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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Blog

Published: 04 August 2023

Hits: 631

Work, last weekend, crazy. The full 5 days, some days crazier than others. Full, walk-ins of 8, 10, 14, inside and out, on the beach, it's unending, relentless. 

Just got to get through it. 

Sunday night, park the car in town, the next morning I discover someone has rifled it, tore the drivers side handle right out of the frame. Which they didn't have to do, the window was down, door unlocked, I keep nothing I regard as theft-worthy in the car. 

I was wrong. 

Creating an inventory:

1 big-boy Pickaxe, yellow handle, stolen

1 Green handled spade, stolen

2 Estwing geology hand picks, stolen

2 large green gold pans, 1 smaller black gold pan, 1 1/4 inch classifier, all stolen

all crystals left hidden under ashtray, nice ones, photographed and posted the blog, stolen...

3 packs of cigarettes hidden under dirty laundry on passenger seat, stolen...

1 big tub of sani-wipes, emptied and used to hold rocks they dumped (flints and arrowheads) - they didn't recognize these, clearly. 

***

The list grows as I figure out how much is missing....

***

Explaining to Michael while volunteering, because I'm not prospecting on days off, I'm desperately short of tools...

1 bottle of rubbing alcohol, stolen

10 packs of gum in glovebox, stolen

1 left dress shoe (they left the right one), stolen

...and here Michael chimes in...."So we're looking for a 1 legged man...."

he gets it..."Carrying a pick axe...with a vintage hardframe backpack, waxed canvas, sleeping bag inside, waterproof"

2 headlamps, 4 flashlights, stolen

1 vintage leather portfolio, with paper, stamps, calligraphy pen inside, stolen...

batteries for flashlights, glovebox, stolen

1 recreational map of the West Kootenays, logging roads, etc, stolen. Map book left behind.

1 box of Cherrybombs, stolen...

1 Prospectors travel coffee mug, with pick-axe logo, stolen

***

The list grows in every retelling. I find a crack-pipe in the back seat in going through the mess they made, there was more than one, certainly, and this right on Baker, it would have taken 2 people to carry all that they took. And I know where it is, approximately, it'll be either in the homeless encampment off Government or the one in Cottonwood falls. 

And I'm itching, dying to go retrieve my stuff, but - herein lies the rub, the encampment is concealed behind tarps, in tents, and you don't want to condemn or judge a few hundred unfortunates by the behavior of a nasty few. A  friend assures me it must be either the dislocated Trail or Castlegar junkies, they're a bad lot, and - maybe so, most of the homeless I know wouldn't do this, but, I'm annoyed.

Very annoyed. 

They took what will profit them not in the least, and inconveniences me a great deal. And it's not as if I can replace them, because the car will just be broken into yet again, and the tweakers will have 2 pickaxes, and I will again have none....

Annoyed, annoyed beyond measure...

***

Monday night, I pop out for a cigarette, forget my keys in the apartment, locked out, I'm not used to this having a place to live. 

And so the night is spent in my car on Baker, this time, on the look-out for a 1 legged tweaker (and his accomplice) carrying a big yellow pickaxe...

The night is long, I've moved my sleeping bag indoors and the back of the car, it's an uneven mess with all the rocks and crystals they left behind. 

The sound of skateboarders careening down Baker. 

Of people talking, crazy talk, tweakers, and I'm checking all of them out, looking for prowlers...

The street, even on a Monday night, is filled with no end of sketchy people all night long. 

There's a girl in front of the Best Western, young, 18 to 21, tops, tall, slender, with a bag on wheels. She's waiting for someone to pick her up, clearly,  someone who isn't showing. 

I go to sleep, awake to her being accosted by a tweaker, get out to have a cigarette, watch the proceedings, tweaker notices, goes away. She moves her luggage down to in front of my vehicle, she feels safer there. 

I try and sleep, fitful, restive, dreams, that I'm working my way from Cottonwood Falls up Baker, in Nelson-not-Nelson, homeless myself, the dream, not unpleasant in tone, I'm working my way past all sorts of the homeless towards a solitary house on the hill, it's night time, and when finally I get to this house, old, outside staircases to all the various floors, I meet a man, older, who's explaining to me that it's all an illusion, life, suffering, here, he's worked it out, and he hands me a notebook filled with equations and symbols I can't read...

***

Wake again, the girl, outside, in a corner, the night has grown cool and she's thrown on a large woolen cape, I see only her shadow and I can't help but think she's a Psychopomp come to ferry me on....

***

Wake finally at 6:00 AM, now, to wait for the building manager to let me into the building. The girl has gone. Head down to the A&W for a coffee, here are gathered a small crew of the homeless, arguing amongst themselves about stealing one-another's phones, other possessions,...these people, they will be no help whatsoever.

***

Come 8:00 I'm back in my flat. Time enough to change and get ready for work, although I really want to nap it wouldn't be safe...

***

Tuesday, busy at work, as I expected, but the night dies unexpectedly. Very unexpectedly. And so I escape to town to grab some tacos - all of the tacos, in fact, and begin my days off. 

Days off, without tools, are rather dire. Wednesday morning volunteering at ...., as is Thursday morning. They're seriously behind, as am I in furnishing my place. I gather cutlery, a cutting board, pots, pans, some clear plastic totes so I can begin to organize my rocks, art supplies, paints, etc; winter will be here soon enough. 

The afternoons, ambitions to write thwarted by the heat. Insufferable, this, 33, 35, higher even, my clothes are drenched in my sweat and I'm grateful for a place to escape it, my empty apartment, windows open, I haven't tried the AC, it's still hot, but lower the shades and siesta through the worst of it. And so I apologize for my lack of writing, it's not that nothing has happened, but I've been rather hobbled by the heat, I remind myself of the English Ex-Pats consigned to India, suffering long afternoons with gin and tonics while complaining of the locals, the heat, getting nothing done, and while I have no quarrel with the locals the heat definitely means I get nothing done...

Details

Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Blog

Published: 28 July 2023

Hits: 544

This morning, meet the building manager, get a look-see at the apartment, clean, vacant, ready for me to move in. Immediately. I need a shower curtain, bathmat, pot, pan, I need to first go to my locker and relocate it here before buying anything, I need a couple of stools, armchair, sofa, bed, I need...

soap, bar soap and shampoo to shower with...Toilet paper, toilet brush, plunger...towels, 

...laundry detergent and some Oxy-Clean.... 

...Food to put in the pantry. Lots of food. Good food. Olives. Cheese. A steak. A fork and knife - no, wait - 2, 3 of them. 4. 4 is an even number. 4 plates, 4 bowls, 4 coffee mugs, 4 of everything...Pot, Pan, Bodum, Pasta....Gnocci....Rice...staples....Asian Food...Coconut milk & curry and jars full of nuts and seeds and a little food processor so I can make tasty dressings for salads like garlic-chili-ginger and...

I'm gonna get fancy and get a glass for my vodka. Fancy fancy. 

I'm gonna go pick up my mantle clock from the antique store and my candlestick phone from a friends... 

I'm gonna run to Calgary and start emptying out that locker (and, having just been to Practicar, quoted $800 for a 2 day rental this might be a ways away...). 

Anyways, this is an entirely new way of living that I'm not in the least prepared for. Not in the least. And so, keys jangling in my pocket, what to do, I work tonight - and tomorrow morning, no point moving in just yet, perhaps tomorrow night, if it's quiet and I escape work early and I can start, unpack the vehicle of my clothes and the dozens of books and bags of arrowheads, rocks, mixed-media art supplies, the trash that has piled up and accumulated, nothing that I need and everything I ever wanted but now, it's back to the basics...

...hangers for my clothes, a desk, ...

the list will go on and on, but for now - I have a fucking place to live in a place I want to be. Bloody hell how long has it taken me?

Details

Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Blog

Published: 27 July 2023

Hits: 616

A newer model VW Jetta (?), overturned in a ditch near Balfour, high speed, crossed lane, lucky no-one was killed. Circumstances and accounts vary, but it's been there a month and a half, and the facebook "explanations" seem to suggest that somebody shouldn't have been driving, didn't remain at the scene of an accident, and is now trying to claim his/her vehicle was stolen. 

Then, a few weeks ago another, the same, a truck thrown up an embankment, slowly slipping down, there two weeks again...

Which inspires me, they should have an official Nelson-to-Balfour Drunk Drive Rally, sponsored by a local liquor store and the auto wreckers, every participant must drink a Mickey then get to Balfour as quick as they can, the winner gets a $1000 prize...you could close the highway just for this, everyone would attend, it would be like the local version of Formula 51 or Grand Prix...

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Blog

Published: 27 July 2023

Hits: 550

The last few days, short staffed at work - as always, slammed Monday, but with regulars I knew, our "better" customers, then again Tuesday, non-stop, the sketched Shambala crews, some tippers, some not so much. The day is long, wave after wave after wave, like some sort of Zombie Apocalypse, people sitting on the beach, assholes every one, it's get through it to the end, these last 6 weeks promise to be brutally long. 

Now C* - worked with last year, a worker, diner styled matronly waitress, a little too plump and doesn't like running, and the other, JR's mother in law, here to work but really she's "Doing us a favour", she's a problem, doesn't bus tables, or run the dishwasher, or a thousand other things necessary to keep the ship running smoothly. And as such I find myself incredibly busy only to realize I'm picking up the slack, I'm not so busy on my own behalf, rather busy picking up after this lazy-ass ...

Anyways, my ire peaked I leave her to do the cleanup, floor it into Nelson, it's my Friday and Taco Tuesday all in one and I'm going to start my week-end right.

The liquor store, the evening's ration, I run into a dirty B* from the Chamber of Mines, also getting a ration, although  his is a little better quality, chat, he's enthused, South Slocan, found his way into a big crystal pocket, hauling out some huge ones, and I'm inspired, I'll have to pop round the Chamber of Mines and see what he's dug up... 

After Tacos, (too many and not to the usual standard) I drive down to Rossland. Nighttime, late, the roads are empty and it's a peaceful hour and half spent. 

The night, at altitude, cool, I tuck into my sleeping bag, I've not slept this good since, well, since it heated up. 

Wednesday morning, café, coffee and a scone, then a nap on a bench waiting for the thrift shop to open. I'm keeping up my reputation...

No finds, but from here to a logging road, 20 KM up, all manners of mafic, ultramafic, igneous, some heavily mineralized veins up here, there's gold and I can smell it, some vuggy spots with rusty, dirty quartz crystals inside (none worth keeping), some what appears to be massive skarn garnet, greenish mineral (limonite?), brownish crystals (??), all sorts, and so this amuses me some hours poking about, then further up, freshly blasted a marble deposit, then again further up more veins of rusty quartz, which I smashed and smashed again in the hopes of seeing some free gold, but I did not. 

From here now back onto the highway, and what was a pleasant nighttime drive is now the stress of getting out of the fucking way of every car zooming up behind, and there's not near enough shoulder for me to be on the highway. This drive is a nightmare, I need to remember - other than construction-delayed Kootenay Lake, to keep this beast off the highway in the daytime...

Castlegar, I find some Chinese, I should have waited, the owner, pleasant but incompetent, her server, the same, 5 minutes to take an order, to fetch a glass of water, to bring change, how is it possible given that I'm the only person here?...

***

Evening, cool down & nap in Lakeside Park. Find a spot on the grass with my book, read, doze, the park is filled with the ambient noise of children playing, there's a giant xylophone, drum in the park, they jingle and bang non-stop, the piano at the ice-cream café is tinkled upon by children, the conversations of passers by, glimpses of melody. 

The drum circle begins, eyes closed and I listen, they're ferocious, laying down some good rhythms and beats, how many are they? More than fifty, not quite a hundred, they're very good. 

And now something new, techno-world-fusion dance music, and I sit up and open my eyes...

Someone's driven a white car into the park, set up speakers, and is blasting this music...

People are dancing. I recognize Nelson from Nelson and he's there, smiling, always in a good mood, and he's explaining it's "Dance Fusion", ecstatic dance, just come and dance, and people, they are coming, soon there's a crowd, 50 people, 100 people, 150 people, I recognize them, so and so from the laundrette, the Magic Man, there's the autistic girl from the library, very pretty, looks like an elf, ears poking through long dark hair, the dancefloor is bounded by the extension cords running to the speakers, she for the first half stands outside it, on the very edge, hands dancing (not feet), then just inside it when she "joins", if that is the right word...

The dancing, world-beat music, not rave quality but good enough, and everyone is freestyling, 150 people, 150 styles of dance, the people, the people, aged 2-75, no one demographic predominates, there's jugglers and fire spinners (no fire, merely the spinner) practicing, hoop dancers, there's everyone...

This ends the evening...

***

This morning, coffee, Big City Girl is back again, and I'm wondering if it's to stay, and Magic Man asks if I enjoyed the Dance Fusion and I'm off to do laundry, hit the local thrift shops, drive off to Kokanee Creek to shower, shave, trim my nails, back into town for some lunch, then to the library, and now, time to do some work...