Ice!!!

You know it’s going to be a difficult morning when you awaken to the sound of a sanding truck stuck on the hill.

Even sanders occasionally need a sander.

Notes from the workshop

All fall I’ve scrambled to get things done before the snow came. This has left a workshop crammed with firewood and the tools shoved aside to provide space for ice-covered vehicles. Bags of hardware for various small tasks cluttered every horizontal surface in the shop.

But I hadn’t done enough. The storm last week left snow banks all the way out the lane. Friday I realized that if the wind drifted the driveway full, the tractor couldn’t push it clear with the loader. I’d have to use the snowblower, currently forgotten below the barn in an unplowed area.

The tractor wasn’t about to make it back up the slope to the driveway with the snowblower hanging from the loader, so after a few tries I unchained the implement and tried to hitch it up in the snow where it landed.

Larger and smaller tractors are easy to connect to three-point-hitch implements, but the 35 hp TAFE lacks the extendable hitches of more sophisticated machines, yet is too heavy to push around. Hitch-ups are a big pain, and this one was worse than most. I must learn not to forget the snowblower at the bottom of a hill.

The problem with a fall spent cutting and splitting firewood for winter was that the lack of indoor projects had left the shop stove without any kindling wood. Out of necessity I turned to a jug of used crankcase oil to start my fires. Did you know that synthetic oil will barely burn?

Bemused by the fireproof oil, I posted a question on TractorByNet.com. Responses agreed that synthetic oils have a very high fuming point, so they are slow to ignite. One guy said owners of used-oil furnaces don’t like synthetic.

Locked in the wood-stove loop, I wasn’t getting anything done in the shop. It came down to Martin to clear the helmets, mitts and hardware off the bench with another of his madcap projects. He emailed me a diagram for an oyster shucking board midweek, then came along with Roz and Charlie on Saturday to build it while they finished the paint in the new garage.

Imagine a sturdy cutting board with a strong ledge on the bottom to butt against a counter top, and another shaped lip against which to jam an oyster. The area below the oyster is hollowed out to provide a convenient place to plunk the victim. While the board would face rough use from abrasive oyster shells, it should look good, as most of its time in Kingston it would be a kitchen decoration.

We settled on a thick cherry board with walnut cross-pieces and pinned mortises. Martin had a great time with the mortiser built long ago by the Cawley brothers in Westport, then found how versatile a band saw can be for cutting large tenons. By the time he had finished the second lip to hold the oysters (he discovered curved, angle cuts on the band saw) the completed board looked nothing like the sketch, but we both figured it would work.

It turned out Martin had a reason to build the board at this time. This week he defended his Ph.D. thesis in biology at Queen’s and is now Dr. Martin Mallet. In celebration his father sent him a case of fresh oysters from the family seafood operation in New Brunswick. Unfortunately the package disappeared from the front step of their home on Sydenham Street soon after the courier dropped it off. ARGH!

Anyway, the workshop had been jolted back into operation and I’d noticed my mother using an unsightly metal stand to hold her telephone. I found a nicely figured walnut board and a likely piece of plank to build her a phone table. The woodworking tools slid back into place. The only problem was the woodpile encroaching on the tenon cutter, so I hauled enough blocks out of the way to allow it to function.

Motors sang and sawdust filled the air. It was fun building the little table. Mortises and tenons cut beautifully in black walnut. It truly is the king of furniture woods.

Everything went fine until the sanding stage. Turns out I am running out of pads for the random orbital sander. It’s hard to go from 50 grit to 220, even with black walnut.

With the outside work as complete as it’s going to get until the snow goes, it’s time to stock up on sandpaper and make sawdust in the shop for the rest of the winter. It isn’t good to run out of scrap for kindling wood.

Lessons from another Friday 13th

If you have read many of these posts you will be aware of my deep antipathy toward Friday 13th. It’s not that I am normally superstitious, but too many bizarre and horrible things have happened to me on the date. So I go into each of these days with considerable apprehension and a marked reluctance to take chances, not that it does any good.

It all started on Friday, April 13, 1971 when I wrote two final examinations at Queen’s. My Shakespeare prof had warned us: “Be sure that you have read all of the plays.” She wasn’t kidding; she had set a compulsory 45 mark question on three plays I hadn’t read.

The craziest episode had to be the time a neighbour’s 1986 Ford Bronco slipped out of park, rolled down Church Street in Smiths Falls, through the George Street intersection, and sideswiped my unsuspecting 4Runner before wrapping itself around a pole. This all happened during my morning shower on another Friday 13th. What’s even stranger, the insurance underwriter classified the accident as an animal collision as there was a Bronco involved.

So today when it dropped six inches of slush on top of an inch of new ice, I figured it was just business as usual for a Friday 13th. My tractor normally does a good job on snow with its loader. I set the bucket to automatic leveler and run down the lane at a good pace, cross the road and stop over the opposing ditch, where I dump the snow and back down the hill to turn around and return for another run.

But the paved road on Young’s Hill was far too slippery for such antics today. I ran out of momentum or stopped early out of caution most runs, leaving mountains of slush blocking the lane. The one time I went over to the opposing ditch I had no traction to back out, so was forced to lever the tractor backwards with the loader while three trucks waited impatiently for me to get out of the way. This was obviously not the way to clean the driveway on a Friday the 13th, so I spent the afternoon developing new tactics to do a ten-minute job. My timid efforts with the tractor eventually relocated the slush mountains without catastrophe. Fine.

Then came the little snow blower for detail work around the garages and sidewalks. It wouldn’t start. I dumped the gas and poured in new, but it still wouldn’t go. But that was a result of forgotten fuel stabilizer, not the act of a perverse fate.

So I backed my truck out through a snowbank and drove down to Forfar to get the mail. The faint rattle in the front suspension had suddenly become a lot more noticeable. Perhaps I should have a look. I dropped a piece of plywood on the ground and crawled under. I started at the gas tank and worked forward. Everything seemed solid. The shocks and ball joints were fine. Then something moved when I reached past the shocks and wiggled.

The brake caliper I replaced three weeks ago had come loose and was hanging by one bolt! Yikes! Perhaps those bolts don’t need to be protected with anti-seize compound like wheel nuts and spark plugs. Maybe it’s Lock-Tite that goes on them. Maybe I didn’t tighten them enough. Anyway, this bizarre and dangerous fail met all of the criteria of a Friday 13th disaster, so I was able to relax for the rest of the day. My truck certainly wasn’t going anywhere without a new bolt.

Out of Friday’s confusion I have learned three lessons:

1. Modern gasoline with its high methanol content deteriorates quickly if left sitting in an engine. When I took the snowblower’s carburetor apart, internal parts were crusted with a green, crystalline material unlike anything I had seen before. It’s not like the ring of varnish which used to form around abandoned gas cans. Without stabilizer I can’t see a small gas engine surviving long in storage if there’s any fuel left in it.

2. It takes more than a hoist and set of air wrenches to make a mechanic. Those caliper bolts needed to be torqued to 90 foot-pounds. We have to get Internet service in the garage.

3. My tractor’s two previous owners traded it in at the same dealership on the same 4WD model. After last Friday that doesn’t seem like a bad idea.

Also check out:
http://rodcroskery.wordpress.com/2009/02/15/the-mysterious-case-of-the-runaway-bronco/

What women want

Our English springer spaniel Moody Blue died three years ago after a long decline.  Bet insisted each time I asked that she just wasn’t ready for another dog.

And then last week Roz sent Bet a card in which she mentioned the fun Charlie had had over New Year’s weekend in Lakefield playing with their host’s spaniel, Loki.  Apparently the enjoyment was mutual.  Bet read this comment aloud to me: “Did you put her up to this?”

You’ll never know what Bet wants by asking her.  Sensing the moment, I dropped an email to Blue’s breeder, Karmadi English Springer Spaniels in Maberly.  Owner Diane Herns wrote back that she had one remaining female puppy because of an unexpected allergy in her intended family.  Barby would be ready to go this weekend.

Looking for another Moody Blue, I asked if she had an older dog.

She told me that Time, a fine yearling, is part her breeding stock, but could go out to a home between whelping sessions.  She suggested we come to have a look.

Bet’s response to this reflected her passionate ambivalence:  “I can’t come right now because I have to feed these people,” referring to the crew of Martin, Roz and Charlie painting the interior of the new garage.  In a call to Diane we settled upon Sunday morning for a visit.

“You know that if I look into the face of a spaniel puppy, I’ll be hooked.  I have no resistance whatever.  I just melt.”

Then I came down with the flu.  This was the first such session since my retirement six years ago, and it came as quite a shock to the system.  Kept awake by the disruption through the rest of the night, Bet scrolled on her iPad through dozens of photos of Diane’s dogs, increasingly wondering if she was up to the six months of interrupted sleeps it would take to house-train a puppy.

By Sunday morning I had recovered enough to make the drive up to Hwy 7.  When we arrived Barby was part of a joyful tangle of 10-week-old spaniels in a playpen.  She was warm, cuddly, and clean.  Her antics with a plastic bone kept us in stitches while Diane finished grooming Time.  Then we met the yearling.  Time is a fine specimen of an English springer, particularly happy when in the company of a big bunch of puppies.  But it became immediately obvious to us that she had bonded strongly with Diane.  Time, to my mind, was a one-woman dog.

At length Diane mentioned that she also had Cagney, a retired show dog (like Blue), whose main drawback was her age, 8 ½ years.  She further mentioned that Cagney doesn’t like other dogs, and could use a home for her declining years well away from other animals.  While Bet cuddled with the puppy I asked to meet the old dog.

Cagney turned out to be a beautiful, dignified specimen in the peak of condition who looked as though she would love to have a new home away from the kennel.  Same as Blue.  We took her for a walk.

She definitely knows which buttons to push on a human, does our Cagney.  In the agility test she hopped neatly into the Lexus and perched on the back seat, awaiting instructions.  While well trained, she showed herself quite human in her delight with the smells and unexpected freedom of a winter walk outside.  She’s no robot.

What chance did a puppy have against a classy, experienced lady like this?

Once home, following the house tour and the food dish location, she proved quite amusing.  Cagney’s a talker when she feels like it.  Her woofs of delight and happy exploration of her new house added great cheer to the household.

Though bred and trained for the bench for her whole life, on the first walk in a field Cagney had a whale of a time bounding around her new territory.  She flounced around, exuberance in every leap.  Breeding kicked in each time she reached the end of shotgun range, and she would quarter to left or right and loop back to us.

Of course no clump of hay or brush could go unexamined.

But she reminded us most of Blue whenever a camera came out.  True to her show dog heritage she played naturally to the photographer, and concluded her first photo shoot with little yelps of pleasure.  What a ham.  When posed between us on the Ranger she suddenly decided it was time for affection, and planted a big kiss on my face as Charlie moved in for a closeup.

Bet read this draft over, handed me back the computer and said, “While sitting there this afternoon reading with Cagney at my feet, I thought: ‘The house feels more like a home now.’”

I guess both ladies got what they wanted.

THE MORNING AFTER (UPDATE):

Morning is much livelier here now.  As I stumbled down in the dark for coffee, a white shadow awaited me on the mat at the foot of the stairs.  She bounded around, emitting little yelps and barks, but quietly.  No time for a leash.  She looked out the lane at what must have been a coyote, then headed out into the field to do her business.  Happy loops, enjoying her freedom, but not for long, because hunger beckoned.

Back from her run her thoughts were only on breakfast, which she encouraged with a series of relatively quiet howls.  Hoovered the kibble.  Affection time.  Upstairs to greet Bet, still faking sleep.  Back down to me. Then she fell asleep beside me on the floor when I opened my computer.

A dog owner’s life.

How to build your own garage door

Note: 

There’ve been several hits on this blog on the subject listed above, so I decided to put up a page dealing with the process.  A copy of the text lies below, but it will fall off the edge of the posts after a month or so.  A permanent copy is up as a page to be found in the list down the right hand side of the page.  One of these days I have find a way to organize the posts.  This one is number 367, and I confess I often use Google to find things on the site.

Rod

I bought the first door, a 10′ wide by 7′ high, “stain grade, mahogany” raised-panel model.  It was in storage in a builder’s locker after a mixup in plans for a new house.

The “mahogany” was the  meranti panels, 1″ material.  The remainder of the door turned out to be western hemlock.  To discover this I called the builder, Stewart Garage Doors, then an obscure factory in Toronto where I spoke to the subcontractor:  “We use hemlock because it’s strong, holds fasteners, and it resists rot well.”

The hardware had come with the door, and it was complete, except for the weather stripping, which was advertised but not available at the time of the sale.  That was a $150. mistake.

I spent two weeks of evenings staining the door with an off-white latex stain, the current state-of-the-art product from a home centre.  It was expensive, but good enough that I used it for the siding on the garage and the next garage door, as well.

Fitted with a cheap Sears opener, this door has served very well in the workshop.  To my relief, splashes from the eaves haven’t seemed to bother the door thus far.  The stain seems to be worth the money.

For my son’s taller garage I resolved to build a copy of the door (only 9′ high) , so I ordered 1 3/4″ stile-and-rail cutters for my shaper which would provide the appropriate pattern for rails and stiles.  I already had a good cove cutter for the raised panels.  Ordering from Freud was a comedy of errors.  After three tries from different vendors, each of which mysteriously disappeared from everyone’s records, a Freud employee rather arrogantly suggested that online vendors aren’t very smart.  For example, a part named EU-264 must be typed “EU-264″ and not “EU 264″.  I privately thought that perhaps it was the Freud programmer who wasn’t the sharpest chisel in the drawer, but at length I received my cutters.

A pile of 1″ walnut had sat outside too long, so I planed it up and trimmed the good parts out of the rather scrubby boards to make twenty four, 26 X 14″ panels.  To save time at the gluing stage I tongue-and-grooved the parts, then just clamped them together with a bit of Gorilla Glue.  Before cutting the panels to final dimensions I ran them through my double drum sander to produce a consistent texture for staining.  Then came the coves.  The heavy cut required three passes per surface, but I ended up with 7/8″ boards with deep coves cut entirely on the front side (leaving the back surface flush) with just under 1/4″ to fit the stiles and rails.  This was the hardest my old Poitras/General 3/4″ shaper and its small power feeder had worked in a long time.  I gave it a new set of bearings soon after.

Earlier in the year I had bought locally 220 bd ft. of eastern hemlock 2 X 6″ planks about 11′ long to air dry for the rails and stiles.  After planing the stock I found six months in the sun hadn’t dried it well enough, so I put it into the greenhouse for a month to reduce the moisture content.

I quickly discovered that the best hemlock is good wood.  The rest is useless for garage door building as it tends to split and shake unexpectedly.  It will twist, too, though this might have been because of a lack of seasoning.  Another time I would order double the amount the plan calls for.  The wood is cheap and available;  it just needs sorting.

Planed to 1 3/4″, the hemlock ripped and machined very well.  For example I was able to cut the end-grain pattern for the stiles freehand, using only the fence as a guide.  This is not a trick for the uninitiated, but the cutters were sharp and hemlock machines very well across the end grain.  Knots tend to be hard, but workable.

I remembered to cut a 5/16″ rabbet into each of the rails to allow for overlap with the door sections above and below.  Be careful at this stage:  top and bottom sections are not the same.

With limited space in my shop I found the easiest way to assemble the six, 10 foot door sections was to clamp one rail in my bench vice and then assemble the section above that rail, gluing as I went.  (I have built a lot of doors over the last few years, so this went quite easily.)

I noticed that the professionally-built door is only 1 3/8″ thick, but has tenons and rabbets which extend an extra 1/4″ beyond the face of the rails and stiles.  My amateur cutters left me with no extra tenon, so I hedged my bets with one #10, 6″ Robertson screw carefully driven through the rail into the end of each stile.

Some shakes or splits in the frames threatened to degrade the quality of the project, so I bought a litre kit of WEST System epoxy (a holdover from my old boat days) and had at anything which needed patching.  This worked well.  A bit of sawdust mixed in provided a good filler for the odd imperfection in the panels, as well.  The beauty of WEST System is the wax in the epoxy which makes the surface touchable before it is completely set.

Some of the coves were fuzzy on the walnut so from Princess Auto I bought a refurbished Dremel sonic vibrator multitool (?) to sand the corners and the coves.  It turned out to be a fine little machine, much more effective than I had expected.  My PC 6″ random orbital sander finished up the sanding.

Staining went as expected, though I had some trouble with rails warping.  Clamping the six panels to scaffolding used as shelves helped a bit, but I couldn’t get the hinges on quickly enough to ensure continued straightness.

I approached a commercial door vendor for a materials kit for the installation.  He took an interest in the project and for a bit over $600 provided me with a heavy duty hardware set.

What turned out to be a critical question didn’t get adequate attention from me.  “How much does the door weigh?”  He wouldn’t order the springs without that weight.  I provided an estimate by weighing the panels on my bathroom scale and adding the weights up.  246 pounds turned out to be too much spring for this door.  So we backed it off two quarter-turns so that it would stay down.  Now it won’t stay up.  Looks as though we’ll have to screw some brake rotors to the door to enable the mechanism to work properly.

Pay attention to the door’s weight when talking to the hardware guy.

More later, after we get the spring situation worked out and the shaft-type garage door opener installed.

A book about the fish we eat

For Christmas Roz gave me Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, by Paul Greenberg, Penguin, 2010.

Greenberg’s childhood fish stories quickly hooked me. From there I willingly followed him through first-person accounts of the development of salmon farming, sea bass culture, the decline of the cod fishery and its substitutes, and the doomed open water fishery centered around the bluefin tuna.

Salmon became subjects for aquaculture because of their large eggs and easy fertilization.  None of the forty subspecies of Atlantic salmon were particularly appropriate for domestication because they ate too much, swam too fast, and grew too slowly.  It came down to Trygve Gjedrem, a Norwegian sheep breeder, to cross salmon adapted to long migrations up rivers (high fat content) with those from the far north for their rapid growth as juveniles.

The problem Gjedrem faced was to selectively breed a salmon which could be grown on less than the 6 pounds of fish it takes to finish a pound of wild salmon.  Within twenty generations the Norwegians had that ratio down to three-to-one.

No wild salmon live south of the equator, but the fjords of Chile have proven productive for aquaculture. Chile has quickly become the world’s second largest salmon producer.

Domesticated salmon now contribute over three billion pounds per year to our tables, three times wild salmon production.

Greenberg prefers a white-fleshed fillet like that of the largemouth bass or its marine equivalent, the striped bass.  These lazy fish have much less of the strongly flavoured red muscle tissue associated with adrenaline-fueled rushes after prey, and so their flesh tends to be light and flaky.

By the 1970s striped bass and European sea bass had been overfished to the point that the only way to meet the demand for the delicacy was through aquaculture.

The author explains how the European sea bass has had an interesting part in late 20th century politics.  Their victory over Egypt in the Seven Days War in 1967 gave Israel access to the Sinai Peninsula, and with it Lake Bardawil, a shallow lagoon which was an ideal spawning area for European sea bass.

Millions went into research on the domestication of the sea bass, a fish Greenberg insists was a poor choice for the role.  With the European Economic Union, many Euros went to Greece to take advantage of the country’s calm, crenellated shorelines, ideal sites for aquaculture.   The sea bass must be a desirable fish:  Israel wouldn’t give back the land they took from Egypt to farm it, and Greece ran headlong into debt to try to meet the market demand.

Greenberg suggests that there’s an Australian sea bass, the barramundi, which is admirably suited to aquaculture.  It can reach adulthood in fresh water ponds, and on a partially vegetarian diet in the bargain.

But while salmon and sea bass attracted buyers for special holiday meals, the day-to-day food fish for much of the world has always been cod, the ugly bottom feeder with the white, flaky flesh.  Cod’s very abundance has been a big part of its appeal.  But then cod stocks plummeted in the face of industrial fishing, and American and Canadian governments listened to scientists and closed the fishery.

Cod is a terrible fish to domesticate.  Apparently it gnaws its way out of nets with annoying regularity, hates to spawn, and is a huge feeder.

The book is at its best when Greenberg describes the lesser fish which are gradually gaining acceptance to fill the fish-sticks role.  Alaskan pollack is a good fish, though the huge fleet owners have manipulated politicians and quotas and strained the resource.

Supermarkets demand a constant, predictable, enormous quantity of fillets.  Fast food outlets are even more persistent.  For example MacDonald’s makes its fish sandwiches from hoki, a cod-like fish found in abundance off the coast of New Zealand, though they are now under pressure to reduce their reliance on the tasty fish as stocks drop.

With a change of diet a Vietnamese catfish, the Pangasius (known locally as the tra), has been upgraded to American chef’s delight.  Greenberg stresses that this air-breathing filter feeder is a good candidate for aquaculture, especially when scientists have improved its taste by eliminating the algae which causes fresh-water fish to take on a muddy taste.

The ubiquitous African tilapia has made great strides as a cod substitute.  This filter feeder requires no additional feed in many aquacultures and reproduces with abandon.  (Not to worry, Canadians:  it dies if the water temperature gets much below 50 degrees F.)

In the 1960s the world decided that whales are wildlife, not food.  Of course the green revolution with its oil-producing seeds for margarine rendered whaling uneconomic, but for the most part mankind turned away from the killing of whales when they could no longer ignore their sentience.

But the bluefin tuna is a warm-blooded animal, as well.  This sushi favourite commands enormous prices and the 700-pound monsters have been hunted to depletion.  Even more insidious, Greenberg suggests, is the netting of juveniles in the Mediterranean to raise to maturity in pens for the market.

Off the coast of Hawaii, on the other hand, Greenberg tells of a dive on deep-water pens where,  “Without any selective breeding whatsoever, the amount of fish required to produce a pound of kahala ranges from 1.6:1 to 2:1, ten times better than the feed conversion ratio for bluefin tuna (233).” And they spawn constantly.    Renamed Kona Kampachi for the sushi market, the kahala is gaining acceptance with chefs and consumers. Greenberg suggests it’s time to end the bluefin fishery.

For its insight and information Four Fish belongs on the bookshelf of every serious cook or fisherman.  It’s also a fine read.

Stay off the ice. It’s not time yet.

See the more detailed report to the right, but the soft weather on this section of the Rideau has produced no gain in ice depth in a week.  It’s still about 4″ deep, but with weak spots highly probable.

Happy New Year.

Check the new ice report: See right ——>

Executive summary:

There’s a bit over 3″ of ice now on Newboro Lake.

A Christmas Poem (sorta)

‘Tis the week before Christmas and throughout the land

We’re shopping and driving and making big plans

For family reunions and holiday cheer

With hopes for some snowflakes and weather that’s clear.

-

The Snowbirds are circling; their flocks swiftly grow.

They line up at Customs: the post-Christmas show.

They drive south in convoy, the like you won’t see,

To trailers in Florida, cheap houses and free,

“An endless vacation with friends from round here.

Our dollar is rich. We have months without fear

Of Florida hospitals, for OHIP will pay

‘Til April’s return to our gardens and play.”

-

With all the elections the signs are worn out.

The pundits keep writing; the Tories must tout

Their latest achievements with PMO rule,

For democracy’s finished. The MPs look bored.

They’re ignorant and arrogant and mostly ignored.

-

While Senators are playing their way through the East,

Concussions are hurting the visual feast

Of hockey like ballet. The best of the best

Are sitting on sidelines from murderous hits.

Enforcers are dying: brain lesions and drugs.

Each saw a career if he acts like a thug.

The great game’s in danger:  inertia’s the threat.

They can’t make it safer: the violence gets

The fans in the boxes, the sponsors in line,

And another career ends – a trifling fine.

-

The point’s not to solve things in rhymes such as this,

But rather to show how, though much is amiss,

There’s many amongst us who put up quite a show.

They love what life brings them: a positive glow

Surrounds what they do, and they greet life with a smile.

-

We saw a young artisan who showed us this view.

She makes stained glass windows so brave and so new.

While the young woman shapes these bright fragments of light

Her cats loll on counters and grin at the sight

Of fresh hands to pat them.  Her shop is a place

Of warmth and contentment, and artistic grace.

-

Perhaps the solution to winter’s sad drift

Lies in the activity and even the thrift

It takes for a project to come to fruition:

Commitment and effort, and even emotion.

-

So let’s not get upset with Ottawa’s drift.

We’ll deal with it later, and try not to shift

Our attitudes right to match Harper’s great plan

To scare us with justice and burn down the land

With oil sands and pipelines and shipments out West

Past Prince Rupert Sound in oil tankers, no less.

-

Instead let’s be thankful, and busy and glad.

This time in this great land there’s joy to be had.

The lakes have just frozen.  The air’s crisp and clear.

Put on your long undies and pull Winter near.

It can’t take your bear hug, but soon melts away.

-

The nights will grow shorter, and each passing day:

With friends you grow stronger.  The prospect of play

On frozen expanses of ice and of snow

Inspires us to action. The maples soon grow,

But first there’s the syrup, that warm, glowing taste!

The smell captures our memories and so we make haste

To get out the buckets, the pan and the gear.

It’s our way of knowing that spring is soon near.

-

So send me no invites to Florida down there.

Don’t bug me with politics.  I just cannot care.

Keep Cherry off Hockey:  that’s just fine with me,

But don’t miss the dog sleds — and ice fishing’s free.

 

Best wishes to all,

Rod and Bet Croskery

Christmas Book Review

Books make good gifts if well suited to their recipients’ reading habits. Here’s a current favourite, a big, honking adventure running heavily to geeks and gun nuts:

Neal Stephenson. REAMDE. Harper Collins. 2011. $35 USD.

Neal Stephenson first came to my attention when a librarian said, “My husband loves this book.” She handed me Cryptonomicon, a tale about Alan Turing and the young mathematicians assembled at Bletchley Park in England during WWII and asked to break the codes used by the Axis powers.

Their ultimate task was to crack the code used in the German Enigma coding machines to communicate with the U-Boat fleet. England’s fate lay in the balance. Their invention of a steam-powered computational device based upon a pipe organ led eventually to the development of the modern computer.

Stephenson is comfortable with the huge canvas and several generations of characters involved in the evolution of an idea.  Crytonomicon goes from Bletchley Park through to a project laying data cables across the Pacific and a massive Indonesian gold mine.

My son and I have read all of Stephenson’s novels, and eagerly awaited REAMDE’s arrival.  So it had huge shoes to fill.

The first chapter is vintage Stephenson in its ingenuity: a shadowy, rich and oft-divorced uncle hesitantly returns to a farm in northern Idaho for the annual Thanksgiving family reunion and dinner. Formalities completed, everyone quickly dresses in heavy clothes, grabs all available firearms and lines up along the creek bed for the target shoot, an afternoon in which everyone shoots ordinary and exotic firearms for the sheer fun of it. As supplies run down the uncle slips away to the nearest Walmart to buy more ammunition. It’s clear the guy is loaded and a bit embarrassed about his wealth.

Other family members know about him primarily from his Wikipedia entry, which he claims has a number of errors of fact.

Gradually it emerges that Richard Fortrast has made his way in the world from draft dodger and B.C. hunting guide to marijuana smuggler, to developer of the largest and most lucrative video game on the planet.

We also meet, Zula, a bright and very adaptable young woman from central Africa adopted in her early teens by Richard’s sister and still troubled by her early life as a refugee.

Shooting up a ditch with a Glock isn’t likely to carry my attention much beyond the first chapter, but Richard’s video game empire is pretty interesting. The big innovation of T’Rain is the legalization of the sale of game property outside of the game world, something rigidly forbidden in other game platforms.

Seems many players of T’Rain do so professionally, gaming to earn weapons, spells and currency which can be traded for cash to other players through a number of electronic outlets, the most common a simple charge card credit. Richard’s particular genius has been in the melding of the economy of the game world with the somewhat more literal economy outside it.

Other characters arrive. The rather shifty boyfriend of the niece gets her into an awkward situation with a Russian gangster in urgent need of cash to fill an unexplainable gap in Mob books. His online payoff comes to a sudden halt when REAMDE, a new computer virus, encrypts everyone’s computer files until each machine user coughs up a ransom – in T’Rain gold, to be paid within the T’Rain game platform.

In a rage the mobster rounds up a group of mercenaries and sets out to find the writer of the virus, kill him, and complete the deal which he believes can restore his standing with the Mob. All signs point to a city in China where a large number of hackers make a living on T-Rain.

We also pick up a British MI6 employee who can easily pass herself off as a Chinese national. She’s on the scene, not because of REAMDE, but as part of a world-wide search for an Islamist terrorist, Jones.

Inevitably the Russian mobster and his mercenaries interact with the Chinese hackers and the terrorists. The leader of the mercenaries turns out to be quite an interesting character.

Our heroes of various stripes do innovative things with ships, airplanes, mountain bikes, guns, hand-to-hand combat, computers and an occasional hand grenade.

Expect to be surprised.  For example in this novel the heavily armed redneck survivalists are actually pretty good guys with solid family and religious values.  An adventure novel sprawls over many exotic settings, and this one spends time in China and Indonesia, but the main action rotates around the short stretch of border B.C. shares with Idaho.

Stephenson plugs the latest cool car (Scion xB), runs through a huge list of highly-desirable firearms, sends a group of unsuspecting geeks to an Indonesian sex-tourism hotspot, crashes around in snow-covered woods in an F-350 pickup tricked out with tracks, and generally has a good time.

It’s a fine read for those who like new gadgets, computers, globetrotting stories and unlikely ideas which work.