Gunshots and chaos next door

The sound of gunshots are not all that unusual in these parts. Everyone's has guns and it's fun to shoot them. What bothered me was that fact that it was almost dark. Either something really needed shooting or someone was being irresponsible. Judging from the party that went on down by the lake last night I'm guessing irresponsible. Could be wrong, but that's how I'd bet.

Normally the cottage down by the lake does not have late night parties. They are normally loud people, but not late at night. Siblings inherited the property when their parents passed on. Everything they do around the property requires loud discussions. They aren't even arguing, they just have to talk loud about everything. Outside of being loud they aren't really bad neighbors. Our buildings are far enough away that the sound is normally muffled quite a bit. Besides, they don't live there full time and only use the place occasionally.

Last night, however, the really pulled out the stops. The leaves are off the trees so sound carries better than it does in the summer. My lovely wife asked if I was playing music downstairs. Wasn't me, it was the neighbors. Pretty impressive as the house has 6 inch thick insulated walls which normally keeps things quiet.

I happened to wake up at 3:30 a. m. and they were still going at it. An hour later they finally seemed to be winding down. The weather is turning cold. Yesterday was probably the last time they could use the place until spring. Their water line will soon freeze. As soon as it snows the driveway will be impassable. It's so steep that vehicles get stuck when the weather's nice. Last night was probably an end of the season blow out party. Now they will be quiet for at least 6 months.

Other people near enough to be considered neighbors are still doing a lot of heavy equipment work. A guy bought the land down the road from me and his daughter has the place across the street. They seriously altered the land. I've property lots across the street. They excavated right up to the line. What they don't realize is that it had been an unusually dry year for here. During wet years that area has many small surface streams. Their excavation is going to turn into a vernal pool.

My lovely wife's been concerned about our shallow well. We dropped off water samples at a testing lab to see if their excavations caused any contamination. I will be very put out if it did. As it is I upgraded to a better whole house water filter. There seems to be more silt in the water, shortening filter life. I'm hoping the cold snap will put an end to their excessive heavy equipment use.

Most of my land doesn't even directly border these people. I'm just glad I didn't sell the vacant lots across the street from me. No doubt they would have bulldozed everything flat there too.

The place across the street used to be owned by one of my uncles. Unfortunately when he died it the property moved out of the family. Too bad my budget was always too tight to buy more land. I got used to it almost always being quiet here. This past weekend it was everything but.

-Sixbears

Sailing the glossy magazines

I get a couple of those glossy sailing magazines in the mail. They were a fine gift and I enjoy reading them. It’s nice to check out some wonderful sailing destinations, even I’ll likely never sail to most of them. Being a pretty green sailor, there are sometimes useful bits of sailing information.

Two things really get my attention, new boat reviews and the advertisements -not that there’s all much difference between the two.

First the new boats: they are almost always totally out of my budget. That’s not a big surprise, many things are. I could not afford to maintain one even if it was given to me. These high end boats have a lot of specialized systems that would be an absolute nightmare to fix. As boats have gotten bigger, they’ve replaced crew with electrical, mechanical, and hydraulic systems -push button sailing at its finest. That’s all well and good, but everything fails. A rigorous maintenance and replacement schedule would lower the odds of failures happening at sea, but you’d better factor in the cost.

Then there’s all the gear, accessories, and equipment advertisements. Some of the items look useful, but the prices are crazy. One example of this was a set of Lexan glasses. That’s not a bad idea. Real glass on a boat could be hazard. Lexan is tough and looks good. The problem was the price. My daughter bought Lexan glasses to use in her hot tub. They looked exactly the same as the ones advertised in the sailing magazine. She got hers at a big box store for about 1/5 the cost.

It’s one thing for specialized sailing equipment to be pricey, but common items like footwear, hats, gloves, sunglasses and rain gear shouldn’t cost a fortune just because they have little sailing logos on them.

There’s no excuse for most of the sailing bits to be so expensive. I used to think that climbing gear was expensive, and it is. I cut them some slack because much of the gear’s function is to keep you from falling to your death. When similar sailing and climbing gear have a huge price difference, something is wrong. A harness designed to suspend you on Mt. Everest cost significantly less than a harness designed to work on a mast. How can that be justified?

I know there are plenty of people out there sailing on the cheap. Many do it my way, with a smaller boat that can be trailered, avoiding marina storage fees. There are lots of people who live full time on older boats, or even homemade boats. There are couples out there cruising on less than $500/month, and doing it safely.

Of course, you give up all of that fancy push button gear, but you gain systems that you can maintain and repair yourself. My rigging is so simple that I can tell at a glance if something is not quite right. Fixing those problems are usually pretty easy too. I wired the boat myself, so I know how to fix anything that goes wrong. There are plenty of systems I don’t have to worry about because my boat doesn’t even have them.

The problem with all those push button gizmos is that they all consume power. The motors, gas generators, wind generators, and solar panels are necessary to keep it all powered up. It’s complicated. On my tiny boat, the electrical system can be charged up from the outboard. Many times I go sailing and never even start the motor. Occasionally, I don’t even bother to put the motor on the sailboat. My power usage is so low that I can go days without charging the battery. I did get a small solar panel for charging, but not from a glossy magazine. Solar panels are meant to be outside in the weather anyway. All I do is make sure the connections are well sealed against the salt environment.

I’m not surprised there aren’t many magazines out there for those of us who sail on the cheap. Magazines make their money with advertisements, and we don’t buy anything.

-Sixbears

Heavy Equipment

The basement of my wife’s church had been hand dug after the church was built. It was quite the undertaking in New Hampshire’s flinty soils. The men of the church got together and built the basement over the course of a summer. It wasn’t really all that long ago, as there are still living members who worked on the job.

A single operator of a piece of heavy equipment can dig a basement in a day or two. A few gallons of diesel fuel can replace weeks of back breaking labor. The equipment is a lot more expensive than picks and shovels, but it can dig an awful lot of basements before wearing out.

We’ve gotten used to our petroleum burning slaves. Few people today would do that kind of labor. No one would hire a crew with shovels to dig a basement. Even at minimum wage, it would be more expensive than the guy with the machine.

Fuel would have to get a lot more expensive than it is before human labor would make sense. However, what if there was no fuel? What if the country was cut off from oil imports? Fuel would be rationed for the most important uses. Digging your basement probably wouldn’t make the cut.

The men who dug the church basement knew it would strengthen the community. There would be a place for community meals and celebrations. Back in the day, a church was often the center of a small town. That hand dug basement still serves it’s purpose as a community meeting place, but now it’s welcome has been extended beyond church members.

Some projects are worth doing, even if you have no choice but to do them the hard way. Those were busy hard working men, mostly farmers. Hard physical labor was their day to day life, yet they volunteered for more hard labor.

My guess is that if petroleum was cut off, it would be a long time before similar labor intensive projects were attempted. It would take a while for our cubical raised work force to develop the muscles and callouses necessary to do the job. Of course, most of those cubical jobs would go away without cheap abundant petroleum, so they’d have to get used to a lot of physical things.

I’d like to think that we would rise to the challenge and pitch in for projects greater than our own personal needs -projects that help bind the community together.

-Sixbears