Category: Banalities & Journaling

…This here blog, now with more dumptruck than ever before.
I have been working with Richard while he installs the drain field for the new septic system. I spend a lot of time moving sand and gravel around in a big pit he made with his excavator. I also have developed some small degree of competency with connecting lengths of PVC pipe. Richard drives his dumptruck to fetch more gravel and returns.

Here is progress on the drainfield. It is now buried.

There is a neighbor down the road named Joe. He has been very helpful and friendly with Arthur at various times, and they have gone fishing together in the past. We had given him a standing invitation to come out fishing with us sometime, and finally he did yesterday. We went out early (departing before 7), and we had some luck at Port Estrella, southwest of here. We didn’t catch halibut, and the salmon remain nonexistant (probably due to drought), but we found a lot of bottom fish – rock fish and such. I think they are ugly fish but they make good soup.
Near Port Estrella there is a small island called Joe Island. Joe is of course pleased to have this island named as he is. Here is Joe in front of Joe Island.

Here is a view of Port Estrella as we were heading out again.

Arthur returned from his 36 hour sojourn in Anchorage, where he got fitted with his new hearing aids.
His first comment on the topic, was that the turn-signal blinker on the Tahoe was awfully loud. So I guess the hearing aids are working.
Here is his plane landing at Craig harbor, just as it first touched the water.

Firstly, Arthur went to Anchorage. He has to see the VA about his new hearing aids, and they decided, in their infinite wisdom, that this should be at their Anchorage location. I’m a bit frustrated with how this has progressed: it seems to me that Arthur could have used the opportunity at being at a large, well-staffed and equipped VA hospital in Anchorage to have taken an extra day or two and set up some appointments to look at his various other issues – the vertigo, the still-sore neck, etc. He will have none of it. Sigh. So he’ll be back tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Richard elected this morning to begin work on our new septic tank for lot 73. I spent the day helping him. Digging in mud, and packing down a layer of sand for the floor of the septic drain field.


It was hard work, but more-or-less satisfying.
 

I finished the “first draft” version of the well-head shed (doghouse). I call it a first draft, because I need to buy some supplies (electrical and plumbing) to now reconfigure the inside, now that I know how the pump works and what’s needed, so that the whole system is “hook up ready.”
I also need to get some proper fasteners for the scraps of metal siding I’ve used (which I found in a pile down by one of Arthur’s sheds).

Only 5 minutes after taking this picture, as I carried some of the tools I’d been using down to the house, I got stung by a bee (or yellowjacket?). I don’t think I’ve been stung by a bee in at least a decade. I’m sure I was never stung during my sojourn in Korea.
So now I’m just resting. I’ve never had a severe reaction to beestings, but it does swell up. This sting was on my collarbone – I think the bee got caught in my shirt somehow without my noticing.
Ow.
 

Art wanted to go fishing. We launched on a drizzly morning under gray skies and smooth waters.
We drove out to the open ocean. I have never been in the open ocean with Arthur in this small boat. The swells weren’t so big, I suppose, but they seemed big to me. They rolled beneath the boat and towered over it, reaching for the white surf on the rocky shores of Noyes Island. And still, no fish were caught.
Arthur gets impatient, which strikes me as a difficult trait for a fisherman. Despite my discomfort (psychological, not physical) on the surging sea, I was willing to wait, but we’d only had a hook in for halibut for about 20 minutes before he gave up and said we should head back. We stopped at Siketi Sound and trolled for salmon for a while, but no bites there, either. I simply say nothing, during these efforts. I don’t really have fishing skill. Anyway, Arthur would not find advice from me to be compelling. I stay silent, and do as he asks.
Call it “Zen on the gray-blue sea.”
At least he didn’t seem to allow his vertigo to interfere with his efforts. He constantly complains that it is unchanged, yet his functionality isn’t so bad – it must be somewhat improved in comparison with last weekend.
Here is the flat water at launch.

Here is a picture of our course, plotted on the boat’s GPS tracker.

The neighbor-down-the-road, Joe, helped us pick up the boat from the service shop today. We towed it to the launch area and put it in the water, then Art and Joe drove the boat back to the house while I drove the truck with the empty boat trailer.
Here is the boat, back at its home dock.

The well-drilling guys finally came back, today, and installed the in-well pump and controller for the new well.
So all the digging I did last month finally had a purpose. Now I have to build a little shed (which Arthur and I are calling the “dog house” because of the approximate scale) to enclose the new out-of-well pieces.

Prince of Wales Island (called by most locals by the initialism simply “P.O.W.”) has exactly one emergency room, as far as I can figure out. It’s in the clinic at Klawock – it’s not really a full blown ER, the staff is on call (meaning they drive there and meet the ambulance or whoever wants to go there, rather than sitting around inside the ER on shifts).

Yesterday Arthur went to the ER. He is experiencing severe, debilitating vertigo, leading to uncontrolled nausea and inability to even walk. My paranoid, hypochondrical side wants to believe that this is related to his brain injury from last year, but medical personnel can’t point to cause-effect, and will only say, “it’s possible.” Meanwhile, it’s simply labelled “benign positional vertigo,” where the word “benign” doesn’t mean what you want it to mean, because really it seems to be medical slang for “we can’t find the cause.” It’s hardly benign. It’s utterly debilitating.

We spent about 4 hours at the ER. He got fluids via IV (replace lost to vomiting). He got some medications. Hours later, it’s not clear they’re that useful to control the underlying vertigo, but at least they seem to prevent the vomiting.

You know you’re in a rural Southeast Alaska ER because the view out the doors (where I spent a lot of time standing and pacing and feeling useless) includes a shipping container and a lot of trees.

Arthur and I took the boat to the boat doctor today. Meaning, it’s at the mechanic. We’ve had some troubling engine symptoms, and so this is what it’s come to. Hopefully the boat shop will make it right.
I experienced a great deal of anxiety over this adventure, prior to it happening. It involved both Arthur and I being competent, which is questionable, for each of us, for our separate reasons. Arthur has experience hauling his boat out of the water, and has done it many times, and is generally competent at such things anyway. But he had his head injury last summer, and he’s often forgetful or absent-minded, in ways that can be quite worrisome. Meanwhile, I haven’t got that forgetfulness problem, but I have never hauled any boat out of any water anywhere, ever. So we had a case of “the blind leading the deaf.”
Arthur took the boat into town, alone. Here is a picture of him departing the dock.

I drove the truck into town with the boat trailer attached. We arrived at the Craig municipal boat ramp, at the north edge of town, at about the same time, waited our turn (it’s a busy place) and then backed the truck with trailer down to the water, pulled the boat onto the trailer, strapped it down, and drove up off the ramp. Here we are, checking the tie-downs.

Then we drove into town and parked the trailer with boat at the boat doctor.

In the end, it was a successful venture. Arthur was very tired, however. He pushed himself at his current limit for longer than he really had it in himself.

I think The Moronic Barnacles should be the name of a musical group.
Instead, there are barnacles (probably moronic) attached to the bottom of Arthur’s boat. It is my mission to try to remove them.