This tree was there as Walter-the-dog practiced his “stump” trick.
I taught Walter this trick where he jumps up on a tree stump, during a past visit to Juli and Keith’s house – some years ago. He clearly remembers it.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km;]
Category: Banalities & Journaling
Caveat: Tree #1403 “A small amount of snow”
This tree was lightly frosted by some morning snow.
Art and I drove to the VA hospital in downtown Portland, this morning, for an annual follow-up with the “poly trauma” team that has been monitoring his progress since the stroke/concussion/broken neck in 2018. The doctor was humorous and pleasant and had excellent communication skills, but I was disappointed with the degree to which the VA was rather unorganized with respect to Arthur’s current needs for some specialized follow-up appointments on various dimensions. Basically, they wanted to make follow-up appointments but were somehow not aware of, or not taking into account, the fact that we were only briefly here in Oregon and live in remote Southeast Alaska… as if we would travel down once a month for doctor visits. That’s not going to work out. So now we are just going to have to wait for a consolidated set of appointments, and travel again later.
The doctor said something funny, though, as we were small-talking about navigating the labyrinthine VA hospital campus: “Actually, this place is mainly just doors.”
[daily log: walking, 5km;]
Caveat: Tree #1402 “Old photographs, and older”
This tree is in front of the house I grew up in, in Arcata. I took this picture a few days ago.
I went and had dinner at my cousin Jori’s house with her husband. My second cousin (her daughter) and daughter’s family were there visiting from Anchorage. We spent some time looking through some old photographs Jori had found. For example, this is a picture of my grandmother Alice, her mother-in-law (my great grandmother) Isabel, my uncle Allen, my father Phil, my Aunt Janet (in front), and my great grandfather John Way Sr. (sitting). They are in front of the San Marino house.
[daily log: walking, 4km;]
Caveat: Tree #1401 “Horse & Deer”
This tree was above a horse.
I saw the horse while walking Walter-the-dog up along the road above Juli and Keith’s house. Later I a saw this deer in their yard.
[daily log: walking, 6km;]
Caveat: Tree #1400 “Another thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat”
This tree is in front of a high school, which I attended from 1979 to 1983. .
It’s not that much changed, actually. The prison-like facade I remember so fondly is almost entirely unmodified. I took the picture yesterday as I took a walk around Arcata, my hometown, which is something I always do when I visit, given my visits are always short and infrequent. It’s been four years since I was last here, and that visit, too, was only a few hours long: just “passing through.” I also had a long visit with Peggy and Latif, who live in the house that I grew up in.
Apparently the old Trinity Hospital – the building in which I was born, and which closed in the mid 70’s – which languished for years as a physical plant annex for the nearby university, is now undergoing renovation, and will become the new early learning center for the university’s education department.
I am pleased, anyway, that the original building is being preserved and restored rather than simply torn town. The university has been expanding rapidly in recent years. The campus has been promoted by the state system to a “polytechnic” – a kind of “elite” level of state campus intended to be on par with San Luis Obispo and Pomona. This has brought in a huge amount of money, and will, of course, radically change the character of the town, but I don’t believe change is bad. Nevertheless, the “feel” of my hometown is much transformed from the memories of my childhood and adolescence.
That was all yesterday. Today, I had another thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat. Here is a picture of the gathered diners.
That’s the tradition, at Juli and Keith’s house – thanksgiving on Saturday. That’s why I was able to enjoy thanksgiving twice. Double-thanks. The picture above shows Robin and Juli on the left, working on a puzzle (a gift that my mother sent, indirectly). Also seen are Mindy, Kai, Taylor, Keith, Arthur, Hope, and Grace.
Interestingly, Taylor became very engaged in the puzzle, which was apparently uncharacteristic of him. So everyone was drafted to finish the puzzle before any guests could depart. So I guess this completed jaguar puzzle is courtesy Ann and Taylor.
After the great meal was over, and the puzzle was done, and the other guests had left, Juli and Keith and Arthur and I sat in the living room in complete silence for maybe five or ten minutes. It was a strange, but calming feeling. Then Keith spoke up. “I could go to bed now.” That was a perfect end to the day.
[daily log: walking, 3km;]
Caveat: Tree #1399 “Pick up your shoe”
This tree is in Humboldt County – barely. This sign at the lower right is the Humboldt County boundary – sorry that it’s a bit blurry.
Humboldt County, California, is one of my favorite third-order administrative divisions. It is, after all, where I was born and spent my childhood. But only a geography nerd like me would conceptualize it as a “favorite third-order administrative division.”
There’s an anecdote about this boundary sign, and Arthur’s role in my childhood. Arthur and I were traveling somewhere. I was around 12 or 13 years old I think. We were driving somewhere, a long road-trip in his 64 Ford Falcon that was his main car for several decades. I don’t remember exactly where we were going. It was late at night, and I needed to pee, so as one does when traveling rural highways, we just pulled over and I peed beside the road. It just happened that we’d stopped by the sign at the Humboldt County line. Later, I realized that I’d lost a shoe. It was obvious to both of us that my shoe, which I’d not been wearing, had fallen out when we’d stopped, somehow. So several days or weeks later (I don’t recall exactly), we were headed back home. I’d completely forgotten about the lost shoe. Arthur stopped abruptly and circled around, so we were pointed the same direction as we’d been traveling before. He stopped the car on the gravel by the roadside. “Open your door,” he said. I was puzzled – I really had forgotten about the shoe. I opened the door. “Get your shoe,” he said. Sure enough, sitting on the ground below the door was my shoe. He’d managed to park the car in exactly the same position he had done last time. He truly had a phenomenal spatial memory, “back in the day.”
I drove up from Eureka back to Forest Grove, today. I stopped in Arcata and took a walk around the town, and talked to Peggy and Latif, who are close friends of the family and who live in the house that I grew up in. Many things changed… many things the same. It’s good to revisit old places.
[daily log: walking, 5km; driving, alot more]
Caveat: Tree #1398 “High-speed Thanksgiving”
This tree is a guest tree from my past – because I drove most of the day and then had a thanksgiving dinner at David’s house on a redwood-clad hillside outside of Eureka. I failed to pause to take a picture with a tree in it.
The tree shown (take your pick) is along one of my “pedestrian commuter” routes in Goyang City (Ilsan), South Korea. I took the picture in December, 2017.
I set a new personal record for driving time between LA (Pasadena) and Humboldt (Eureka): ten hours, thirty minutes. Driving on Thanksgiving day, with minimal traffic through cities, was the advantage.
Here is thanksgiving dinner at David’s. I guess there’s some shrubs in the shadows at the edges, and I could have used this as a tree picture. But it didn’t feel legit.
Erilynn took the picture, that’s David in the front right – an iconic friend of the family from my childhood, one of my many unofficial uncles, I guess. I look like I have a bandage on my neck – that’s just a mask because we were occasionally wearing masks in the house, because of concerns about Covid.
[daily log: walking, 1km; driving, alot]
Caveat: Tree #1395 “The house that no longer is”
This tree is in front of a house which replaced another house where my grandfather grew up.
This house that no longer exists was known in the family as the “San Marino House” – it lies on almost the exact city line between Pasadena and San Marino. My grandparents didn’t live there when I was a small child – they lived over in Temple City. My great grandparents lived in the San Marino house. But when my great grandparents passed away, my grandparents had moved into that house by the time of my memorable trips to LA with my parents when I was 7 or 8 years old. That San Marino house was a fabulous old house on a very large lot, with passages, bamboo forests, outbuildings, an ancient 1920’s era pool, a fountain, a pipe organ…
When my grandparents had passed away, my dad and his siblings inherited it, and in 1990 or so, my dad and stepmother and brother Andrew moved into it. And when I came back from Korea the first time, in late 1991, I stayed there for about a year, too. So I know the neighborhood, and developed my own relationship with that old family estate. But for various reasons, the house and lot were sold a few years later, and the house was torn down and replaced by three modern and relatively boring houses – though the one on the corner, which can be seen in the picture above, retains some of the “Craftsman” style features the original old house had. I miss that old San Marino house.
I don’t have many pictures of it. I need to remember to get some from my dad and scan them. Meanwhile, I did draw that house. Here’s one scan of an ink drawing I did of the house in 1992.
And here is one photo of it I found – that’s my dad’s cousin Larry in his Model A in front of the San Marino house, as seen from the driveway.
[daily log: walking, 3km;]
Caveat: Tree #1394 “Meeting”
This tree is in front of the Quaker meetinghouse (church) in Pasadena, where my dad works but also that my grandparents were members of when he was born (1939). I attended meeting (Quaker church service) this morning.
[daily log: walking, 8km;]
Caveat: Tree #1392 “The tree at the dog park”
This tree is inside a dog-park in downtown Palm Springs. My stepmother, Wendy, lives in Palm Springs these days, and she has a dog, which she takes to the dog park. “This is my main social group,” she explained. Not meaning the dogs, though – referring to the other people she meets at the dog-park.
[daily log: walking, 3km;]
Caveat: Tree #1391 “A ghost remained among the living”
This tree is in the courtyard of a hospital in Rosemead, California, where a certain Doctor Carlos Figueroa quite literally saved my life 24 years ago this month. I’ve tried a few times to find him to thank him for this, but I’ve never been able to. He ended his practice and disappeared.
[daily log: walking, 5km;]
Caveat: Tree #1390 “This train’s service ends here”
This tree is by the wide blue sea.
It is a painful irony, given where I’ve chosen to live these recent years, that I am an unrepentant “public transit nerd.” I love public transit: buses, subways, trolleys, etc. So I am eccentric: I arrive in L.A. with my own rental car, but promptly set out to take the trolley and subway to the beach – just for fun. L.A.’s public transit is grossly underrated – some stations even have clean restrooms – though not quite to Korean standards. A trolley-subway mix from Pasadena to Santa Monica takes about 2 hours. But a drive would be at least an hour – and unpredictably, it could be much more, depending on traffic. Further, driving is intense and focused and doesn’t allow one to read or surf the internet during the journey, whereas sitting on train permits such leisures.
So that’s what I did today. I find large cities reassuring more than alarming.
[daily log: walking, 4.5km;]
Caveat: Tree #1389 “Burbank”
This tree is in front of a building in Burbank where I worked for 6 years. That’s the longest I’ve worked in a single location in my life. I worked for Karma Academy in Korea for longer, but the school moved twice while I worked there, so it wasn’t a single location.
[daily log: walking, 6km;]
Caveat: Tree #1384 “Witnessing whiteness”
This tree witnessed whiteness.
Art and I did some last-minute looking for things that can’t be found, but must be found, preliminary to our departure for points south, dark and early, tomorrow morning.
We’ll see how things go.
[daily log: walking, 5km;]
Caveat: Tree #1379 “Extrinsic motivation”
This tree was there when I installed the snow tires on the blueberry (Chevy Tahoe)… in the snow.
The snow served as a kind of extrinsic motivation.
[daily log: walking, 5.5km; dogwalking, 3km; tiring, 3hr]
Caveat: Radio Silence
I was driving to work the other day, listening to my music, and I had a tragic epiphany.
I almost never listen to music anymore. That day, listening to music, as I drove to work, was that sort of exception that underscores the rule.
All my life, I’ve been accustomed to having a “soundtrack” of sorts. Which is to say, I’ve very often had music in the background – especially when I’m alone. And given the circumstances of my life, I’ve certainly spent the majority of it alone, for substantial portions of each day. I’m also capable of a more engaged type of listening – consuming music in focused fashion, as a concert, or just listening carefully to something I’ve decided I like. I think of these as quite different activities – and the types of music I listen to in these two different activities aren’t necessarily identical sets. I never use classical music for background listening, for example. On the other hand, some of the quite banal euro/techno crap I listen to as background music often is startlingly incapable of engaging me. So it’s just a background thing. There’re even whole subgenres that admit that: the various types of “ambient” tracks that can be found. But they work well as background music.
There are also immense fields of music that can be either/or. Mostly these fall into the pop/alt/rap/country genres of yore, though I think my use of those terms might date me, as our culture’s ways of thinking about music and genre has evolved past my comprehension. I have no “playlists” – that’s not how I listen to background music. I have a single folder of “tracks I like” which is a subset of my entire collection, and I have the mp3 player on my phone. And I push the shuffle button and off I go. It can be anything: a k-pop track followed by some weird German dark industrial techno followed by a 70’s disco bit followed by Taylor Swift. Et cetera. If something that comes on the “shuffle” doesn’t match my current mood, I’ll just hit the “next track” button and move on. But what I enjoy hearing one day isn’t what I’ll fixate on the next. And none of this rises to “engaged listening” except on the rarest occasions. Mostly it’s old, familiar stuff that I’ve acquired over the years, where more recent acquisitions tend to be more likely to be what I want to hear.
This was my style of listening even before the advent of mp3 players, to be honest. It was just a bit more laborious to mess with CDs (in the olden days) or cassettes (in the oldener days) or vinyl (in the oldenest days) to get the effect I was so pleased to discover once the “shuffle” button came along. I suppose there was more of a tendency , back then, for the “shuffle” effect to be at the level of albums or mix-tapes than to be at the level of individual tracks. But if I made mix-tapes for myself, I’d certainly work to maximize the randomness of it, from among the music I considered to be my back catalog.
The artists and tracks that have existed for the longest in my catalog are some (but no means all or even most) of the music from my childhood: Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens, Arlo Guthrie, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band are probably the most notable. Then there are a few from a period of exploration in my high school years: mostly Talking Heads, David Bowie, certain individual tracks (but rarely artists’ entire oeuvres) from the pop radio of the era (hence fragments of disco, punk, and such).
I acquired a lot of music in college – as most people do. And some of it remains the most resonant for me. Depeche Mode, The Cure, more Bowie, some early rap (eg NWA), some bits of “club music” of the 80’s.
Some artists in high rotation in that long-ago era have since failed to survive. I remember the Beatles, from my childhood, used to be invited, but at some point I lost interest. I remember thinking highly of Dire Straits at one point, but for the last several decades I can’t stand them. I exiled Aztec Camera for a few decades, but they made a comeback at some point. Tastes change.
There were my years in Latin America (actual and later “de facto” as a graduate student of Spanish, where my day-to-day life was at least 50% in Spanish even though I was living in Philadelphia). That contributed artists such as Cafe Tacuba, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, or Silvio Rodriguez – each as diverse from each other as any are from any North American music. I have tracks of Nuyorican rap, Cuban folk, Mexican punk.
Much later, my time in Korea was a period of a rate of fairly high discovery of new music. That’s because of the invention of the internet, and the existence of streaming radio stations, and the emergence of Youtube and its endless suggestion algorithm. I acquired lots of little bits of k-pop (from my students – naturally) but also quite diverse bits of stuff from all over. German techno and industrial, US alt rock, Röyksopp (Norwegian, I think), strange pop anthems in unlikely languages: Arabic, Georgian, Japanese. Many of these discoveries are actually documented on this blog, which I was maintaining once I’d moved to Korea. I had my “What I’m listening to now” feature, or as I sometimes called it, “Background noise”.
Then I came to Alaska.
It’s not like the internet went away. But circumstances changed. The internet here is still abominably slow. Streaming internet radio or more contemporary streaming apps and services (e.g. Spotify) are out – they don’t seem to have been engineered with the idea of an “offline” mode in mind (e.g. there’s no “download and listen later” option). Youtube suffers the same shortcoming. Sometimes it works.
Really, though, those are just excuses. I still have my mp3 player (nowadays an app on my phone rather than a standalone gadget, as I had in the early 2000’s).
In fact, rather, there’s a quite straightforward reason for the loss of soundtrack. I no longer live alone – I live as a caretaker with my uncle. And he gets up to mischief, sometimes. I can’t be “tuned out” listening to music – not on speakers and certainly not on headphones or earbuds. I need “situational awareness”. This has paid off more than once. Like the time a few years ago when I caught him toting the 32 foot ladder out to the dock, on a windy day, because he’d suddenly decided he needed to “fix” something on the dock arch. That was only possible because of the clatter of the ladder carrying up to the attic where I worked on my computer. Or the time just two days ago late at night when he was stumbling around in the basement (where he likes to sleep) having gotten disoriented (possibly a bit feverish from our recent vaccination). I stay “tuned in” to the sounds in the house. Always.
That means no music at home.
I’m not really able to listen to music at work, either. I mean, when Chad comes in (the new owner), there’s music. I get a pleasant background of Christian Rock and Christian Country. Actually, some of it grows on you – it’s not so bad, especially if you avoid engaged listening and just use it for background music. But I’ve resisted putting on my own soundtrack when Chad’s not around, because I suspect my tastes in music might antagonize the customers (e.g. “What’s this foreign crap doing playing in here?”). So the only time I listen to music is when I’m driving – and only when Arthur’s not riding along, because it would make communicating with him even harder than it is already, with his incipient deafness and cognitive challenges.
Half the time, I don’t bother then. The drive to town is only 25 minutes, and firing up the mp3 player on my phone and linking it to the car’s speakers is just enough of a gumption trap that I don’t do it.
I’d estimate that my music consumption is at about 3-5% of what it was when I lived in Korea. And my rate of new music discovery is even less. Perhaps this is one reason why, impressionistically, I often compare my current lifestyle to life in the military, despite the fact that there’s almost nothing similar about it. My time in the military was the only other time in my life when my music consumption was so low. That palpable absence lends the same “feel” to my day-to-day existence.
Sometimes, I miss it. But I’m not sure how to solve it.
What I’m listening to right now.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
Caveat: Tree #1370 “The sea rises”
This tree was near a very high tide.
Today Arthur and I both got both flu and covid booster (so-called “bivalent, AKA 3rd booster) vaccinations. I’m expecting to have a rather feverish weekend, as my immune system tries to make sense of the invasion.
[daily log: walking, 3km;]
Caveat: Combustability
One thing I sometimes spend too much time worrying about is whether Arthur will burn his house down – by accident, I mean. The thing is, Arthur is used to considering himself supremely competent in the management of combustible materials. After all, his career was careening through air by managing a carefully-controlled, ongoing explosion (the helicopter engine). There have been incidents before.
One time he was messing with the propane heater in the kitchen, something wrong with the igniter, and he was lying there with the thing half taken apart, mashing the ignition over and over and meanwhile he hadn’t turned off the gas. I could see that going wrong.
There was another time when he was trying to use his little propane torch to loosen the bolts on the boat trolley. They were almost glowing orange. And he was banging away while still running the torch. I could see that going wrong.
Arthur hasn’t adapted his self-perception away from the self-image that he’s good at working on stuff, including burning, combustible stuff.
Last night, I knew he was feeling much better. How did I know? I had just fallen asleep, and I awoke to the sound of banging down in the basement (boathouse). He had decided it was an excellent time to “repair” the Toyo kerosene heater that’s down there. The strong smell of heating oil was rising up through the house. He’d had a “spill” when trying to manipulate the removable tank that inserts into the heater.
I suggested we’d be better off working on it the next day (today), and finally he shuffled up the stairs to sleep in the main bedroom. I put the pile of kerosene-soaked paper towels that he’d left on the floor outside.
This morning, I repaired the stove – it was showing an error code “EE8” – which I looked up online as being related to the exhaust fan not working right. I found a crack in a hose leading to the exhaust fan, and there was crud in there that had to be cleaned out.
Arthur told me he hadn’t even noticed the error code, and had simply decided based on past experience that it had to be a fuel problem – that’s why he was messing with the fuel. I wonder if he just likes messing with flammable materials?
I might start keeping my most important documents in the car.
Caveat: A thousand words less
“A picture is worth a thousand words” – so goes the aphorism.
Today, I’m starting some necessary maintenance work on my “image server”. Note that on this here blog thingy, the pictures are hosted separately from the text. So the text of the blog will continue without problem, but there may be occasions for some users over the next several days when the pictures come up missing, or where your browser complains that links are broken. Please be patient. I’m moving the pictures to a new location and everything has to be redirected to point at the new location (this is what is called “DNS” in internet administration jargon).
Caveat: Tree #1359 “The new shed”
This tree was nearby when I did some more work on my little storage-shed-slash-greenhouse thingy (“studio 3.0”).
Art was feeling a bit better today, and so I felt comfortable walking with the dog and then later working outside a bit. He’s completely past nausea as far as I can tell, but he’s struggling (and staggering) with the dizziness/vertigo, still.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: Nauseating Reboot
Tuesday night Art fell down as he prepared to take a shower in the late evening. I was already asleep, inconveniently out in my treehouse, where I’ve been sleeping all summer. Not that he even tried yelling for me – I speculate that I might not have heard him even if I’d been sleeping in the attic.
He was unable to get up, and he was suffering extreme dizziness and debilitating nausea and vomiting in the toilet, on the floor, on the walls.
I found him when I came in to get myself breakfast at 4:30 AM.
We got him a bit cleaned up, and escorted upstairs. Wrangling him directly to the car seemed uncalled for – we had been down this path before, and it was exactly the same in every respect. You can read about his last severe episode of “fall + dizziness + nausea” at these two blog posts: Caveat: POW, emergency and Caveat: Less Uncivilized Than You’d Think.
This experience was very much a replay of that one.
I let him sleep all day, and we controlled the nausea with some leftover medication, Ondansetron, that had worked that time before. When the dizziness was unabated at dinner time, I set up a semi-emergency appointment at the SEARHC clinic in Klawock for the next morning (Thursday).
We went in, they put him on IV for rehydration (he was severely dehydrated, which I knew but I can’t make him drink water, can I?) and did X-rays for broken bones and a CT scan to see if it was stroke-related (just like last time). And just like last time, it was not stroke related. Mostly dehydration combined with a minor concussion from one of his falls (he had several subsequent to the initial one, because I can’t tie him down, either, and he doesn’t really seem capable of mentally assimilating that he might be better off not trying to move around for a while).
We’re back home and he’s resting again. Still dizzy. Still with medicinally controlled nausea.
I have returned to sleeping in the attic, and Art is staying in the main bedroom rather than his cave down in the boathouse. So I’ll hear if anything more happens. But I suspect that just like last time, this will pass without any clear idea what had happened.
Meanwhile, I’m sticking close to home. I’m grateful to my coworkers Jan and Chad for understanding my need to miss a day on Wednesday.
Caveat: Tree #1347 “With red flower”
This tree was near a red flower.
The boat has been uploaded into the barn. Art and I took the last step, running some anti-corrosion goop through the motors, put it the rest of the way in, and shut the door. The boat is trapped for the winter.
Also, too, happy Foundation Day – a type of Korean holiday.
[daily log: walking, 5km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: Tree #1345 “Board”
This tree was cut into boards by Fred, one of our neighbors-down-the-road. I acquired them from Fred and drove them home hanging out the back of the Blueberry (Chevy Tahoe). I will use them for some project. It was raining a lot.
Here is the pile of ex-tree, somewhat blurry.
Meanwhile, Arthur and I ended a week-long saga of trying to get the boat out of the water, finally with success, helped by another neighbor, Brant (the new owner of the house-that-burned-down, next door, up visiting his property briefly). We had several different mechanical problems on trying to pull the boat out. Monday we had wheels that wouldn’t turn. Thursday we fixed the wheels, but then on Friday, we had problems with too much wind, and a broken tie-down rope. I fixed the tie-down ropes this morning, and we got it out, with an extra pair of eyes/hands to make sure things went right.
The boat, before and after.
[daily log: walking, 4.5km;]
Caveat: Fishing Report #(n + 33)
As Arthur put it, as we headed back at around 1 PM: “another perfect score.” His meaning was: zero fish caught. The wind was picking up, snapping waves at the boat as we entered Port Saint Nick via the south entrance.
Of course, we started out too late in the season, didn’t we? Anyway, we should have been able to catch some halibut – there have been reports from other fishers I’ve talked to, at the gift store, about catching halibut. But we only had one halibut pole (Arthur forgot to fix the other one, which was declared broken a few outings back), and the place we’d been lucky last year didn’t work out. We caught two of what I call a small “uglyfish” – some kind of bottom fish or rock fish, that we returned.
We’d tried for halibut after an obligatory troll down the east side of San Juan Island. That was utterly fruitless, too. We caught a lot of kelp.
We hadn’t started early – maybe we left the dock at around 8:30. But the sea was very calm and some heavy fog made our navigation out the inlet a GPS-based untertaking. It had lifted by the time we reached the open waters of Bucarelli Bay.
Overall, nothing really went wrong. It was just what fishing would be like, if it were an overly dramatic sigh.
Seasonal totals:
- Coho: 5 (minus 1 lost at dock)
- Kings: 0
- Halibut: 0
- Other: 0
- Too-small fish sent home to mama: 5
Caveat: Fishing Report #(n + 32)
We were skunked.
I kept waiting for Arthur to say he wanted to go fishing again. He never did. I suspect he finally picked up on my frustration with our efforts and putting up with his “drama” (as Alan termed it), and it’s easy to just keep procrastinating – he’s still Arthur, after all: the erstwhile emperor of procrastination.
Anyway, the other day I pointed out that the weather was looking promising (for a change), and so we set Sunday as a day to try fishing.
We departed the dock at 8 AM. It was quite windy – there’d been a rainy deluge in the predawn hours, as we’ve been having quite a few of, lately. Instead of getting the usual drizzle-all-day pattern of rain, we’ve been seeing these massive deluges of an hour or two, broken up then by spots of sun and strong wind: a more “midwestern” weather pattern.
So it was windy and between deluges. We went out to the north end of San Juan Island, and started trolling. Here is a picture.
We trolled down the west side of the island, rather than our typical east side, so as to stay in the lee side of the island. Not a single bite on our trolling hooks. We stopped at Diamond Point, on the southern tip, and crossed over to Tranquil Point. I was proud of crossing to exactly the point on just visual dead reckoning, not using the boat’s GPS navigator thingy intentionally.
We trolled more but found no fish. The wind calmed and the sun came out for a bit, but Arthur seems to be content with a half-day of fishing, so we headed home at noon, and were docked and stowed at 1 PM.
There was no drama, nothing went wrong, but there were no fish, either. A neutral day.
- Coho: 5 (minus 1 lost at dock)
- Kings: 0
- Halibut: 0
- Other: 0
- Too-small fish sent home to mama: 3
Caveat: Tree #1316 “Tree, road, dog”
This tree was alongside a road with a dog on it.
I spent the last 2 days trying to repair the wash down pump on the boat. I figured out that the pump actually still worked fine. And switch worked fine. The fuse seemed to have some problem, and there was something wrong with the electrical wiring. So I rewired stuff, bypassing what seemed to be the bad wiring and making a new branch off the wiring that provides power to the left-side downrigger.
It works – we can spray seawater in the boat, once again.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3.5km]
Caveat: Tree #1307
This tree was behind a bright red flower that finally realized it could bloom.
Arthur saw his follow-up with the cardiologist, today. Frankly, it was a bit anticlimactic – basically, the message boiled down to: “more data required, meanwhile just monitor things closely.”
The doctor placed a lot of emphasis on introspection – Arthur needs to pay close attention to how his pulse correlates with his general level of energy, his capacity for exertion, etc. Like that’s gonna happen – Arthur isn’t at all introspective (at least, to external appearances). I’m not sure Arthur even understood what the doctor meant in using the word “introspection”. Keep a diary? (The doctor actually suggested that). I had to suppress a snort of cynicism.
Well, to quote a common Arthurism: it will be what it will be.
[daily log: walking, 2.5km; c093051044084s]
Caveat: Tree #1302
This tree hangs out at the cosmopolitan Frank Peratrovich Airport, just north of Klawock.
We took my other uncle, Alan, to the airport for his return to his home in Colorado, this morning. The skies had cleared remarkably.
[daily log: walking, 8km; dogwalking, 3.5km]
Caveat: Fishing Report #(n + 31)
It was not without misadventure. But we did survive. And now we have 4 salmon that we didn’t have before.
We left the dock at 8 AM. It was heavily overcast and drizzly. The sun and blue skies of the last week or so had decided to disappear – just in time for our finally being able to make our fishing trip happen.
We went to the northeast corner of San Juan Island (called by local xenophobes of various stripes “Saint John”). We saw other boats, we trolled around through the notch several times. We caught a coho salmon, and so Arthur went to fill the fish-containing basin at the back of the boat with some sea-water. The spray hose attachment pump didn’t work (another thing that should be tested before departing the dock!). I suspect a corroded connection somewhere. So meanwhile, we can always go “low tech” and fill the basin using a bucket.
So I was using a bucket to fill the basin, leaning over the side of the boat, getting some water, dumping it. Well, I was also trying to monitor the direction of the boat – I should have slowed/stopped the boat, but I was trying to multi-task, and Arthur and Alan weren’t being terribly useful with respect to situational awareness. With my attention in two places at once, I managed to lose the bucket. I would have just given up and let the sea have the bucket, but Arthur insisted we circle back and try to fetch it several times, until it had sunk out of sight beneath the rolly waves. Arthur spends a lot of time obsessing over the various buckets in his mental inventory, which all seem to have individual characteristics and personalities, and he has a hard time reconciling this mental inventory to fact in the real world at the present moment. So this will contribute to that problem. Anyway, we’ll need to buy some more buckets. Meanwhile, there was a spare bucket on the boat, though somewhat larger and a bit harder to handle. I tied a rope to the handle of that one, so it would be harder to lose in the sea.
We caught a few more coho salmon, and lost a few, too, as Alan or Arthur tried to reel them in and failed to bring them on board. Sometimes that happens, but it seemed to be happening more than usual.
Around 1100, Alan caught a massive agglomeration of kelp, which took a while to disentangle. That (along with the constant drizzle) dampened our spirits with respect to further orbits trolling for salmon, so Alan suggested we head over to Caldera and try for halibut. We crossed Bucarelli Bay in choppy seas with low visibility due to overcast and rain, and at Caldera Alan got his hook in for some halibut, but Arthur struggled with the second halibut pole, as we realized that the second pole had a mechanical problem which we’d identified last Fall, and which was supposed to have been repaired ™ but of course never was.
So that ended Arthur’s interest in continued efforts to fish, and Alan was unhappy standing in the drizzle at the back of the boat, too. So we headed home. Though it was choppy with a steady south wind out on Bucarelli, inside Port Saint Nick the water remained flat, and docking was easy – we docked at around 1 PM.
We had 5 coho, and Arthur set about gutting and cleaning them right there on the transom, while Alan and I fled the scene because Arthur, gutting a fish, is a demonic thing, unhealthy to behold. Unfortunately, Arthur managed to lose one of the 5 fish overboard in the process of cleaning them. He wanted me to try to fetch the fish out of the water with the net, but by the time I got down there, I couldn’t see anything in the cloudy, sea-green sea under the dim light of the heavily overcast skies.
We had salmon barbecued on the traeger grill for dinner. It wasn’t too bad.
- Coho: 5 (minus 1 lost at dock)
- Kings: 0
- Halibut: 0
- Other: 0
- Too-small fish sent home to mama: 3
Caveat: Tree #1293
This tree saw multiple uncles.
My other uncle, Alan, has come to visit.
[daily log: walking, 8km; c108069053084s]
Caveat: Tree #1291
This tree has white bark.
The sun was out (what omen is this?). I spent the morning repairing the electrical connection problem on the right-hand downrigger on the boat. I had been waiting for a sunny day because I didn’t want to mess with electrical wiring while it was damp and drizzly. The repair was fairly straightforward – I just replaced the connector end on the boat-side cable, which was badly corroded.
[daily log: walking, 5.5km; dogwalking, 3km; c101065062084s]
Caveat: Tree #1287
This tree oversaw a boat that wasn’t afloat.
Chet the boat mechanic made short work of repairing Arthur’s boat. It was finished today. Because of high turnover at his shop, he wanted us to fetch it as soon as possible.
Arthur basically bullied me into letting him drive the boat home alone. I wasn’t happy, but I need to just let go. It’s his boat. If he wants to go out and have adventures in it and wander around the sea, I need to refuse to stand in his way. He thinks I’m overly controlling and excessively cautious. But of course, he doesn’t remember all the stuff that’s gone wrong in the past. He just has these quite stale, vague mental images of everything going smoothly. So Arthur drove the boat home, and I took the boat trailer home with the car. I’m pretty angry, but mostly because he is so dismissive of my efforts to communicate. He ignores or willfully misunderstands my concerns until finally I give up on trying to explain them, and let him have his way. Bear in mind that this is not specific to his cognitive issues related to the stroke and head injury – he has always been like this. I think in some weird, subconscious way, he exploits his new memory and comprehension issues to ensure he can be this way “more and better than ever.”
The problem with the boat was an “Idle control valve.” Chet wrote on his summary of work done:
Alarms going off, hook motor to CDS fault idle control valve, replace bad IAC valve, service both motors, oil change, lower lubes, test run both motors on hose no faults on main, replace trim bracket anode on main
Which is to say, it was easy to fix – for him. There is no way I could have done it. These modern engines with their electronics and such, you need the “CDS” (computer diagnostic system) to be able to figure anything out.
Below is the offending removed and replaced valve.
[daily log: walking, 3.5km; dogwalking, 4km; c149080063084s]
Caveat: Tree #1285
This tree was in the background as a raven cavorted along at dock-edge.
We got the boat to town successfully. It took about 95 minutes on the kicker (small) engine only, at about 5 knots speed but with a good tailwind outside of Port Saint Nick that got us up to around 7 knots. It’s parked at the boat-doctor’s place. Here is a view of Craig harbor as we entered. It was a rainy morning.
Then Art got a ride home with Penny and I worked all day. I made some frames and messed with spreadsheets. I realized I had done something quite new in life: I commuted to work by boat this morning.
[daily log: walking, 6km; retailing, 8.5hr; boating, 2hr; c103061055084s]