Tuesday May 01/2012

Ok I have have not posted anything for a stretch. I have had a lot on my mind, and I have been waiting for a nice sunny day to run out and take some pictures to post but Spring has been a spotty proposition so far.

You know when its Tuesday, just like clockwork, I hear a helicopter coming down the valley from the north at 9am. The doctor from Pemberton comes down once a week to make his calls at the tiny remote native villages of Samaquam, Skatin' and Douglas. I usually hear the machine coming when it clears the mouth of Rogers Creek, and when it is over head the doctor always gets on the radio and announces his arrival for the  residents of Skatin', which is only a few minutes flying time from here. For some reason, the helicopter was extra high today. Right when I wanted a good low helicopter shot to post.

If that wasn't a lame enough picture of a helicopter going over, here is another one. 

Its that little speck you see, or not. That's the doctor.

 Bad bear. I thought I heard something last night, figuring the cats had knocked something over, then look out this am and see the BBQ on the front deck in a wreck. In the nearly 20 years I've been out here no bear has ever molested my BBQ. I initially thought it may have been a wandering band of dogs from Skatin', but there were big sooty bear prints up on top of the hot tub cover, he had got up there and walked around and I'm surprised he didn't fall through.

There have been several mysteries solved around here recently.
First is the case of the missing cat food. I keep dry food for my guard cats out in the shop. I had noticed it had kind of been disappearing over the winter. I had checked some of the likely hiding spots but found no trace. Turns out one or more mice had packed the cat food one piece at a time from the dish across the floor and then scrambled up into the innards of a Honda ATV that was parked in shop. Said ATV developed strange tendencies when taken out for a run in the Spring. The highly trained Hotspring Lodge technicians dug into the problem and found the plenium air-box chock full of about 4 bucks worth of assorted brands of dry cat food.
Little buggers.

 Official taste tester ChUk, no problem we can just recycle it back to the guard cat dish.

 Another perplexing mystery was the case of the missing gas can.
Last Summer I had reached for my can of mixed fuel I keep around for my saws and gas brush saw, and there it was, gone.  I had to think, "who the hell would walk in here and pack off a one gallon can of mixed gas?, esp. when there was a fiver right next to it! I did a search of the immediate area but can be gone.
8 months later, back in March of this year, some young folks were taking a hike up the dry channel out front here and came across a chewed up one gallon gas can, which they brought back to show me. I guess some bear, maybe the same knot head that dumped over my BBQ last night, came upon my fuel can stored behind the shop last summer and was attracted by the bean oil based two-cycle oil. Packing his prize off to the cover by the riverbank then proceeded to bite it full of holes and lap up the contents. He must have been a very volatile bruin after his gas and mix-oil soup.

It is no easy feat to bite into a fuel container, and takes hundreds of pounds per square inch pressure. 

These days the 'green', or environmentally friendly two-cycle and bar-oils sold, are generally based on a bean oil, which most bears find irresistible. I've heard of loggers having their chainsaws packed away, and after searching find them off in the bushes licked absolutely spotless. Pretty funny.

KC's chair.

A fella has been coming out to the hot spring for years, always camping out with his younger brother in law for a week at a stretch. Turns out KC does wood work at home and filled his workshop with projects. He is an avid Hotspring Lodge blog reader and noticed some of the funky works I keep around. He was out in March for his Spring camp and brought me a chair he thought I should have. I think its pretty neat.

It looks to be a great year for playing music. There are numerous projects on the go with different musicians, and gigs lined up through the year. A few years back I met a young feller by the name of Josh Fairbrother. He had organised some jam nights at the hotel in Pemberton while he was slinging beer there to liven up the slow Sunday night shift. A talented songwriter and acoustic guitar player, he came out once or so a year to the hot spring to kayak and play music out in my garage/studio. He had the misfortune of spending last Winter in Saskatchewan, although it did move him to buy an electric guitar and write some rockin' new songs which he couldn't wait to get back to BC to run past his favorite drummer.
He moved into the motor home for a few weeks while he waited for his regular gig in Whistler to start. We went over his songs and played a few impromptu live sets for people whom happened to be around.
This past weekend 'Blackwater MC' got invited to an outdoor jam/birthday party held on the back forty of a riding stable in Pemberton.
First obstacle is I have to cram all my drums and sound gear in to my poor Safari tour bus.

Pit stop by Lillooett Lake, with all the gear on I take it pretty easy, taking an hour and a half to reach pavement.

Mount Currie for a backdrop, would be quite a spot to play on a nice day.
I expected it to be a little cool after dark but I always bring a heat-lamp for out door gigs, I clip it to a tall mic stand and it keeps my heads warm. Mine too.

I'm afraid this is the only picture I got, before I set up. Melanie's birthday was a great success, and in true Pemberton redneck style a car trailer was used as a stage, and a truck load of pallets fed a huge 3 metre high fire all night. Many of Pemberton's most talented musicians got up. I got to play drums the entire night, getting back to the Lodge after four in the morning, way past my bedtime. I had to get up early to get the motor home ready for some fellas and prepare for a chat with the head treaty negotiator on some unrelated business.
My eyes felt like a couple of little a-holes all day after being up all night.

There was days worth of studio time reserved for Monday back in town, I unloaded  the cumbersome sound equipment from the van. All the big stuff, the two large speakers and the amp and sub-woofer and the rat's nest of cables and my van rides about 4 inches higher. Monday I got out of here early to move into the studio in town at 9am. It didn't take me too long to discover I had forgotten my drumsticks. Luckily, Jason, the sound guy, is a drummer and had a pair of the 7A stick size I'm used to.

It was a little intimidating having mics all over me, knowing every little nuance or slight bobble is going straight on to multi-track recording equipment. 

 Josh Fairbrother, song writer and driving force behind Blackwater MC project.
 http://soundcloud.com/blackwatermc

Once Jason had it all dialed in he turned on our headphones and it was a great mix, I could play naturally and Josh and I could interact between the sound deadening mats between him and the 'drum room'. We went straight through 7 songs in the order we always rehearsed them out here at least twice, including a couple of bum starts. The set consists of an even split of electric, and acoustic guitar, Josh's originals, with a cover thrown in.

Command central.  Josh and I took lunch and refreshments at the Pemberton Hotel and Jason spent the afternoon mixing and burnt demo cds, one of which has been playing almost continuously around the Lodge since. The professional sound mixing spoils you, you want to sound that good all the time.

Always nice to be heading home with groceries down the lake road.

There a gig at D'arcy BC coming up on the 12th with Archie Peters for the natives Statl'mx Nation gathering, a one hour performance on the Saturday night, looking forward to that, although we need to get together right quick and brush up on some new material. On the long weekend there are some top notch musicians coming up from Vancouver to jam at the Lodge, and I'm counting the sleeps left.  A few days before the long weekend Blackwater MC is playing at the Pemberton Hotel. Looks to be some gigs and birthday parties through out the summer and not to mention the world famous Skookumstock out here and who knows what else may come up. Going to be a fun summer musically.

Easter Sunday 2012

     I've had a pretty quiet spell for a few weeks. I'm glad Spring has finally put some warmth in the sun, and this long weekend was spectacular. There was a full moon and a pretty good frost for the first night or so, and I bet there were some cool campers down there at the hot spring a few mornings. There were an estimated 30 outfits camped out down there every day and a fair amount of day trippers coming and going. 

 Not much of a picture of the hot spring facility, but there were some people in skimpy bathing suits I was trying to keep out of the frame.

 Back down at this end of the property I had a nice Russian family in the guest cabin most of the weekend I did my best to entertain.

All indications are they had the time of their lives. So much fun they decided to stay over an extra night, raising an alarm at home and getting the RCMP out looking for the guests gone M.I.A. at the hot spring!.

My buddy Josh arrived with several guitars and we treated them to a live 'set' on the Saturday night.

You may recall back a few posts about the wooden bear from the hot spring needing repairs last year and receiving a new lease on life. I had him set up by the front porch here until I got organised enough to move it back down to the hot spring, and I was getting pretty used to it being there, coming up with all kinds of excuses to put off taking him back down to the hot spring and turning him loose.
I have to admit, myself, and anyone else associated with the place, were getting a little sick of hearing, "Wheres the bear?".
During a walk thru of the campsite I happened to mention to Jill Lobley that I had briefly considered their help in relocating the bear back to his original spot. She was camped out with a large outfit up for the annual Easter trip to T'sek.  I was thinking more in terms of next years visit for this project, and immediately realised my mistake. She charged off at a dead run and next thing I know bear nappers of every description have emptied out of her campsite and converged on the Lodge.

 They cornered the terrified bear at the front deck and fired him into the back of my pick up, forcing me to drive.

The inert captive was transported down to the hot spring then loaded onto my rubber tired wagon and wheeled back to his familiar spot, leveled up and turned loose. First we had to line up to get back in.

 Turned loose in familiar habitat. Everyone back off before the tranquilizer wears off.

Takes a lot of engineers to handle a big job.

A Mystery Generated, The Legend Of Bluff Corner

   
    One Saturday a number of years back there was a clomp up the steps and a knock at the Lodge door.
Before I opened it, I speculated on what it was going to be this time. Someone with a flat tire, or two,  they could be needing gas, or a jump start, or maybe just going to ask if I knew where the hot spring was.
An unhappy looking man stood there, "Do you know where I could launch a boat?" he asked, hesitantly.
This rightly aroused my curiosity, as two words that seldom come up in the same sentence, are boat, and the local fast moving river, "Doing a little fishing?" I asked.
"Not if I can help it!" he says. Well it turns out a few days before, the company he works for had sent a junior member of the team out to the middle of no-where to retrieve their large 25kw diesel trailer mounted genset that had been on rental to an outfit building a school down at the small remote first nation community of Skatin'. He didn't make it far down the road before the tow vehicle hitch came loose. Normally that is bad enough, but as luck would have it, it happened at an area known locally as "The Bluff", which is just a short distance downstream of the hot spring here. The industrial size genset is mounted in an enclosed trailer that sets on tandem axles, so once freed from the restraints of the hitch it looses no enthusiasm for the journey, but fails to follow the tow vehicle around the Bluff Corner corner, launching off the cliff side berm and doing a spectacular backwards somersault and dropping into the Lillooett River below making a tremendous white splash.
    There are some things in life you just wish you had been there to see, unless you were the guy driving the tow vehicle. The scene in his rear view mirror will be forever etched into his mind, and it must have been a very long drive back to Vancouver.
His replacement speaks of him with disgust, and refers to him as 'the ex-employee'.
I jumped in his pickup and we headed the few clicks down the road to the notorious bluff. Along the way he told me how, with the exception of the boss, everyone back at the shop had such a big laugh out of the new kid being gone for an entire shift and coming back with no generator. The loud firing that followed will long be remembered within the organisation, and a further source of jokes around the lunchroom coffee machine for months to come.
   We stood on the Bluff corner and sure as hell, you could see these tandem axle tire tracks continue off the corner then blast off the graders berm on the edge, and what ever made them now lay submerged in the cold green, boiling waters. I can tell any initial mirth he might have found in the plight of the ex-employee left him when he was singled out and assigned to drive out to the middle of no-where on his normal day off to asses the situation for salvage. He tells me his boss, whom he starts to refer to as "that old bastard", had suggested he go out into the river in a small boat dragging the bottom with a hook in an attempt to 'snag' onto the chassis of the genset, bringing the line back to shore then drag the unit in close enough to fish it out of there by some means, like a  tow truck. "That's easy for him to say, old bastard!" he says.
  This was late Spring, and the river was fast with melt. I suggested he wait until the water dropped later in the season before launching his creaky row-boat, and stated the large slurping whirlpools would be smaller then too. That was all the encouragement he needed, and tore off in an attempt to get home before the game started. "Let me know when you come back!" I had told him, not wishing to miss out on the entertainment.
   I half expected an insurance company to get involved and there would be some activity, and it would have to come out you would think, with the coolant, engine oil, and diesel tank. I was familiar with the unit, it was an older model that had seen many hours and paid for its self twice over, I think the owner decided it would be less trouble to just take it off the books.
Rumours of the Bluff Corner Genset persisted over the years, becoming part of the local lore told around smoky fires, with the odd reported sighting from a helicopter pilot at low water.
  Every time I drove by there I was always haunted by the spirit of the generating plant. Or what would be left of it, metal objects , like vehicles, get torn apart by the water's force. I wondered if it had possibly rolled onto its wheels, and on the bumpy river bottom could go quite a ways downstream.
   Last week there was a clomping up the steps, and a frantic knock at the Lodge door.
A passing hiker had made a fleeting sighting of the legendary genset. An expedition was hastily organised and the party fought their way down the bank through the buck brush and boulders and out onto the exposed river channel, sneaking up on the subject and snapping the following pictures, seen here for the first time.
   
Another myth, busted.

That point you can just see way upstream on the right is where it landed in the river upon re-entry. In the past 8 years the force of the river in flood stage has tumbled it along tearing away the enclosure and the chassis and wheels, only the heaviest single chunk, the Caterpillar engine, remains.

Any lubricants or coolant have long since been washed away, but knowing this thing is sitting in the pristine river bothers me a few times every day. I've brought it to the attention of a contact of mine in the environmental field, and I'm not above tackling the job myself either. It would be a good challenge for me to drag this out of the river, I have enough cable, I would need to use blocks and pulleys and a swear word or two. At least if you can get it to the edge of the far away road  where it could be reached with a picker truck or something.
It could no doubt be the source of a good post too, with proper censuring.


Postscript...
Years ago, I'm guessing 1998, I received complaints from campers down at the hot spring one morning regarding some young knot-heads that had pulled in really late, roaring around, then blasting music and being rude until light and made a can mess at the tubs and generally got it wrong all around. I don't recall what it was that I said, but it was sufficient that they soon pulled out. One vehicle in the group, a black Volkswagen Rabbit, later turned up down river, at this very spot, more or less, where the generator motor now rests. It sat on its roof there for the longest time, visible from the road, but just barely.  Turns out it was reported stolen from the lower mainland. When they had been woke up and challenged at the hot spring by the mad guy with the radio they decided to go down the road to dump the car.
Choosing to let it go off The Bluff Corner with a rock stuck on the gas pedal.

March 12 2012

    Holy smoke its been a couple a weeks since I've posted anything. People are going to think my power has gone off again. Nothing in particular has come to mind to write about, but I'm starting to feel sorry for those poor souls that check in every day to see if I have. I still check the stats every day and find a certain fascination with the whole tracking feature, and I will edit in here later that the first reader of this particular post will be located in Alexandria, Egypt.
 Theres been visitors from 25 countries. I can look into how they reached the site, often from something like google pictures, or key word search. For instance like the fella over in Slovenia that typed in "peltonova turbino", and came up with an image of my pelton wheel. Or the person in Serbia searching saw-mills on his computer, and came up with the story on the shop. I could tell when my buddy Lorne was down in Mexico and checking the site. I can see pretty quick if there has been a mention of the site someplace, often  getting a spike in visits from a cabin or hot spring forum, but mention of Hotspring Lodge comes up in the strangest places out there. I had a visit from a Royal Canadian Mounted Police IP address in Ottawa. Their route to the site was a google picture of one that I had used in my story of the early roadhouse down at the hot spring, I assume some guy on his coffee break googled gold-rush.
The particular image was of some roadhouse artifacts, including a rusted out old rifle and old square nails.
Some visitors stick around for a bit and browse, sometimes downloading a picture or two. Other visits last only seconds, people having a quick look before better judgement takes over.
I'm always surprised at the amount of visits from Russia, for eg. in the past while there had been 1975 visits from Canada, 366 from the States, and 304 in Russia. The States has only taken over the number two position recently after a lot of visits after a mention on a popular cabin forum.
Don't see many comments from readers, maybe its too difficult to log in to comment. I understand my 'blog' may be a little confusing to someone who just logs on cold turkey and starts reading from the top down. Someone did comment recently that instead of a blog it reads like a book, only backwards! 

In the olden days I remember sitting out here writing stories for a planned book with my Brother word processor to pass the time, mostly to do with my then recent adventures and misadventures in the wilds of Central America. I'd print  copies out for friends and relatives, sometimes 20 pages filled on both sides stapled together then stuffed into an envelope and mailed on the next trip to town.
A month or so later I might get a card back saying, "Good one", or "Send the next installment!", or, "You ever heard of spellcheck?"
Nowadays, with my dish, the entire globe is out there with a single poke at the orange 'publish' button.

  Occasionally my publish button may go silent for a stretch, where I am either gone blank, or occupied with other adventures, like housework and things, or catering to my infrequent demanding guests. I had to do some monkey wrenching on my vehicles in the last few weeks too. The roads out here are not really bad. But they are not really good either, and they do take a toll on the vehicles that live out here. I've often been asked over the years, "..whats the best kind of vehicle to use out in this country?.."
I always answer, "Someone else's!".
My little pickup needed some ball-joint work, which was a new experience for me, and back a month or so ago I was coming down the lake road in my van and encountered some loose rock on the road that had come down the bank. That's nothing too unusual but it was a little tight alongside the lake to go around so I decided to straddle one, something I seldom ever do. My van sits lower than any vehicle I've had out here and I had a new washing machine in the back and I'm sure it was sitting lower than usual and I could tell by the sound it hit something other than steel under there. It was that dull thud of a cast aluminium oil pan. I managed to get home before all the oil drained out. Not too big a thing to repair, but in the process noted coolant in the engine oil so apart it came for new top end gaskets, being quite a bit of work.
I can do the mechanical work alright, but I hate having to.

 I finally moved the repaired bear out of the shop. Its taking me awhile to get used to him standing there, and gives me the odd start when I walk by. I have spilled several coffees here on my way out to the shop at night.

 Late February the snow melted off and the sun came out and it was quite nice.

Sitting on the deck eating pistachios kind of afternoon.

This is just down river from lot 1747, the area on the river you see on this side is the hot spring campsite.

Then it snowed.

Then it got nice again.

 No one around at the hot spring campsite.

Then what do you know, it snowed again.

The cycle repeated, and it melted off for a week then snowed again today.

Spring is still a week off so I guess I can't crab too much. I'd have to consult my journals, but I don't recall  snow this late in March. As a rule I'm usually burning dead grass on the field about this time of year.