Signal to Noise

Wednesday afternoon was a great time to go biking. There is nothing better to beat my blasé attitude out of me in the middle of UPEI’s reading week then to hop onto a tandem bike with Dave and be propelled around Charlottetown on a beautiful warm-ish winter day. The streets were free of snow (though the amount of traction sand and run-off water was impressive) and car traffic was very light. A little over an hour later we finished our ride covered in damp sand–me taking the forward soaking and Dave with the telltale stripe up his back. Grit-filled satisfied grins all around. Thanks to Dave I have been biking in the first two months of this year.

As it turns out, the very next day I learned that “[c]ycling advocates in Charlottetown, including the Medical Society of P.E.I., are upset accommodation for bicycles is not part of a $5-million expansion of Riverside Drive“–and this was one of the very same roads on which we were biking the day before. Of course, given the limited number of roads into and out of Charlottetown, it was hardly a surprise that we would be biking on one of the access roads. The only other cyclist we met on our ride was biking from Stratford and into town on Riverside drive. It is not the most direct route to the heart of the city but it is the most scenic and the relative lack of traffic is a benefit to anybody on a bike.

Rather than comment on how biking is great and more bike lanes and paths would be good for Charlottetown (well, maybe I will comment on it by saying I will not comment on it) I simply note that I am raring to get back to work and am planning on how I can bike in every month this year. Time to get back on the rollers for a while and hope for a warm and clear day in March.

The Noye family, inspired by a man that I smell like (and without needing two tickets), Jan and I and the girls went out to Orwell Corner Historic Village yesterday to partake in the Orwell Corner Winter Fun Day. The writeup in the local paper suggested that we could

Visit with farm animals, go sledding, make snow taffy, help Blacksmith make a nail, horse and sleigh rides (weather permitting), plus traditional indoor board and card games. Hot chocolate will be served.

It was all true and to top it off there was a light snowfall that floated clumps of stick-on-the-end-of-your-nose snow. It is very hard not to spout words like “idyllic,” “rustic,” “picturesque,” “unspoiled,” and other synonyms … because it was a lot of fun. A lot of people worked hard to make an afternoon of sleigh rides, hot chocolate, and maple syrup taffy in the snow.

We spent about 45 minutes in the blacksmith shop and Robin and I got to make some crafts with steel. She got to make a nail and I made a double-ended hook. When Robin was not making her nail and hammering she was driving the fan to keep the force hot. She was told that in the late 19th century she might earn ten cents for a day of keeping the shop clean and the fire hot. She would probably also have been a boy.

All told, we spent a little over two hours wandering around the village, eating taffy (actually, picking taffy out of teeth and hoping not to dislodge fillings), patting bunnies (free to a good home), going on sleigh rides, and drinking hot chocolate. We finished the day at home with warm stew and many smiles.

I am tempted to write a book about working at the Sun-N-Shade campground this summer. There have been enough laughs, quandaries, and pearls of wisdom in the last two weeks to at least fill a trade paperback. If I could come up with a touchy-feelie title that evokes folk knowledge and caring (perhaps something involving chicken soup or self-healing) I might just might make my fortune and be able to ride the talk show circuit for a few years and retire in the splendour deserving of a modern-day oracle. Of course to do all of this I would need some reasonable stretch of uninterrupted writing time; so that idea is out.

I have come up with a chapter title for the portion of the book that relates the wisdom bequeathed to me by George, the social hub of to campground. George does everything from stand-up comedy to emptying garbage cans and is able to find humour in most any situation (self-deprecating or not). The chapter will be called “Grab the Easy Stuff First.” This is not so much a philosophy as a way of life that has been honed by years sailing off of the east coast of Canada. Even though he professes what might be construed as a lackadaisical attitude toward work I have yet to see any of his jobs undone. To abuse a nautical metaphor, he gets where he is going with minimal tacking and almost no wake.

Speaking of time, I have been writing this post for five hours now and I … cripes, I just got interrupted again and this sentence has taken me twenty minutes and I forgot what I was going to write. I cannot wait to see the narrative of this post when I am finished.

Ah, the jobs. I am fascinated by the number and variety of small jobs. The bigger jobs such as collecting the garbage, cutting the grass, and cleaning the facilities are all running without me getting involved to muck things up. There have been a few times that I have wandered in to clean up a large mess or move things about to make cutting the grass easier, but I am not needed much there. It is the “everything-else” jobs that fall my way. Here are some of the “everything-else” that I have undertaken (skilled in the area or not):

• wasp nest removal
• clothes dryer repair
• golf cart repair
• lawn mower repair
• reversing and parking obscenely large trailer
• argument mediator
• computer technician (including wireless network)
• tour guide
• restaurant critic
• delivery and shuttle services
• fan belt squeal remover
• and so on …

There are a ton of little jobs like that (some longer than others) and every one of them interrupts something–usually supper.

I would have to say that I am enjoying the variety and challenges that I am getting these days at the campground. There is a fair bit of tedium when it comes to checking people in and taking reservations and doing the books but the rest is a very interesting adventure. There is, however, a significant downside: the evenings.

I am alone in the evenings. When all of the jobs are finished and all of the music has been played and songs sung–then I am alone to finish my work and go to bed. I never suspected that this would be the hard part of the job. I have been married (with children) for quite a long time and this stretch has been the longest period I have been away from my family at night. I am missing my family at night a lot. It is just too quiet. There is no conversation, no discussion, no planning for the next day … just quiet.

I was talking with a man a while back who is a widower and he was telling me about how empty his house has become. We talked for about ninety minutes about this and that with always the underlying theme of emptiness. He was not unhappy, it was more adjusting the the change of not having a loved partner around to maintain their well-established pattern. I found myself trying to be sympathetic but not really understanding the nuance he was trying to convey. I suspect that like many people, I had simplified the situation to fit my understanding and past experiences.

My situation is a temporary dislocation and not a permanent loss. But I cannot help but feel that there is a part of both circumstances that is common, the disruption from comfortable routine and companionship. I have been struggling to put my finger on why I am bothered by this at all and this is what I have surmised. It may be complete twaddle and I know it sounds (borderline) silly, but so be it. As a footnote, part of the discussion on loss was the fact that very few people discuss that type of loss (I was told that it was discussed more with women and less with men) and it is very difficult to put into words. Maybe I understand the nuances a little better and maybe I don’t. I know I am looking forward to getting back to my comfortable routine.

As I am going numb from doing bookkeeping at the campground I noticed an article on reddit.com. Reading Reddit is no substitute for information but there are enough tidbits that I seem to give it more time in a day than I should (that was my obligatory I-am-not-really-addicted-to-a-social-news-site disclaimer).

The article mentions a Canadian from Chelsea Quebec who was stabbed in the neck and then sat down with his attacker and called the police. During the call to 911 the operator ended up speaking to the attacker who gave his name and birth date and awaited the police. Not your every day sort of occurrence.

Now the bit that I was startled to see, the man who was attacked is named Christopher Holloway. I met Christopher a number of years ago when we were both working for Bell Northern Research and Northern Telecom was a company that was making buckets of money. He had recently finished skiing across the Arctic from Russia to Canada via the North Pole. The trek was called Polar Bridge and there is a short blurb about it on Richard Weber’s Wikipedia page. I did not know Christopher very well but I knew enough from his stories to know that he was (and likely still is) very capable and pretty darn hard to faze. So even though the article states that he was “surprised last week by an intruder in his basement who had been eating his fruit and using his clothes dryer” I picture him being surprised in the “that’s unusual” sense rather than the “what am I going to do now” sense.

I am very glad he was not hurt. My first thoughts were very much about hoping he was okay. My subsequent thoughts (not the caring ones … ) were much more along the lines of the look on his face and irritation of being stabbed while he was trying to figure out what to do about a guy eating fruit in his basement who had just stabbed him in the neck. I have no idea of the circumstances but I cannot imagine anything else but a matter-of-face expression (some concern about weak legs, bleeding, and the knife, I am sure) and one more story to add to his already substantial quiver of tales.

I also remember biking to his house and when he opened the door he shouted “kill” to his very large Canadian Eskimo dog named Franklin. Although their temperament is described as “loyal, tough, brave, intelligent, and alert … it is affectionate and gentle” I did not know this and was far more concerned about the fact that I had a 90lb dog running toward me and my friend Chuck (on bikes) wearing little more than Lycra and a terrified expression. Better still, we were unable to flee and the first thing that Franklin did upon reaching us was to put MY ENTIRE HAND in his mouth and lick off the salt I had accumulated from a long ride. Chuck’s next words (when Franklin) moved to him were “Teeth, I feel teeth.” Franklin was a great dog.

I would have loved to know Christopher better but we ended up working for different companies and I paths seldom crossed. It is good to read that he is still kicking and apparently very much as I remember.

We had a dandy storm Thursday night through Friday morning–lots of rain and thunder. There was one clap of thunder that was louder than anything I had previously heard. It was an enormous explosion at precisely 4:00am on Friday morning (to be fair, it might have been slightly before that but when I looked at the clock on my computer it said 4:00am).

I was up and running and ready to volunteer at NORAD to protect my home from alien invaders. My laptop was providing the only light in the room and when I finally managed to orient myself I realized that there was a stink of burning plastic (or the like, it is hard to identify funny smells in the dark with a heart rate that has yet to recede below 200 beats per minute). Now I had to find the fire and figure out what had just happened (after a rather urgent need to urinate has been settled).

With flashlight in hand my wife and I wandered around the house looking for the fire. We walked outside and looked around. We wandered into the basement. We found nothing and gradually were calm and confident to go back to bed still puzzled at what had made the huge (emphasizing huge, big, loud, scary, thundering) noise and the funny smell, which had since dissipated and I was figuring that I had imagined it because waking up scared caused me to smell funny things.

It was dark, the power was out, and we slept the rest of the night very comfortably.

The next day the storm was gone and we waited for the power to come back. Our area was out (according to Maritime Electric) so we waited. We got suspicious around 6:pm when we saw lights on at our neighbor’s house and we were still without power. When we called Maritime Electric again they assured us that everybody had power … we suggested otherwise and they sent a truck out to investigate.

At 8:00pm the truck checked out the line to our house (which is about 500m from the road) and the breakers on the line. All were good. When they checked the transformer on a pole just outside of our house the problem was found: the transformer was not working. It had gone boom. It had shuffled off its oil-soaked innards. The lightening had made it explode. Thus the exceptionally loud boom.

At midnight we had a new transformer and power flowing into our home again. The crews that fixed the problem were fast and neat.

The tally from the storm began to accumulate after we had power returned and we found that

• None of our (powered) telephones worked
• Our satellite connection to the Internet did not work
• Our router did not work
• My laptop power supply was toasted (and smelled funny)

The laptop was not on a UPS or surge protector (my bad) but Apple has put a new one in the mail for me. The phones were likewise not protected and we bought new phones the next day. The router and the satellite were both on UPS but got toasted–but they were connected by CAT-5 cable.

All in all it was not too bad. Nobody was hurt and everything should be back to normal in a week or so. My heart rate should have dropped to normal levels by then.

I am about to take three weeks and work at the Sun-N-Shade Campground (the world’s most underwhelming web site that belies an amazing place). This is an adventure for me and I have been drafted into the position by virtue of the fact that my parents are taking a bus trip for the last three weeks of August. My parents run the campground.

When we started with the campground we worked it together but I have spent less and less time at the campground in the last few years. As it turns out, my parents are far better at knowing what people want than I am. The result is that the campground runs in ways that are mysterious (to me). Most of the knowledge exists firmly encased in the minds of the two people who are taking a trip to Arizona for three weeks. It is a subtle thing, but I am beginning to suspect that there is a bit of fear within those same minds that they are abandoning the campground. Anarchy and horror awaits.

I, however, am confident that all will be well. I have run the campground before in a previous incarnation. I like to think I am level headed and not prone to violent outbursts. I have run companies in the past. But, I am still “the son” that is moving into my parents shoes.

When we dropped into the campground last night and all was running well. My parents were taking a break before the evening show at the hall and the people at the campground had it running like a well-oiled machine. We hung around for over an hour and chatted with campers and generally had a good time.

It was the cap to a wonderful evening to have my mother quietly pull me aside and tell me that if things are too tough for me in the next three weeks then my younger sister is willing to fly over 2000kms to help me run the place. And my aunt in Halifax can be available too.

No matter how successful or credible I might ever become … I am still a son.

There is nothing more sincere than a parent’s desire to protect a child. I will not sully the moment by allowing the possibility that the protective instinct is for the campground and not me.

I do not think I have done many things more difficult than sending my daughter off to camp for a week in the Magdalen Islands (Le centre nautique de l’Istorlet on Havre-Aubert). It is difficult to let somebody you have been protecting and guarding go off out of protective range and left to her own devices … for a week … without any contact. I am not trying to compare myself to “America’s worst mom” , but it was tough enough to send her away with adult supervision for a week to an island (well, archipelago is probably more accurate) and not hear from her for a week.

The picture (above and to the left) of her leaving for camp shows a couple of things: she has already made a friend and is leaving hand-in-hand with her new friend; and she is not even slightly hesitant or showing any desire to look back once she took the first step toward the boat. I now have a more perfect understanding of what it means to have an experience be bittersweet. I could not be more proud of her being able to go off by herself to a place where she will speak nothing but French for a week, but would it have been too much for a father to ask to have even a brief backward glance? Just a little glance would have been okay.

So off she went. As much as we could do to research the camp (we went to the information session and talked to other parents who had children attend) it was still traumatic. As you can tell, it was a far bigger deal for mom and dad than it was for daughter.

Nonetheless, we survived and I was gratified to see her come back happy, tanned, and full of stories. She even managed to run the last few metres to greet me. I managed to maintain my cool just long enough to take a picture (on the right) and then dropped all pretence of cool and gave her a big hug. I continue to wrap myself in the comfortable knowledge that this was a great experience blah blah blah … she is more self sufficient blah blah blah … she learned a lot blah blah blah … and so on.

The truth is that all of these reasons are spot on the mark. She did many (nautical) activities she had not tried before and had fun. We had a great time spending some “alone” time with our other daughter. I am filled with a newfound (and possibly illusionary, but I do not care) feeling of being a good father. And, best of all, we are back to “normal” with the exception of the girls’ bedrooms; they have been torn asunder to improve them and paint them pink. Life is good.

I finally finished a bottle of Bushmills ten-year-old single-malt Irish whiskey that I carried back from a trip to Ireland that Jan and I took a while ago. I am not a particularly heavy drinker. Well, check that; I am indeed a drinker (a little) and according to dubious science I am indeed heavy, so I guess the previous statement is not strictly true. But around the ole household a bottle tends to last quite a while. The aforementioned Bushmills has lasted more than fifteen years.

When I had the bottle’s lifetime pointed out to me I realized how many people have taken a drink from that particular bottle (via a glass mind you), I had more than a touch of melancholy. A lot of good people (certainly as far as I am concerned) have bent an elbow holding a glass of that whiskey (including my father who reached for it rather than a more common Canadian variety beside it when he desired a base for his drink with ginger ale). Some of the melancholy likely came from the funeral scene in Waking Ned Devine which was playing as I finished my glass.

So, in keeping with he end of the movie and the history and heritage of the bottle, I toast the friends that shared it with me and the fond memories of those times, Sláinte.

I have always been obese. Well, probably not really, I was probably within statistical norms for a few minutes after birth. And when I say that I am obese and have been for the last twenty years (which is closer to accurate) it is based on the body mass index.

I would also like to point out that at various periods during this time I was

• Playing competitive (let’s call it somewhat competitive) soccer three times a week
• Biking 200+ km per week
• Playing hockey (again call it semi-competitive) five times a week
• Practising taekwondo four times a week
• Generally being fit and outdoors and happy

My point being that I am a big guy and have been for a long time. I was fortunate enough to have a bicycle built for me by Gilles Bertrand at one time and I wanted a particular frame. I was told in no uncertain terms that for such a bike I would have to weigh less than 200 lbs or I would greatly lessen the life of the bike. I was a “gram weenie” far more than was healthy for a guy my size. I am far better described as torque-enabled or gravity-enhanced than as a mountain goat. I suffered up every hill that my more svelte friends ascended with (what appeared to me to be) the greatest of ease. My only revenge was the downhill where gravity and a tuck were my friends.

So, back to being big–I was and am. My BMI has always been high. To be fair, I just checked the scale and when I got down low enough to buy the bicycle I was only “overweight” on the BMI scale. I biked over 2500km that year around Ottawa.

I have come to hate the BMI. I hate being classified as being so overweight. “[Because of its] ease of measurement and calculation, it is the most widely used diagnostic tool to identify weight problem within a population” (Wikipedia). And there is nothing more comforting than a simple number when making a diagnosis, especially when the number is the result of a mathematical formula. Those things are great.

When I came across a NPR article called “Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus” I could not have been happier. I read it three times just to cheer myself up. Hey, I am still a big guy. I am bigger than I should be given my current lifestyle and physical ability but I would appreciate not having people rely on an abstract number that assumes uniform body composition across all members of a population and uses poor mathematics and statistics (as well as an early 19th century understanding of physiology) to classify individual fatness–particularly when the inventor explicitly said it was not suitable for that purpose. For the record, here is the top ten list in abbreviated form:

1. The person who dreamed up the BMI said explicitly that it could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual.
2. It is scientifically nonsensical.
3. It is physiologically wrong.
4. It gets the logic wrong.
5. It’s bad statistics.
6. It is lying by scientific authority.
7. It suggests there are distinct categories of underweight, ideal, overweight and obese, with sharp boundaries that hinge on a decimal place.
8. It makes the more cynical members of society suspect that the medical insurance industry lobbies for the continued use of the BMI to keep their profits high.
9. Continued reliance on the BMI means doctors don’t feel the need to use one of the more scientifically sound methods that are available to measure obesity levels.
10. It embarrasses the U.S.

(from NPR)

Aside from the conspiracy theory tilt of the last three points I couldn’t agree more. There are lots of fat people and there is little argument that we (Westerners) are becoming fatter. I am a big believer that the reasons centre around eating too much and exercising too little. I know, that is the kind of rocket science that you just cannot believe I am giving away for free, but there it is: more calories come in than go out so we get fat. Our diet has increased in sugars and fats so the calories go up. We are more sedentary so we are burning off fewer calories. These problems are serious enough without confusing the issue with poorly constructed formulae and statistics to prove the point.

It is almost quaint to hear an automated voice on a telephone call instructing the caller to insert more coins to continue a call. I got a call from my mother-in-law on June 30th telling me to gather my family and make sure we were at the Sun-N-Shade campground in Borden-Carleton on Canada Day. As this campground is owned by my family I had no problem with the request although I wondered why it was coming from my mother-in-law; she has no connection to the campground. I agreed (I am working to maintain my acceptable son-in-law status). I started to ask some questions regarding the reason we should trundle off to the campground and what time would be appropriate but the aforementioned automated voice interrupted to request more money. My mother-in-law was out of change so all I got was a “I have to go. I will see you tomorrow at the show.”

Ah ha … a clue.

It turns out that my parents (and several others) were putting on an evening performance of music and entertainment (a common happening at the Sun-N-Shade) that evening and they had been pressed into service for a bus tour at the last minute. My mother-in-law, her sister, and a number of her friends were on the tour and would be rolling in to the campground to see the show.

There were a few performers that began the show and then a longer set by the Dunromin Duo (the picture above is of them playing–and yes, there are three of them). They are (from left to right) Harold Noye, Vans Bryant, and Marnie Noye (the silent bass player). If you are a Last.FM person you can listen to their album. Jericho Road (Harold and Marnie Noye and Vans and Emily Bryant) came on after a break to finish the show.

The show was very good … really. The opening performers played traditional Maritime tunes (conspicuously evenly balanced between the provinces) and a couple of country songs. Dunromin Duo concentrated on duets (typically the “brothers” songs of the 1930s to the 1960s) and chose songs featuring close harmony including a version of “Kentucky” by the Louvin Brothers that ran close to eight minutes. The lyrics are below. As it works out to just slightly less than a minute for each line you can understand my amazement that I enjoyed the song as much as I did.

Kentucky you are the dearest land outside of Heaven to me
Kentucky your laurels and your red bud trees
When I die I want to rest upon your graceful mountain so high
Kentucky that is where God will look for me

Kentucky I miss the voices singing in the silvery moonlight
Kentucky I miss the hound dog chasing coon
I know that my mother dad & sweetheart all are waiting for me
Kentucky I will be coming soon

Kentucky you are the dearest land outside of Heaven to me
Kentucky I will be coming soon

Without disparaging the earlier acts, the evening was more enjoyable as it progressed. Jericho Road’s bluegrass and gospel music was an excellent capstone to the evening and the people I spoke with at the end of the evening echoed my sentiments. This Canada Day was far from typical for us; we usually see fireworks and sometimes outdoor concerts. I was expecting simple and homey and familiar. I got all of that–I was surprised by how much I truly enjoyed it.