Interesting and Unimportant

When we looked out the window this morning we saw a car hauler parked in front of the house. This was quite exciting because we don’t get out much and are working on the official designation of ‘nosy neighbours.’ There was one SUV parked on the top deck of the hauler and a couple of vehicles we didn’t recognize were parked on the street. We watched from inside for a few minutes and then Richard, coffee in hand, went out to talk to the guy working around the rig.

He said he was from Cape Breton and when Richard replied that he was born in Newfoundland, the guy said that the Cape Bretoners and the Newfoundlanders used to throw grenades at each other. The Newfoundlanders would toss the grenades and the Cape Bretoners would pick them up, pull the pins, and throw them back. They both laughed. The guy said he did a lot of single deliveries of vehicles and was kept quite busy.

As we watched he attached the ramps that led from the trailer to the ground. Then he took off the chains that secured the wheels of the SUV to the trailer. With that done he got into the vehicle and started to back it up off the trailer. I was quite alarmed when I saw the vehicle lurch and thought, at first, that one of the wheels had slipped off the tracks. When I looked more closely I saw that the wheels had settled into a kind of a sling made of chain. From there with another lurch they moved out of the sling and onto the lower track. Richard told me it had something to do with getting the right clearance for various types of vehicles.

The hauler has a separate motor to control the hydraulic arms that raise and lower the various parts of the trailer allowing vehicles to be parked above each other for transport. As the driver manipulated the various arms it reminded me of a grasshopper stretching first one leg and then the other. We thought he was delivering the SUV to someone in the neighbourhood but when we looked out later, the SUV had moved from the top of the trailer to the bottom and two other vehicles that were parked on the street were now on the top deck. The last vehicle to be loaded was a tundra buggy of some sort. The whole process took several hours and when we looked out in the middle of the afternoon the car hauler and its cargo was gone. Why, we wondered, had the driver chosen our street to shuffle the positions of the vehicles. Where were they headed and wasn’t it possible to pick them up in a last-on-first-off order? We will never know but for a while today our front street was more interesting than YouTube. As I said, we don’t get out much.

The second interesting thing today has to do with the current ukulele build. Because of the stage I am at in the build I have three different kinds of epoxy on hand. Mostly I use the 5 minute variety and when my old stuff expired i.e. became rock hard in the bottles, I bought a hardware store version before I got to one of the tool stores in town to buy a brand I like better. In addition to replacing my regular 5 minute epoxy, I also needed epoxy with a set-up time of more than 5 minutes. I tried Lowe’s and Canadian Tire and found only a marine epoxy. I almost bought it and then realized that it would dry white. Nope, that wasn't going to work. Using good old Google, I tracked down a local source for slow cure epoxy that dries clear but, according to their website, they were sold out so I resorted to Amazon. Once the long cure epoxy came, I happily went about the repairs that required an open time of more than 5 minutes.

Today I was chasing a few minor imperfections and picked up the resin and the hardener bottles of epoxy. I mixed up the two parts and applied it. I went into the kitchen to get a cup of tea expecting to find the epoxy had hardened when I went back to the shop minutes later. Back in the shop I found it was still tacky. I stood puzzled for a moment; then the light dawned.  I had picked up the slow cure variety so instead of waiting 5 minutes I had to wait 60 to 80 minutes. Oh well, better to pick up the slow cure when you expected the quick cure than the other way around. I did, however, take the opportunity to label the slow cure bottles with red tape so that the next time I’m too lazy to read the containers I’ll have a clear reference.

I think it should be cured by now so I’ll head into the shop to see what other imperfections I need to find and fix before I can proceed to sand the instrument and put finish on it. I didn’t used to like the process of finishing wood because it takes so much time and patience. Now I’m looking forward to seeing the wood grain pop as I progress through successive coats of finish. I haven’t made enough instruments at this point to have a finish perfectly dialled in so it will be a bit of an adventure.

Stay tuned.

Involved in a scam

It started at church this morning. Richard got a notification on his phone that someone was at our front door. We wondered about it but it wasn’t until later when we replayed the footage and heard part of a conversation that we realized someone had given our address in an ad for a TV on Facebook Marketplace.

One guy came to the door, left and returned in about an hour. He was joined by a second guy. Turns out that the first guy had paid $250 as a deposit on a TV. They decided, when they realized we weren’t home, that it was probably a scam and they left. Someone was out $250. I think there was one other visitor to our door before we got home.

At lunch time a young guy with an English accent also came about a TV for sale. Luckily he hadn’t transferred any money. We thought he would probably be the last person because people who wanted the phantom TV would have been on it early in the day. A few moments ago, when we were out filling the bird feeder, three guys pulled up in a truck also wanting to buy the TV. They had come from Marlborough across the city. We encouraged them to go to the police and to contact their bank because, they too, had paid a deposit. From this latest group we learned that the scammers used the photo of an older woman in the ad. One of the guys told us he had cautioned his friend to be wary but when they saw the photo of the woman they thought that the ad must be legit.

All of the people we chatted with were really nice and apologized for bothering us. I know many people use Facebook Marketplace all the time and have had no trouble. I’m angry with whoever hatched this scam, not because having people show up at the door was particularly bothersome, but because the scammer at the least, had people driving all over they city wasting their time. At worst, people were out  hard-earned money.

We all know that there are scammers out there and we do our best not to be tricked. I guess I’m very fortunate in that I don’t come across something like this very often. I have been scammed once and came close to being scammed a second time. I feel for the folks whose day became much less than they expected because of this scammer. I hope the remainder of their day went better and that they are able to somehow recoup their money. I also admit to hoping that this scam comes back to bite the scammer in the butt!

Memories of spring break

Today is the end of spring break for teachers and students herein the public system. It’s been a long time since that mattered to me but this year I find myself thinking back on how much I looked forward to spring break and how the few years that we travelled to the coast to cycle now loom large in the catalogue of holiday memories.

I remember staying later than I meant to at school so a couple of students could finish a project. I remember the growing anticipation as the break approached. I don’t remember exactly how many years we made the trip west with the Elbow Valley Cycle Club but on one of the first trips I remember being in our hotel room in Washington where a few people were playing cards. I was lying back on the bed and I drifted off in the midst of the fun and laughter only to awaken when Richard closed the door as the last of the visitors left. I was always tired when holidays came around.

We did our fair share of cycling in the rain and some trips were wetter than others. Some trips were entirely in Canada and some ventured into the San Juan Islands and onto the Olympic Peninsula in the US. Our starting place was usually Sydney on Vancouver Island. The hotel we stayed in overlooked the sea and many of the rides went along the sea wall. It was always a treat to go to the coast in March, to leave the mounds of snow in Calgary, or if not snow the brown left over from winter, and land in the warm moist air where there were carpets of green. Often the flowers were starting to bloom and sometimes the cherry trees were a riot of blossoms.

We took ferries between various islands and travelled on the lowest level with huge transport trucks for company. We were generally the first off the ferries which gave us a chance to get through the narrow exits and up the hills before the flood of traffic. It is always uphill from a ferry dock and we quickly learned to put our bikes into a low gear on the way down to the ferry so we would be prepared for the climb on the other side.

We ate smoked salmon and Dungeness crab and as much clam chowder as we could hold. I certainly wasn’t going to come from the prairies to the sea coast and eat beef. Often there were grocery stores within walking distance from our hotels and we bought supplies for breakfast and lunch. Sometimes we chose to buy food for dinner as well and stay in our room with an urban picnic rather than eat in a restaurant.

I don’t know what year it was or where we were exactly the day we sat in the sun against the wall of our motel, ate coleslaw, bread, cheese and ham and were entirely content. At home it was snowing but in the fading coastal light we were warm.

Of course memory is a great editor and looking back it all seems idyllic. I have conveniently edited out the times we got soaked through and squelched our way into a shop or fast food joint in order to get warm before going back out to cycle more miles in the rain. I have almost forgotten about the time I caught a cold and felt miserable for most of the trip. Chances are, I will not take trips like these again but when spring break rolls around I can pull up the memories and, in my imagination, sit against that wall in the sun eating bread and cheese and being content with the world.