Big-Velo Big Life, small house, small footprint

Saturday, December 20, 2008

The Eight Fold Path

The snow hasn't stopped for a couple of days now, so the city is hunkering in.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/us/22snow.html?em

I did a mockup in my mind of my Atkin Lady of the Lake inspired design, measuring from my bathroom and down the hallway, mentally noting where each room would fit. The head was a bit smaller than my coat closet. The living area larger than my bathroom. The exterior dimension of the living space is 22' long by 8' wide, modest by total liveaboard standards, but I think pretty good for reasonably extended stays.

And that brings me to one of the questions I am still working through... how exactly do I want to use my boat, and what compromises am I will to make?

I know I'd like to spend time on my favorite local rivers. They are unremarkable in many ways, in that they aren't the stuff of Life magazine photo essays, they don't lead to exotic locales or towns that time forgot, and the navigable distances are pretty modest, but I really enjoy my time there. They have their own beauty, made all the more special to me in that they are really relatively unknown pockets of nature tucked in amongst freeways, farms, and cities. The rivers are small and filled with snags, so a shallow hull is a must. The sternwheel of my "Lady" would be ideal.

Then there is Puget Sound, a boating destination for people around the world. And the San Juans, as well as the Inside Passage between Vancouver Island and the Canadian mainland. People from around the world spend thousands chartering boats, exploring the beauty that is my backyard. This is scenery that IS worthy of that photo essay, hundreds of miles of coast line filled with small bays and inlets, perfect for what we call gunkholing in these parts. But there is a problem or two that make these places less attractive to me, and they mostly center around a couple of concerns from my cruising partner, my wife. She gets horribly seasick, even in a mild blow. A finally, she is somewhat, oh, rish adverse, I guess you would say. These waters can be unforgiving of human error or mechanical break down. Take a look at this blog in the Summer, and you'll see just how much trouble can befall a boater in these waters! There are times I share my wife's concern. Still, I've never boated there. Would the rewards surpass the challenges?

http://captrichardrodriguez.blogspot.com/

There is South Puget Sound, filled with hundreds of miles of shoreline marked by all sizes of coves and inlets, and while the beauty is less rugged than up north, I hear the waters have their own beauty, and are much safer and less crowded. While "Lady" wouldn't be an ideal boat here, it could be quite good. These are shallower waters with tidal variations leaving entire bays high and dry. With the flat bottom of Lady, we'd just wait it out, virtually unaware as we slept. And while a higher freeboard would be best, careful design coupled with prudent boating, could make the risks acceptable.

And then there is trailering. I'd love to visit some of the great rivers of America with my boat, but this, I believe, can create the biggest sacrifice. To be easily trailered a boat should be 8.5 feet wide. Yes, in Washington state at least you can go to 11, I believe, before you need to start talking about pilot cars and the like. You would need a trip permit, but that's ok. Still, that is one serious load. I don't want to trailer every day, or even every month. Really, I'l like to trailer a couple of times a year, and once there, I'd stay for months. I could trailer over to the Snake River, for example, take a trip for a couple of weeks, then stay at a marina down the river, and leave the boat there for a month. Then, I'd come back and continue down the river to, stop, and come back again. A few months later I could trailer to Banks Lake behind the Grand Coulee, and do the same thing. Still, it's the trailering, especially with a boat this big, that seems a problem. 28 feet long, plus another ten for the sternwheel, and 11 feet wide, or just under.

And I want to boat to be something that interests me, even realllly interests me.

And with those last two items, that's where I get stuck.

Lady may still be best.

Bryan

Thursday, December 18, 2008

A Day in the Snow

It snowed today in Seattle, and the world as we know it came to an end. Schools were closed. Freeways were in chaos. Families left the car at home and walked to stores, stocking up on supplies for the days of isolation that surely lay ahead. The snow total? Two inches where I live.

To be fair to all my neighbors, there is a lot of ice, and Seattle is known for its hills. And since snow is so rare here, we have little in the way of snow removal equipment. I stayed home from work today, and will likely head in to work quite late tomorrow in the hope that some of that ice will melt.

And what a nice day it was. Seattle is always a beautiful city, filled with trees and other greenery that takes hold in any speck of soil, even the cracks in major hiways. Most city lots offer plenty of trees, and they are well augmented by lush green lawns and even moss growing on the rooftops. In my own home I have to work to keep trees from growing in my hard to access gutters. And now with the snow offering a white blanket over it all, you couldn't ask for a more picturesque scene, so long as you didn't try to drive, that is.

For reasons I can't quite fathom, I awoke at 3 and couldn't get back to sleep. Finally, at about 3:30am I gave up on my attempts and climbed into my warm jetted tub. There I read from my new book, Payne Hollow by Harlan Hubbard. It's the tale of his time spent at Payne Hollow, and the years that lead he and his wife, Anna, to move there.

His life-long goal was to eschew all the aspects of a civilized life that the rest of us seem to long for. He wanted nothing of the 9 to 5 world, had no use for cars.. even busses, and really had little use for prolonged exposure to people in general. He wanted solitude. For him a scenic outlook was, simply put, no longer scenic, if there was a trace of the modern world to be seen. If there was any sign of humanity that he enjoyed, it was the steamships and sternwheelers of the mighty ohio river, and there were precious few of those left during most of his lifetime.

There was no electricy, so all work was done by candle light or oil lamps, and the cycle of his day was built around the hours of daylight. Water was from a creek... food was from the river... and heat came from the firewood cut by hand from the forrests around him. There was human contact, to be sure, but he preferred it on his terms, and asked that all but a chosen few limit their visits to certain Sundays.

There are parts of his life at Payne Hollow that would appeal to even the most hardened New Yorker. Hubbard's love of the earth, it's seasons, and it's non-human inhabitants couldn't come through more eloquently or with greater passion. But I can't help noticing a sense of anger and desperation in his loathing of the path the rest of us have taken. His is a take no prisoners approach to getting in tune with nature, a communion that spawns, for me at least, a sense of admiration, but also of pity, if not for Hubbard himself, than perhaps his wife. And so far at least, his wife is little more than a pleasant sound effect in the background of his always serious, always industrious world.

His world is filled with an enviable and uncommon interest in the nature that he has worked so hard to become a part of. He spends his days with oil painings in the forrest and fishing for catfish in "his" river, returning to a house hewn from the very landscape that surrounds him. He kills the meat he eats, then serves it in a bowl hewn from the stumps of the trees that fuel the fire, over which he cooks his dinner. There's a joy in it all, but perhaps there's also some desperation and a somewhat frantic quality to his efforts to forsake the norm, the lives the rest of us live.

It's a wonderful book, one I highly recommend to anyone with a yearning to be free of the stress and pressures of the office or work world. Yet, I'm not sure I'll finish it. My life lacks balance, balance between want and should, between natural and manufactured, between isolation and family, but so does Hubbard's.

In Buddhism we talk of the middle path. The answers rarely lie in one extreme or the other. There is such as thing as too much of a good thing. The answer is balance.... the best of both world's, in effect. Hubbard's book is a glimpse into the opposite extreme of my life. Now to bring his world into mine... in balance.