Saskatchewan

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Tuesday Was Memorable

Life at Haven tends to be rather idyllic. But the break-ins over the winter have really changed the atmosphere here, with doors getting locked even when folks are just wandering around the hamlet. My outbuildings are normally unlocked during the day when I’m here, but now I’m getting used to carrying my keys with me. It’s sad.

I awoke to lots of rain on Tuesday, which has turned to sleet today, Wednesday, a perfect day to power through the bit of work on my plate so that I could focus on looking for more today. I was making good inroads when the phone rang just shy of ten. “No number” came up on the display, but I still answered assuming it might be the RCMP calling me back. It was. I spoke to a kind-sounding constable who asked if he could come right down to Haven to take my statement about my attempted break-in. Yes, of course!

About 40 minutes later, the phone rang again. Wow, twice in one day. That has to be a record. It was Scotiabank doing a “courtesy call,” wanting to know how I like my account (a lot), more about my business, and curious about whether I’d consider changing to them as my main bank (not a chance in hell). It was a pleasant conversation and I didn’t mind answering the questions because most of my products are with CIBC right now and it would be good to have a backup. For example, if Scotiabank were to offer me a a credit card, might as well take it. Also, the woman wasn’t trying to sell me anything or convince me to move to Scotiabank. I was about to tell her I had to cut the conversation short as I was expecting a “visitor,” but, thankfully, she kept the call short.

Minutes after I rang off with her, there came a knock at my door. I checked that it was the constable and let him in. I’ve transcribed I don’t know how many statements over the years, so I knew the drill and he noticed that. He offered me victim counseling services (I’m not traumatised, so let’s leave the stretched thin resources to folks who need them) and to provide a victim impact statement. I accepted that because I knew that absolutely nothing was going to happen regarding my own break-in so I wanted something in her file about how she has destroyed the fabric of our community. The constable discovered he didn’t have the form on him but said he would “pick up” my neighbour and when he came back in a few hours to drop her off, he’d bring a form for me. I could then fill out the form and bring it into the detachment next time I was in town. Well, I hadn’t planned to be in town for a bit, so I’ll be doing a special trip for that as soon as the weather clears. Since I’m going through propane for heating, I’ll pretend it’s a propane filling trip not a “my neighbour sucks and is making me waste gas” trip. 🙂

He was back mid-afternoon and said that she denied everything, including stealing a pallet from my property, for which there was an eye witness. Unfortunately, rain destroyed any chance we might have had for fingerprints, which were a long shot anyway since the way the door is damaged makes it look like it was only touched with a tool. There’s no witness. The constable said that he knows she’s lying and that she did it, but he can’t do anything. He seemed incredibly relieved to be dealing with someone who knows the system and wasn’t expecting a miracle. I said to him that what I wanted to accomplish was done — she knows I won’t take her bullshit lying down. Apparently, she broke into some other neighbours’ places and they forgave her since she’s “sick.” Maybe she thought that would happen with me. Not a chance. The constable did say she is willing to take a polygraph, to his immense surprise. That’s not admissible in court, but sometimes the truth can come out in other ways that are admissible. He was surprised that I knew all of that. What can I say, I’ve transcribed the odd polygraph interview too.

I thanked him for his time and then came in to keep working since an unexpected job for Wednesday came in from a client I normally only work on weekends for.

And then, another email came in that really brightened my day.

There is a transcription firm I’ve wanted to work for since I started doing this five years ago. I had a chance to interview for them around that time and was deemed to need more experience. Just before I left Mexico, they emailed to give me a chance to interview again. Just like that, out of the blue. I did the test and then didn’t hear anything back… until yesterday. Soon as I get through my current workload, I’ll start with this new company on a probationary period. Too soon for exclamation marks, but I’m rather chuffed. They are another firm like an existing client of mine who would have as much work for me as I want as long as I meet their standards. I’ve had a run of bad luck with clients this year and I hope the tide is turning. We’ll see how the month goes with them. I’ll feel more comfortable leaving for Bulgaria if I feel I’m solidly in place with them.

The only progress I’ve made on Bulgaria is I’ve set up a price alert for airfare. Soon as I get something around 800CAD all-in (which I saw come up periodically over the winter) at the end of June or sometime in July, I’m buying a ticket. I haven’t decided yet where I want to settle in Bulgaria, but I’m narrowing it down based on the best places in the country to hike. I’ve been reading a lot about hiking in Bulgaria and am getting really excited about getting there!

So that was my Tuesday at Haven. Wednesday is starting off cold and snowy. Pretty strange after landing in summer weather! But things should start clearing up this afternoon and we’ll be back into the 20s by the weekend.

It’s still good to be home. 😀

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Water Day Is Always Exciting

Looks like the RM maintenance man saw I was home and turned on the water for me! He did that last year, so I checked the hydrant yesterday afternoon and this afternoon in case he did it again. Tonight, I hit the jackpot. Woohoo!

I made a rookie mistake while dewinterizing — I hooked up my hose to the RV without filling it with water first. That meant I got tons of air in my lines, which took forever to bleed. Otherwise, the water tank and heater filling was uneventful. Once both were full, I tested my system for leaks.

The tap in the dressing room is dripping, something I’ve avoided dealing with for a while because I don’t have room to work. It’s always corrected itself, so I hope that will happen again… This leak may explain why I have heaps of pressure in the dressing room and almost none in the kitchen. I haven’t found a leak in the lines, so I’m sure it’s that or that there’s still water in the lines leading to the kitchen. Usage will tell. At least, the shower appears to have good pressure!

Then came the fun part — lighting the water heater. Forget doing so from inside. I went out to the control panel and manually forced ignition. I actually got it to light in two tries, but it wouldn’t stay lit. I made some adjustments to the heat probe spacing and after a few more ignition attempts and corrections, I finally got the thing lit for real! Wow. That water heater is exhausting. The one on Isla wasn’t much more reliable, but being on a manual pilot system, I just had to turn on the gas every afternoon and apply a flame to it to ensure I had hot water for a shower. With Miranda’s decrepit water heater, I never know if I’ll be able to ignite the stupid thing from day to day.

I appreciate the irony that I got my water system going right after doing a huge mountain of dishes by hand, including hauling water and heating it on the stove!

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My RV Oven Is So Very Special

Oh, I’ve missed my RV kitchen, especially my oven! I use my oven a lot and I really missed in Mexico.

As some of you may remember, I bought myself a cast iron Dutch oven for Yule. It’s a pot with a tight fitting lid that can go from stovetop to oven. I can’t wait to sear a pork roast in it later this week and then transfer to the oven to slow cook!

Well, quite a few of my friends in Mexico are or were RVers. Those of them who saw the Dutch oven thought I was nuts for believing I could use it in my RV oven. Having seen dozens of RV ovens, I’ve only ever seen another one as large and usable as mine, and that was an upgrade made after purchase, so I understood their concern. Many RVs don’t even have a real oven, just a convection microwave. Some folks, like my friend Vicki, find their oven so useless that they have to make space for a large toaster oven instead.

In my case, I moved the rack to the lowest position to fit the Dutch oven in with an inch to spare at the top, so it will be easy to pull in and out, even when super hot.

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I’ll also be able to store the pot in the oven, with the baking sheets and cast iron frying pans fitting neatly under the broiler.

My oven also heats very evenly and is good for baking. Don’t buy into the myth that you can’t cook or bake in an RV as you can in a stick home. Instead, insist on a better and more usable oven!

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Unpacking Is a Chore

I awoke to sunshine at 6:15 this morning. I really don’t remember mornings here been so bright! I thought I might be able to go back to sleep, but was not able to. I read for a bit until the call of breakfast was too loud to ignore. Interestingly enough, I’d been up over an hour and awake for nearly two before I even thought of having coffee!

After a lazy couple of hours doing a more thorough sort of the mail, I finally dressed and started to bring things in from the truck, unpacking as I went along. I never think that I picked up much extra stuff during my travels until I found myself at a loss as to where to put everything when I get home! But I finally got things under control (nowhere near done) and was able to head to town to get groceries.

The road out to highway 2 was the best I can ever remember it being, with only one or two serious potholes, so the drive went quickly. My first stop was the carwash to fill one of my five gallon jugs with potable water. Thankfully C&C had warned me that there is no water filling at the grocery store right now since the renovations are still ongoing and that the carwash was the place to go. I was not impressed with the carwash station since it does not fill the jugs completely.

I ran a couple more errands and then went into the grocery store. It was a mess. I’m disappointed that so far all the upgrades are cosmetic. There sure isn’t any extra space! Prices were dire, but I shopped the sales and actually had something to show for my $125 (including quite a bit of meat). Kale was on sale, so I’ll be having quite a lot of that in the next week!

Back home, I was able to put together a nice lunch even with the kitchen being only half unpacked, then I headed to C&C’s to get non-potable water for doing dishes and washing myself. Charles was on his way over to my place to level Miranda, so he helped me with the water and then we headed back to Haven with Brutus in tow (he’s so shaggy he looks like a bear!).

It took quite a bit of doing, including two trips back to his house by Charles for different jacks and some tool fetching on my part, for Charles to get Miranda level for me. Even though the gravel is hard packed now, he could only lift Miranda so high before the jack would sink into the ground. He finally got her up using two jacks. She’ll stay on them for the time being, with a large log under the frame also holding some of the weight, but Charles intends to get a different type of jack and some blocks to do a more permanent job. Miranda has been unlevel for so long that it feels strange to have her level! When I moved her last year, I should have brought her west a little bit and out of the dip her left driver’s side tire is in. Live and learn…

After he was done, he graciously helped me get my swing out of the shed and set up. The weather is so unseasonably warm that I know I’ll use it all of this month as well as through June and so it’s worth setting up. Then, I offered him one of my last two Pacificos!

The beer pretty much knocked me flat, so I spent quite a bit of time in the swing, enjoying my view and the fact that I have internet in the yard now!

Then, it was time to deal with the kitchen so I could make dinner. I’m nowhere near done, but I was able to make brown rice, caramalised onions and Brussels sprouts, chicken, and gravy — even if I had about as much energy as it takes to open up a tin of beans and eat them cold! 😀 But the effort was worth it! Fortified by my yummy dinner, I did a clothes putting away blitz and then set up my office since I have a medium-sized job due Monday night that I’m hoping to start on tomorrow.

As promised yesterday, here are some pictures of the door damage. It’s hard to see because of the black on black. Charles is certain the damage was not there when he came by on the 27th and so this would mean the attempted break-in occurred while the neighbour is out on bail…

In this picture, you can see the gap between the door and the frame, as well as scratches and the torn rubber gasket. The door is bulging outwards.

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The door bulge is more visible in this one. The scratches betray the amount of effort made to get in. I’m happy to know my deadbolt and frame are that good!

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And here’s the damage to the frame:

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Finally, all the nasty haze during the day is so worth it in the evening…

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Cody, WY, to Haven

I debated this last leg of my trip over and over again, crunching all the variables. In a best case scenario, with no delays, minimal stops, and an easy border crossing, home is a mere eight hours or so from Cody. Leave early and I could get to the border before it closed at 6:00 pm and be home with daylight to spare. A very long day, but not a hard one. But if there was a delay, like construction or a particularly nasty secondary inspection, I could be miss the 6:00 pm border closing time.

I also had to decide which route to take. My options were Cody to Billings to Glasgow to Opheim to home or Cody to Billings to Miles City to Scobey to home.

Last night, I decided I would get up early today and attempt to make a run for the border. This made the second route, crossing at Scobey, the better choice because Scobey has a reasonably priced motel while Opheim doesn’t have any lodging. By choosing this route, I wouldn’t have to double back very far from the border if I got there at closing time.

That settled, I went to bed looking forward to another good night of sleep. I’ve been on quite a streak since Camp Verde. Well, I probably got two hours of fragmented sleep all night! Guess I was just too eager to be home… 🙁 I gave up on sleep around 6:15 am and spent a final half hour enjoying good internet before getting up to dress and finish packing the truck. I’d done the hard work last night, so I didn’t have much to do. By the time Vicki got up around 7:00 to double check that I had everything and hug the stuffing out of me, I was ready to go.

What a great week we had! It’s not easy living in such close quarters with someone, but she makes it very easy. Thanks again, Vicki!

I left the campground around 7:30 and went to a gas station for fuel and coffee since the more obvious coffee choices (McDonald’s and Starbucks) were in the wrong direction. The coffee I got was absolutely fine. Vicki and I did pizza again last night, so I had my leftovers to munch on today and didn’t need any breakfast — or lunch. 🙂

And so, I pushed northeast to Billings, then got on the Interstate, eager to reach Miles City as that would be the start of familiar territory. The miles passed uneventfully and sometimes I even caught a clear station on the radio. It was good driving weather, a little overcast, so the truck was comfortable.

In this direction, Miles City was the end of civilisation as I would start to push on into a few tiny towns with dozens of miles of open prairie between them. I made a pit stop in Circle and then turned onto highway 13 to Scobey just before Wolf Point when…

I hit the wall. Well, the wall was a train. A train several miles long that was not budging and would not budge for hours, blocking the way north.

There was quite a lineup forming, but I also saw people turning some distance before the crossing onto a gravel road. I explored this road with my GPS and saw that it led to a railroad crossing about 10KM away where I could take highway 2 and come back to highway 13. Most of that 20KM detour was on gravel and it took me almost 30 minutes, but it was completely worth it!

Right there at the corner of 2 and 13 is the first sign telling me that my journey across the US is almost over: “Canada – 62 miles.”

I pulled over in Scobey to fill the gas tank one last time and then pushed on for my final 14 miles in the US, dreading the border crossing. Many of you know I was spoiling for a fight. The number of times I get pulled over for secondary inspection is unacceptable considering the fact that I have never made a false declaration or otherwise given CBSA any concrete reason to red flag me. I was fully ready to file a complaint after having my truck emptied for the umpteenth time for absolutely no reason.

Needless to say, I was not ready for an official who remembered me and started with, “Hey, welcome home! Your truck made it!”

Ah, life in a small town… Cross at the same place often enough and things get easier…

I still had to give a very thorough declaration, but I was not physically searched. This was fine and I am pleased that I had my first truly easy crossing in a very long time. It infuriates me that so many resources are wasted on me when I know RVers who come back with contraband or who flat out lie in their declarations and barely get boarded. But, anyway, I was cleared quickly today. WOOHOO!

It was then a very potholey final hour to home. Work crews were out in full force patching and so the roads will be smooth again very soon.

In the final stretch from Willow Bunch, it was wonderful to get to that rise where I see the hamlet spread out before me and then drive down into it. Home!!! 🙂

I wish I could say that all was well at Haven, but that was not the case. 🙁 One of my neighbours went on a bender over the winter and broke into everyone’s homes looking for booze, cigarettes, and valuables. Charles did a check of my place and thought everything was okay, but he didn’t see that an attempt was made to pry my front door open. There is considerable damage, but the deadbolt held and still works. I would need a new door frame and door, but I doubt that’s going to happen. I called the RCMP’s non-emergency number and left a message. When the constable in charge of this case gets back to me, I will be pressing charges. My insurance status is a little dodgy right now and even if it weren’t, moving Miranda to a repair place to get a new door isn’t an option. I will probably try to hammer the door back into shape and then apply some black spray paint to the scratched areas. I’ll have pictures tomorrow for those who want to give me suggestions on how to deal with the issue. 😉

Even though I’m annoyed by this, it really isn’t a huge deal in the grand scheme of things and my buildings were secure so I’m not as upset as some of you may thing I am. I quickly detarped, hooked up power, started the fridge, and connected the internet. The latter was so easy thanks to my new booster setup! Everything so far is good except that Miranda is not level (Charles will help me deal with that once and for all tomorrow) and that the hydrant where I get water hasn’t been turned on yet so I can’t test my water system. Spring has sprung early, so there is a chance I can get the hydrant turned on next week instead of waiting till the middle of the month.

I then hauled in a few boxes before calling C&C to let them know I’d landed, and was invited for supper! Oh, bless these lovely people!

I made my bed (two toppers and a heated mattress pad sound like heaven right now!) and put together some things so I could have a shower there. I then headed over to catch up (including giving their dog Brutus lots of hugs and kisses — it’s so lovely to be missed!). I opened all my mail and had nothing urgent, just a tax form for when I get around to filing my return and a small cheque that is hopefully still good.

We had a lovely late dinner (with good avocado in the salad!), I enjoyed a shower (Caroline had wondered why I’d brought my suitcase, LOL), and then I headed home in a rapidly chilling evening.

It’s very smokey because Alberta is on fire, but otherwise, conditions are excellent for May, even too much so. The area is desperate for rain and there is worry of fires starting here… Even so, I’m the wrong person to ask to do a rain dance!

That’s all I have the energy for tonight! I’m going into town in the morning to get some groceries (I did a shop at Walmart in Cody yesterday, but need meat and veg) and then I’ll keep unpacking until Charles comes to help me with my leveling issue.

HOME! 😀