Biking in Westport
February 20, 2008
All through my childhood in Westport I would hear visitors exclaim: “Why are there so many churches in such a small village?” I didn’t have an answer at that time, but later on I came up with an explanation: instant prayer and The Mountain.
More specifically, it was the corner on the Lower Mountain which used to snake its way around Stan Crawford’s house. I would suggest that over the years many a deal was struck with The Almighty on the lower reaches of that hill by a series of young men on bicycles with failed brakes, some with a pant leg wrapped hopelessly around the sprocket, others with the chain flapping randomly beside the bike. Without hand brakes, about all you had was prayer and adrenaline as the white corner of Stan’s house loomed up and you leaned the bike over until the pedals scraped.
There are no atheists on bikes without chains.
I don’t recall any cyclist-shaped silhouettes bashed through that wide white sign at the bottom of the hill, so the prayers must have had some effect.
My pal Don Goodfellow had his disaster on the Upper Mountain. What he told us was that a car turned in to the beach and cut him off just as he hit top speed on the run down from the dump, forcing him to run headlong into the Anglican Cemetery’s wire fence. He reportedly flipped over the page-wire panel and came to rest with a tombstone as a backrest.
I remember joining Bob Conroy, Don, Johnny Wing, Jim Forrester and David Roberts on a ride “back the mountain” to a cheese factory, loading up on a pound of fresh curd each, then coasting back to town. By the time we got home in the hot sun, what was left of the curd was positively leaping around in the bags, a fitting accompaniment for a lunch of green apples.
This was before the days of mountain bikes, though we could have used them. One summer our favourite pastime was to schuss down the hill next to the beach, rolling over old hay and juniper bushes, seeing who could make the slope last the longest while not putting a foot down until the wheel hit water.
Later on it was my great pleasure to introduce my son to cycling in Westport. Charlie and I made a trip around my old haunts a part of every summer’s cruise. One time my mother reported coming upon: “This big lug on a bicycle in the middle of 42, and he had a little kid with him, and a dog on a leash, and they were riding right down the highway!” My sister broke it to her that the obstructions on the road were in all probability Rod, Charlie and Grover returning to the boat after a visit to the Bresee homestead.
Perhaps the greatest triumph of technology over the aging process was the first time Charlie and I rode up the lower mountain. He was about thirteen at the time, and had put a lot of effort into his bike. I had a standard Raleigh12 speed mountain bike, but lots of determination. We had talked about this for months.
Off we went. We passed where we used to have to stop and push our old one-speeds. Then we passed where the best bikes of the sixties gave out. Then we shifted down to the lowest gears and kept grinding at about walking speed. The hill grew steeper, and then nearly vertical. I started to zig-zag across the hill, counting upon my hearing to save me from vehicles in the grip of gravity in the oncoming lane.
I’m not saying it was pretty. There was drool all over the front forks of the Raleigh. I couldn’t talk for wheezing by the time we reached the entrance to Foley Mountain, but I had climbed The Lower Mountain on a bike without putting a foot down, and I didn’t die! My partner seemed much less fatigued. Better gears, I guess.
I had warned Charlie that he would have to look out for himself on the trip down, because in my 14th year I had burned out the speedometer on my bike coasting down this stretch and that speedometer registered up to fifty.
He didn’t seem too impressed, and was even less worried that his digital instruments would be stressed by a little run down the hill. He refused to call it The Mountain.
Off we went, coasting. He drifted a bit ahead. Huh? I have seventy-five pounds on him and he’s getting ahead? On the steepest part of the hill a porcupine waddled out into his lane. In horror I watched him brake neatly, steer around the rodent, and then accelerate away from me again. He made the widened corner at the bottom without incident, then coasted over to The Spring for a drink.
I puffed in behind him. “Thirty-two miles an hour, Dad. That’s a nice hill.”
So much for my fifty miles per hour. “I couldn’t believe it when you coasted away from me like that. What have you done to that bike?”
“Remember what I told you about the bearings in stock bikes? The after-market ones roll with much less resistance. That’s why I spent so much to change them. You should upgrade your bearings and save some effort.”
I don’t remember what I mumbled, but the bike is still hanging in the garage, unchanged.
On the other hand, that porcupine showed me that instant prayer is still very much a part of my repertoire.
The Floor Sander
February 18, 2008
The biggest renovation task when we moved to an older house involved tearing up old carpet to get to the good hardwood floors underneath. The rusted staples through the underlay made my blood boil, but we managed to bleach most of the stains out. Some rooms were so heavily coated with oily varnish that it proved quicker and much cheaper to scratch the finish off with a brace of hand scrapers than to gum up the sander’s belts in seconds of use.
Over a couple of weeks the floors and stairway succumbed. Most of the varnish went on very well, but I had read that the open grain of oak required filler before the varnish, so in the living room I slathered on a generous dose of the goop and waited for it to set. It didn’t. More research revealed that Japan dryer mixed into varnish makes it dry much more quickly. I resolved to put a coat of modified varnish onto the floor in the hope that it would mix with the filler and cause the whole thing to harden. This left a living-room pool of smelly liquid. Not good. Maybe if I used more dryer. To apply the second coat I had to wade, so I settled upon woolen socks covered by clear plastic bags as the footwear of choice. In I went with the foam applicator on a broom handle, and on went the third coat with a fervent prayer to whatever deity controls the drying of varnish.
It worked. The whole thing set up beautifully. Two more coats of gloss and we had a magnificent living room floor.
Thus emboldened, I set my sights on my son’s bedroom. He needed a desk and shelf-unit, so I picked up 300 bd. feet of red oak from a mill north of #7, ran it through the planer and built a complex work unit. This left a great deal of surface to sand, so I resolved to rent a floor sander for his bedroom floor and then press it into service for the new wood, as well.
The old-style Clarke drum sander hurts my back. The angle is just wrong. At that time I was at the stage of life where I tended to adjust things to suit. It turned out that the handles don’t adjust that high. This discovery came to me as I held dumbly to the handle while the rest of the unit took off down a flight of stairs, under full power until the cord pulled out.
Yikes! Fortunately the oak baseboards were pretty tough and I hadn’t hit any balusters, so I got by with one dent in the pine flooring on the landing.
The day was wearing on and I still had that pile of oak to sand, so I moved the unit to the back deck and smoothed the two desk tops without incident. But the deck was the wrong shape for shelves. Ideally a long, flat area would be best for the narrower pieces. The street! Church Street at that time was a series of long, concrete slabs: a smooth, uninterrupted sanding surface.
Fueled by coffee and determined to complete the job before the sander was due back at the rental agency, I arranged the shelves one after the other along the quiet street. The heavy red cord wouldn’t reach the outlet in the garage. In haste I grabbed an extension, one of those yellow things on a reel which were popular in the 80’s. It reached. I plugged in and started the first shelf. Pop! The sander quit. The breaker on the cord reel had let go.
In frustration I walked over and punched the reset button.
Nothing on this earth accelerates as quickly as a Clarke floor sander on concrete. By the time I could get my finger off the breaker the thing was down the street and out of sight behind a Pontiac. What’s worse, I heard a loud “crump” when it hit the curb. Silence.
I looked around. Everyone in the neighbourhood had vanished, even the owner of the car.
The sander did not enjoy its encounter with the curb. It cracked the cast aluminum casing. Of course I tried to puzzle out how such an accident could have happened – or more likely I tried to find an explanation which made me seem a little less of an idiot. It came down to the clearly-labeled electronic switch on the unit. Electronic switches don’t normally start up after a power interruption. This one obviously did. Turns out the rental guy had replaced the worn-out switch with a regular light switch, but hadn’t changed the label.
Still, returning the sander was easily my most embarrassing moment to that point in our life in Smiths Falls. Later on I bought my own unit, but I’ve never tried to raise the handle. I just sand until my back hurts, and then quit for the day. It works fine that way. Oh, yes, I also threw that yellow, wind-up cord away and bought a heavier one.
More on the 1976 Ski Doo Alpine
February 14, 2008
The Alpine’s been sitting outside, safe from the dust of the barn. There’s been a lot of snow, though, and the blast from my snowblower may have cuffed it a time or two. When I started it yesterday to move it a little higher in the snowbank, it wouldn’t move. Strange, I’d never had it frozen in before.
I kicked enough crusted snow off the foot-trays that I could stand up. The usual shaking motion didn’t work. No movement whatever. No wonder it sat there, emitting smoke and steam around its track.
I had just put the tractor away, so I fired the diesel up and nosed the loader over a three-foot snowbank and up to the front of the Ski Doo. I looped a wrapping chain around the front bar and slotted it into a hook welded to the loader. Up it came. No problem. Few things are as gentle and as powerful as a good hydraulic loader on a tractor. I lifted the Alpine until it lurched ahead a few feet, then set it down carefully and put the tractor away.
It engaged forward gear easily after it was freed from the snow, and away we went into the soft, fluffy stuff, most of which seemed determined to come over the windshield and right into my face. Face shield in place, I concentrated on keeping enough fuel to the cold engine with the primer, and I headed out into an eight-acre field. Turning proved a real challenge, as the Alpine has excellent traction in this snow, but it won’t turn without some driver ingenuity. Finally I had it warm enough that I could jazz the throttle, shifting the weight forward and back enough for it to realize that the front ski was turned all the way to the right. It reluctantly turned a bit each time I blipped the throttle.
Normally I can kick the back end around a corner, but the snow was gobbling up the horsepower, and I had to be careful in the unfamiliar footing, as one earlier cowboy session left me with a badly scratched helmet and two cracked ribs.
Never throw an Alpine into a series of skids on a frozen lake. If the track suddenly catches, it will tip. 38″ away from the stub-point where the track meets the obstruction there is a foot, firmly placed on its tray on the opposite side of the track. The launch off that machine was a sensation I’ll never forget – just a tremendous surge of power under my right foot, and then I was airborne. The Alpine stopped on its side, still idling. My trajectory was a little more radical: the first thing to hit was my visor, which quickly slid down to protect my face. Full marks for the helmet, by the way. The top of the helmet took quite a bit of the impact, but what was left seemed to take an inordinate interest in the left side of my rib cage. This hurt.
Gradually I collected myself and got up. This childish accident had been entirely my own fault. The Alpine was still idling quietly on its side, undamaged. I carefully tipped it up, as I feared I’d never be able to pull that cord again if it stalled.
Gingerly I climbed on and ran the thing a short distance to the marina where my truck and trailer waited. An old friend had just arrived from Montreal as I rammed the Alpine onto and almost through the front panel of the trailer.
Now I know what the expression “Save your breath!” means. I really didn’t want to talk to this guy. It hurt too much. Home I went, having learned the lesson that you never, ever, give an Alpine the opportunity to launch you like a diseased cow on a medieval catapult.
But I digress.
Yesterday’s mission was to recover a 20′ ladder abandoned under the snow after my neighbours had winched down a large elm. I knew the ladder had a rope attached, so I planned a route which would take the machine close to the tree. The turning was the only problem. I rooted the ladder out of the snow, looped the rope over the trailer hitch and blasted away. Straight for the summer deck. More blipping of the throttle and I got it and its load headed downhill. A half-mile later I picked up the reciprocal course and then steering was easy because the earlier track was a bit more than a foot down in the loose snow. All I had to do was use the sides as banking when I wanted to turn.
Pulling a ladder through a foot of snow isn’t much of a challenge for the Alpine, it turns out. Might be different if I had hooked a fence post, but things went well. I left the ladder on top of a pile of lumber I had driven over by accident earlier.
By this point the machine was well warmed up and I was ready for a nap, so I parked it in a slightly less exposed location and headed in for a shower.
Sunday, 17 February:
I thought I had enough gas in the Alpine for a spin around the property. What I hadn’t counted on was having to stop, back and fill around a sharp turn in the woodlot. When I backed up the nose dropped deeply into the snow, and with the nose down it was out of gas. I set off on the short walk back to the house. The snow only seemed about six inches deep on the snowmobile’s track, but with each step my foot would hit a bit of ice about half-way down, then slip a bit to the right, and fall on through. It made for brutally slow walking, even on the broken track. I wisely resisted the temptation to cut across a field and struggled all the way out through a long loop into the field and finally up the hill to the barn.
Exhausted after a half-mile, I stumbled into the shower, ate a meal, and got ready for a nap. Things would have been much different had I been further from shelter.
Next time I’ll take snowshoes and extra fuel, regardless of my travel plans.
Shrike!
February 13, 2008
This inconspicuous little gray bird zoomed down and killed a male cardinal on the back deck at noon today. I looked out the kitchen window and he stared up at me from about six feet away, then grabbed the cardinal and flew under the railing with it to a fence row just down from the house. Two hours later, he landed in the white mulberry tree and fluffed up all contented, wiping the remains of the cardinal from his beak. According to Sibley’s field guide it’s a Loggerhead, but this may be an oversimplification. Logic would insist that it’s a Northern Shrike which only looks like a Loggerhead, because the smaller Loggerheads are down south now, not raiding bird feeders in Eastern Ontario. Still, the beak is short, the mask is wide, and the breast is an even, pale gray. The bird’s a bit smaller than a Blue Jay, and didn’t look much larger than the cardinal. It was quite a stunt slinging the victim underneath and flying off like that.
I think I’ll name him Macbeth.
When I called Leed’s Stewardship Council Member Rhonda Elliot to report the sighting, she was out of the office and I left a message. Apparently they don’t get a lot of birding communications at Leed’s Transit. The receptionist was a bit wide-eyed when she reported to Rhonda: “Rod called and said a sheik killed a cardinal and took off with the body!”
Feathers at 11:00.
Climate Change and the Eastern Ontario Woodlot
February 9, 2008
Before he retired Bob Stewart was the Climate Change Research Coordinator for the Canadian Forest Service. Here are my notes from his lecture at the Eastern Ontario Model Forest Owners annual meeting in Watson’s Corners on February 9th.
“One in sixteen jobs in Ontario is related to forest products, so the impact of climate change is something we must anticipate and manage, though we have the tools and the time to do so.”
For the period 1941 to 1970 the growing season averaged 145 days (May 13 to Oct. 5). From 1971 to 2000 it averaged 160 days (May 2 to Oct. 9). From 2040 to 2060 the model projects a growing season of 175 days (April 24 to Oct. 16).
Extreme weather events are becoming more common. With a projected average 2 degree C. increase in temperature, the 1 in 100 chance of an extreme weather event like a major ice storm becomes more like a 1 in 25 chance.
While other areas of North America will face major upheavals, Eastern Ontario will only be a little warmer over the next fifty years, though precipitation levels will also increase slightly. That is not to say trees won’t face stress, however, because the precipitation/evaporation index doesn’t look good. According to the model, in the hot part of the summer only 75% of the moisture lost to evaporation will come back as precipitation.
Stewart showed a map of the current and projected ranges of the hemlock tree. There’s a wide band between the shaded areas, so it’s obvious that the seeds won’t readily make the 200 mile trip to the southern part of the new zone on their own. “We will see very significant species mix changes in the next 50-60 years in this area. The lag for natural regeneration of southern vegetation to repopulate areas with climate, weather or fire die-offs may take as long as 100 to 150 years if left to seed naturally.
“The most powerful tool to help our forests adapt will be the tree seedling bred for the specific environment, planted and cared for by the property owner. Genetically modified seeds are out of favour at the moment, but a technological fix may be important to enable trees to deal with stresses to come.
“In the past if you’ve ever planted a shrub you bought according to the plant hardiness chart and it didn’t live, blame the chart.” Stewart told us that the old chart was based upon the 1930 to 1960 records. “That period was so warm that the rating was off.” The new temperature and precipitation charts are more accurate.
To give an illustration of how the growing seasons have already changed, Stewart told the group that thirty years ago very little corn and soybean acreage was cultivated in Eastern Ontario.
He concluded on a note of caution: higher summer evaporation means a higher risk of fire for tree stands. He further qualified predictions of massive northward shifts of vegetation: “Trees can’t grow on rock.” He explained that if the soil isn’t there and the nutrients aren’t available, the species can’t get established, regardless of the temperature. A major problem with the northward march of the forest is permafrost, which isn’t receding as quickly as expected.
Perhaps the headline earlier this year was a bit optimistic when the writer predicted sugar maples would be growing along the shores of Hudson Bay within fifty years.
The Trojan Peacock
February 3, 2008
News Flash:
Check out the Science News article (June 7) in which Roz explains some of her research.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/32451/title/How_they_shine
UPDATE: Check the photo of Penelope in action at
One of the simple joys of life is to watch the things the younger generation can get up to. My son and his friend Roslyn brought the device in the photo to the farm this weekend for a few modifications before Roz packs it into her suitcase and takes it to Los Angeles with her. Roz is a graduate student in ornithology at Queen’s, and her field of study is the mating habits of peafowl, specifically the males’ use of iridescence in their feathers to attract the female eye. The Los Angeles Arboretum has the largest collection of free-range peafowl on the continent, so it became a good location for a month of field studies. The problem, as Roz explained it, is that mating season is still several months away. How could she observe male display behaviour when the females aren’t in the mood?
Turns out a fellow grad student is an accomplished taxidermist, and he offered to make up a stuffed peahen for Roz if she could find one. A weekend in New York ended with the purchase of a frozen bird from a farm in Ithaca.
Roz’s research has to do with how peacocks control the iridescence of their feathers, primarily by turning to catch the light from the sun. For the decoy to work to maximum advantage, they’d have to move it around a bit in the presence of the males to enable their best displays.
That’s when the remote control truck came in. Charlie looked back to his boyhood days and turned a Radio Shack RC truck chassis into a parade float for the stuffed bird. The main engineering problem had to do with finding a fastening system for the parts which could be taken on an airliner (no wrenches or screwdrivers) and assembled easily on demand at customs and in the field. In the end he hit upon a roll of duct tape. You can’t beat the stuff sometimes.
Roz had her first lessons at RC peahen-driving in our kitchen. A series of empty paint cans became pylons, and the poor bird held grimly to the platform as she zoomed around.
The creature needed a name, but earlier this week both Charlie and Roz had expressed their disapproval of my calling the local red-tailed hawk by a dumb name like Zeke. Apparently to someone of their generation Zeke has connotations “of a creepy shotgun-loving redneck from the deep South.” Gee, I just thought it sounded like his call, but what do I know? Understandably I was hesitant to offer a name for the new toy, but I made an earnest request for one to personalize the thing for this article.
Then on the way home I thought of that Ryan Gosling movie with the mannequin. Wikipedia had its/her name: Bianca. Perfect. I caught them in the car on the way back to Kingston, but Charlie blurted out before I could speak: “Penelope! Her name is Penelope. Roz and Rob had a phone conference on it, and that’s her name.”
Somewhat taken aback, I tried anyway. “Did you consider Bianca?”
A blank-sounding “no.” He obviously hasn’t seen the movie or read about it.
“Could you at least mention the name to Roz?”
“O.K.” Hoots of laughter from the car. A long pause, more hoots, and then, “It’s still Penelope.”
Scratching my head about how Zeke is too “old” a name for their generation, but Penelope isn’t, I signed off. Then I started to think: in Homer’s The Odyssey Penelope was a magnet for every available man for many years while her husband Odysseus was away sacking Troy. She managed to maintain her dignity and integrity throughout, but there was no doubting that males found her attractive. And their home island/farm was, of course, Ithaca. What’s more, Odysseus was best known for his clever invention, a statue of a horse mounted on wheels, designed to deceive the Trojans into letting down their guard.
If the rest of the research is as clever as the decoy’s name, Roz and her crew should have an interesting month in LA.
The things kids get up to these days.
Power Outage
January 30, 2008
It’s been a day of power interruptions. Mom returned home from Portland today to report that the post office couldn’t give her a phone card because the power was off all the way to Lombardy. Forfar seemed fine, so I checked that the generator was gassed and plugged in and headed for home to nurse a cold.
This afternoon at 5:30 my computer screen faded to black and the lights came back on at about 1/3 intensity. The energy-saving bulbs didn’t look much different, though, until one started to smell really bad and quit. (It returned to service when the power came back on, though, to give it credit.) Not wanting another computer meltdown I pulled the power cord out of the processor, shut off the furnace and the refrigerator, and settled in to await developments.
Bet had just arrived home with groceries, happy that she had cleared the supermarket before things shut down.
I’ve never seen it as dark in Smiths Falls as it was at 6:30 this evening. By 7:35 I had had enough — nothing to do without electricity, eh? — so I jumped in the truck to retrieve the little generator from the farm and stockpile some gas. Who knows how long these things will last? The only working traffic light in town was the last one on the highway. Just past it one service station was lit up and pumping gas to a lineup of cars.
Information was scarce and the speaker a bit insincere. The cashier said, “A little bird told me the power will be on by 9:00 or 9:30 this evening.” Uh, right. I decided to get the generator, just in case.
Once at the farm I loaded up all of the goodies, returned twice for things I had forgotten, and headed for home to the country tunes of Y101.1. All I learned from that is that It woulda been cheaper to keep her around. Y101.1 programing must be recorded in advance. Here we were in the biggest emergency to hit Smiths Falls since the ice storm and they just kept running corny country songs, car ads, and promotions for a tropical getaway.
I felt a stirring in my pocket. The phone! Bet called to tell me that the power was back on. With great relief I glided into town, chuckling at the lines of cars aimlessly touring the parking lots of the fast-food restaurants, trying to find one that had remained open. Then I learned to dodge the disappointed customers: they weren’t looking very carefully when returning, caffeine-less, to the highway.
Bet had everything up and running by the time I returned. Frankly I had dreaded coaxing that little generator to life in the dark. It only likes to start in warm weather, and I’ve never actually hooked it to our furnace: the power it makes is o.k. for a reciprocating saw, but I’m a bit reluctant to feed it to an expensive gas boiler in the middle of winter.
Zeke’s back!
January 26, 2008
I drove in the lane yesterday morning and just as I stopped in front of the house a large bird swooped over the truck and jerked to a halt on top of the nearby hydro pole. Zeke’s back.
Zeke is a young red-tailed hawk, one of a pair who grew up in the woodlot last year.
I was a bit taken aback at first by Zeke’s antics last September. It seemed whenever I was driving around the property this large gray bird would fly up behind me and then crash to a stop on a low tree branch and stare at me as I passed.
A check in a field guide soon identified the new character as a juvenile red-tail. This was a large specimen, but quite clumsy, to judge by his landings.
At the time I was doing a lot of mowing with the bush hog to get the fields ready for IPM parking and demonstrations, and I guess Zeke must have been learning how to hunt on his own at about the same time. Somehow he hit upon shadowing the tractor as a good way to find mice. I soon realized that Zeke’s apparent aggression was just adolescent clumsiness, and my new pal could be counted upon to try his swoop-tactic regularly enough to impress visitors.
One day he and a sibling practiced aerobatics above my head while I tried to mow straight rows. The lesson of the day seemed to be the hover. They took turns riding the slight updraft until they stalled, fell into a spin, pulled out with a sideslip, and then watched the other try the same trick. It’s hard to mow around little pine trees when this is going on above one’s head.
Another day we were driving up the lane in the golf cart when I glimpsed what looked like a newspaper blowing across the gate, but it was moving quickly, and against the wind. Zeke was after the cottontail who had avoided the coyotes all summer by sleeping under farm machinery in the barnyard. We carefully nosed through the gate only to spot Zeke perched on the steering wheel of my old Massey, staring intently at the mower. He flapped off in disgust when we disturbed him, and from then on chose the more private hydro pole as his perch.
Anyway, yesterday morning Zeke had returned to his pole. He stared at me for some time as I sat in my truck and watched him. He looks bigger than ever, and magnificent in his new adult plumage. When he realized that I wasn’t about to roll out any mice, he glided through a maple tree, over the bird feeder (ignored by the junkos and goldfinches), and landed at the top of one of the tall maples overlooking the road.
Mom grabbed the binoculars and quickly noticed that Zeke had his eye on the flock of turkeys in the field across the road. Would a red-tail attack a fully-grown turkey?
It took a couple of minutes but the flock caught on to his presence. Then they did a remarkable thing, and my mother recounted this to me, wide-eyed: “They all sort of hunched down and blended together into a long, narrow line of turkeys. Then they walked quickly off into the woods. You couldn’t tell one from the next, they were so close together.”
I don’t know where he’s been, or even if red-tails migrate, but it’s good to see Zeke crashing into the odd tree branch around the house again.
Renewing Acquaintances
January 18, 2008
Attending my uncle’s wake in Westport this week proved a jolt of sorts. I talked to Salem farmer Bob Ambler for the first time in 54 years. When I told Howard Maynard’s daughter tales of hunting in their woods during my childhood, he reminded me that his mother had also kept me supplied with .22 ammunition, a practical way to cut down on the woodchuck population on the property.
Jack and Mary Dier don’t look a day older than they did in 1973. How do they do it?
A couple of people at the wake were able to identify me by the blurry photo above my articles in The Review-Mirror.
The jolt came though, when Linda Bryce told me that she had read the column about the Volkswagen Beetle to her dad just before he passed away this week. It wasn’t until a bit later that I made the connection: Linda is the cousin who bought the car from us, and her dad, Don Hannah, had replaced the floorboards for her. They would have known the Beetle even better than we did.
It’s far too easy over the years to forget the intricate connections which have made us who we are.
—————————————————————————–
Offroad Adventures with a 1973 VW Beetle
By Rod Croskery
Later on in life a man may forget the name of his first love, but he will never forget the intimate details of his first new car. Mine was a yellow 1973 VW Beetle Custom. I chose the Custom model rather than the Superbeetle, because I was skeptical of those newfangled MacPherson struts — thought they were a fad, and CV joints looked to be a maintenance nightmare.
The Beetle was a great car on the road, especially after I replaced the stock bias-ply tires with oversized radials. The thing was amazing on ice: just how amazing I was to discover one Sunday afternoon in February.
The Big Rideau had watered up in mid-winter, leaving a triangular, five-mile expanse of perfectly glare ice. This was too much to resist. Gingerly I drove on at Portland and worked my way up through the gears, getting the feel of the unfamiliar car on the unfamiliar surface. Everything seemed quite well balanced, so I got up into 4th gear and settled into a cruising speed at what I considered the limit of adhesion, 68 miles per hour.
A Ford Courier with a cement mixer in the back came up behind me and then pulled ahead. This would not do. Determined to catch this upstart, I gradually sped up. The Beetle complained, squirmed a bit, then, resigned, settled in all the way up to 80. All of the sudden everything let go at once. There was no gradually-increasing oscillation which normally leads to a spin-out with a Beetle. Nope. All of the sudden I was spinning like a top.
This was quite an interesting sensation: on a zero-traction plane, you go from a vector of 80 mph north to a similar vector counting in about sixty revolutions per minute. I’d never spun that fast or for that long. I started to worry about oil pressure, so I shut the engine off and shifted into neutral. Still spinning, not even slowing, I turned on the tape deck. It worked fine. I was still a mile from any shore and still spinning, so I just settled back and enjoyed the ride.
Eventually the back wheels caught up and the Beetle coasted to a stop. The Ford Courier was long gone over the horizon. I started up again and continued my tour. A new Corvette blew by me, and I chose not to take up the chase. After about an hour of glare-ice driving and a tour to Rideau Ferry and back I had a pretty good feel for the car. 68 miles per hour remained the optimal cruising speed on ice.
The Beetle served us faithfully for ten years and 130 thousand miles. Then it received new floorboards and lived with my cousin for another three. Its only ill-effect from its many off-road adventures was that when we sold the car it was 1 ½ inches longer than when it was new. My dad’s horses had had to tow it quite a lot, sometimes out of ditches, and sometimes like a toboggan over the snowdrifts to the ploughed road. A couple of times I buried the thing while driving on the crust. Once, disgusted, my dad made me wait until spring to recover it. I had to use my wife’s Datsun for a month until the snow melted. What a grouch!
We got rid of the Beetle when our new son arrived. The Rabbit was much safer, but useless off-road. My dad could hardly contain his relief, but two months later he bought his new grandson an army surplus Jeep to drive around the farm.
January Thaw
January 10, 2008
But when he had seen again the face of this world, enjoyed water and sun, warm stones and the sea, he no longer wanted to go back to the infernal darkness. (Albert Camus)
This line from The Myth of Sisyphus came to me this morning as I gently tooled my golf cart down the rows of next year’s walnut seedlings. The sun feels fresh and a little strange on one’s face at this time of year, but it’s a pleasant strangeness. It indicates that the long night of November is finally over. After this thaw winter may bluster and blow, but we know that its anger is a ruse: whatever it throws at us will soon melt away because the sun is ascending more steeply each day. A look at the buds shows they are already much larger than they were last fall.
The melting snow has revealed the net of mouse-burrows which seem to have covered every square yard of the walnut fields, yet so far no saplings show signs of hurt.
The coyote’s footprints in the old snow are close together, with many small detours. He’s walking his route, paying careful attention to the activity below.
The huge wind yesterday took down a white ash on a fence-row below the house. This news provides an excuse for a visit to my neighbour, so I shoot down the road on my golf cart, drawing broad grins from the guys on the loading dock at Baker’s Feeds. They’re enjoying the sun this morning, as well. Grant Stone’s working on a chain saw’s carburetor, and seems inclined to take the tree for firewood as soon as the field is frozen enough to support a tractor, so I head out of the cozy workshop and make my way back up Young’s Hill.
The gods condemned Sisyphus to roll a rock up a hill for all of eternity. Camus insisted that Sisyphus’ rock, intended to be his punishment, was also his victory. In order for him to suffer the gods had to make him aware, and in his awareness came his victory. In those moments of quiet reflection as he walked down the hill to once again resume his pointless task, Sisyphus was happy.
I parked the cart. Inside the house my vacuum cleaner awaited me.
the Walnut Diary 
