The Ranger TM in Snow
December 19, 2008
Saturday, January 10, 2009: It was about zero F this morning, and the Polaris wouldn’t start. By noon it limped into motion on one cylinder, and eventually the other one cut in after a long warmup. It may be old plugs, but with 130 hours on it, it shouldn’t be. I’ll give it some new ones tomorrow and then try it.
To its credit, it did manage to start without a boost or a battery charge, but this isn’t good enough. I put the battery on the charger for the afternoon and then it lit up quite easily, so it may be a maintenance, rather than a design issue.
YouTube is full of film clips of Polaris Rangers in sand and mud, but I haven’t seen much about the cold weather operation of the machines.
This week during a cold snap the shift cable froze solid, imprisoning the TM in its tent/garage until heat from the idling engine eventually thawed it out. Requests for information from ATV forums didn’t produce anything useful, quite possibly because all of the avatars of contributors have their machines surrounded by sand or mud, not snow.
The 2004 TM is still under factory warranty, so I called the dealer and explained that this intermittent failure of a cable could be a real safety issue for me if I’m out on a frozen lake in mid-winter, so he ordered a replacement cable.
The Subaru 653 twin didn’t start all that well on the cold morning, either, picking up on one cylinder and the choke, and only gradually getting #2 into the act. I bought the machine as a demonstrator last fall with almost 100 hours on the engine (now 130), and I’ll bet it has never had a plug, though, so I’ll hold off on complaints about cold-weather starting until I have fresh spark in it.
This morning I took the TM for a drive to follow the tracks of the coyote who had scurried out of the barn as I approached. I had a pleasant morning wandering around a hundred acres of fields and pine, spruce and walnut seedlings. The coyote is clearly doing her job, foraging for mice almost exclusively around my young seedlings, so I guess her Christmas bonus is assured, and I’ll try to forgive her persistent use of the miscellaneous piles of shavings in my barn as her personal litter box. What’s with that anyway?
Most of the footing was frozen grass under about four inches of powdery snow. As a test I drove the TM at low speed as far as it would go into a field with a gradually thickening pack of snow and ice left over from an earlier storm. With no load in the back the traction failed before it dragged bottom. Fine. I backed up, interested to see whether the thing would get itself out of a situation on the flat, or if with the differential locked it would skid off the the side and compound the problem. I was quite pleased to find that in reverse it follows its track quite faithfully, and seems able to back out of whatever situation I create for it while driving forward — on the level. It would be foolish to expect to back uphill to get unstuck with a 2WD machine.
All in all, the Ranger TM is quite a pleasant machine in cold weather. So far I have only had one morning when it wouldn’t work, and this may be easy to fix.
A month ago the dealer offered me a used cab frame, windshield, cab enclosure and plastic roof, but I declined after considerable thought. A small cab like this would frost up quickly from one or more persons’ breath on a cold morning. There’s no defroster. Further, if I towed the machine to a lake over sanded highways, I’d have to clean the windshield before starting out. That would be rough on the plastic. The doors would have to be removed for safety when traveling on the ice. What’s more, I have a perfectly good 4X4 pickup which is most capable off-road. Why would I create another, inferior copy of it?
The advantage of the Ranger is that I can look up and enjoy the tall trees when driving through my woodlot. In buildings and around obstructions it’s the easy visibility and lack of fragility of the body which give it an advantage over the truck. A cab would reduce these benefits.
So instead of a cab I have opted for a snowmobile suit and helmet with full face shield and a scarf for the chin area under the helmet which freezes instantly without it. Feet don’t seem to get all that cold, but very heavy mitts are a necessity, as well.
My first cold-weather run nearly froze me before I adapted to snowmobile attire. That time I had some carburetor icing or governor issues: at full speed the engine would bog down to medium revs for a while, then speed up again. It continued to fire well throughout the slowdown, though. Surprisingly, the problem has not recurred. Perhaps there was moisture in the crankcase which frosted the carburetor, but once it had cleared the problem resolved itself.
I haven’t started my 1976 Ski Doo Alpine yet this winter, and we have had lots of snow. That says something about the appeal of the Ranger TM.
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UPDATE 22 DECEMBER, 2008: Today was so cold my Toyota groaned when starting, but the Polaris lit right up, and the shifter hasn’t whimpered since that one tantrum a week ago. The snow was too deep for the TM, but I had work for it to do, so I cleared a trail back to the woods with my tractor and 5′ snowblower. It was able to bull around enough in the deep snow to turn around at the ends of the road, though more weight in the bed might help. Inexplicably, the left dog on the tailgate release stuck in the on position late this afternoon. (Turns out the right cable had doubled inside the gate, jamming it to the left. No biggie.)
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the reason I needed the Ranger was that my faithful old Massey Harris 30 gas tractor wouldn’t start. Those things always go, but it was too cold today or else it was feeling neglected because of all the attention the Ranger gets.
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UPDATE 29 DECEMBER, 2008: Yesterday’s high temperatures and gale-force winds swept the snow away in our area, so I took the Ranger for a tour of the property to check for damage. No doubt because of the improvement cut in the winter of 2006, the woodlot held up well to the onslaught. Traveling on the trails was easy because the snow was all gone from beneath the maple crown. Then I emerged onto the butternut plantation, which is sheltered from the wind on the eastern side of the woodlot. The far side of the field sported a band of green, but the corn snow (crystalized from freeze/thaw cycles) lay a little deeper than I would have liked in the 150 yards separating me from an easy drive back to the house. Do I back up and go around, or try to get through the deep snow?
I hit the snow at about 3/4 throttle, acceleration limited by some ice on the trail. The Subaru engine sounded as though it was working for once, as I kept the revs up and let the locked differential chew its way through about a foot of soft, heavy snow. It seems the way to get through deep snow with the two wheel-drive Ranger is to keep the rev’s up and let it paw away, because as it passed the point where I thought it would lose momentum and stick (necessitating a rescue with my truck), it just kept going at about jogging speed. It carried on through snow that was quite a bit deeper and harder than I expected, and we gratefully reached the grass on the sunny side of the field. What impressed me was the lack of axle-bouncing of the sort I get in my Toyota when spinning in deep snow. The TM’s axle stays in place well while spinning.
Family members accuse me of deliberately trying to get stuck with my toy. But how can you trust a machine if you don’t know its limits?
Story, an excerpt from Anathem
December 17, 2008
If your favourite quote is Thoreau’s “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” you’ll probably like the following.
Rod
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The way in which Yul had decided to join us on our journey north was strange to me. There had been no rational process, no marshaling of evidence, no weighing of options. But that was how Yul lived his whole life. He had not-I realized-been invited by Gnel to come out and pay us a visit at the fueling station. He had just shown up. He did a new thing with a new set of people every day of his life. And that made him just as different from the people in the traffic jam as I was.
So I looked with fascination at those people in their mobes, and tried to fathom what it would be like. Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be; it was how you got a productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who’d made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day’s end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them. People who couldn’t live without story had been driven into the concents or into jobs like Yul’s. All others had to look somewhere outside of work for a feeling that they were part of a story, which I guessed was why Saeculars were so concerned with sports, and with religion. How else could you see yourself as part of an adventure? Something with a beginning, middle and end in which you played a significant part? We avout had it ready made because we were a part of this project of learning new things. Even if it didn’t always move fast enough for people like Jesry, it did move. You could tell where you were and what you were doing in that story. Yul got all of this for free by living his stories from day to day, and the only drawback was that the world held his stories to be of small account. Perhaps that was why he felt such a compulsion to tell them, not just about his own exploits in the wilderness, but those of his mentors.
Neal Stephenson. Anathem. HarperCollins. 2008. p. 414
Elevation
December 11, 2008
It’s official: they’ve discovered a new emotion. Psychologists are now theorizing that Obama’s electoral victory was the direct result of his high-flown oratory, creating the feeling in listeners that they want to be better people and causing them to forget the cynicism of the past.
O.K., Michael Ignatieff, the time is ripe. You’re probably the best orator in Canadian politics in the last decade, so go for it. End our feelings of cynicism and uplift us.
Ignatieff? He’ll do. Let’s get to work.
December 10, 2008
The crowning of Michael Ignatieff gives the Liberal Party a unique opportunity to attract young Canadians, especially those at universities and those planning to attend. Face it, the guy’s a world-renowned and respected academic. Who wouldn’t want to be on his team?
Following Stephen Harper’s self-mutilation over the last two weeks, the CPC’s main competitive advantage is its bank account. It’s time to refill the Liberal coffers to neutralize that edge. Bob Rae had a good point about the need for grass roots support for a resurgent Federal Liberal Party in Canada. The Achilles’ heel of the one member-one vote leadership campaign he proposed was the creation of instant Liberals to distort the vote. I once joined the Conservative party just so that I could vote against Jim Flaherty in a leadership contest. Those new memberships might work very well as a fund raising strategy, though.
When Rick Mercer’s online petition to ask Stockwell Day to change his name scored hundreds of thousands of signatures in a short time, it signalled that the Internet was here to stay as a force in Canadian politics. Internet use has replaced pubbing as the time-waster of choice of this generation. You Tube, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and websites attract active minds during their times of idleness. These minds look for interesting, arresting ideas which they can’t find in the mainstream.
Ignatieff and company should be able to capitalize on this opportunity. The Green Shift was a good idea sold badly. Liberalism is a compelling idea which has captivated young minds since the days of Bertrand Russell. My opinion of Ignatieff stems from his address to the Liberal National Convention back in 2005(?). It was a terrific speech on what it is to be a liberal.
Who says Canadian federal politics has to be grimy and dull? The mud wrestling of the last month has certainly drawn attention, but it shouldn’t be that hard to raise the level of discourse — if Ignatieff and team act quickly.
Another thing. In Eastern Ontario where I live the ridings are traditionally safe Tory seats. But this may have occurred because strong Liberal candidates haven’t made the commitment while out of power. Kingston MP and Speaker Peter Miliken for twenty years has taken his duties to his constituency seriously. His approach seems to be, “If there are five events to attend and you can’t get to all of them, go to four.”
If a Liberal candidate showed that kind of commitment in Leeds and Grenville, and even in Lanark, the outcome might be very different in a few years.
In the meantime, we geezers should get out our chequebooks… Uh… I don’t use cheques any more. Iggie: how about an email address to which we can send online contributions?
The Road to Power
December 7, 2008
The road to power in Canada is to march to the left while claiming to march to the right, and to adapt to every eventuality while proudly proclaiming that you will never change.
Nobody I asked was able to give me the source or precise wording of the above truism, but all agreed that it has been around Canadian history for generations. If any reader can clarify the statement, please drop me a line.
My point with the quotation is that Canadian politicians invariably change after they are elected and discover the true nature of their jobs. Honourable men and women, regardless of their politics, once in parliament form a strong commitment to doing the best they can with what they have. For this reason I trust Gilles Duceppe a lot more than Stephen Harper because Duceppe has long demonstrated pragmatic behaviour in the House of Commons, despite his claims to the contrary. He does his job as defined by his constituents as well as he can, and I believe he will honour his commitment should the coalition take power.
Stephen Harper gained re-election on a promise of pragmatic leadership, but as soon as the opportunity arose, he tore off to the right wing in a spectacularly un-Canadian manner, seeking to settle a few personal scores and upsetting everyone to no good purpose. When cornered, he let loose blasts of vitriol which I fear have blistered relations within the country for the foreseeable future. As more and more analysts are now saying, it seems he can’t help himself: he just has to attack.
In all fairness, though, I can’t go through with my suggestion that Harper is to blame for the closing of the Chaudiere Bridge to Quebec from Ottawa because of crumbling arches. Last week’s bombast, even though fired in that direction, just wasn’t that powerful.
Speaking of bombast, we had an amazing evening of television last week when Harper asked the networks for time to make a public service announcement and the coalition members asked for equal time. I wonder if Simpson, Jaccard and Rivers had any inkling of what could happen when they named their 2007 publication Hot Air. Stephane Dion’s inadvertent endorsement of the book on climate change turned into one of those bizarrely cruel accidents on which the fates of nations turn.
Liberal aide Mike Gzowski mustn’t be much of a photographer. The camera’s automatic focus seemed to be oriented toward the upper left corner of the screen, rather than Mr. Dion’s face in the centre. Thus the only thing clearly in focus for the entire speech was the end paper of the volume at the corner of the bookshelf in the background, Hot Air.
As I watched I found it very difficult not to take this as an editorial comment upon all that was happening on this fevered and painfully amateurish evening in Ottawa. First we had Stephen Harper-as-vampire in a darkened red room, heavy with draped Canadian flags, speaking soothing banalities in a strange lisp through bad pancake makeup.
Then came a half-hour of Peter Mansbridge ad-libbing – not an unpleasant experience, by the way.
At long last the tape began with a flash of red, and then Dion’s nose. Why in the world would anyone set up a camera at this angle? Gzowski couldn’t figure out how to raise the tripod? At first I thought it must be deliberate sabotage, or that the nutty professor was trying to use the camera by himself. If I were to write a comic scene for a novel I couldn’t do better than this.
My mind flipped back to the defining moment of the election campaign in which Dalton McGuinty replaced Ernie Eves as Ontario P.M. The initial goof was a Friday press release from the Tory war room calling McGuinty “an evil, reptilian kitten eater from another planet,” but that wasn’t the defining moment. It came the following day when at a media stop on a dairy farm, a kitten wandered over to the feet of the candidate. With a grin to the photographers he picked it up and they snapped away. As soon as I saw that picture Monday morning, I knew the thing was won.
In this case, amid the hyperbole, distortions and outright lies emanating from Harper and his Myrmidons, I ran across this word from the gods: “Hot Air!” But the only lie so far I had heard from Dion was a vague claim to competence. From the looks of this film, though, that claim was a real whopper, and it has left Dion’s leadership in tatters.
On Sunday evening as I write this the political landscape in Canada has again changed. Stephane Dion will resign the leadership prior to the Liberal caucus meeting on Wednesday, and Dominic Leblanc and Bob Rae will throw their support behind Michael Ignatieff as Liberal House Leader. This puts Ignatieff into the game in time for the return of Parliament on January 26th.
Stephen Harper can’t be happy about this development: the Liberals have used his time-out to their advantage, and what’s more, he still has a trunkload of anti-Dion ads and only a month or so to dust off some anti-Soviet, anti-Harvard stuff. What’s more, Iggy will be no pushover.
The play which could still win the day for the CPC would be if Harper resigned or the caucus removed him. Coalition support would evaporate on the spot. If they have the guts to do it my next vote is Conservative, because the local MPs seem to be pretty good guys.
Searching for the proper quote
December 3, 2008
22 DECEMBER: OMIGOSH! DID STEPHEN HARPER READ THIS COLUMN??? HES…MARCHING TO THE LEFT, JUST LIKE IN THE QUOTE!!!
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I’m going nuts trying to find the correct version of the following quotation:
The road to power in Canada is to march to the left while claiming to march to the right, and to adapt to every eventuality while proudly proclaiming that you will never change.
I think John Diefenbaker, Dalton Camp or Peter C. Newman said it, and it’s at the heart of my argument, so I would very much like to nail it down.
My pitch is that I trust Gilles Duceppe a lot more than Stephen Harper because Duceppe has long demonstrated pragmatic behaviour in the House of Commons, despite his claims to the contrary. I believe he will go along with the coalition in order to do a good job.
Stephen Harper gained re-election on a promise of pragmatic leadership, but as soon as the opportunity arose, he tore off to the right in a spectacularly un-Canadian manner, thereby upsetting everyone to no good purpose. Such a man cannot be trusted.
Laurence Peter once said: Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.
Such is certainly the case in Canada at the moment. The less informed the speaker, the more certain he or she is about the current situation in Ottawa. Astonishingly, most accept Harper’s argument that it must be illegal to overthrow an elected, minority government. Only the educated few realize that this is a normal function of the parliamentary system, however seldom used.
Blood in the snow on Parliament Hill
November 30, 2008
Last Friday the Finance Minister’s update created chaos on Parliament Hill. While journalists waited for a stimulus package to lead worried Canadians into the New Year, what they saw was a series of partisan attacks upon public servants, working women, and the opposition parties. To compound their amazement, Flaherty predicted a surplus. T.V. newsmen openly laughed at the math used to produce that set of numbers, but all through the weekend every Tory M.P. interviewed grimly stuck to the party line distributed by Chief of Staff Guy Giorno and condemned opposition bail-out plans “written on the back of an envelope.”
Minds of a historical bent immediately flipped back to the Harris-Eves years in Ontario when the route to a balanced budget lay in selling Highway 407 to an Arab consortium and the Bruce Generating Station to a British utility. The subsequent mess this crowd made of power generation in Ontario remains, with Walkerton, the enduring legacy of that government.
So Flaherty’s done it again. As ex-M.P. Garth Turner put it this week in his blog, “He did nothing to create a single job for one Canadian worker. But he walked us closer to the brink of deficit, started to sell off the furniture, and forced a needless war with his political opponents at a time when the country needs all oars in the water. http://www.garth.ca/weblog/2008/11/
Then Friday afternoon Stephen Harper waxed indignant because of “a plot to overthrow Canada’s government hatched by the opposition.” This stand was a little hypocritical for Mr. Harper, unless he somehow forgot a 2004 letter to the Governor General bearing his signature along with those of Layton and Duceppe in which he tried exactly the same tactic against Paul Martin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Harper).
Sunday Harper unveiled a taped phone conversation which suggested that Layton had been hatching this scheme for a long time. Uh, Steve, that’s what the opposition does, according to the BNA act. What’s illegal is when you record such a conversation without their knowledge. That’s a criminal offense.
In his victory speech six weeks ago Harper expressed his hope that this parliament would work smoothly to benefit all Canadians in a time of economic uncertainty. So why did he attack the right to strike of public servants, block pay equity legislation, and attempt to bankrupt the opposition parties by cutting off the $1.95 per vote public subsidy brought in to replace outlawed corporate sponsorship?
No one else in Ottawa could at a single stroke unify the three opposition parties, women in the work force and the public service of Canada, but Flaherty managed to do it and save $28 million in the process. This is either hubris or stupidity. I’m not sure which.
The best minds in the world right now predict a worldwide recession which may well degenerate into another depression as bad as the one in the 1930’s. The world looks to President-elect Obama as much for his calm and his apparent understanding of the circumstances as for his actions (Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money).
In the face of this we have this pair of buffoons: a personal injury lawyer (Flaherty) and a longtime Imperial Oil employee (Harper), who apparently see a world economic crisis as a great time to score points on their opponents.
Canadians were wise enough to keep Harper and company to a minority. The way the rules work, if a minority government fouls up — and it’s pretty clear they have — the Governor General is bound to replace the regime with another viable government, if such a coalition can be found.
Ask an auto worker if you’d rather have your interests represented by a bumbling-but-honest Liberal with a hearing problem or by someone who as finance minister publicly announced that “Ontario is the last place to invest.” The route out of a recession is generally through infrastructure spending, but Flaherty’s position on that one has been, “Cities should stop whining and repair their own crumbling infrastructure.” Furthermore, he offered that the Feds “are not in the pothole business.” Flaherty doesn’t sound like the man to assure financial markets. Oh yeah, there was that flip-flop on income trusts that caused the stock market to dive and even made the U.S. news. Alberta’s Ralph Klein took Flaherty and Harper to task on that one: “The only thing a politician has is his word.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Flaherty
If Klein is right, Harper’s on mighty thin ice, indeed. He promised a fixed term after he defeated Martin, then he broke his own law. He promised financial accountability until the travel invoices from ministers and their staffs hit the papers. Flaherty broke Treasury Board rules for so many single-source contracts to cronies that even the Wikipedia online editors despaired of recording them all.
I have already waxed indignant about Harper’s cribbing of speeches from other politicians, so I won’t go back to it here, though at the time I expressed my belief that those who plagiarize eventually have things come apart on them. Stephen Harper doesn’t appear able to see beyond partisan combat and his own interests. Canada desperately needs an inclusive leader who can help us through the next few months or years. Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty proved last week that they are not the men for the job, and they must go.
Drive-by Ice Reports
November 26, 2008
March 20, 2009: We finished sheeting the dock in Newboro this morning, and none too soon. Yesterday’s task was to haul 150 2 X 6″ planks across 100′ of ice to the dock frame. Walking was generally solid in the open, but we had to build a bridge of planks near shore. Beneath the piles the ice was weak in some places, non-existent in others. A cutoff from a 3 X 14″ pine plank went right through apparently solid ice when it was dropped about three feet and hit on a corner. Nevertheless, the ice held out long enough for us to complete the dock.
Vehicles on the ice now in this area? Crazy.
Would I still walk on it? Yes, with precautions against falling through.
March 4, 2009: We’ve spent the last two days driving pilings for my friend’s new dock on Newboro Lake. The ice is strong and thick out from shore, though I put a foot through at one point as I moved from the sloping ice on shore to the flat part. Water levels seem to have dropped steadily over the last two weeks. We had to deal with top water on the ice because a neighbouring boathouse’s bubbler seems to come on in mid-afternoon, pumping its flow onto the ice above. Nevertheless we were able to work with three tractors and a couple of trucks on the ice in fairly close proximity and there was no sign of movement in the ice. Two of the posts we sank partially the day before were frozen so solidly into the ice that we couldn’t break them out today, even though we pounded on them repeatedly with the bucket of an 85 hp tractor. Unless we had left the piles on bedrock the afternoon before and not realized it, the grip of the ice on those 5 1/2″ steel posts remains a mystery.
February 20, 2009: Newboro Lake shows consistent, thick, hard ice anywhere that I have drilled a hole over the last two weeks. This can change quickly, but at the moment I feel comfortable driving my truck on familiar sections of the lake. Last week I explored Clear Lake and the Scott Island bays of Newboro Lake with my Utility Vehicle, and found the same ice depth wherever I drilled. I’ve seen open water in the middle of Clear and up into the Elbow too often for me to trust the ice in the current, though.
February 9, 2009: Yesterday’s attempt to fish on Newboro Lake left everyone with very wet feet, due to the six inches of slush which covered the harbour area. Only one determined crew drove their SUV out to an ice shack. A brief jaunt onto The Big Rideau at Portland showed that the crust of new ice over the slush was only about an inch deep. I retreated to shore as soon as it cracked under my 1000-pound vehicle.
February 6, 2009: A drive around to ice fishing hotspots today yielded discouraging news. According to snowmobilers Brad and Danny Wilson of Chaffey’s Locks, virtually no lakes are currently travelable away from plowed tracks because of slush and deep snow. I drilled two holes on Newboro Lake and one on The Big Rideau and all showed ice deeper than 24″, but the snow accumulation is such that only snowmobiles can travel freely, and they are at great risk of getting mired in patches of slush. While driving on a plowed track on Newboro Lake today I felt my truck wobbling in a manner consistent with a vehicle on very thin ice — I must have passed over a large puddle of slush beneath a crust of hard ice. Surely enough, I soon came upon the tracks of a previous vehicle which had broken through the thin ice into the slush below, but presumably had had enough momentum to regain the surface. I parked close to shore and walked part-way back to the danger zone to drill a hole, but I hit only solid ice where I drilled. The Big Rideau seemed solid on its well-established ice roads, but I didn’t go off them. There were no fish. Neither were there any recent tracks on Indian or Rock Lakes, save for some foot traffic close to the cottages on Rock. Buck and Devil Lakes, as well, have virtually no tracks from traffic. A lone cross country skier set out onto Devil Lake without difficulty.
JANUARY 27, 2007: I spoke to a snowmobiler today who claimed to have recently hit 90 miles per hour on Upper Beverley Lake on good snow conditions. He heard that a party traveling the Upper Rideau got into ten inches of slush above the ice, though. That got my attention.
JANUARY 25, 2009: From the Rideau Ferry Bridge I noticed a lot of ice fishing activity on the Lower Rideau out off Knoad’s Point, so I continued on to Beveridge Lockstation to check for access to the lake. The messages on shore were ambivalent: a road has been plowed to leave a bare-ice route out onto the lake, but a sign posted where the snowmobiles go on said, “Open water in middle: keep to the eastern part of the bay.” The message wasn’t dated, but was well written and in good condition.
On the other side of the Rideau Ferry Bridge I saw a road plowed out onto the main part of the Lower Rideau. There were no tracks of any sort running beneath the bridge with its currents, though.
I noticed at Port Elmsley and again at Chaffey’s Locks yesterday that they’re running a lot of water at the moment. My heart was in my mouth as I watched three nimrods on snowmobiles crossing very close to the open water on Opinicon Lake. Ski Doos and wintering swans definitely should not mix.
JANUARY 19, 2009: To judge by the vehicular activity on The Big Rideau now there must be lots of ice. I haven’t drilled a hole lately, but before the frigid week just ended I found just over a foot of ice in a sheltered bay on Newboro Lake.
Google seems to prefer this article’s address to the one I’ve kept updated. Sorry.
December 26, 2008 The Big Rideau and Otter Lake are frozen as far as I can see from the road, but I haven’t seen any tracks on the ice. Generally there’s lots of evidence of movement around the edges of the harbours, but not this year.
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I encourage you to post your observations. Be sure to identify the location from which you have observed the lake or river in question.
Half a Nest
November 23, 2008
A few years ago a cow in our pasture worked the cover off a Wood-Miser left unattended overnight. Then she licked all of the switches to “ON”. Her vandalism destroyed the electric lift motor, the main circuit board, and our cutting schedule. This meant that my dad and Gus, the saw-mill contractor, had to finish the work without my help, the school year having begun before the last walnut log was sawn. My seventy-year-old father had little choice but to pile a couple of thousand board feet of cherry and basswood on the outdoor pile. The more valuable walnut he stacked on the part of the barn floor where I normally stored the fishing boat in winter.
I say he stacked this lumber, because without spacers between the boards it can’t dry. Piling involves placing the spacers, and the careful organization of the boards according to length and thickness. I resolved to deal with this expensive heap of black, dusty wood at first opportunity.
This turned out to be the following Sunday, so as soon as I figured that my parents were safely away at church, I dragged the sleepy teenager to the farm. I wanted to pile the lumber on top of a narrow granary on one side of the hay mow in the barn. A row of straw bales currently occupied the space, and Charlie has a mild dust allergy, so I resolved to get the bales out of there before the kid came sneezing onto the scene.
Leaving him half-asleep in the truck, I shed my rain jacket, and clad only in shorts, T-shirt and boat shoes, made my way by ladder to the top of the granary to make short work of the straw. I grabbed the first bale and dropped it down to the empty haymow below. Next bale the same. Then something hit me from behind, an impact like a blast of birdshot. All of the sudden I had hornets all over me! They kept going for my eyes and mouth. I had to get out of there, fast. The ladder was out of the question. I couldn’t wipe bees out of my eyes and climb, too. I jumped, praying I wouldn’t break a leg.
Any movie stunt man would have been proud of my leap. I landed on my feet, hopped over a plow and a low wall, then sprinted for the green field beyond the open door.
The bees stayed right with me, chewing religiously on all parts of me they could reach, especially my back. I dashed past Charlie in the truck, found a patch of smooth grass, and started to roll. This didn’t work. The dislodged bees just kept jumping back aboard. Then Charlie was slapping the bees, killing them in large numbers. More kept coming. I remember noticing that the bees weren’t stinging him, just me, and he was killing them by the dozen and I wasn’t hurting them at all. This seemed unfair.
Charlie got me into the truck, still swatting. Now bee-proof (or so we thought), the next priority seemed to be a trip to the emergency room in Smiths Falls, a half-hour away. I thought I’d drive, as Charlie had just gotten his learner’s permit, and I might be able to make better time in traffic. After a few miles I decided that this wasn’t on.
The words “bee stings” get attention in an E.R., but once they had determined that I wasn’t likely to do anything interesting like dying on them, they were content to ignore me for a while.
The dumbest thing anyone said all day was when the doctor asked me if it hurt. How does one answer a question like that? About then I noticed an exhausted hornet falling out of my shirt. “Odd,” I thought, “that little rascal has been chewing on my armpit all the way to the hospital, and I haven’t noticed.” I took off the shirt and got two more.
In an examining room where the nurse had placed me after painting my back with lotion — I guess her handiwork made me too ugly for the more public emergency room — I removed my shorts and found another hornet under the waistband. This understandably led to a thorough examination of the rest of my clothing. No more hornets.
Just for the record, my offense against the hornet kingdom consisted of tearing their nest apart. They had built a sort of bee-condominium by hollowing out two bales of straw. The second bale I picked up contained half of the nest. In return they decorated me with a total of 75 stings, not counting the ones hidden by hair and beard. Much itching later, I was left with a spectacular set of scabs over my head and upper body. For about a year after the event, bees would still home in on me as if I had a bull’s-eye painted on my nose. It must have been pheromones from the venom, or maybe they can smell panic.
I didn’t touch that lumber until I had to pry the frozen boards apart, and then I did it on a weekday. No more Sunday work on the farm for me. I got stung the last time I tried that.
the Walnut Diary 