5/20

When i was 12, a Boy Scout, we the more senior members of the troop patio-boated for 3 full days i think on vast Lake Powell, the tragicly-former Colorado River in Arizona. We'd sleep ashore on huge solid rocks, and from the motion of the boat all day: you could feel the rock move.

Disconcerting maybe, but embracing it, a wonderful feeling now, often, even on land, bobbing, floating, just a little bit unstable, unknowing, unsound.

"Unwept, unhonored, unsung." - Sir Walter Scott

Un.

Good name for a boat.

Morn, consulting the manual, me, unmechanical, removed and inspected the carburetor and fuel pump filters. They looked ok, well, to ~me. Darn. Of course i tried starting it again, no miracle.

Today, Canadian holiday, Port Edward only a mini-mart and major commercial fishery, the dock shoreline is *20* amp, my new-from-Ganges power line *30*, what to do but *stare* (which i was prepared to do).

Cathy texting, like an AI, suggests: take a "bus to somewhere interesting".

brilliant! i love how she watches over me.

and: this being not USA, there is a beautiful modern bus that comes by to this very remote small town in a vast wilderness every 2hrs, even on holiday, to transport me, a mere itinerant, and others, to the cultural/economic hub of the region, for 3$C.

First-Nations man waits at the bus stop. He's worked the night shift to 2am on a container ship. [First of course i imagine him at sea, but then i realize he's working on the ship in port.] He hates working nites, but is anxious for the call he'll get to maybe do it again this nite, holiday pay, $65/hr. "You must be rich," i marvel. "No", he replies, "i have a house." He motions in a direction up the hill. Impatient for the bus. He wants a cold beer

I upload accumulated blogs&accompanying-fotos in a Starbux/Safeway.


Then some groceries. I find the shopping carts all locked together. I've never seen this before. A local shopper explains you insert a quarter, you get a cart. It's to discouraging folks from walking off with the carts, spreading them all over town. (But, he adds: there are slugs, quarter-imitations, always a way around.)

Checking out, motioning to the receipt, i ask the clerk: did i get my quarter back? Answer: you get it back when you re-lock-in the cart! Back where i got it. THIS IS BRILLIANT! Not only dont folks push-off with 'em, they actually return them to where they got em, 'stead o leaving em randomly out in the parking lot to seek/destroy cars and for an employee dedicated just to collecting carts. For a quarter, refunded: it encourages responsibility.