©Ian Coristine/1000IslandsPhotoArt.comSome of our islands have many cottages.
some have few. Some have one.
some have few. Some have one.
“All the news that is fit to print”
For the past 2 years, we have been using a service called ‘Earth Class Mail’. This company receives all of our snail mail regardless of the source and serves as our permanent address for correspondence purposes. Whether a letter comes to us from France, Canada or the US, it all gets directed to our mail drop in Oregon. There, it gets scanned and sent to us as an attachment in an email the moment they received it. We can print it, delete it or have the actual physical letter sent to us wherever we are at the time.
It has been a foolproof system that has been a godsend to us as mail forwarding services we had used previously were notoriously unreliable and tardy. We have had some mail travel around the globe for weeks going to places we had just left and being forwarded to places we would not be returning to for months.
The point of all this blather is that I got a call from a reporter from the New York Times. She wanted to ask if I would endorse the company and talk to her about our experience with the service as she was writing an article about how they were expanding in Europe. For reasons I simply cannot fathom, she chose not include my witty, insightful, forward thinking opinions on current political matters. Anyways, here is the link to the article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/technology/internet/13mail.html?_r=1&scp=7&sq=earth%20class%20mail&st=cse
Small towns
Much like in France, it is hard to beat the small town lifestyle we enjoy here. Only in a small town can you walk into your bank and have the new teller say “Hello, I don’t recognize you. My name is Linda. Have you been banking with us long?” as she reaches out to shake your hand. Then, having walked down the street to the post office, the postmistress says “I know you, you are the magician. I read the article about you in our local magazine”. I love large communities but it is hard to beat the small town everyday relationships that we built in them.You are under arrest!
View of the US from our Island
We had some excitement here about a week ago. We woke up one morning to find that US and Canadian Customs officers had arrested 3 guys (including an Australian and an Ukrainian) for trying to cross the border within a few feet of our island. It seemed that the bad guys were ferried across from the Canadian side to the US by a man who picked them up in a boat.
Having been tipped off, agents equipped with night vision goggles had staked the area out during the night. They might have been Canadian terrorists trying to sneak in or just folks trying to get away from the Canadian health care system…
Da Plane, Da plane!
It has become a sad fact of life that I have to come to grips with. I won’t get it in the air this summer. I aimed high and expected more of myself. While I fell short, I can’t very well ask my kids to do what I am not prepared to myself. Meanwhile, I am surrounded with a bunch of “I knew it!” and “I told you so’s”, but it’s OK. At the end of the day, I still have an airplane so I am not what Texans call city cowboys: “All hat, no cattle”. Clearly, I have nothing to complain about.
I have not exactly sat on my laurels. I worked over 182 hours on it in the past month alone, working 6-9 hours a day on most days. I should note that for every 3 hours I spend building, another hour is devoted to reading assembly manuals, watching instruction video's, writing emails for advice and ordering parts. I always make sure I have at least a weeks worth of work ahead of me where I have an idea of what I should be doing, including allowing for "I am sorry but that part is on back order".
By the time we leave next month I should have made another huge stride. I recently heard that the average build time is spread out over 5-8 years. Yikes! Every morning, the thought of working on my airplane lights my pants on fire and gets me jumping out of bed, do my snoopy dance, go into my Wilbur Wright mode and run off to assemble another component of the Thousand Island Air Force.
Each day after breakfast my bride packs me a lunch for the stars, I head for the mainland like a laborer and don't return until 7 PM. Working on this project is the most time I have been away from my bride since I retired nearly 5 years ago. Because she does not share my unfettered devotion and zeal to this undertaking, Janice stays on the island.
My days go from doing one thing after another that I have never done before and haven’t a clue where to start. This past week I built doors. The week before I finished the wings and got them ready for paint. I still don’t quite know when I will be done, but I think I see a faint glow at the end of the tunnel and I don’t think it’s a train. Still, it's the kind of thing where you can do it well or do it fast. If it sounds like I am rationalizing here, I most certainly am. But it is my story and I am sticking to it.
It is frustrating that the Federal Aviation Administration refers to my efforts as an “Amateur built, experimental, light sport aircraft”. I like to refer to it as “Custom built, conscientiously hand crafted with meticulous attention to detail”. It may be aeronautics, but sometimes it feels more like rocketry where the learning curve is straight up.
An interesting aside was a concern I had about being able to bring my airplane to our island. I am not allowed to fly into Canada until I have a somewhat more advanced license than is required in the US. The temporary solution was in the details. “Flying in or into” was the issue, but a taxiing airplane is technically a boat. [ More than technically actually as I will be required to have life jackets for the pilot and passenger, 50 feet of floating safety line, a paddle, a whistle and a fire extinguisher] I am permitted to taxi from my dock to US waters (10 meters) and take off. Upon my return I can land in US waters and taxi to my dock. Perfectly legal and completely doable because of our location. At least until I upgrade my license.
Taking a stroll down memory lane
A few months ago, we celebrated our 25th anniversary but we were reminiscing of our 10th anniversary also. That one was pretty cool.A full year ahead, I had decided to take my trophy bride on her first trip to Europe by planning a trip to England. (It was a big deal then). I spent the entire year getting myself organized as I wanted it to be a surprise. I secretly made arrangements with her boss to schedule her to be on vacation, got my favorite in laws to agree to watch the little monsters while we would be away and got Janice’s sister to con her into getting a passport based on a bogus story about them tripling in price.
First time across the pondSeveral months out, I began surreptitiously photographing her as she would leave for work so I would have a reference when it came time to assemble the proper combinations when I packed her clothes. I never told any of the kids, so holding a globe to the camera, I made a video that my in laws could play in daily segments describing where we were and what we were doing that day. I was hoping that the kids would feel that we were not so far away and they could ‘participate’ in our travels.
I drove to Los Angeles Airport a week ahead to meet with the shift supervisor to explain the situation and persuaded him to allow me to check in luggage early and permit us to board without Janice having to come to the ticket counter. Bear in mind that this was pre 9-11… and could never be replicated today. My cover story to Janice was that we were picking friends up at the airport. She would have actually boarded the aircraft and be seated before she knew what was happening.
One of the fun things I planned was our attending the “Ceremony of the keys”. I had requested and obtained tickets a year ahead, as was required. With only one exception, this nightly ceremony has been held at precisely 9:53 PM at the tower of London for the past 700 years. During WW II, a bombing raid knocked the guards to the ground and they were a few minutes late. The guard was required to write a letter of apology to the King.
This ceremony is where the tower gates are locked for the night and the keys are taken to the Queens quarters for safekeeping, indicating that "All is well". Only about 30 people are permitted in the courtyard to witness this very formal event. Most visitors have never even heard of it and by the time they do they are a year late in trying to get tickets.
In spite of my best laid plans, some serious last minute drama with teenage kids raised issues that could potentially have canceled the trip. That required me to spill the beans to Janice just 48 hours before our departure for her input as to the go / no-go of the adventure. It was a go.
