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.

Lonely firefly

I shaved and filed and sanded the kayak deck seams today, getting them down to as near perfect as I could. There are a few spots that will need to be re-glued though, there were bubbles in the epoxy that have left holes in the seams that need to be filled.

Saw a firefly in the evening. One single firefly. Reminds me of the hundreds that you could see in the Tennessee woods at The Farm, as if the stars swarmed down to Earth all around you. One single firefly, must be pretty lonely.

Day of rest

Today I didn't do much work, I walked with Sheila and her dogs, took a few photos.




This is a club moss.











This is some stained glass hanging from a tree in the woods.





In the evening I went into New Minas with Ruth and Erin to see "Kung Fu Panda" at the cinema.

Shopping day musings

Cloudy and dull this weekend they say. Canada Day falls on a Tuesday (July 1) so a lot of people are "bridging", taking the Monday off too. But the weather is not so great here in the East. I hear that the West is finally getting a little heat though.

I decided to go into Wolfville to pick up some bread at the Farmer's Market, but I dawdled so long that I only arrived at the Market in the last half hour. Fortunately though the bread folks still had bread, and they had it at a two-for-one price, so I got two loaves. Don't need two loaves but I can either give one away or freeze it. I also bought a disgustingly good and sweet piece of carrot cake. It was so gooey!

I had a small shopping list of other things to justify my trip into town but decided I'd go to Carolyn's first to check email and such. Carolyn wasn't home, but she arrived soon after I did. We had coffee together and chatted, I gave her the extra loaf of bread and we talked about her weekend task of gathering stuff together for the Church yardsale on Sunday.

She's trying to tackle the perennial problem of Too Much Stuff and after decades of living in the same place, it really is daunting. As someone with no personal or nostalgic attachment to any of her Stuff, I can easily say, Be Ruthless! Chuck It All! But I do remember when I was going through the same exercise myself in 2006 how hard it is to give up The Stuff. In spite of my best efforts over a couple of months of focussed attention, I still managed to transport close to 5,000 pounds of Stuff to my new home in Toronto.

We also decided that I would take an old armchair up to the house on the land in my truck, but she wanted to wash its cover first, so I went out and did the rest of my shopping while the chair cover whirled away in the washer.

Went to Stirlings Farm Market and they had strawberries, two quarts for $6.00. Again, I didn't need two, but was fairly certain I could unload one quart on Carolyn, to go with the bread. A few weeks ago one quart cost me $6.00, now I get two for that price!

Strawberries are probably my favourite fruit, but only when they are in season and local. The imported ones from California are atrocities, big and red on the outside, hard, white and tasteless on the inside. No doubt they are great when picked and sold locally in California, but shipping them across the continent so we can have strawberries in the winter is just plain stupid, they only look like strawberries.

So much food is available now, the farm markets are bursting with fresh local vegetables. And when the strawberries finally give out there will be other fruits to take their place, right through to November. It's so different shopping here than in Toronto, so many farm markets to pick from. Every major farm around here has its own market, Stirling's, Hennigar's, Elderkin's, Bishop's. And the local grocery stores carry local fruit and vegetables too, unlike in Toronto where it is very hard to find locally grown stuff in the major grocery stores.

Not to diss Toronto, that city makes up for its lack of fresh locally grown food in many other ways, a wonderful array of foods from all over the world, an incredibly multicultural population that celebrates its diversity very loudly (figuratively speaking, but occasionally quite literally) on the major streets and in the many ethnic neighbourhoods.

I wish I could live in both places at once!

I got back to the Harbour around 5.30pm, Mike and Ruth's son Erin helped me haul the chair from my truck to the house. Now I have an armchair and a couch, in case I have guests!

After a very quick supper of leftover chicken soup, I went to the Garden House to do the last of the gluing. It was an hour's work to remove the last tie-down and fill in the last few gaps between the deck and the hull. Tomorrow it will be ready to shave/file/sand down to a nice rounded edge ready for the fibreglass covering.

Fourteen nights

A rainy morning today. The smell of the woods in the rain is exquisite. There was a brief period of heavy rain and thunder while I was having breakfast, but it quickly dissipated into mist and very light rain. And stayed there for the rest of the day.

Gluing the deck to the hull is going to take four days even with the extra tie-downs. I moved the tie-downs and did some more gluing today, but there will be more gluing to do tomorrow. I also started filing and shaving the cured glue at the stern end of the kayak, it will go slowly as well.

Looking at my list of steps to complete, I find that no matter how much time elapses and how much work I get done, I still have fourteen more nights to go. The magic number, 14. But Mike looked at the kayak and said that when I was finished gluing the deck to the hull, I could in theory put the kayak in the water. He made a cryptic remark about the tide, I asked him to elaborate but he just said it was him being foolish.

Wandering around in the evening I spotted a few more plants to identify. There are now daisies (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum), buttercups (Ranunculus) and Indian Paintbrush (Hieracium) everywhere along the road, especially where it goes through the field. I spotted Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus crista-galli) and Naked Witherod (Viburnum nudum) on the edge of the field, and False Solomon's Seal (Smilacina racemosa) in the woods. Blackberries (Rubus allegheniensis) are flowering as well.

The Lupin floral spikes are getting so tall and top-heavy that the plants are starting to topple into the roadway. The Aralia used to have three branches of three leaves each, now there are five leaves on each branch. I'm not seeing Strawberry flowers anymore, I'll have to start looking for the fruits.

I saw the mother rabbit today, not far from Ruth's garden. She wasn't actually in the garden, she's still grazing along the roadway. Mike says he'll have to start thinking about what to do if she moves into the garden.

Mike's tie-downs join the fray

Today I removed my brother's tie-downs from the stern of the kayak and put them on the bow. I put one of Mike's tie-downs near the cockpit but I was missing one part of the second tie-down so I couldn't use it. I had to use knives and a metal ruler to pry the hull edges out to meet the deck edges. I applied the epoxy as glue to all the seams that I had tied down and also to the spots that were covered by the tie-downs and tape at the stern yesterday.

I was hoping that the glue will cure by this evening so that I could move the tie-downs and do some more gluing tonight. But Mike said don't push it, leave it to cure over night before moving the tie-downs. I was able to add the second tie-down after finding the part for it, and I added a bit more glue to that area of the seam.

I tried making some baking powder biscuits in a frypan in the evening. I had some chicken soup and a spinach and lettuce salad, I thought biscuits would go nicely with it. The biscuits turned out OK, but I did burn the bottoms of them due to having the flame up too high too long. Next time they'll be better! The cast-iron frypan distributes the heat nicely so they were fairly evenly cooked.

I haven't seen the baby bunny, but Mike says he has seen the mother fairly regularly, so she is still around. A family of raccoons moved into the old stained glass studio and did a lot of damage there, Mike set off some firecrackers just outside the studio to scare them off. He says it worked, but he will invest in more firecrackers to ensure that they stay away. Now he has an excuse to set off firecrackers whenever he likes! The raccoons were tearing holes in the roof of the studio, apparently just for fun. The studio was in bad shape anyway, the roof is pretty rotten, but I guess having the raccoons deliberately tearing it apart was a bit much. When I am done using the Garden Shed for building the kayak, Mike plans to move the remaining stained glass there for safekeeping.

The ants don't seem to be deterred by the borax I am putting down to keep them out. They are kind of weird, apparently they like to make nests out of spruce needles, so they are constantly stuffing whatever spaces they can find with the needles. There are piles of them along the base of the walls and also on the roof plates. They pile the needles on top of the borax. They stuff them in behind the shingles on the outside walls. A half-barrel left sitting on the ground was filled with needles. The wood pile is full of needles. And they are always busy moving needles, long lines of them each carrying a single spruce needle to whatever site they are currently working on, and they seem to have several locations on the go.

My brother's tie-downs go to work

In preparation for gluing the deck and hull together, I taped them together. This was not as hard as I was thinking it would be, however there were some discrepancies between the two that the tape was not strong enough to deal with.

I remembered that my brother had given me a couple of ratcheted tie-downs to use to transport my kayak back to Ontario, and I thought that they might work to tighten the hull so that the edges of the hull and deck meet better.

They did, but it was clear I would need more than two to do the job. I thought I would glue the hull and deck together over a period of several days, moving the tie-downs along the kayak as each glued section cured. However in talking to Mike when he got home from work, he came up with two more ratcheted tie-downs that may allow me to complete the job in two days instead of three or four.

I wanted to take some photos of the ladyslippers which are still in bloom, and while I was doing so I could hear rustling in the bushes nearby. This is right where the baby bunny appeared in the road last night so I think it might be the bunny trying to stay clear of my camera. I wonder if young bunnies usually set out on their own at this age, or if something has happened to its mother. I am hoping the former.

After supper I went for a walk along the brook in the vault. The boundary of this land runs along that brook. On the other side, the owner cut down all the trees right up to the edge of the brook a few years ago. He did this days before they changed the law making it illegal to cut next to a brook. I tried walking along the other side of the brook, but the tangle of old branches left to rot was too much for me. It is growing up fast in bushes and ferns, but is hardly easy walking. However the view across the brook to the tall trees on our side was nice.





I saw a few jack-in-the-pulpits along the brook.













And of course, lots of ferns.













It was still light when I got back home so I set out on my bike down to the shore and walked a ways along the water.

Several people who have cabins there were out on their decks or on a log on the beach enjoying the sunset.

The quacking tree

I was cycling along the road back to my place from the Garden House and I heard what I thought was a duck quacking in the woods. That seemed rather unusual, there was no water in the direction I heard the quacking from. I stopped in the road to listen to the quacking, it sure sounded like a duck.

Out of curiosity I left the bike on the road and started walking into the woods in the direction of the quacking. I kept looking up into the trees for the bird making that was quacking, the sound appeared to be coming from the trees not the ground. Following the sound I reached a small clump of trees but could spot no bird in the tree branches.

Instead, what I thought was quacking was actually the branch of one tree rubbing up against another tree. A birch was swaying in the wind, and it was rubbing a short stubby branch on a spruce growing right up against the birch. The branch had actually rubbed a groove into the birch, and that was where the quacking was coming from.

It doesn't quack all the time, only when the wind blows the birch in a certain direction. I feel bad for the birch, the sound is not really quacking, but a kind of screeching.

My defective passport

Today I went to Halifax to renew my recently expired passport. I had been warned about long wait times if I didn't arrive early so I did try to leave the Harbour early in the morning, but not very successfully. I arrived in Halifax around 10.30am, and at the passport office a half hour later. At the door I was required to take a number, but I didn't even have a chance to sit down before my number was flashed on the screen. So much for wait times!

I had not yet completed the renewal form, I thought I was going to have lots of time for that while waiting my turn. In fact I also brought two books to read and some knitting to pass the time. So I laboriously filled in the form while the woman at the counter waited, she was in no rush so we chatted and joked our way through the form. She checked it over for me and then brought to my attention a small glitch.

Apparently the US border folks are suspicious of passports that contain an initial instead of a name, and my old passport is written that way. In order to change my passport to make it more innocuous, in other words to include my full name instead of an initial, I would have to complete a longer application form and provide a guarantor's signature and personal details. The renewal form only requires two references. Well, that means I would have to return to the Valley and try to find someone who qualified as a guarantor (doctor, lawyer, engineer) and fill out a completely new form. And I am under a bit of a time constraint as it is, a further delay will make the whole project less than useful.

So I decided to take my chances with my existing name. I guess border crossings are going to be a lot slower for the next five years. The passport woman said, just bring along ID with your full name on it, but the problem is, I don't have any such ID! The last piece of ID I had with my full name was my BC medical card and that is long gone. My birth certificate has my full maiden name on it, but I don't use that surname now. She said, get a new driver's licence. As if that is easier than getting a new passport.

Well, I'll just have to see what happens. I do think this business of vastly increased border security has been a rather gross over-reaction, but my opinion on the matter is of little consequence.

I took the pictures for today from the elevator of the office building where the passport office is in Halifax. I went up and down a couple of times to get them, on either side of the building.

Since I was finished at the passport office within half an hour, rather than head immediately back to the Valley, I tried to think of other errands I could accomplish in Halifax. I decided to go looking for parts for the kayak, or at the very least a line on a source for them. Mountain Equipment Co-op was close by but not helpful. Mike had mentioned The Trail Shop on Quinpool Road, so I went over there and drove slowly down the street until I spotted the shop. Amazingly, they had everything I needed and were very helpful. I only bought one item for now, a pair of adjustable footrests that will bolt on to the inside hull walls.

I also checked out their book section and ended up spending $60 on a night sky star chart, The Backroads Mapbook of Nova Scotia, Gibson's Guide to Bird Watching and Conservation by Merritt Gibson, and The Last Billion Years, A Geological History of the Maritime Provinces of Canada. I've had my eye on this book for a couple of years, several friends have copies of it.

Dr. Merritt Gibson is a retired biology prof at Acadia University, I took histology with him. His book is illustrated by Twila Robar-DeCoste, who was a biology student when I was. She has illustrated a number of local natural history books, including other books by Merritt.

The mapbook is part of a series of mapbooks produced by two brothers originally from New Westminster, they started with mapbooks of rural BC and have since expanded to the rest of the country. It is not quite as good as the Atlas of Nova Scotia, the maps are smaller but just as detailed so they are a bit more difficult to read. However it is considerably cheaper and takes up less space.

I returned to Wolfville shortly after my Trail Shop shopping, did a little grocery shopping and went to Carolyn's to check email. Carolyn got home late and had to rush off immediately to a meeting that she was already late for, but we agreed to go out for dinner after 9pm. Boy was I hungry when she finally got back from her meeting! There were only a couple of places in town where the kitchen was still open so we settled on Joe's Emporium, formerly Elmer's Pizza.

Joe's is one of the original restaurants of Wolfville. Carolyn had fish and chips, I had a burger and fries, we both had a glass of wine. When we got back to her house her son Kurt and his girlfriend were watching the tail end of O Brother Where Art Thou, so I stayed long enough to see the end. A very youthful looking George Clooney and some good gospel and old-time music.

My midnight drive back up the Mountain was kind of neat, I still had a bit of a buzz from the glass of wine, and I was listening to Bruce Cockburn's "Bright Skies" on the radio, the stars were out but it was otherwise dark and cool, no moon. Something about that road up the Mountain and then down to the Bay is quite uplifting, makes me very happy to live in this country.

On the road through the woods to my parking spot, the baby bunny I saw the other day appeared right in front of me. I was driving slow enough to stop before hitting it, but in its panic to get away it ran straight ahead of me on the road instead of off to the side into the trees. So I was forced to drive the rest of the way home at baby bunny speed.

Laundry day

I slept in and still I was tired. A slow day, low energy. But it was very hot, I think it reached almost 30C here. It cools off quickly in the evening though, I like that.

I did a laundry at Mike and Ruth's place and hung it out to dry on their laundry line in the woods.
















I measured and cut out the bulkhead templates for the kayak. That was all I had energy for today. I am going to bed early because tomorrow I have to go to the City (Halifax).

Oh yes, today I saw a baby rabbit on the trail out to my truck. It ran in front of me and tried to hide under an aralia in the trail. I was just two feet away from it when it decided to make a run for it. I was so close I almost could reach out and touch it, but of course he had other ideas. He was about the size of a small squirrel. Very cute looking.

Paddling on Lake George

Yesterday Ruth invited me to go kayaking at Lake George with them on Sunday. Mike's family has some land and a cabin on Lake George, on the South Mountain just south of Berwick. They have three kayaks, all handmade. Two of them were built by Mike, and one by a friend. One of the three kayaks is just like the one I am building, so I will have a chance to see what my kayak will be like to paddle when it is done.

It was a wonderful day of paddling and hanging out at Mike's family's cabin.

One of Mike's younger brothers is there working on a project. He is carving three foot high chess pieces from poplar logs with a chainsaw, for a commission. He has some dental surgery coming up and needs the money to pay for it, so he is anxious to complete the job as soon as possible. Which is too bad for us, he needs to use the chainsaw in a space next to the cabin all day. The chess pieces are impressive though, he has most of them done.

The knights...










The bishops...















Lake George is not very big, our first trip before lunch we head west, and then after lunch we head east. There are some high speed motor boats and Sea Doos also on the lake, just to complement the noisy chainsaw next to the cabin.

Also there are still black fly here, and a lot of them! Especially at the east end of the lake. Bug dope, even DEET, is of no use against them, they drive me crazy. Mike and Ruth seem curiously immune or invisible to them, they paddle slowly along the shore when all I want to do is get out in the middle of the lake and paddle like mad to escape the flies. Later in the day I go out by myself west and south, there are few flies in that direction. But that is also where the Sea Doos and motorboats are roaring around. I try to ignore them, assuming that they can see me and will avoid running into me. Rather a risky assumption but no one runs into me.

Mike jokes about his Sea Doo remote control. He has a contraption he constructed of wood and bits of electronic parts, that basically looks like a large wireless remote control. When the Sea Doos are most active he goes out to the end of the dock and aims his remote at them and begins fiddling with dials and switches. He says that he gets relief and satisfaction from this activity, and sometimes manages to scare the Sea Doo-ers down to the other end of the lake. I joke that this is like the old Kids in the Hall joke, "I am squishing your head!" He says yes, it operates by the same Law.

After dinner (barbecued hamburgers, strawberries and chocolate) Mike leaves with the badarka to play music at Paddy's Pub Celtic night, Ruth and I go for a final paddle. But the flies are even worse than they were during the day. As we head back to the cabin, the rain starts. By the time we get to shore it is coming down hard. We run for our rain coats and then load one of the kayaks onto Ruth's car. We are leaving one behind for Mike's brother to use tomorrow. There is a stunning rainbow from one end of the lake to the other.

We chat most of the drive back to the Harbour but by the time we reach the land I am almost catatonic with exhaustion. It was a great day and I much enjoyed being out on the water, fantasizing about what it will be like when my own kayak is completed. Could have done without the flies though.

Bulkheads, flamenco and gamelan

Today is the summer solstice and the first day of summer. There is a potential thunderstorm in the weather forecast. In the morning I visit Mike and Ruth and while chatting in the garden (Ruth is weeding her tomatoes), we can hear thunder. Mike starts telling me stories about people being struck by lightning. By the time I leave, the thunder is much closer and I am beginning to worry about it.

While chatting with Mike about the kayak, we decide that the next best step for me might be to make some templates for the bulkheads that I will eventually want to install. The deck is soon going to be permanently glued to the hull and it will be a lot harder to make a template after that. Mike digs out some cardboard boxes from his woodshed for me to use.

I cycle over to the Garden House with the cardboard. I then walk over to the outer field to look at the sky to see how close the storm is. Big black clouds loom on the south, and appear to be moving northward toward us. Mike had said the safest places to be in a storm are in a car or in a massive building. I decide that Fritz's house is more massive than the Garden House, I'd rather be at home than in the workshop when the storm hits. So I leave the cardboard in the Garden House and head home again.

The thunder is getting closer and closer, but still no rain. The sun finally disappears, but still no rain. I think I might as well do something useful while I wait so I start gathering kindling from under the spruce trees along the edge of the vault. Then I notice that the thunder is getting fainter, it appears to be moving away. After a few minutes I am quite sure that that is the case, there is not going to be a storm after all. I make some lunch and read for a bit until I cannot hear the thunder at all and the sun is back. No storm. I think it must have moved up the Valley, bypassing the North Mountain.

I return to the Garden Shed, do a bit of sanding of the deck and measuring for my bulkhead templates. But after working hard over the past few days, I am feeling lazy and disinclined to complete the job. I cut out some strips of cardboard and wire them together to use to measure seam angles, mark with masking tape roughly where I think the bulkheads ought to be, and cut out some rectangles of cardboard that will eventually be the bulkhead templates.

There will be two bulkheads, fore and aft, and I want two templates for each bulkhead, one to fit in the hull and the other to fit in the underside of the deck, with a 2" overlap between them. Figuring out the location of the aft bulkhead is easy, it will be an inch or so behind the cockpit opening. The fore bulkhead is a little more tricky, I need the cockpit to be long enough for my legs and possibly the legs of a taller person, but I don't know how much I should allow for that, since I am just guessing that I might be letting someone else use my kayak when it is done. I also have to allow for the length of the footrest pieces and I only have the vaguest notion of what that might be. I finally settle on a distance of 56" from the back of the cockpit to the fore bulkhead and mark that location with masking tape.

I also filed down the "bow bubble" from when I poured thickened epoxy into the bow the other day.

That's it for today. Ruth wants to go into town for a concert at Heather's place, Ken Shorley on percussion and Bob Sotherby(?) playing flamenco guitar, so I go with her. My inclination is to say No and stay home, but my instinct is to go nevertheless.

The concert is wonderful. Ken plays a variety of drums and shakers from around the world and a Southeast Asian gamelan, Bob plays several different flamenco styles. At intermission there is wine and cheese and biscuits and fresh strawberries dipped in chocolate. Very tasty! After the intermission Bob and Ken play together, a fusion of Spanish, Thai and Arabic styles.

It really is quite amazing the musical talents in this part of the world.

Seam reinforcing and bow pour

I went to the Garden House today to check the results of yesterday's work. It looked good. I didn't have a lot to do today, but nevertheless it took most of the day. I sanded everything down to get rid of any roughness in the hull and to prepare the underside of the deck for a saturation layer of epoxy. The fibreglass needed to be reinforced around the middle butt seam, with three pieces of glass each a little wider than the previous layer.

The next task was to epoxy the entire underside of the deck. I also decided to epoxy along the upper edge of the hull fibreglass to cover any spots that may have been exposed during the tape removal the previous evening. Finally I inserted a small triangle of cardboard into the hull bow to create a small area to be filled with wood flour thickened epoxy.

As with the stern stem filling, this area of thick epoxy quickly heated up and began to harden. A small dome rose out of the bow pour area, because I did not allow for the expansion of the epoxy. However I was prepared for something like that to happen and before the epoxy had hardened too much I was able to scrape off much of the excess with only a wooden tongue depressor.

Ruth came by and invited me for dinner later, which I gladly accepted. We had broiled chicken breasts and a salad from Ruth's garden. Ruth enquired about my Belize trip photos so I brought my laptop over and after dinner showed them the photos I had of the Belize trip. Mike and Ruth have travelled in that area, most recently a couple of trips to Cuba, so we were comparing their impressions of Cuba with mine of Belize. Ruth had been in Belize as well, but way back in the '70s. A lot of what I showed her was somewhat familiar to her, although she did not remember town names. She just remembered driving through Belize to Guatemala. There is really only one road that takes you through Belize to Guatemala, so I could tell her which towns she would have passed through.

A social evening in the Harbour

Having finished fibreglassing the hull a bit early, I thought I would go visit Nancy and Peter to hear about Peter's trip west to cruise the BC coast with some friends. I cycled out to the road and just before turning in at Nancy and Peter's, Sheila came along in her Jeep and asked if I wanted to go to the beach with her. It was shaping up to be a spectacular sunset and she wanted to get some photos. Unfortunately I did not have my camera with me but going to the beach sounded good to me. So I left my bike behind a tree in Sheila's yard and hopped in the Jeep.

The tide was out and the rocky Baxter's Harbour beach was wide and long. A couple were having a small bonfire at the top of the beach. The sun was setting over Parrsboro on the other side of the Bay, and down the Bay you could see rain showers slowly moving eastward up and across the Bay. Amazing view. Sheila took pictures and I just enjoyed the view. Off to the right we could hear a seal snuffling in the rocks. We couldn't see it but we could hear it, snuffling and scrabbling over the rocks. I think our voices alarmed it and it was shuffling back into the water. We also saw another seal out fishing in the water.

We watched until the sun had set, the clouds had lit up bright pink and then subsided back to grey. We drove back up to Sheila's house and I retrieved my bike and headed on to Peter and Nancy's across the road.

Peter, Nancy and their daughters were having a little bonfire beside their house. I was offered the bag of marshmallows and roasted a couple over the fire. How can you have a bonfire without marshmallows?

Peter described the trip route he and his friends took on the BC coast, and then the rather horrendous flight home, involving among other things a six hour imprisonment on the airplane sitting on the runway, with no food or water. There was a thunderstorm in Toronto that had rather unfortunate repercussions for people trying to fly into Toronto, most of whom were diverted to the smaller airport of Hamilton. As a result Peter's arrival home was delayed by a full day and he was quite exhausted.

Around 10.30pm we all headed off to our respective beds. I had a flashlight and cycled home through the woods by its light.

Upon getting home I realized I needed a loaf of bread from Mike and Ruth's freezer for breakfast, so I walked over there to get it and found Mike outdoors examining his rock collection.

He showed me the rocks he had collected over the years from different beaches along the Bay of Fundy, a lot of fossils and jasper. He has been practicing flaking jasper into points, similar to how the local Miq'mah would have. We talked about the prehistory and geology of the area, Mike's plans for making a display of his rocks, and tales of some of his rock hunting expeditions. There used to be a Miq'mah quarry nearby, where jasper was mined and flaked into various tools for trading with other aboriginal groups.

I got home for the final time around 11.30pm, after a very busy day of kayak building and visiting!