I Am Going to Run Out of Spring Projects

     Our BC winters normally give me a lot of slack days, enabling me with a lot of time to think about what outside projects I will do when the weather gets warmer in spring.  However this winter, with its unusual warm spell that melted the snow, has enabled me to do a lot of those spring projects already.

    One of those projects I was planning to do was to replace the coroplast skylights I had on the barn roof.  The very sunny summers we have been getting had caused the plastic coroplast sheets to turn brittle and deteriorate.  Taking advantage of the mild temperatures (11°C, 52°F), I was able to get the job done yesterday.

    I have a lot more respect for working at heights, now that I am in my old age, so I wore a safety harness and made sure the ladder was secured the barn. 

View muy paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Our Unusually Mild Weather Continues

     I couldn’t think of any other thing to blog about today, so as I often do in such situations, I have fallen back to our weather.  We are still sitting in a very unusual warm spell for the first part of what is normally a frigid February.  The temperature was 11°C (52°F) yesterday, and is expected to be 10°C today.  

    Yesterday afternoon, I spent an hour bucking up the big cedar that had fallen a couple of months ago.  That was a job I thought I would put off until spring, when the snow had melted, but since the snow was already gone and it was just “jacket” weather, I thought I might as well take advantage of the situation.

    This morning I took a walk around the pond for a bit of exercise.  There is now water sitting on most of the ice, and as you can see in the photo, there are even a few small bits of open water around some of the cattail stalks.   I am sure the ice is still at least five inches thick over most of the pond, so even if our mild weather continued, it would take quite a while for the ice to disappear. 

    I must say, so far our February sure feels like spring.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

We've Got Spring Weather, What's Going On?

     While a lot of my friends and family are suffering under unusually frigid weather where they live in more southern climes, the Robson Valley residents are shaking their heads wondering what happened to winter.  The 8 inches of snow we had on the ground, which suggested that we were finally going to get a normal winter, has melted away after we received a spell of above freezing temperatures and rain, making it really feel as is Spring had arrived.

    Today it is forecast that our daytime temperature will be 11°C (52°F).   Back in my hometown in Southern Indiana, today’s temperature is -2°C (28°F), and they have a foot (30cm) of snow on the ground.  Things sure seem to be mixed up and unreliable these days.

    On the positive side, the BC’s snow pillow equipment that is up in the mountain alpine and measures the amount of snow and precipitation, is showing that things up there have finally returned to normal after a record breaking low accumulation last winter, which was below historic normal readings.  That is a positive development.

    Time will only tell how the rest of our winter season will pan out.  I don’t really mind the unusually mild temperatures, but would certainly prefer snow to rain.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1996: Wow, The Trains of Europe

     One of the things that impressed me the most during our trip to Europe were the trains.   I had never done much traveling by trains.  I had gone on some long poky train trips in Mexico, were where we sat, rocking back and forth on old hard seats, watching the dry countryside slowly go by.  We felt spoiled, sleeping overnight, in an ancient Pullman Sleeping car. 

    I knew well, the bad reputation of Canada’s Via passenger trains that come through McBride, which are extremely unreliable, arriving either very unexpectedly early, or unexpectedly late.  I knew that when passengers thought they were making good time, the Via train would pull over, sometimes in sight of the destination, and sit on a side rail for 30 minutes to let a freight train go by.

    Anyway, while being aware of those train experiences, I expected that Europe’s trains would be a whole lot superior, but I was blown away at just how much more superior they were.  They were fast, modern, comfortable, convenient, and very efficient.  They ran like railroads were supposed to run, always on time.

    My wife’s experience in Europe had led us to purchase EuroRailPasses, and although expensive, they ended up being worth it.  The passes allowed us to board any train traveling through any European country, without making any reservations.  It was pretty mind blowing.

    I remember one incident, when we arrived at a train station, planning to go somewhere in one direction, then upon discovering that the train departure time was an hour away, we just decided that didn’t want to wait around, so we immediately changed our minds about where we wanted to go that day, and got on a train that was about to leave going to that new destination.   We didn’t have to make a reservation or buy a ticket for the train, we just got on the train and showed our EuroRail Pass.

    On our first European train trip, we got onto the modern car, settled down in the comfortable seats, and being very impressed with it all.  When the ticket clerk came around and asked, we showed him our EuroRailPass, and after looking at it, he said there was a mistake.  “Yikes,” I thought, “What could be wrong?”  

    Then the ticket collector said, “You are in the Second Class Car.  You should be in a First Class car.”  

The Second Class Car was fancy enough for me, but we did gather up our things and walk up to the even more comfortable, First Class Car.

    A lot of Europeans travel to Canada to vacation and I often wonder how they feel after being used to those European trains, and probably expecting much the same train experiences traveling in Canada.  I know it must be a shock to them, to see how our old trains run here.   There is a plan in the works for a fast, modern, efficient train to be built between Calgary and Banff National Park, which I imagine will be closer to the European train experiences.

You can take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Yummy Dutch Treats: "Frits with Mayo" and Vla

     On our 1996 trip to Amsterdam, I was introduced two Dutch gastronomical treats that I remember with great fondness and hunger.   While my wife and I were wandering through the streets, we came upon a small food trailer with a crowd of people congregating in front of it.  It was a vendor selling Frits (French fries) with a generous glob of mayonnaise on top of it.  The only condiment I had ever had with my North American, French fries was ketchup, and I found these freshly fried frits topped with mayo, amazingly delicious.  Just now writing about them, makes me hungry.  

    The other food we were introduced to while visiting my sister in Amsterdam is vla.  Dutch vla, also known as vlaflip is a creamy, silky vanilla custard pudding, but what I found unique about it (besides its scrumptious creamy taste) was the fact that it came in milk carton-style containers.  While originally a vanilla flavored puddling, it had evolved, and now also came in chocolate and caramel flavors.  There were rows of Vla cartons lining Dutch grocery shelves.  

    When my sister served us some vla for dessert, she mentioned that vla was very popular with heroin addicts, something that has always stuck in my mind.    You really didn’t have to be addicted to heroin, to also become addicted to vla.  It is probably a good thing vla is not available around here, because it would be something I could probably not pass up in the grocery store.

    I am sure that there were other delicious Dutch treats that were available while we were in Amsterdam, but these two are the ones that are most memorable to me.

        You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1996: Our First Day on the Streets of Amsterdam

      While my wife had grown up in Berlin, I had never been in Europe before, so I found our first day of wandering around through Amsterdam, full of new sights and sounds.  We ambled down the city streets with the tall skinny Dutch buildings on one side of us and canals on the other.  We visited an open market, and bought some cheese and apples for lunch.  

    While walking in Amsterdam one has to be very attentive, because of tremendous number of the bicycles that are zooming by on all of the streets.  Amsterdam has long tried to discourage automobiles, encouraging its residents to use bicycles, buses, and trams.

            Regular bicycle lanes often run adjacent to the sidewalks, and while I was used to watching out for vehicular traffic, I was often caught off guard, not noticing the bicycles speeding toward me, immediately beside the crowded sidewalks.   Several had to “jing-jing” their bells, to get the unobservant tourist out of the way.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Those Dreaded Words: "The Water Pressure is Going Down."

     Last night just at bedtime, my wife spoke those dreaded words, “It looks like our water pressure is going down.”   Those words are something I ever want to hear.   If I am lucky, losing water pressure means I need to change the water filter under the house, but it also can mean that we need to hike up to Sunbeam Falls to change the filter on our waterline intake.  

    I called Nick our neighbor, to see if they were also losing pressure on the waterline, and he said that theirs was also falling.  That confirmed that the problem was with the whole waterline, and we would have to hike up to the falls to change the intake filter.   The falls is always a dangerous place (it cost me a finger) and because it was night, we arranged to wait until this morning’s light to do the work.

    The recent temperatures have been unusually mild +7°C (45°F) for a January in the Interior of BC.   A lot of the snow in the yard has melted, and I was expecting that the ice that usually forms over Sunbeam Falls had also disappeared, but as you can see in the photo above it hadn’t.

    Nick and I weren’t really prepared for breaking through a lot of 6 inch (15cm) thick ice, but that is what we had to do, just to get to the big culvert that collects our water.  The creek was still flowing briskly into our waterline culvert under all of the ice.

    We took turns poking at the ice with a big iron railroad pry bar.  (photo below)

    The ice was hard and didn’t break away easily, but eventually we broke away enough for us to get to our culvert, and pull up the watergate to drain the culvert.  We were tied to a tree for safety, because it is always treacherous working on the steep falls, even in the summer, and trying to stand on the irregular slippery ice that covered everything, made the job even more dangerous.  

    Once we had the water drained from the culvert, Nick climbed into it and removed our intake filter.  The filter’s surface was covered with pine needles and other small detritus, which prevented water from going into our waterline.  

    We replaced the dirty intake filter with a clean one, then lowered the watergate back into place, and watched the flowing water from the falls once again fill our culvert with clear, cold water.  We were not able to remove all of the heavy big chunks of ice that we broke off from the culvert, so they remained floating around the top of the water that filled the culvert.   Once the culvert was again filled with  water, we hiked back down to the truck.  

    Despite all of that early morning exertion, it was very gratifying when I got back home and turned on the tap, and see water coming out of it again.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Our Arrival in Amsterdam, 1996

    We arrived at Schiphol, the famous Amsterdam airport at 7:15 PM.  It was gray and raining.  We took at nice train to Amsterdam’s Central Station, then a subway.  We walked around in the rain, trying to find Nancy’s house, and after several inquiries, we found her tall, skinny, iconically-shaped, brick Dutch house.  After cheerful greetings, with my sister and her family, Nancy gave us a tour through her heritage-designated house which was built in 1640.  

    Her living room was comfortably and tastefully adorned, and like the rest of her house, very narrow, maybe 16 feet from wall to wall, but deep, with the kitchen at the far end.  A steep, squeaking, wooden staircase in the living room, led to bedrooms on the several upper floors above.   Nancy, who is an Internationally-known knitter “the Queen of Brioche”  https://knitwithfriends.pt/en/blog/speaker/nancymarchant/  used a couple of the smaller upper rooms, for storage of the skeins and skeins of accumulated colorful yarns, and other knitting supplies.

        Above, is a painting that I did of Nancy’s house.  It is the dark-colored house on the right.  If you look carefully, you can see Homer, Nancy’s cat, peeking out of the corner of the window beside the door.

You can view my other paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Latest Painting: "Splits The Sky"

     I finished my 77th painting yesterday.  The image shows some striking morning light created by a break in the clouds, illuminating the Cariboo Mountains in the Robson Valley.  I started the painting which consists of 216 two inch squares, at the beginning of August last year, and it took me 120 hours to complete.

    The painting is 24 inches by 36 inches and was done using acrylics on canvas.

You can view my other paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Sun Sinking Down The Dore River Valley

     I have blogged before about how I am constantly looking at the natural world for indications of the changing of the seasons.   A couple of days ago I observed another of those markers I look for.  It was the position of the sun as it dips behind the Cariboo Mountains.

    During the winter, the sun is always low on the horizon, and sets far to the left of what you can see in the photo above.   Slowly as the year unwinds, the sun sets further and further to the right of the photo, and by summer, it no longer sets behind the mountains, but at the far end of the Robson Valley.  From our house, one of the things I look for, is when the sun begins to set west of the Dore River Valley, and the other day, when I took this photo, the sun was setting in the cleft of the Dore River Valley. 

    For me, once it begins moving west of the Dore, it is a positive indication that our slow march to spring has begun and the Universe is unfolding the way it should.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Flight to Amsterdam: Delay, Delay, Delay

     Looking back, it seems like things rarely went smoothly whenever had to take a flight anywhere.  Missed connections, racing from one end of an airport to another, delayed or cancelled flights, lost baggage; something always seemed to happen.  Below is an experience my wife and I had, when we were trying to fly from Calgary to Amsterdam in 1996:

            We drove to Calgary, where  we checked in at the Travel Lodge half a day before our night flight.  That is where we would be staying upon our return from Europe a few weeks later.  We arranged to have our car kept there in our absence.  We caught the motel’s 4:30 PM shuttle to the airport, then wandered around killing time for hours, until we could go to the ticket counter at 9:00 PM.  Eventually we got through the line-up at 10:15, for our 11:00 flight, only to be surprised by an announcement that our flight would be delayed until 2:00 AM.  

    I tried to take a quick nap on a bench in the boarding area, but without success.  An announcement came over the PA system, telling all passengers for the flight to Amsterdam to go back upstairs.  There we were told that our flight had been cancelled until 2:00 in the afternoon the next day, because they had to replace one of the plane’s engines.  We were told the airline would pay for overnight rooms at the Travel Lodge (where we had left our car).

    We, along with the 70 other passengers on the flight, had to go downstairs and wait for the shuttle to take us to the motel.  It was a ridiculous situation, since the mini-bus shuttle could only carry five people at a time, and there were 70 of us.  After an hour’s wait, we decided to save waiting around and just to take a taxi to the motel.  We invited a Dutch couple, who were also waiting for the shuttle, to join us in the cab.  We finally got to the motel at 1:30 AM.

    Next day, we woke up at 9:00, ate our free (airline paid) breakfast, then upon returning to our room, we found a message from the airline that our Amsterdam flight had once again been delayed, this time, until midnight.  Fortunately, the airline would again pick up the tab for another day at the motel, and pay for a $10 lunch, and a $15 dinner.

    I had already phoned my sister in Amsterdam to say we would be leaving at 2:00 PM, so I had to make another long distant call to update her on our new departure time.

    We spent the day wandering around a mall.  Sadly, the stores didn’t open until noon, because it was a holiday.  We went to the movie and saw, “Phenomenon” which we enjoyed, then later, when we were having our dinner, one of the Dutch couples said they had heard that our flight had been again pushed back, this time until 2:00AM.  We tried to confirm the news, but the airline wasn’t picking up their phone.

Just before midnight we arrived back at the Calgary Airport, and waited.  Another, but fortunately short, delay of 15 minutes was announced.  By this time had lost a lot of trust in “Air Club” where we had gotten our flight, and we weren’t the only ones fed up with the lack of communication they had with their passengers.

Finally, we were able to board our plane, and our flight departed Calgary at 3:00 AM.  Things got better once we boarded the plane.  We had very good seats for the flight; just the two of us together in the back of a very huge 747.  It took a long 8 hours to get to Amsterdam.  We tried, but were unsuccessful  in getting any sleep on the long overnight flight, but the meals and the service were good.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A 1991 Cold Snap, Conclusion

  This story started on the Jan. 24th blog.  You should start there.

         I was in a foul mood.  I took the battery into the warmth of our house, then called Teresa at work to see if they could get anyone there to come and pick me up.  Teresa told me they would send someone out in a truck to pick me up right away.

    I quickly loaded the wood stove up for the day, and walked back up the driveway to the road to wait.  I waited, and then waited some more.  I waited and waited, standing with my face toward the sun.

    In the extreme still cold, sound carries easily, and I could hear the sounds of tires on the highway which is a mile away.  It sounded as if the traffic was just behind our house.  I could also hear the sound of trees cracking from the frost.  I kept on waiting.

    I watched some chickadees in an alder tree beside our driveway.  I started pacing around and did some toe lifts in an attempt to keep my feet warm.  Finally I heard a truck coming my way on the road in the direction of town.  Finally, I thought.  The first sight of the truck did not give me the thrill I was seeking.  I wasn’t a Forestry truck.

    After a long 40 minutes of standing in the cold, the truck finally came.  Teresa had told Johnny the warehouse man to go out and pick Dave up.  Even though Johnny had already had a conversation with Dave S. that morning, he got in a truck and mistakenly drove 32 kilometers to Dunster (where Dave S. lived) to pick him up.  

            By the time Johnny had realized he was to pick me up, not Dave S, I was getting pretty cold, but I forgot my misery quickly, once I was able to climb into the warm Forestry pickup and finally be on my way to work.

    I was able to catch a ride home after work and upon arriving home, I put the warm battery back into the car.  The block heater had been on all day, and with yet another prayer, I turned the ignition and amazingly, the car started. 

    I didn’t experience any other trouble starting the car for the remaining two weeks of the arctic weather.  I did constantly check the circuit breakers though.  I had unplugged the space heater under the house and just let the cold water in the bathroom run constantly at a slow rate to prevent it from freezing up. 

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A 1991 Cold Snap, Part 2

             This story is a continuation from yesterday, read that blog first.

    I decided I would just stay home from work for a couple of hours to give the car’s block heater time to warm up the engine.  During that time I fed the goats.  My wife, who was also wondering how she would get to work, called a couple of neighbors to bum a ride.  One of the neighbors was having a similar problem getting their car started, but my wife did eventually arrange a ride with a neighbor.

    At 9:00 I went out to try to start the car again.  I learned that and hour and a half was not sufficient time for a block heater to warm up an engine at -33°F.  I tried again at 9:45 and got a similar result.  I was sure that by 10:00 I would be successful and almost was.  I turned the key and the engine almost caught, so I tried it again, again, it almost caught, again, again, and again.

    “Dammit, come on, come on.” I said to myself gritting my teeth, but it was too late, the car battery had just used up all of the power it had.  I was snookered.

            By this time my wife had caught her ride and was on her way to school and I thought I should probably use the same tactic, so I walked up to the road hoping to flag down a ride to work.  The sun was starting to shine over the trees and as I stood beside the road I could actually feel some warmth radiating from the sun, but after about 10 minutes without a single vehicle coming by, I gave up on a ride and went back down the driveway, thinking I should give the car one more try.  Instead, I decided to take the battery out of the car and put it into the house so it could warm it up, thinking maybe that might give it a bit of power.

    I opened the hood of the car, and with a wrench in my gloved hand, I started to loosen the bolts holding the battery cables.  As I worked, I happened to look up to see our friend Linda go by in her car, heading for town.  “Damn,” I  thought, “I could have caught a ride with her,”  but that ship had already sailed.  

    Two minutes later as I was lifting the battery from the car, I heard the sound of another car going by—my neighbor, who had evidently had more luck getting his car started than I had.  I had forgotten that he was still at home.

           The ordeal continues on tomorrow’s blog.

Take look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Remembering A Frigid, 1991 Cold Snap. Part 1

         In honor of the frigid Arctic temperatures that are now dipping down through most of Canada and the US, I thought I would relate my “adventures” dealing with a cold snap we experienced in the Robson Valley about this time in January of 1991.  Since living through so many winters in the Robson Valley and having to deal with so many problems the frigid temperature cause, I automatically  feel uneasy and get nervous upon hearing a forecast of a cold spell.   Here is the story:

    We had just suffered through two weeks of continuous cold temperatures ranging between -20F (-29C) and -33F (-36C).  It was pretty brutal.  It was so cold that someone in Prince George had reported that they saw a lawyer walking down the sidewalk with his hands in his own pockets.

    The cold snap started out badly for me.  After I had gotten home on that first day when it started to go down to -20F, I noticed that the cold water tap in the bathroom was running rather sluggishly and was on the verge of freezing up.  (The bathroom water was a weak link in our water system and was always the first thing to freeze up.)  I figured I had better do something to prevent it, so I crawled down into our dark,  gloomy, cobweb-draped, crawlspace under the house and plugged in an electric space heater, so that warm air could blow over the waterline leading to the tap.

    I couldn’t think of anything else to do; I had the block heater in the car plugged in, I had armful of wood brought in and ready for the wood stove, the electric baseboard heaters in the house were turned up and humming, so I went to bed dreading the thought of how cold it would be the next morning, but confident that everything would be okay.  

    I was wrong.

    The next morning when I forced myself out of bed to check the thermometer, I was depressed to discover it was -33F outside.  I got dressed as quickly as possible, then opened up the front of the wood stove to get that burning hotter.  I fixed a lunch for work, then decided that before I went out to the barn to feed the goats, I should check the car.  I thought I had better start the car to allow it to warm up before heading off to work.

    I got in the car, turned the key and heard one of the most pitiful sounds that can befall a commuter on a cold morning:  ERRRrrrr.r..r…r,  then silence.

    The engine wouldn’t turn over.  The block heater had been plugged in to keep the engine warm, so the only problem I could think of was that for some reason, electricity wasn’t getting to the block heater.

    I went back inside the house and checked the electrical service box and discovered that the breaker leading to the car had been thrown.  I then realized that when I had plugged in the space heater under the house the night before, it had overloaded the electrical circuit which was on the same circuit as the car and it had thrown the circuit breaker.

            The story continues tomorrow.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Cold Weather Story

             In 1980, we had just purchased our house in McBride, my temporary employment at the Forest Service had stopped, and I needed to find a job.  I was able to get employed at Far West Cedar, a company that split cedar logs and manufactured cedar fence posts and rails, for rail fencing.  I was fortunate to get one of the safer jobs in the mill:  I ran the machine that drilled the holes that held the rails in the fence posts.  

            The winters I worked at Far West were brutal, because the large metal quonset hut building where we worked was unheated, and when it got cold, it made for a long miserable day.  Here is one cold day’s experience I had while working at the Far West Cedar Mill:

    Toward the end of January of 1981, McBride experienced blast of Arctic air.  One morning when I woke and got dressed to go to work, our thermometer read -30° F.  Nevertheless, the car started and I drove to work and when I arrived, the air was frigid and still. Surprisingly, the thermometer that hung outside the Far West office showed that the temperature was -48°F.  It seemed strange that thermometers showed that much difference.

    It felt like a march of doom as I plodded through the snow toward the mill door, knowing that the unheated building would not offer any more warmth than the frigid outside air, but I rationalized that maybe manhandling  the heavy fence posts to and from the drilling machine would exercise my muscles and keep me warm.  

            Once inside, I shuffled over to my station and turned on the drill.  I lifted the first post into position on the drilling platform, pulled back on the lever to lower the rack of drills onto the fence post, but as soon as the drills began to penetrate the wood, one of the drill bits snapped off.  

    That put an end to the drilling.  I marched over to the office and reported the break to Bob the foreman, and he told me go back and run the rail trimmer.  When I pressed the button that turned on the rail-trimming machine it too, immediately broke.  I trudged back over to the office and reported that too, to Bob, who immediately pressed his lips together as he shook  his head.  I wasn’t disappointed to hear him tell everyone that it was just too cold to work, and that everyone should go home.

    That evening our thermometer dipped to -35°F but the Department of Highways thermometer was reading -50° F.  

Our house is located on the mountain slope, so is higher in elevation than McBride, which is sits on the valley bottom.  Cold air is heavier and it sinks and lies in lower land, so maybe that creates the difference in temperatures.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Temperature Inversion

     For the last handful of days the Robson Valley has been living beneath a temperature inversion.  The high pressure, cold air above had created a dome which trapped moist and warmer air below it.  This left us with several days of thick overcast cloud which was fairly depressing.  The thick clouds prevented us from seeing any of the spectacular auroras that had been happened across North America.

    One of the interesting results of the inversion was that it caused trees to be covered and turn white with frost.  This made what scenery we could see, picturesque.  Here are a couple of photos.

    I was happy this morning to discover that the dome of the inversion had disappeared overnight.  Today we can again see sunshine and patches of blue in the sky.

Feel free to look at my paintings.  You can see them at: davidmarchant2.ca

Snug As A Bug

     Pets spend all of their time monitoring their owners.  They always figure out what is going to happen by their careful observations.  Kona always knows way ahead of time, when my wife is headed to town.  She loves riding along, so as soon as Kona is aware that the trip is going to happen, she starts making her desires known, by bothering my wife.

    That happened yesterday, and Kona was very impatient to be put in the car, so she could be sure she was going along.  I put Kona in the car early, to lessen her anxiety, and because it was cold outside, as she sat in the back seat, I draped my wife’s silver down coat around her, before  I went back into the house to help my wife get her boots on.

    When my wife was finally ready to go, she asked me if I would back the car out of the carport for her.  When I got into the car, I noticed that by then, Kona was laying down and snoozing in the back seat, completely covered with the down coat, with only her nose sticking out.  I couldn’t help but take a photo.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca