Winter Is Dragging Its Feet

FRIDAY THE 13th

4:30am is not my favorite time of the day. But it was Friday and I had a 7am appointment at the hospital's imaging department for my CT-scan.

It was chilly in the house which made we wonder what kind of weather we had this morning. Stepping outside, I noticed a little fresh snow, just a dusting on the ground. Frost filled the air. Window wipers where frozen to the glass. Most of the night it had been raining then turned to snow. The roads would be treacherous. 1.5hr. drive to the hospital was not what I wanted.

An hour later I called the hospital and canceled.

They gave me a new time for Wednesday. I can live with that. It is only a little more than a year ago the hospital in St.Stephen had gotten that CT-scanner. Before that, people from Campobello had to travel 3 hours to Saint John.

Well, Bea had gone to sleep again while I made sure we had a fire in the wood stove.

Saturday, March 14. The curtains are still drawn. Daylight Saving Time and at 6:45am it is still pitch dark. So I have my coffee and another portion of disgusting news of the day. Why are we doing this to ourselves - filling our morning with atrocities happening around the globe? I make a mental note of stopping this morning madness.

Finally daylight arrives, and I pull open those curtains. What can I say...? Thick snowflakes have already covered the ground transforming it into a Christmas-style postcard picture, and more is coming down.

Oh my.....

Aren't we just a week from the start of spring?

We need to bring more firewood into the house!

Bea has an idea. She wants to bake breakfast buns. I love fresh-baked breakfast buns.

A couple of hours later the delightful smell from the baking stove is moving through the house. Meanwhile, the snow has stopped and the sun is now working overtime to melt the white stuff again. A cold wind is working against it, making outside activities unpleasant. Not even Dixie likes it outside.

So we stay where we are. Well - not quite. We are out of a few supplies and I drive across the border. My goal - the Dollar store. Milk is cheaper there. Another stop at the IGA and I get some more stuff. They got eggs for 2bucks.

But while eggs are cheap, gas prices are soaring. "A small price to pay", says the president. He should ask those people with a minimum wage who have a daily commute.

Let this lighten your day....

The Greyest Of Grey Days

HOME FOR A WEEK

Waking up on this day I found the outside world in a state of 500 shades of grey. So with a 100% of humidity we won't be moving around outside. 

So time for reflection.

Clearly, we have been busy getting ourselves reinstalled in the house. And that didn't just happen without hick-ups.

Like in years earlier, we found that we had way too much stuff in the motorhome. Our clothes, our kitchen utensils and our gadgets had to find their original places in the house.

The most overshadowing problem has been the water supply. We had days with absolutely no water from our well, and then suddenly water was running for 2 days, just to fail again. On and off it went, never to be reliable. We still hope that milder weather will help to restore a normal water supply.

Then one afternoon our power went out. There wasn't any storm going on, so we wondered about the reason. Shortly before dark, the power came back on. Later we heard that someone had hit a power pole in an accident.

Personally, I still had to deal with my headaches. After a doctor's visit I got a referral for a CT-scan, which will be done tomorrow, Friday. I hope that Friday 13 doesn't imply anything sinister happening.

The past 2 days have been warm and sunny. In fact, day temps climbed up to 10C (50F) and the warming sun even made it possible to sit down outside coffee in hand.

Snow was finally starting to melt and I was able to fix an electrical issue on our motorhome. Before we left in October, I had removed our Magnum Inverter/Charger as I couldn't get it to work. A 3000W Renogy inverter from our trailer was installed instead, which got us through the winter. Now, I tested our Magnum and to my surprise found that it actually was working. So the Magnum was reinstalled in the motorhome and it is working just fine. 

A successful job like this and it makes me feel good.

The coming days will be significantly colder with temps below freezing again. Thankfully, we have lots of firewood so we will stay warm. Our central heating which is run by an electric forced-air furnace has been disconnected. Running that in cold temps is the same as registering for bankruptcy. If I'd be 30 years younger I'd install solar for the house and kiss the power company Good Bye. Besides of firewood, we use a couple of electric oil radiators which are much more efficient than the furnace in the basement.

So we should be fine riding out the last weeks of winter.

I have had days with contemplating whether we left California too early in a panic. But two facts have made these thoughts go away.

As you all have noticed gas prices are on a steep rise due to the illegal and completely unnecessary war the orange pedo-ape has started. And now Iran promised that they will not allow any oil to pass through the strait of Hormuz. But we still got home on much lower prices, and if we have to stay home next winter we will do so.

Number two has more natural reasons: Temperatures in Holtville, CA have risen into the 30s C and will peak at 41C for March 20. This would have been forbiddingly too much for us and directly deadly for Dixie.

So with that consolation in mind, I can live through a grey day and stay in front of my wood stove.

Best way to spend the day

The Homecoming

The trouble of returning home after months of absence can be that "normal" functions" in the house don't function any more. 

This time we discovered that our deep drilled well did not have enough water to provide us with running water. But I think you read about that already in my previous posting.

This is not a good situation. Nobody can live without water.

First day we got by with using our 2 5gal containers we had in the motorhome. But then we had to seek help from our neighbours. 

Then of course, our house was really cold. We connected 3 oil-based radiators and got a roaring fire in the wood-burning stove.

Our property here has been "blessed" with lots of snow. This white stuff is in the way when trying to get into the garage, or the wood shed. And some of it is frozen to a heavy ice barrier. Yesterday we had sunshine and no wind, but today olde sun didn't show itself and we got subzero freezing conditions.

A fellow islander came by with his truck and plow. He pushed a lot of snow out of the way. This makes room for parking our trailer and being able to drive close to our wellhead. Our plumber had suggested to fill water into the well. With our 50gal water tank that could help.

This morning I had my medical appointment. I will have to go for a CAT-SCAN the coming week. 

I was still tired after that long haul homewards. Notice that I am not young any more.

Home Free!

Yes, we made it home - yesterday. But we got way too busy to do a posting.

Yesterday, started with -11C (12F) and that caused a whole lot of problems. Overnight there hadn't been enough battery capacity to run that little fan, so the water was frozen again. But worse things were underway.

Under a routine walk-around I discovered that passenger side tire was down quite a bit. So I unpacked our air hose and connected into the compressor outlet. After starting the engine I noticed air gushing out from that connector.

Removing the air hose didn't make a difference. The connector didn't close. I tried  multiple times but it didn't work. Then, finally after using Bea's hair dryer on it, it did close. But I didn't dare to try the air hose again.

So we left with a low pressure tire. Bea went onto the internet and found a tire service in Portsmouth, NH. We pulled into their yard and found two helpful guys inside the building.

When one of them started looking at the valve stem of the inner tire he discovered a damaged valve stem. A minute later he had gotten a new flexible stem from the shop and put himself under the motorhome to replace the old one. 

At the tire service

It takes a service minded person to do this outside in freezing temperatures. He finished his work by controlling both sides of rear tires and even our trailer.

When it was time to pay, the manager didn't want any money, instead he hinted to pay the worker directly, which I did. What a good man and a good outfit!

\We went back to the Interstate and continued for our last miles northward. We had lost about 2 hours that morning but made it to Bangor,ME before noon. 

3hrs later, we reached Canada Customs, where our bus and car was searched by two agents!  This is quite crazy, given the fact that we are locals here and would never even think of smuggling anything through the border. But I get it. There was no traffic and the agents must have been pretty bored.

We unloaded the car in the Roosevelt Parking Lot then continued home. 

Restarting the house was a problem right away. Our well pump did not produce any water, despite the power being turned on. So either our well is empty, or it is frozen. The latter being the most probable cause.

Our good neighbour Deanna had invited us for dinner so we warmed ourselves under a delicious meal.