a magnificent view of the surrounding forests and fields but the windows are small and high, you have to be very tall to see out.

The music was great, a number of local musicians played throughout the afternoon and evening.









The balloon lady created balloon animals and marvelous hats for a long line-up of eager kids.




























Jack and Dennis played for a couple of hours, and in the middle of their performance, a couple of kids came up on stage asking for Dennis' autograph. Then a swarm of kids came up waving bits of paper for autographs. The music was interrupted as Dennis attempted to give everyone an autograph.

Finally he got them to dance to the music instead. Jack just sat there laughing through the whole exercise. It was kind of funny.








Later, when just about every kid on the property had a balloon hat, the balloonlady packed up her balloons and mounted bouncy stilts to stride around the fields. She then let some of the kids try her stilts, leading them as they bounced along in the grass.

People on the stilts looked like fauns, half human half goat.








Wagon rides were popular all day long, and the many kids participated in workshops on wigwam building, watercolour painting, and lantern making.

For a change in pace, some of us weeded the vegetable garden in the field. Trillium, an a capella trio of women, had us singing O Canada at the end of their set.

As evening came on the breeze died and the black flies materialized in great clouds. While battling the flies we admired an amazing sunset. Mike went off to setup the firework display at the edge of the vault.

After the sunset, lanterns that had been made by the kids earlier in the day were distributed and we had a grand parade around the edge of one of the big fields, with handmade lanterns, lightsticks and a great sun mask leading the way.

When we returned to the little hill behind the centre, we all sat down to watch Mike's fabulous fireworks display. A fitting end to the day of festivities.

I got one photo of the fireworks before my camera battery gave out.