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Windstorms, Rolling Blackouts, Heat Lightening
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
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It continues. The forecast didn't include these - rather predictable - setbacks. Weather - hotter than hell, but - "Cooling Down" as they say, only a mere 39 degrees.
Now there are the windstorms - that tear up the beach and patio, lift off the umbrellas, pagodas, tear them down the beach. A sprinkling of rain - just enough to increase the humidity, make it unbearable. And in the East, Heat lightening fills the sky.
Climate disaster. Already 119 Fires and counting and I make a mental note to prepare a "Go Bag" - keep it in the jeep, one day after work there's going to be no returning home, it'll have burned up.
The garden, generally thriving although a few of the blueberry bushes have succumbed to the heat.
And the restaurant - the restaurant - I've become - as every year before - the donkey that carries it on his back. Start, scheduled at 12:30 - the midshift, and I'm always early and forever late. The shit hits the fan before the door even opens.
The owner's son - and his wife - are job splitting, she opens the restaurant, he closes it - each working about 6 hours to my 10. And while he somewhat knows what he's doing she's not so swift. Start - and no matter how slow or busy it's been - it's as if a bomb has gone off. Unbussed tables, unwashed glassware, dishes piled on the bar, "BOOM" - it's chaos, and my job is doubled in having to pick up after her. It doubles my work - they have the pleasure of "babysitting" their children half the day, whereas I have the misery of babysitting them all the live-long day.
Yesterday, windstorm, rolling power outages, the computer fails, can only take cash, no - credit cards, we'll write the numbers down - no -
Half an hour later the power is back, but the computer still won't process credit cards, and the customers, they're pouring in, the busiest day off the year so far, it's pandemonium...
Everything that can go wrong does, we're short staffed - like everywhere else out here, and the onslaught of customers is unending - pulling up on the beach in boats, walking up to sit, it's like the Zombie Apocalypse, they never stop coming...
It's the forced pretense of normality - "Back to Normal" - everyone's out celebrating the end of the Pandemic, a trifle premature I suspect.
The assholes as well, Assholes that come in half an hour after close and you order them a pizza to go but they cancel because they find me curt.
No doubt, 10 hours in this heat, half an hour after close and a mountain of clean up to attend to, I'm curt.
Personally, though, I've never walked into a restaurant after close and found the staff other than curt. Let alone get food - so -fuck-em. The entitlement is strong.
And the people that happily sit at dirty, uncleared tables, rush the already harried staff into cleaning them up, wiping the crumbs onto their lap, their oblivious entitlement and lack of manners begs comment and I'm biting my tongue, bite it harder, 2 months of this, 9 or 10 weeks to go. Complain about the food "I said SLICED TOMATOES" begins an entitled elderly biker, all the wrong patches, before snorting his disgust at the service and complaining for 10 minutes to management.
You have to think of the good people, 90% of whom are decent and grateful. But that other 10% - well, that's why everywhere is looking for staff.
And now to go - once more into the abyss....
Under the Murder Heat Dome
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
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This is crazy, the climate apocalypse. "A predictable side effect of climate change..." they said, and then mentioned it no more.
The restaurant, no AC, hotter than hell, customers - well, people that go out in this, expect to be served, expect cooks to work in industrial kitchens with little to no ventilation - the less said of them the better.
Yesterday - back up to the new crystal spot with Chris. On the Ferry, hot, I've drunk 3 liters of water already, I need more, I'm pissing clear but I can't seem to hydrate. And at the seam, 12 KM up, a mile above the lake, banging on the quartz, decomposed, filled with pockets, but not a single crystal in sight. 2 hours of this, no horsefly can get perch on me, they're washed away in the waterfall of my sweat.
Give it up, head down, back to the ferry, only we've missed it, into the dive pub of the east shore.
Waitress, confused, flustered, a bar filled with a half dozen regulars and she can't keep up, the heat, it's addled her, scrambled her brain, she can't pull it together enough to bill customers, we make token orders - we only want in out of the sun - and eavesdrop on the tables. One guy grows magic mushrooms. Another Oyster mushrooms. So they're talking about mushrooms.
A table sits next to us - Albertans, older woman with her 2 daughters, looking for a bite to eat. This is the only place open in town. And the waitress talks to them, and I'm not paying attention when the chef comes out and tells them "NO WAY!! He's been working all day in the fucking kitchen with no AC, hotter than hell, hotter than hell, and he's finished in 7 minutes and he'll be damned if he can take it any more...".
They leave.
The drone of the waitress, the regulars laughing at how addled she is, we ask for our bill, she can't get it, the computer's stuck, she thought we had left, did we see the other guy that left? She needs a cigarette...
We wait. Everyone has bad days, only I don't think she knows she's having one, it's moment-to-moment survival.
They should just close. Everyone should. This is intolerable. This is payback for every ant that was cooked by a child with a magnifying glass, see, feel how it's like?
The leaves, they curl, wilt and wither in the heat. We're running low on water, every spring less and less, this hot spell - the hottest ever - will by followed by the earliest and longest fire season yet.
And it will be the same again next year, exactly as it has been every year for a dozen years before - every year another "One in a thousand year event" - thousand year flood, drought, snowfall, heat wave, plague...
There's a surreal haze to everything, like through the smoke, only without the char-broiled smells, it's every living drop of moisture being sucked up from the earth, it makes for a beautiful sunset.
***
This morning - up at 7:00 AM. 28 Degrees. A smashing headache, little to no sleep and that brief stint in the sun, it's hard-boiled my brain. There is no respite. This murderous heat wave, it's the kind of weather that births spree killers, madmen, lunatics.
I should be able to meditate this away. If the monks of the high Himalaya can raise sweats in blizzards, then I should be able to convince my body that I'm cold, that I'm hypothermic, I should be able to become Mr. Freeze, insulate myself from the charring heat...
The world has gone insane. From one disaster to another, the restaurant, the laughing face of enterprise trying to pretend it's now "back to normal" - there is no normal, not anymore. This is the beginning of a sea of troubles for which there is no plan, for how can you plan for what you don't believe in?
Harper, and his destruction of all the carefully garnered climate data, his muzzling of scientists, suppression of facts, he's guilty as sin. Hang him. As is Kenney, O'Toole, Ford, the lot of them. We'll make no progress with these ass-holes in charge.
The world's on fire, and we can't begin to foresee the effects. Overpopulation will soon be a thing of the past. Climate change will trigger wars, mass migrations, famines, water shortages, political instability, there are no end to the effects - predictable, predicted and ignored.
We would gag the scientists and wait for the "Visionaries" - the Elon Musk's and Jeff Bezos's and Bill Gates' of the world to come to our rescue, only they are the problem. They are why we are where we are. We are told we should trust in politicians with their long term plans that have no bearing on the immediacy and urgency of our current situation.
There is no long-term plan. We've gone past the tipping point and everything now is in free fall. Grab a parachute, an air-conditioner if you can, a sheltered underground home, This heat wave, it's killing people, crops, what's it doing to the fish and wild animals?
Tomorrow will be cooler - a mere 39 degrees. Bring your parka. The manipulation of language - by the media - is outrageous. It will not be cooler in the least. 39 degrees, 41 degrees, 38, 35, 47 - it's all too fucking hot. None of these temperatures mark any sort of end to this inferno. Quit saying it will be cooler, content yourselves with "you'll be a little slower cooked..."
This is the beginning of the end.
The Anthropocene
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
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You see the signs - some crazy old hippie camping out somewhere near 12 Mile, large hand-painted signs warning of human induced climate change, "The Anropocene", most people dismiss him. Last year his signs were 3 mile, he's a seasonal visitor.
Most people dismiss him as a lunatic.
I'm not so sure.
Every year we're breaking more and more heat records. Less and less precipitation. Milder and shorter winters.
Tomorrow, the next few days, forecast at 40 degrees Celsius or greater.
I've never seen it that hot out here. Even in Saskatchewan, or the Drumheller Valley.
Never, not once. And it's not even July. And it's going to get worse. Up to 50 degrees Celsius in Kamloops, if you can believe it. 42 in Nelson.
***
Note that "Climate Change" has almost entirely shifted - this is a "Heat Wave" - there's no mention of how Climate Change might have driven or impacted this. We hit new records - year after year, the classic climate change hallmarks - yet now, for some reason, it's off the table for discussion.
This Pandemic, it was just the toe in the door - there's a world of trouble coming. There's a theory of climate change that talks about "Tipping Points" - how - once past a certain tipping point, it's almost certainly irreversible, and the change will only accelerate. We're there.
Think of ball rolling down a slope. Predictable, you know when it leaves, you know when it arrives at the bottom. Simple formula.
But this, this is more a ball starting to fall off an incline, into the abyss, and the scientists, they've foretold it, predicted it, but were silenced, but there's good information out there that were at a critical time in human history. World history - not just ours - and that shit is about to go sideways fast.
And so lockdowns end, eat, drink, be merry, for the Pandemic is over but the end of the world is upon us...
Up Tungsten Creek Road, Shutout thrifting
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Tuesday off, a few errands, thrift shops, then head out - the 11:30 Ferry to the East Shore, meeting up with Chris to do some prospecting.
I eat a big breakfast. I've taken this intermittent fasting to an extreme, 5 days of work I eat nothing, I'm the starving waiter, but on days off I'm ravenous, eat everything I can get my hands on. And as I'm not made of money I eat before we head out.
This is not the ideal, I like cooking for myself but I'm craving oysters, steak tartare, carpaccio, steamed mussels and clams, spicy papaya salads, beets, everything I don't get to eat...
Still, economy prevails.
First off we're looking for Brad's garnets. And I have the place now, the exact place, and we show up, it's less a beach than a shoreline, I find an exposure that might be what Brad was speaking of, not sure. But his description - the abundance of them, the size of them, it's at odds with what we're finding. Maybe the water's too high and they're down lower, maybe?
We try a few other beaches on the way south towards Creston.
One, a driveway down to a pier, we're accosted as we park buy a Kootenay Karen, she tells us it's all private property, not allowed, and then stays in her truck to see us off. Pulls off on the side of the road to ensure we're heading out.
Now - they're everywhere, we're getting overrun with these entitled bitches who think they own the beaches, the air, the right of way, talking to a friend she says "Probably an Albertan...".
We head on down to the smoky quartz digs, then, on a sudden whim I pull off on Tungsten Creek FSR, a few spurs and 12 KM later and we're at the top.
A little more eventful than that - the jeep, getting warm, decides (as it's prerogative) to not start, we're stuck halfway up for half an hour while it makes up it's mind...
To the top. And here there's giant quartz seam, given way by a few boulders on the overburden, we get out, dig, and - exactly the same material as we found at the Crystal Mountain, big, blocky decaying quartz, and dig a little, dig a lot, and finally we're rewarded with a couple of small crystals.
It's strange this, given the material I'd expect to bust into a great big pocket, find dozens, hundreds, clusters, but no. Just a couple of small points.
But there's a lot of digging to be done up here, and we're high enough up there's boulder fields to be walked over, looked at, and there's a dozen other undriven spurs to be explored, I'll be back...
(Boulder with pockets of citrine crystals)
From here to Wyndel, I've a lottomax ticket to buy. I have given up on winning, personally, anyone could win it, take the jackpot, I'm resenting the ongoing playing of "My chosen numbers", I'm beginning to suspect Uncles Flim and Flam of swindling me...
Wyndel gas, a farmers sausage, coffee, soft drink, a large ice cream that begins immediately melting, pouring down my arm, sleeve, into my lap as I'm driving towards Creston, sticky on the wheel, suspicious on my jeans, damn, but sooooo tasty...
From Creston up the pass, stop at the Mica place where I banged out the beryl, dig some more, looking for more.
It's boring work, this digging, and Chris conceals his boredom poorly. I've spoiled him with the finding, and I'm resenting that I have to compromise and pack it in early.
Tuesday's prospecting is done.
****
Wednesday, up and at-em, off thrifting. Castlegar, Rossland, Salmo - a complete shutout, not a nickel spent. Nada of interest. Back to Nelson, check the thrift shops here - nothing as well, but I note the angry huntsman is back at ... - a longstanding employee, always gave off the impression that he was trying to be "efficient", only he comes off as angry, he dresses - well, formerly like a huntsman - hard to describe, a D&D character, leather vest, gloves, there's a "style" going on there but now he seems to have changed his look to more of an angry Wizard...
Evening, take Stormy for Ice Cream down at lakeside park, chat, catch up, then home to sleep - it's back to work Thursday and there's easily another 10 weeks before I can eat or relax...
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