Monday 28 September 2015

If in doubt, ask a farmer.

When we bought this rig some six months ago in Toronto, we were delighted it came with a built in a clip-on-the-side gas barbecue which connected to the propane gas supply. It was awesome, as they say about absolutely everything over here. Anyway, we used it almost every evening until one time I probably had too many beers before the assembly process and whilst the rubber gas pipe was connected I managed to drop the darned thing snapping off a vital component. We tried to replace the item at every town we came to but gave up. Not to be deterred, we bought a stand alone job with small propane gas cylinders, made in China!

Well, the first chance to impress us it failed, miserably. There was more heat in a couple of candles so I assigned the thing to the depths of the storage hold next to the original barbecue, no doubt they had some pretty depressing conversations down there.

Today I met a retired farmer from Saskatchewan who was travelling through on his way to Mexico. We drank tea and discussed world politics, he brought to the table coconut macaroons., my favourite! Conversation soon swung around to gas barbecues, as it would, and I told him the sorry tale of "Two failed barbecues Thomas". 
"Let me take a look at these monkeys" he said. The original bit of kit he dismissed as being too far gone. The second, and newest and Chinese he looked at, rubbed his chin, fell silent for a while then asked me to produce a Phillips screwdriver. With this he demolished the gas control knob and adjusted the screw hidden inside. "Try it now" he said so casually. 

Bugger me the flame looked like it might have been used as an afterburner from a Phantom jet!  Red, blue and all metal bits glowing in no time at all.
In celebration I made some burgers to put the beast to the test, passed with flying colours. Apparently, the crew on the space station could see the glow, just as well as after dark now its getting mighty cold.

Wednesday 23 September 2015

A concise history of the town of Oliver.

The town of Oliver sits astride the highway leading to the border with the USA some 20 minutes away, most of the traffic is freight trucks, wealthy elderly Canadians fleeing the wicked winters and Hells Angels, hundreds of them all dressed in black and riding the cleanest shiniest Harley Davidsons I have I seen outside of a showroom.

The highway follows a river valley through the mountains and back in the 1890s gold was discovered, not only in the river but up in them there hills. Word soon got out about the huge nuggets being washed down from the mountains and very soon a shanty camp was built and named Fairview. It soon transpired the stories of nuggets bigger than your head were true, they were just stories.

The majority of the prospectors left for greener grasses while 275 hardy diggers remained to scratch a living from the river. The area supported quite a few small gold operations and hard working miners and prospectors all need feeding. As usual, the obligatory beef farms were established and a few fruit and veg farms took advantage of the fertile glacial soil in the valley. The problem was, the area is desert which by definition gets little in the way of rain and there is only so much water one can transport from the river to the crops by horse and cart!

Now it gets interesting. Some disenchanted miners began to dig a small ditch leading from the river at the top of the valley and heading into the few farms, the plan was to sell running water to the farmers for crop irrigation. The price asked was so high that the farmers increased the price of their crops. The beef farmers felt their share of water had decreased and got a bit annoyed. Then, the indian tribes had a pow wow because all this river activity and diversion had upset the salmon migration and the fishing ceased. 

All hell broke lose. The miners beat up the cowboys, the cowboys called the farmers names and the ditch diggers fled when the indians began putting war paint on their faces and lighting fires for smoke signals. All the miners ran away after some of their fellows were found drowned in the river leaving the workings abandoned.                
The cowboys blamed the crop farmers who in turn blamed the cowboys for the loss of their income so they began to remedy the situation by shooting each other while the indians watched quietly from the mountain forests.

The premier of the British Columbian government, John Oliver, dispatched a squadron of his finest troops to the valley to restore order which was quick and brutal.  Most of the surviving cowboys took their cows to some other gold rich and prosperous town while the fruit farmers felt compelled to stay on their rich fertile farms and protest to John Oliver about the problems of growing fruit in the desert for customers far away.  

It was widely agreed that Okanagan fruit was the finest in Canada because of the soil and favouring climate, however, the lack of moisture was a deciding factor in what happened next.

Premier Oliver was an intelligent man. He saw the value of the valley as a fruit producing tax generating employment opportunity so in 1927 his government funded an ambitious irrigation scheme costing millions of dollars. His engineers carved a concrete lined canal of 25 miles from a glacial fed lake, a series of viaducts, tunnels and even a siphon system for the higher farms. They named it "The Ditch". The natural river was returned to its former glory, the fruit farmers were happy and the indians put away the war paint.

The valley exploded!   Fruit including apples, peaches, peppers, tomatoes, cherries, melons, plums, apricots, grapes and probably many other fruits and vegetables are grown here today. The valley is festooned with vineyards producing world famous wines as well as distilleries.

Oh, the whole point of this is, as a mark of respect to the premier, the town of Fairview was renamed Oliver after the man announced the irrigation water will remain free of charge to the farmers. He was hereafter known as "Honest John".

Pictures of the abandoned gold workings.

The Ditch.

Sunday 20 September 2015

Oliver......

Where we are right now is a town called Oliver, about 20 minutes from the US border. Its desert, so dry, dusty and windy. Its one of those towns you see in the movies, one street leading to somewhere else. There are a few bars and some places to eat but the overall feeling I get is that everyone has left town as we got here.
The most noticeable occurrence is the daily trains of Harley Davidson mounted bearded scary people in black heading for the border. We counted one group of over 60 bikes plus a constant stream of smaller groups. The suggestion is they head to Mexico for the winter. So glad I left my Lambretta at home.


Wednesday 16 September 2015

Me & the boss.

The Commissioner said to me "Well Paul, you and I have a lot in common" "Really Sir?" I said "Whats that then?" He said "Neither of us are going any further in this job!" I wonder what he meant by that?



Sunday 13 September 2015

Frozen out.....


So, after a long hot day of fixing domestic appliances the time soon comes round to break open a couple cold ones. Lyns in the pool so I lay out some crisps, nuts, smokey cheese and the obligatory Budweiser. My plan; always need a plan, is to eat the nibbles, down one tinnie and use the empty tin as an ash tray. So far so good. I still enjoy the demon rollup with a beer but rest assured there is a plan to finally phase them out....AGAIN! 
Anyway, I open the second tin of golden nectar and without a second thought I pop the finished rollie into the full tin...bugger!  No comments required thank you.

We've been in Vernon almost a week and feel its time to begin the slow trek south so on Tuesday morning we will hitch up the trailer and drive to a town called Oliver which is still in Canada but almost on the US border.  We paid a visit to Walmart and stocked up on loads of frozen food and treats for the week ahead. Whilst squeezing the rations into the fridge I noticed the little green light on the control thingy was not shining.....uh oh, the fridge had died.
I spent the best part of the evening checking fuses, shutting down the whole system, anything as well as constantly pushing the on button.......nothing.

Bearing in mind its now 9pm on a Saturday, we call the RV Doctor. What a lovely bloke, he was away for the weekend but became very concerned with our crisis and talked me through several possibilities leading that might lead to a resolution.

Now, for the more technically minded of you I will explain how this fridge works, or doesn't in my case. Its all about heat. There is no compressor or pump but a heater which causes a sealed unit to circulate gas around drawing any heat from within the fridge to a small radiator on top of the trailer. The theory is in the absence of heat there will be cold. Sort of makes sense that the back up system works off a propane gas burner...weird.  Anyway, my system has two electrical power sources, one being 110 volts for the heater and 12 volts for the circuit board what controls everything.

We plug into the 110 volt mains and have a 12 volt converter supplying lights and the fridge etc.
It seems the converter was sending 12 volts to the fridge but it was not arriving to give life to the brain of the system. So I bought 25 metres of cable and laid a separate supply to the circuit board and low and behold the green light reappeared just in time to refreeze the grub.

In conclusion, it seems likely that a mouse or some other critter has chewed the 12 volt cable somewhere and broken it which makes sense as the TV cable plugs into the outside of the trailer at the same point as the back of the fridge, and the TV doesn't work either! The new cable is strapped to the chassis under the floor so unless Mr Mouse uses similar tactics as our Syrian refugee friends and has no fear of hanging underneath a moving vehicle, my fridge will forever remain cold.

Also, by hanging the TV cable out the window to connect to the supply, we get US cable TV.......yay, not. OK if you enjoy baseball and endless adverts...........







Friday 11 September 2015

Theres gold in them there hills......

Today was a better day. No admin! I say no admin, what I meant was none for me. Lyn spent the best part of the morning trying to get reconnected to the Virgin phone network after two months away. Anyway, still no connection.

Yesterday I drove to the local airport of Vernon, a place which 13 years ago was my place of employment and pleasure. There I got chatting over a coffee with one of the many old fellas hanging about the flying clubhouse. His name was Ginter or Kermit or some suchlike name suggesting a European heritage from way back but I found him gushing with knowledge on almost every subject I threw at him. 
He told me all about disused gold mines in the area which I found rather exciting and suggested I return in the morning for an aerial tour of said secret locations. 

I presented myself at 9am, strapped myself into his rather small Vans RV 7 and off we jolly well went!  The commentary was endless, all manner of facts from how much gold had been extracted to how many Chinese labourers had been killed in the process some 100 years ago. Bearing in mind we were flying at about 10,000 feet above sea level but were in the mountains at about 100 feet above the ground!  A bit too low for my liking. However, amongst the carpet of trees I did manage to see some evidence of said mine workings and a bear. Herman the German did say that although these mines were a secret, he felt happy in the knowledge I would never be able to find them again should I feel the need to. I think he was probably right.

The rest of the flight was uneventful, a demonstration of how well the plane could climb, a few stalls and spins, well away from the mountains I might add then back to the airport for more coffee and chitter chatter. All in all, a bleddy good mornings work leaving me feeling maybe I ought to fly again, after all, I still have my Canadian licence, shame to waste it........no way says Lyn!

Thursday 10 September 2015

Welcome back

Dear diary, been back in Canada four days now and just beginning to shake off the effects of the dreaded "jet lag". It manifests itself by lulling one into a parallel world, a kind of time warp.
 We arrived in Vancouver on Sunday last at 11.30am local time, sunny day so lets get a taxi to some posh hotel, have a cup of tea then start the process of recovering the truck (hereinafter known as Kevin) from storage nearby. Cup of tea went well. 
Mr. Google gave us a local insurance agent in a mall nearby so we could register and insure the truck prior to collection having completed the mountain of paperwork before we left the country in July. Armed with 11 separate completed forms ranging from deeds of ownership (log book), safety check certificate (mot), bill of sale, tax paid certificate (Ontario), to emission compliance certificate, proof of no claims history, drivers licence, passport, 25 yards breast stroke certificate etc.....then presented said docs to Mr Patel at the government run Autoplan counter, I smiled, he smiled back. I felt confident........ for a second. Sifting through the sheets of paper maybe 4 or 5 times he very slowly began that slow head shake from side to side. Then his hand covered his mouth as the head shake became more and more prolonged.
This is where the jet lag has its best effect. Mr Patel is talking at me and I see his lips moving, although he avoids any eye contact, I have no idea what he says other than it ain't anything like what I want to hear.
Not for a second am I questioning the mans capabilities or his intelligence, I assume he has a Phd in "Lets see if we can find the smallest problem here just to f**k your day a bit more".
Back to the effect of jet lag. Local time by now is 3pm but my bodyclock screams 1am minus 24 hrs lost during the flight, so my brain assumes as Im still going I must be pissed somewhere, all I can do is float and smile at anyone. Mr Patel assumes that all he tells me is agreeable because Im smiling. On the other hand Mrs Thomas is grinding her teeth as some horns appear to sprout from her forehead, which affects Mr Patel in a strange way.
He abandons his path of "This insurance application is impossible" to "I can issue temporary cover for 3 days if you take your wife away from my face". 
He issues a very expensive cover note, calls us a taxi, calls the storage company who were just closing because its a bank holiday weekend to say we are on our way to collect Kevin the truck, and we leave.
The taxi arrives 45 minutes late! The storage people refused to speak to us other than hand me the keys but hey, we got the truck back.
Another effect of jetlag is that you wake up at 4am, no matter what, slumber has left the building so a 5am swim passes time until 7am breakfast time.
Monday morning means a new plan. We can drive toward Vernon, some 250 km, in order to start the insurance process all over again!
We stop at a town called Hope, a gold prospecting town from the last century. We look for a decent motel, some hope! Instead we settle for a dump from the film set of Deliverance, bed bugs were free, and grateful for the slowly diminishing effects of jetlag to be able to leave in the dark hours of the next morning.
We finally arrive in Vernon for an early morning big boys breakfast at some diner, oh and it tasted good, followed by another two and a half hour epic battle with Sheila at Capri Insurance Services who very kindly allowed us to present our application for insurance cover and the issue of British Columbian licence plates. This done, we collected the trailer and plonked ourselves at a lakeside RV park and went to sleep.