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SATELLITE REPAIR MAN’S ORGANIC TRIPODS

29/12/2020

HUMBLE HOMESTEAD

In the last blog there’s a photo of Sue, Buster and me sitting by the Middle river. The river having settled down after, once again, re-arranging the beaver damn. In the photo Sue is sitting on a log. I wanted to use a different photo. I planned to take a photo of Sue and me sitting on the log together. Buster would, I hoped, be smiling at the camera.

Please note that I knocked my camera onto its keister, three times when I attempted to take the photos. Once off a step ladder and twice off a big, log that had been tossed out of the angry river five years ago.

INSIDE OLD HOMESTEAD

What happened, so that I never got the perfect group shot? Well, I sat the camera on the exiled log, set it on time delay, pressed the shutter button, ran like the devil to the log, sat on the log and it collapsed.

SUE AND BUSTER RELAXING IN HOMESTEAD

Whereupon I quickly grabbed Sue by her coat which prevented her from tumbling ass-over-kettle into the watery abyss, while at the same time, I prevented myself from rolling into the river. I don’t know what Buster did while all this was going on. Probably just watched and thought to himself, “What’s with their nonsense this time? I hope it ends at a good place.”

So, we used the photo that had my face half covered by the hat, Sue smiling and looking innocent of her looming adventure and with Buster eyeing the river’s landscape for beast and foul.

ICED MOUNTAIN TREE

Now-days we’ve got communication gadgets coming out of our ying yangs and yet if you try to phone these communication companies, you might as well settle down for a day of sitting on your ass, your cell phone or mobile set on loud speaker, so you don’t burn off your ear, your phone sucking out the battery’s power while you listen to elevator music over and over again with periodic interruptions by smooth voiced persons who inform you they’re sorry about the wait, they value your patronage and they’ll get to your super important phone call as soon as they can. It’s like listening to a brick wall.

WALKING THROUGH ICED TREE FOREST

Speaking of, this summer, Torey and I decided to explore Cheticamp Island. We discovered an old cemetery, picked berries and watched tour boats. They were usually stuffed with tourists who were watching the cormorants, seagulls and eagles minding their own business.

TOREY ADDING COLOUR TO CHETICAMP ISLAND

OLD CHETICAMP ISLAND CEMETERY

At the end of the official hiking part of the day I heard that special call of nature. “Wee wee, wee wee, Larry.”

While feeling this tug of nature I noticed a couple and their black and white dog hiking towards us. They were quite a distance away.

ENJOYING BEING WITH ICED TREES

I figured I had time to zip in and unzip behind a large satellite dish and finish up before the hikers passed by.

I was halfway through when I saw the dog. I quickly ended my session and not too soon because the couple weren’t far behind.

HAPPY TREES IN THEIR COVID BALLOON

The woman asked me if I was doing maintenance on the dish. I indicated I was. You see, I often look like somebody other than who I am. If I’m in the forest, I’m a forest ranger. If I’m picking berries at a U-Pick berry place, I’m not a public picker, no sir, I’m an official worker picker who just happened to be out in the berry field, so dedicated to his job, that he’s picking berries on his coffee break. I’ve been a fella from Seattle, who, while in a grocery store line-up in Ontario, was blamed for breaking up the cashier’s best friend’s marriage. I’m also a forester in Ireland, a doctor from Cleveland, the Commodore at the Baddeck Yacht Club and, on the same day, the evening’s entertainment. Where’s Waldo?

HIKING ON OLD LAKE'S TRAIL

So, I also said to the lady, “Beautiful day, isn’t it.”

It wasn’t that beautiful, but what do you say when you’ve just fibbed, even if it wasn’t a doozy. I love my satellite dish job.

When they walked on down the lane, I finished up and then continued on with my murky life of doing satellite maintenance and breaking up marriages.

ON OLD LAKE'S TRAIL

Why am I telling you this? How does it relate to the social media being so prevalent? People staring at their plastic shiny rectangles, talking at them, pointing them or waving them in the air?

Well you see, a few weeks ago, I was on top of Squirrel Mountain with two of my hiking buddies. From time to time the one fella would take photos and talk to his phone. I assumed he was live-posting the photos and telling his Facebook followers all about how great the day was. And it was. I even found a chair lying in a snowy ditch that I used to put my camera on so I could set it on twelve second delay and get a photo of all three of us. I had planned to buy a tripod, but it’s so much fun trying to find organically creative natural camera supports for steadying my camera that I didn’t. See first section of blog for why I should buy a tripod.

SHARING HIGHLAND'S LOOK-OFF WITH TREES

And of course, while we were enjoying the view I had time to tell the story about having a wee wee on Cheticamp Island and being mistaken for a satellite dish mechanic. The reason it came up was because we could see Cheticamp Island and the satellite dish from Squirrel Mountain’s summit. It was a gorgeous view!

JALAL ENJOYING VIEW

Anyway, I’ll end this blog by saying that on the way home my hiking buddy and I stopped into the Dancing Goat for a coffee.

I noticed, as I drank my coffee, that he looked sheepish.

You know what he told me?

VINCENT AND JALAL MAKING HOT TEA AND SOUP

He said, “you know that while you were telling us your pee and satellite dish maintenance story that I was live streaming on my cell phone.

Did anybody happen to hear my really interesting satellite whiz story?

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYBODY!

THREE HIKEETEERS

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December 09th, 2020

9/12/2020

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HAUNTED FOREST

I want to begin this blog with a wish that Carter, my grandson, gets the cast off his leg and can soon be back to one hundred percent. I hope he has plenty of important signatures on his cast.

GHOSTLY HIKER AND CYCLIST

Remember, a few blogs back, when I told the story about taking my truck to the dealership? The poor truck had an electrical problem, which by the way, healed up by itself. Anyway, when I’d parked the truck in the service area a poor little disoriented mouse ran out from under the truck.

ONLY A LOG? MAYBE?

The diagnosis, after they hooked my truck up to a Truck Cat Scan, was that an animal may have chewed on a wire or moved a wire around. However, they couldn’t locate the problem. The advice I was given was to stuff my truck with Bounce sheets. The fella told me he did that when he was storing his boat and it kept the varmints away. I think it might work like Voodoo.

A HAPPY TREE

Well, let me say this about that. A few days ago I took a gander at my truck and guess what I saw? A ghost. A wee ghost floating and scurrying around under my truck.

VINCENT STANDING BY BADDECK RIVER

I thought it was a ghost because it was white. I knew it wasn’t a ghost when I realized that a squirrel was carrying it in his mouth. I assume to use for the building of his winter nest.

This incident wasn’t such a big deal except for two facts. The critter was carrying a Bounce sheet and the critter was under my truck.

VIEW FROM BALD MOUNTAIN SUMMIT

A few days ago I accepted an invitation to cycle to the Bald Mountain trail-head and then climb the mountain. I quickly found out that the easy part, which I assumed to be the cycling, was actually the hard part.

ROAD

The road to the trail-head was arduous. Potholes full of water surprised us with sudden plunges to depths we hadn’t expected. Branches, logs, and big and small rocks littered this bit-of-a-son-of-a-road. Mud, lots of mud, gummed up the trail and, it seemed, just for a chuckle or two, the trail would surprise us with sudden bits of missing roadside.

My hiking buddy and I both took a partial dip, each in our chosen muddy coloured swimming hole.

VINCENT AND ME AT SMALLL CABIN ONLY A SHORT DISTANCE FROM TRAIL TO BALD MOUNTAIN

At one point on the trail, it got so narrow that the bushes were poking and grabbing at me and my camera. I finally had to stop and stuff the camera into my saddle bag. Then when I got on my bike I almost fell over into the expectant bush.

That’s when I came to one of my conclusions. My conclusion being that I do not have as good a balance as I used to have when my hair was brown and the world was my half-eaten

RESTING ON BALD MOUNTAIN SUMMIT

You see, the thing about this stretch of trail was that the ruts were mud-filled and the centre grassy area between the wheel ruts were slippery as heck. So, I chose rut over mound and came to two more conclusions.

SUE AND BUSTER RELAXING

One: cycling through mud is extremely strenuous. Playing three periods of hockey is easier. Granted, much of the trail was uphill.

Two: I’m getting a tad long in the tooth.

VINCENT READING LOG BOOKS

When we finally got to the trail-head at two-fifteen pm, I was ready to head back. I didn’t want to cycle back in the dark and we still had a mountain to climb.

My hiking buddy, Vincent, went into his sarge-mode and convinced me that we could do it. So we climbed it and the view was, as always, spectacular. Mist softening the distant hills while the sun teetered dangerously close to the horizon.

VINCENT, TOREY AND ME AT MYLES DOYLE FALLS

We stopped for about fifteen minutes so we could eat a snack and savour the view before we headed back. The Sarge barking out, from time to time, “No pain, no gain.”

We arrived at the bottom of the mountain just before the darkness began to gobble up the remaining light.

Sarge gave me a wee light, about the size of a toonie and then we set off. Sarge took the lead.

VINCENT, TOREY AND ME AT ST. MARGARET'S OF SCOTLAND CHURCH ON MOUNTAIN

The wee light threw no perceptible illumination. However, Sarge would shout guidance. “Stay to the left of this mud hole.”

“Watch out for the culvert.”

“Stay in the middle.”

Anyway, I learned another lesson while I was cycling this darkening trail. The darker it gets the more powerful a tiny light becomes.

ROAD TO CHURCH

The very last huge mud-hole, before I got to my truck, had a little fun. I thought I’d plough through the middle like I did a lot of the other huge puddles. However, when I got in the middle, the mud sucked my bike’s tires to a halt. I had to step into the muddy water, which was up to my knees, and found my foot stuck in the mud. It took lots of effort to free my boot and then wade my bike to the beckoning shore. They told me at the store that my boots were water resistant. They are, as long as the water isn’t coming in over the top of the wall.

IS HE THE PRIEST CYCLING TO WORK?

But we had fun, right? And Vincent was kind enough to give me the little light as a token of a job well done.
***
In case this is the last blog before Christmas, we’d like to say: MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY HOLIDAY!!

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SATELLITE REPAIR MAN’S ORGANIC TRIPODS

December 09th, 2020

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