Trail and rules of the road

I just returned from a trail walk. Only one uncivilized person.  Perhaps ignorant is a better word.  Barbarian.  Bully.

On a trail with two directions, it can be divided by half.  This fellow took up more of the road than his half.  He was using 2/3’s of the road and going too faster than usual.  

He was alone and I was with a dog.  IF we break up a road into 2 then subdivide it into 4 then he was pushing me or the dog off the road.  Prick. Low brow. Thug.

Often I am walking with my dog and three cyclists don’t drop back into two and one or single file but hoard the road like thieves.  Four cyclists who do this are the worst.  But four other walkers as a group will take up the road and play chicken , not readjusting their group till they are right upon me and my dog. Often I recognise their social immaturity at a distance and step to the side of the walk.  They pass in a line.  The girls are giggling and commonly passive aggressive or self absorbed cunts who were simply unaware where as the guys who do this tend to be aware but bring ‘macho’ in that way children play for dominance.  I haven’t killed anyone on the trails recently simply because the effort of burying the bodies seems too much.  Easier to step aside and let the brain deficient pass.  With all the drugs around such behaviours are often just drugs.  Frontal lobe, the area of good judgement, turned off by whatever mental wanker agent is the flavour of the month or individual choice.  Zombies.  Silly people.

I walk the dog and the two of us avoid confrontations. I have to worry about the little guy getting hurt.  I have to worry about me hurting someone.  I rarely think about getting hurt myself dealing with people. I think with age I’d thought it’s a good day to die and that I really don’t have a second round in me so it’s gonna be over as quickly as I can make it because I just don’t have the stamina I once did.  Mostly the dog doesn’t like danger.  He’s a little guy and we go for a walk to stay or get fit and he likes the entertainment of a wealth of smells.  

Bullies and idiots, male and female and other , they have different agendas. I try to avoid letting their sickness or putrid personalities interfere with our getting through our walk. I like it best when we’re alone or other civilized people are walking or cycling along the trail.  The majority are toilet trained and out of diapers but there’s always one or two.  I wished I thought more of those who do the right thing and are godly rather be distracted by the satanic spawn of anal breeding.  

Have a great day. I just came home from a great walk with the dog.  

Belonging

It’s a sunday.  I have been invited to a church picnic but don’t really feel I belong.  That’s not a surprise since I haven’t been so often and I leave at the end of the service not going to coffee. I’ve been going to AA meetings regularly and feel I don’t belong there. I identify with so many concepts, ‘incomprehensible demoralization’ , ‘egomania with inferiority complex’, ‘the serenity prayer’, ‘god works through people’….’my mind is a bad neighbourhood I shouldn’t go there alone’…..’god of my understanding’……”I’m powerless over alcohol and my life is unmanageable’, ‘sought god’s will and the power to carry it out’,  ‘conscious contact with God’…..’spirituality’. “I’m a spiritual being living in a material universe’…..’character defects’…..’helping another alcoholic’…..sponsor/mentor….meetings…’last club on the block’

It’s fall and yesterday I prepared for hunting ensuring I had all the components I needed.  All that remains to be seen is whether my truck will be ready by Wednesday or Thursday. It will be but my anxiety relates to the times in the past, when 1) my ex wife and I after horrendously stressful hard work had to wait days for our sailboat to be ready because the workers had slacked off.  They were sociopaths we would learn and their modus opera di was to do this sort of thing to create drama and crisis so they would gain praise for a late completion and be begged as errant children to come to the table for dinner while the whole caste waited.  Yet I remember we were going to sell the sailboat then rather than be dependent on unconscionable marine workers. I remember being furious that as two doctors we gave first world medicine but got got third world service in return . Now I look back and associate that time with smoking marijuania and being preyed upon as doctors, a recurring theme of the lower classes and Marxist mentality.  Meanwhile we did get away and did desolation sound and kept the sailboat. I consider it would have been a different life if we’d sold the boat and gone on a cruise.  Today I said “G.O.D.” Good Orderly Direction and appreciate when I’m in the Flow and Go is good all of the time.  

2). The other time was when we had friends paint the interior of the house with 2 weeks to the do the job and finishing the night we arrived home.  It was obvious that they wanted to be ‘seen’ to have done the work.  So many work to praise and want to be present for this in addition to the pay.  I just wanted to sleep the night before return to work and the demand and stress of an unforgiving job that insisted on perfectionism.  Our government always demanded that while surgeons were collectively working under a 25 watt light bulb.  The political beauroacratic structure labelled under the delusion they were great when all they were was loyal to the leadership.  The doctors were and are great but the licensing system keeps them trapped in inferior settings on b teams rather than people freely moving to best reward.  I’ve stayed so in the end it’s been worth it and the house was painted and I stopped drinking and marrying women who drank and did drugs and being around people who drank and did drugs with the result that life improved.  The experience with the Frazer RV was another example but they really did seem stoned and sociopathic , a reminder of that lack of accountability.  I’m less dependent today and thankful for choices. I’m blessed to know people who are the best advisors.  

Now I’m concerned about my fear and identification with the aggressor. Worrying is wicked and it is a prayer  for negatives as God focuses not so much on the positive or negative but rather the attachment .  I’m attached to my catastrophising so by the law of attraction I attract catastrophe.  I am moving more to gratitude.  I’m thankful for this life of recovery. I  

The College told me being a doctor was ‘just a job’ ……I had responded ‘but to me it’s a calling and a profession’.   ‘It’s just a job.’

And I realized then that the government, now communist, worshipping the religions of aetheism, was stealing as communists do, taking all the good and Nobel and sacred for their self centered nefarious aims and not paying what was due.  In return they provided shit and low grade management and generally a system where the people want to escape and find they are slaves.  I’d felt a slave and now wonder about moving.  I see the doctors coming from countries where the leadership is corrupted and they do ‘everything for themselves’ and the new young doctors are ‘working to order’,  I loved that a group of doctors wanted to rejected the corrupted government and college in Ontario and join the Teamster Union because government wasn’t acting in good faith or accepting arbitration.  Now I think of myself in recovery and trying to live a spiritual life and be ‘kind’ and compare that to the jail where sociopaths are among their own.  The government and college don’t want people like themselves or a system that works as a heartless automatism. When they are sick they want ‘care’.  Lawyers and Doctors are opposite ends of a spectrum in that sense .  The church and state killed God.  Steal and little and they put you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king.  I suffer all those things we talk of imposter syndrome, alieness.  I’m wondering if in the inclusive group I will feel more apart of but then I don’t want to be on the losing team.  I also believe Jesus and Buddha and all the saints of all religions are waiting for the last man to pass through.  So as its not a race and I can’t get to heaven faster than someone else then participating in this world is not the only way. The way of tantra is not stoicism and avoidance my go to place. Today I address addiction as attachment and I’m not to look for God in the wall but what of sacrifice and what of joy.  This life is a gift should I turn away or see the God in all manifestations and embrace the dance.  Playing hide and seek with God .  I’m wondering about attending WPATH conference and wondering if I felt the same to gender dysphoria as I felt to those who did drugs and alcohol.  I’m reflecting on sex addiction and looking at the deadly sins, gluttony, pride, envy and jealousy, anger, and lust. I play whack a moll with them addressing one as the other pops it’s head. The fact remains that only god can relieve me of the bondage of self and the character defects I ‘d like to lose but don’t know if I can focus solely on the light.  I’m so easily distracted.  This too will pass.  ODAAT. 

All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.

Paradise

It’s another day in paradise.  I’m intent on opening a channel to God.  I’m doing my best to make conscious contact.   I’m blessed to have seen the fingerprints of God all over my life. Today I hope for miracles.  I live in the sacred but am so conditioned by the conventional I may miss the glory of God and the sheer wonder of creation. I am here in the beauty.  

Today the sun is up again There’s blue sky.  Madigan is happy and well up to his doggy delights.  I am amused just watching the little sausage.  I have planned a trip to the storage locker to gather the equipment I need for the bow hunt.  I was happy to see the bow heads for bird shooting arrived .I saw a partridge last week and yes , that excited both Madigan and me.  There may even be a deer waiting.  

It’s the end of Autumn. I associate the fall with back to school and university. I loved study and wonder about taking another course this year. I’ve a pretty tight schedule but that never stopped me in the past.  I was interested in the ancient religion course at Oxford that overlapped with Religion and Anthropology. It’s on line but I wonder about course work. I used to audit courses and not feel the pressure to do papers.  I do so much of that in work 

We are looking forward to seeing Laura again. 

The truck couldn’t be completed on Friday but they say it will be done by Wednesday or Thursday.

I’m enjoying the Apple series Invasion. I’m reading a sci fi book as well.  I loved that as a teen.  Sci fi novels from the library and Star Trek on TV.  

Time to look at mail and FB and prepare to head out to the storage locker. I’ve a bag of clothing to give away so will phone the Canadian Diabetes Society or Salvation Army and drop it off on the way to the storage locker.  

I’ve been enjoying my HD Nightster special.  Yesterday I rode the electric bicycle from Coastal for and had some serious exercise.  I do need to lose weight .It’s unhealthy and I would be healthy.  Less weight less pain.  

Thank you Jesus for this day. Thank you for all the blessing you bestow on me and my family and friends.  Thanks for the sunshine. Thank you for little dog, Thank you for my home, Thank you Creator. Thank you Lord.   

Social Media

I’ve a break between patients sand scanning social media.  Facebook has chosen to send me all the clips of the Miss World Contest. I can only guess that it’s because I enjoy some photographers and models on my feed so repeatedly like their pages.   I dated models, was a dancer and loved the pageantry of youth, I’m enjoying seeing all these beautiful young people caught up in competition and social frivolity.  Today I mostly work alone only interacting with colleagues once a week while spending hours a day on the phone or in virtual communication.  Young I was always in a group of young men and women, in theatre, on television, in green rooms, eating chinese sweet and sour ribs late at night in restaurants that catered to a flamboyant and shady mix, the entertainment crowd after shows, and the bar tenders and night crowd.  There’s a particular group of ‘after closing’ people that needs somewhere to go before returning to often empty and lonely digs,  The fast food 24 hour places serve that function today in a sterile way.  Instead in my day we had these hard working family restaurants serving ethnic foods. There was one particular place a theatre director took me to that had only ribs.  Years later I’d go to after hour honky tonks that had locked entrances with small openings in locked door. The doorman was there to keep unsavoury folk out but mostly to alert everyone if there was a raid.  Today the intercom has replaced the doorman and sliding opening just big enough for a face.  

It’s been a long time since I was out past midnight so I can’t comment on the 3 am and 5 am places,

I love seeing my first wife’s and dance partner on FB travelling in Italy.  We’d planned to bicycle there but early winter storms caused us to detour at Heidelberg to avoid the mountain passes and catch a rise with an Alberta’s bus driver to Southern Spain and Morocco.  She looks as beautiful as ever and is travelling with a friend who worked with her on the numerous shows she choreographed over the years.  It wassn’t so long ago she retired from dancing.  Amazing life with sons and family and countless awards for performances.  She was in Venice where I want to go and the Vatican where I ‘ve been.  I love Italy and her pictures certainly encourage me to return.  

Laura loved our time in Milan and Rome.  Now we’re gearing up for fall hunting season with a couple of weeks planned in the camper, first in bow hunting season and next in rifle hunting season. I’m excited about bow hunting partridge with my little cockapoo Madigan who on his own fetched those I short and brought them back to me.  I’d like to shoot a deer for the venison. I’ve missed venison stew and venison barbecue. I’ve not shot a deer since before Mexico.  This winter I’m planning on returning to Arizona and northern Mexico.  I really did enjoy missing some of last years winter and ice so hope for the same yesterday.  Covid made me feel anxious about my lungs having acquired TB as a fly in doctor in northern canada for years. It was diagnosed by the American and I was subjected to a year of treatment which caused me deafness.  Clindamycin which I”d needed for treatment of a resistant pneumonia years before caused me to lose a lot of my sense of smell.  Aging I feel like I’m losing the connection with the world physically in bits and pieces.  I really am enjoying my leisure time now that I hope to hold on to as many faculties for as long as I can.  

I was reading about Ben Shapiro whose column I’ve enjoyed.  He’s challenged the rather sloppy thinking of the leftist students and profs in his campus talks.  I prefer a bit more leeway but appreciate his countering the radical left that masquerades as central. He’s a counterpoint to communist Trudeau who is so corrupt and deceitful 

There’s a chill in the air, I liked this in the past , autumn being the time that I took courses or went hunting,  I have been looking at courses, There’s an on line Oxford course I would like to take on prehistory but I fear I’ve too much to do. It surprises me that I was able to take so many night school courses in theology and language and literature for so many decades. Now I like to walk the dog, make dinner and watch NCIS.  Last night after a terrific Wednesday Night Men’s meeting I picked up a baked chicken I shared with Madigan. We had a bit of a pig out with that followed by Cherry Garcia ice cream which I shared as well,  I call the little guy the ‘sausage’ as he’s settling down and gaining some weight.  A Bernice Saint Bernard cross female is visiting next door and Madigan was trying to hump her leg. The owner was telling me of bring kidnapped for ransom in South America.  

It’s another sunny blue sky day with a light breeze,  I’m really grateful for the sunshine and good time that August has been,  I feel relaxed often and have moments of peace and maybe even bliss.  God is good all of the time.  All Shall Be Well. Thank you, Jesus. 

Sunshine Valley

I woke at 6 am.  I remembered fascinating dreams.  In one I was part of a security detail of young volunteers for a museum. In another I was looking for a gift for my mother and loved a Klimt vase.  I worried about taking it home on the plane and whether it was authentic since it was so inexpensive.  Then I wondered if my mother would appreciate the gift and the effort I’d talen to bring it home.  

The embarrassing tale of bicycling across Europe was that I’d sent her cards and written letters of our adventures yet when I asked if she’d kept them she said she’d thrown them out but she had a carbon copy of the letters she wrote to me. Mostly about her garden and conversations with the neighbours.  I would love to have them today because I expect I’ve thrown them out.  Yet that time speaks a lot about my mother and her relationship to me.  My brother was my father’s son, always helping him and I was my mother’s son, She couldn’t have anymore children after me and I suspect she wanted a girl.  Now when I left home she was very depressed. My father told me that she was.  My brother had gone to university.  I’d married and she’d worn a white brocaded dresss to the wedding. It was odd. But then my mother in law was flirting with my father and said he was a very handsome man and it was a shame that my mother didn’t look after herself.  Mom had cut her hair short and gained weight but young she’d been a beauty. My mother in law had this sickness of flirting with men and yet rejecting them . It was a power trip of some kind and even enticed her best friends husband to her bed only to reject him.  She demonstrated to the women she could have their husbands but gave them back to them, slightly used.  The men weren’t relevant to the ‘game’.  My mother said she didn’t ‘like the woman, she was always trying to steal my husband’.  Dad was flattered, Mom was furious and jealousy. My mother in law had divorced the father of her younger children while having my ex with another man in Europe, a married man apparently.  But she’d been through the war escaping Russia and Germany and was a beautiful girl so one must imagine it was a terrible time. She spoke about the hunger.  So who can judge.  She loved her children and didn’t particularly like men except to seduce and reject.  She was an outcast in her community no doubt because the wives didn’t want to play her game.  She claimed her husband was to disciplining of the children.  His colleagues described him as a great doctor who would have gone to the top if he hadn’t married the refugee woman with another man’s child. After the divorce he went to the country and served out his years as a country doctor .  His son , my friend, said when he visitted he just wanted to go fishing and that he didn’t think much of his father. He was rural.  The gifted son of a single mother who dotted on her boy would become an alcoholic and have a mean streak that came out when he was drinking.  His adolescent antics paled as he grew older and though a once gifted artist and creative rebel he because one of the flying boys until at last he met a proverbial ‘good woman’ who stayed with him. I loved that we called each other ‘brother outlaws’.  Boys with their mothers.  We love them but we can see their quirks. He hated that his mother played her dominance game and that his older sister lied.  Growing up a middle child with older and younger sister he was wise, the family so artistic and showing such genius.  

My mother was a baptist and the church was where she and her two sisters spent all theirs social times outside of school and doing chores for their thoroughly adored mother.  My mother mother lived her last years with her as did my ex wife’s grandmother ,  My girlfriend, a grandmother, has a daughter who was rebellious as my ex wife,  My girlfriend divorced and  her daughter and she have an unsteady relationship, so much love but such uncertainty.  

My mother and father were hurt when I left home, coming back and leaving again.  They had expectations.  Rockwell did us all a disservice,  My parents felt hurt and betrayed by me and never trusted me not to do that again. Years laster when I was a doctor’s doctor, a solid citizen really, who’d saved my father’s life on two occasions and served the family well, I was still considered by them to be the adolescent rebel.  I remember when there was a dinner in my honor and my praises were being sung I over heard my parents say ‘you don’t know him as we do’ in response to ‘you must be so proud to have such a successful son”.  

My parents were not one for compliments,  They believed it spoiled the child,  “We didn’t want to add anything to your ego” my mother once said,  Ironically for all her piousness she suffered spiritual pride and was unaware, so judgmental of the neighbours and critical of Christians not of her church. They were tribal.  Years later I met other church ladies with the same judgementalness despite ‘judgement is the lord’s’ being the essence of Christianity.  

I tend to avoid everyone. I don’t so much judge others but rather how I feel with them,  There are so few I feel safe with and even them I doubt.  Such betrayal in my life.  The lies and betrayal of my ex and my psychiatrist and mentors.  I pray for them and forgive but I’m just as judgemental saying they are ‘sick’ rather than declaring them ‘evil’ .  There’s that thing about the ‘politics of friendships’ and the ‘political of faith’.  I look at capital cities and think they are full of people who never left junior high school.  The endeavours of war and business and Hollywood are vast political affairs with lots of people and lots of gossip. I imagine that Epstein’s list is the key to the membership in that club.

I’m loosely connected with others and am even tenuous with family.  I’m skittering like my dog afraid to be close, feeling I’ve worked so hard, so very hard and repeatedly lost my house and heart and been blamed not for the right or wrong of a thing but rather by tribal allegiances and Marxist hegemonies.  I was just trying to do the next right thing and not even awar there was a war.  

I loved Leonard Cohen’s “There is a war.”   I remember feeling smothered in my relationship with an ex when she painted the walls pink and asked me to take my pictures and put them in the basement.  She never thought of herself as aggressive or proud or bullying but I eventually was taken for granted and she and her mother and family closed ranks and expected me to ‘serve’ the princess.  I’ve done the role of husband and wife in marriage.  I’ve worked serveral jobs and watched them take the money and serve themselves.  I thought we’d have a child. Even when my wife was rich we only used my money and later she’d use her wealth to buy lawyers to destroy me.  No wonder self pity was my go to place and yet I learned in therapy and in AA that I was accepting of abuse. I cooked the meal and expected her to do the dishes. That was the way I was raised. But she just took. I created takers because I never raged or argued or set boundaries. I just served and paid and watched them play princess. In the end I paid for my friends and felt un loved and alone.

Codependent’s anonymous.  Melody Beatie described me.  I attracted parasites who insisted on their being the victim but thought themselves clever to be with me having a friend like me who paid for everything.  I laugh remembering paying for the exwives who were doctors and how the money they made went only in part to the rent while all else I paid. It was okay knowing they could take care of themselves and I had this issue of not wanting to be indebted to anyone.  It had to do with freedom and allegiance.  I didn’t want to owe anyone and nearly died paying off the debts my last ex ran up .  

Now where is the intelligence I savor, the holy elixir.  What does the masochist say to the sadist?  Hit Me.  What does the sadist say to the masochist?  No.  

I will get my reward in heaven butt I also get the reward of knowing that I have carried my share.  I watch these families serving their genes and their future and I’ve helped strangers and enemies.  I’m that kind of crazy.  Too often I come across others who have a reciprocity arrangement within their tribe or in their relationships.  She stop cooking when their partner stops doing dishes. They stop being nice and have temper tantrums and major pouts and show everyone they can’t be walked on

My friends say, ‘get down off the cross we can use the wood’.

My dog is a little disgruntled taker, part cat if you ask me. Just a good looking little guy who walks on my face and lies on the table and growls at me if I don’t give him the first cut of my steak.  It’s no one else’s problem and I imagine going to he grave with an inferiority complex and low self esteem feeling I must buy my friends and being denied anything but living in a pink room.  Spiritual pride and lack of I statements.  Years of self care and study like years of showers and being among the unwashed.  I’m self centred as the next but am afraid going forward.  I feel unprepared.  Those who were selfish and cared for themselves and prepared for their old age and death and lived with others who were preparing too weren’t betrayed by a government creating inflations and constantly taxing more and more as I fear that my future will have increasingly vulnerability. I am anxious that older I’m not able to work three jobs I needed to to care for the slackers around me selfish and insisting that they suffered more and then didn’t have the energy and yet they got fat and cared for themselves and their tribe.  

I’ve never focussed on money.  My family did and does. I just focused on the good I would do and it seemed the money followed though I had to give blood to pay for medical school and in the end was fucked by my professor.  I remember my wife said ‘no women likes oral sex , It’s dirty’.  Now here I was spending hours a night performing cunninglingus and listening to women and friends all day singing the praise of oral Sex and deep throat was all the rage.  She considered sperm ‘icky’ and never had children.  She was germophobic and I presumed that since I was performing oral sex all the time, the only way she could ‘come’, then I was dirty but then I realized that no. “Men were dirty’ and ‘women were clean’.  So she was trapped in some pre adolescent fantasy and I was a damaged adult.  

I always have felt that sex was rationed by women.  That I was denied sex as a way to keep the price of diamonds high. It was all economics.  Women were better masturbated and had affairs all the time so they didn’t need their men.  Besides given the choice between orgasm and food they’d rather feast. So many fat people stuffing their emotions with food or skinny people stuffing their emotions with drugs and alcohol pointing fingers at others.

I m up for another coffee. I arrive here and it’s always the ‘spirituality of imperfectio’.  The other is always God.  In Job the devil works with God and all is one so the devil is God and the only question is love or fear.  I love her.  But she scares me.  

Mother and child.  It’s always mother abd child and only when there’s a child does the princess become the queen.  Single mothers have always believed in tyranny.  No other Gods but them.  The divorce rate is now 50 % and only bad marriages are lasting. The courts prey on marriage and the judges and lawyers are rich by destroying families .  And they still haven’t released Epstein’s list, 

I’ve been a perpetual parent ironically caring for everyone, a caregiver, the solo sailor who is survivalist in the woods. I remember that day I realized that if I was hurt no one would or could care for me.  I was always out with others who were arrogant and thought they could lead and were great critics but simply couldn’t.

Yet here we are old and have managed to get this far and will muddle along somehow.  

Gratitude is the answer.  My mother and father were great lovers.  They were best friends, confidants , raised a family, managed a major business and gardened together.  

My dad was Air Force.  Ive enjoyed the men who served.  

It’s been a blessed life, I’ve been blessed to know all the characters.

Personally I seen to always be playing whack a moll with my character defects.  When I get lust settled down, then gluttony pokes up it’s head, I whack that and envy appears , then anger, then jeallousy and back to pride, it’s impossible.  So I pray to God that he remove my character defect.

Today sitting in the dog park while Madigan sniffed other dog’s shit and piss I contemplated that there was definitely a conscious creator. I woke this morning to this creation and I couldn’t make the birds fly or levitate a table, In the present I am with God.  God within God will come again,  My life is a dialogue with God.  Thank you God

Thank you God for my mother. Thank you God for my father. Thank you god for brother. Thank you God for my aunts and uncles and cousins and nephews, Thank you God for my in-laws. Thank you God for my ex wives. Thank you God for the dogs. Thank you God for the cats. Thank you God for the dish. Thank you God for the friends. Thank you God for the acquaintances. Thank you God for the teachers. Thank you God for knowledge. Thank you God for food and shelter. Thank you God for Maslow’s Hiearchy of Needs. Thank you God for Erick Erickson’ developmental stages. Thank you God for Piaget. Thank you God for Neuro science. Thank you God for chemistry and physics. Thank you god for history and pre history and politics and psychology and sociology, Thank you God for Food and Shelterr.  Thank you God for my ATV Thank you God for this camper, the electricity and water and sewarge dispoasdal and garbage disposal.  Thank you for coffee. Be with Madigan and me today keeping us safe. Watch over our friends and family and keep them well. Thank you Jesus. 

Sunshine Valley

Yesterday was a challenge. My alarm for 6 didn’t go off so I only awoke with my normal 7 am alarm.  I had to get to Chilliwack to pick up my camper to take it to Adventurer RV to have the decals done.  Kevin had done the major repair in the spring but the decals had not been in stock. I’d looked at the blank wall on one side of the camper and been tempted to hire a friend to paint that side. The Insurance Company would not have been on board. 

The Langley bottleneck wasn’t too bad.  Madigan was excited about a car ride. I had an Ian Rankin audio book.  I just could have used another coffee.  Loading the camper went well.  I had planned to leave the trailer to pick up later for when I was going to be picking up my ATV.  As it was I’m so poor at back up a trailer and time was running late I chose to take it with me,

I’d hoped to wash the camper at the self wash place but the entrance was full and I worried that I’d not be able to turn around with the trailer, one of the reasons I’d planned to leave it.  At least this put me back on time to getting the camper to Kevin at Adventurer RV on Chilliwack Mountain Road.

“It’s okay,’ Kevin said , smiling, “We can wash it.”  

The lovely receptionist was already down at dog eye level offering Madigan a treat. He’s pretty skitterish but he took one from her.  He recognised her as a good heart.

  

While the camper was being beautified Victor came by in his Ram truck so we could go for breakfast at Tim Hortons.  He’s had major surgery and is walking with a cane.  His challenge is to be able to lift his leg to mount his ATV for moose hunting.  

“If you can’t get enough lift with physio you could erect a t bar to your quad that you could attach your winch cable to and lift you into your seat. “ I joked.

Victor is very handy and mechanical and had developed a winch rig to lift moose quarters onto his ATV that all the hunters admired.

“So I could use that to haul up game as well and you could take my winch rig for your quad.”  He laughed.  

Victor was military and one of the brotherhood. We both knew “Sarge” who’d served in WWII.  He’d died of old age a few years ago.  Victor had helped him at the end hunting.  Victor’s more Vietnam and Cypress era but we’re all getting older now, like Sarge did.  Victor has a son and friends who he are glad to help him get the game out.  

I’m planning on hunting this fall and the issue isn’t the ambush or stalk but rather getting the game out.  A moose is a couple of thousand pounds, a deer a few hundred pounds.  The last few years I’ve just shot grouse/partridge,  I’ve let game go simply because the work of getting it home was too daunting.  I’m whining about my fractured back from a plane crash and here’s Victor gang ho despite two surgeries in the spring to deal with the damage from a long ago motorcycle crash.  I’d slipped in the rain coming down from Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh but I had to climb the little hill to see the glorious view and think my grandfather’s had done that before me.  There’s a cost for glory and dignity with aging.  Neither Victor or I or so many of our old friends regrets the craziness of youth.  I feel sad for those who have lived lives of quiet desperation and haven’t even memories in old age.

This summer with the heat and long stretches of sunny days has had me recollecting the sweet joy of my summer growing up in the prairies.  As kids we bicycled everywhere.  The  blue sky went on forever above the wheatfiields and we could watch dark storm clouds  come rolling in for hours shouting thunder. Otherwise we could lie on our backs looking up at thee cumulus clouds telling stories in the sky with their changing shapes.

Now here I am again in Sunshine Valley. Laura and I had commented on it often and we passed by on our way to Princeton or Merritt.  I stopped first a few weeks back on my way home from a week of workation with my camper , laptop and star link in Logan Lake.  I loved walking Madigan aground the well kept grounds with a dog walk area he just loved .  I rode my folding electric bike up to the logging road along the river and decided I wanted to come back and explore more.  

We’re booked in a couple of weeks. It’s long weekend and Laura and I have time off so we have an extra day off for time off. She’s finding the clinics more stressful.  People are increasingly frustrated demanding and even belligerents with the broken health care system, shortages and long waits. Her doctors are my age and continue to work. We all love serving patients but more and more see colleagues leaving because of the top heavy administration and irrational interferences that always occurs when untrained bureaucrats get power. We’ve had 10 years of a failed surfboarder drama teacher in power whose influence has been Shakespearian  with  something definitely rotten in the state of Denmark 

I’m working full time hours by government job standards but half what I used to work as a private clinician.  Private practice medicine carries the system but more and more doctors are opting for the gravy train great life style of government work with endless meetings and little demands to do heavy lifting or get ones hands dirty.  There’s an arrogance in that work too and so much time for politicking and gossiping. I did a few years of that when I was younger at different times and frankly now that I’m older I’m envious of the high pay and pension and various packages,  But I like my freedom.  That’s a fact. I’d not be able to do the sailing and camping and travel I have done so easily.  

When I took a month off work to sail my yacht back from Hawaii and the mask broke I could phone my assistant and let her know I’d be a week longer returning. In a government job I’d get all manner of attitude for something like that.

Now here I am today out camping when I’d actually planned just to have the camper job done and return it to storage.  Kevin’s partner noted that my trailer lights weren’t working properly. 

“I know,” I said. “I can only connect the camper or the trailer but not both at the same tine,”  I said knowing I was at risk of getting a ticket if a policeman became ornery.  The big lights on the trailer that Kelvin of Travco had fixed made the whole rig safe but technically it wasn’t quite legal,.

“We use a splitter” he said,.

“Would you he able to fix mine now before I leave” I asked,

“Sure,” he said picking up the parts from the little store at reception. I’d just bought more of the special RV toilet paper and septic tank deodorizer. They had lots of electrical parts as well. 

So an hour later I had a legal system with lights working on camper and trailer.  He’d fit me in between two jobs he was doing in the shop. Big Winnebago buses worth hundreds of thousands the owners happy to have these folks work on their rigs given how conscientious and trustworthy they were,  I feel blessed when I can trust a workman.  It was the same sailing, My life depends on good work.  I’ve been blessed that most do adequate work but so impressed when I’m blessed to find a godsend place like Adventure RV.  

I was thankful too that Victor had told me about his friend at Chilliwack Motorcycle just off Chilliwack Mountain Road. I’d left my Honda 420 Tracker ATV there the week before  today. It’s was there in the lot waiting for me to pick it up,  When I ‘d last used it in the mountains by Princeton last year the wrench symbol had come on and the engine seemedto be working harder. I’d only had it a year and it was well past it’s first service date.  I carry a satellite phone but admittedly worry as I’m driving on old logging roads beside gazillion mile down ravines forcing myself not to think of mechanical failure.  All I’d need was for brake to fail and if the engine failed I’d have a might long walk out of the deep back woods.  I was thankful to have the machine serviced by their mechanics.  They do Harley’s too and racing motorcycles along with ATV’s.  Their clientele like me can’t afford to have less than the best work done given what we’re doing with our machines.  The engine purred when I started it up and it was likely just the dirt ash and dust I’d been in that clogged the filter, 

There’d been so many fires the last few years caused by arsonists , probably domestic terrorists or just sick folk. I’d treated several so knew the addiction that starting a huge flame and televisions fan fare gave these folk, the evil ones and the mousy boys and girls with pent up resentments.  One of my favourite hunting areas by Copper Mountain Princeton was totally burnt out.  Because the liar in Ottawa wants to make money on climate change he’s unwilling to support the forestry and community policing services that have been catching the arsonists.  One woman admitted to starting 35 fires.  70 rural churches were burnt down last year.  Theres’ been less change in climate but a whole lot of change in government.  I miss the days when we had powerful bright men like Mulroney, Martin, Chrétien and Harper in power. This puppet selfie low IQ bully has been a nightmare.  I looked at that once green forest with miles of black despair and thought of Lord of the Rings.  Thankfully the provincial government has been doing all it can despite the evil federal menace,  It’s obviously our premier lives here and doesn’t appreciate the cost of having such stupidity and evil in the east wasting our forests with his pavement mind urban police’s disregarding the farmers, ranchers, miners, natives and forestry folk who live here in God’s country,   

Well, that’s an aside.  It troubled me a lot to go through the town of Lytton and see that it was all destroyed by arson and think that these folk would get away with such out rage because they could say it was the climate rather than put the responsibility in Ottawa where it belongs.  Now more fires are raging by Kelowna.  A patient texted me a request for an inhaler, her family physician on vacation because her asthma is so bad because of the smoke in the air.  Thanks to wifi and computers I could get an Rx to a pharmacy there,.  

Fortunately here the air is great.

My ATV is thoroughly vetted with new parts and everything copacetic.  Thankfully Honda makes tough machines,

Well, here I was having had breakfast with Victor at Tim Horton’s attended an online international meeting on zoom sitting with Madigan watching Canada Geese on the river while waiting for my Camper and now it was early afternoon still and I had a camper and ATV and remembered how much I enjoyed glamping at Sunshine Valley RV.  I contacted the clinic because the Camper and ATV storage isn’t open Sunday so it means I return Monday afternoon.  I will phone the three patients I would have seen in person and make up for this last minute change .  The clinic will priorize rebooking them and I have to remember that the broken health care system isn’t my problem, that people didn’t wait so many months to see me in the past.  Two more of my colleagues have left the province too going to Alberta where I”ve been invited to go as the decline in standards here in my subspecialty area has attracted the best to the best of doctors .  I’m sorely tempted.  But I really like this clinic and I like the ability to do virtual work and have been having great sleep without nightmares,  The college even offered me work but I had to confess that my experience dealing with authoritarian structures had caused me so much stress in the past that right now I’m enjoying working as a clinician and  healing,  seeing people for their sake not because of some law suit or third party interference. Someways I feel like I did when I was a northern doctor or island doctor or country gp.  I’m just a clinician and enjoying healing not fighting politics as well as insaniety and cancer.  

I’m really quite happy, I rode into town and visited Laura who was stressed by the city and her work and I felt I was on the right path. I’m not ready to retire despite being of an age that I could.  It’s just that even now journaling and thanking god after and early morning walk is so sweet.  

I’m so glad that the Camper is ready for the weeks that Laura and I will be having our vacations this fall. I’m glad to be able to check out the ATV before hunting season. The trailer is working like a dream.  

I dreamed of my incredible friend Marion Nadler, a psychologist I worked with North Vancouvrr Island a quarter century ago.  The beautiful Anne Lindsay was the social work then and I met the two of them never known how close and how long our paths would entwine.  I remember thinking I’d died and gone to heavy when the two of them invited me to lunch so we could meet as I was doing out reach consultation into their areas. I’d date Anne and remain friends for decades and actually move to Parksville to live across the country road from Marion. We last had lunch together before Covid.  Her children are grown , the little boy I knew as a toddler is now a successful businessman. Her daughter who looked like a vogue model exercised the brains her phd mother had passed on last I heard had done something at the university,. Marion has a hacienda in Mexico on the west coast, Bungalos Paraiso Melaque.  She’d learned Spanish travelling Mexico after she completed her clinical psychology degree at University of Manitoba.  I’ve yet to visit Melaque and rent one of her cabins by the beach.  It’s on the bucket list. In my dream she was laughing and reminding me how silly the world was.  We used to laugh and play music and dance and I have such fond memories of times at her place. When I was persecuted because I lodged a complaint against a powerful now dead professor she was the person who stood behind me.  Marion had my back.  It’s a reflection of how peaceful it is in Sunshine Valley that I dream of Marion and the good times I had living in the country before moving back to the city.

I was talking with the lovely receptionist at Adventurer RV after I’d sat outside beside the river reflecting on how peaceful it was in the country, how one could go for a picnic beside a river in town and be so distant from traffic.  She said they did that, taking their lunch to sit by the river in summer

I told her I’d twice lived and worked in the country but that both times ex wives had brought me back into the city.  I’d been a country doctor but my wife ddin’t want to leave the safety of the university teaching hospital and her mother whereas we’d planned to travel and work and live in the country.  Her paediatrician friend and doctor husband had a hobby farm with cattle and trout pond. I loved them and their life and had hoped for that but she was happy at the university in the city.  Eventually she’d stay there and have a clinic with her mother as reception and work with her sister while I’d go off to be a fly in doctor in the north, specialize and sub specialize in the the states and Canada and work as a fly in doctor in the Polynesian islands live and work in BC.   

I’d had the property in parksville and loved my life there only to find my crazy wife was sabotageing it. “I just went along with it till you got it out of your system. I always knew I’d convince you to live in Shaughnassey. My mommy got my daddy to settle down because she knew what was best.’  I only heard this after I’d seen the old man go in sane and mother was decapared certifiably insane and my wife’s cocaine addiction had declared itself. We were all drinking wine and smoking dope in the day. It was a hippy kind of young or yuppie young urban academic thing but cocaine was a no no. I remember Marion’s husband got hooked and left Marion for a lawyer who I presume liked cocaine. Not Marion.  Fortunately for me I had an idiosyncratic reaction.  I didn’t need stimulants either but would get all round up with work that I’d need some R&R, drinking a glass of wine and smoking some weak weed was my idea of relaxation back then. 

We say work hard, play hard, go to AA.  When it was time to quit I did but my ex didn’t want to but w’e had some great times raising turkeys and sailing.  I was blessed in the wives I had even if we had addictios and one tried to kill me and herself.  All the while I was going to therapy they refused.  Pride is a problem. Thankfully anger management for women has come along and women are learning to deal with their anger rather than always blaming it on men.  

Back in those days women would tell me they don’t get angry, only men do.  Thankful the field of psychology progressed though gender and race continue to be as problematic as other political weaponized words like climate.

I am really more accepting and less blaming today but then I don’t drink and don’t smoke weed and do my vest to avoid negative people in my personal life.  I’m alone a lot too.  I’m afraid more.  I’ve really been blessed like this morning. I walked Madigan who was ecstatic at the early morning walk. I then mediated at a chair in the community garden watching the sun come up between the mountains.  

It’s 9 am.  The rules are you can’t start up your ATV before 9 am so not a good place for serious hunters.  I used to be out in the woods before dawn but now I’m happy enough to get out after coffee usually waking at 6 or 7 and getting our 8 or 9 which explains some of why I’ve been only shooting grouse the last few years.  I’m not even hunting today just exploring so this is just fine.  

   

 

Chilliwack

I miss the 6 am alarm I set. Probably it will go off at 6 pm.  I was awoken by the 7 am alarm and got going slowly. .Quick meditation.  Coffee and shower. On the road before 8..  Still traffic slow down around Langley. I didn’t stop for breakfast but went on to Chilliwack RV.  I pulled aside the ATV trailer then loaded the camper on the truck.  It went smoothly Practice makes perfect. I connected up the trailer to leave but had trouble backing up as usual.  It was nearly 10 and I had to wash the camper too.  I took the trailer with me but when I passed the case wash it was full and I couldn’t see how I’d get in and out.  Oh well. On to Adventurer RV.  I was about 20 minutes late. 

As usual they were welcoming and happy to see me.  I left the keys and called Victor.

We’d made a plan to go for brunch.  He’d had a couple of family emergencies arrive and the 2 pm meeting was moved to noon. This meant he had little time but a Tim Hortons was close by, So we stopped and talked there.  Madigan was a nuisance acting up in the car and not to br left. Fortunately no one noticed him under the table by th or, Brrttrr to ask forgiveness than permission. 

Now I’m back at Kevin’s Adventurer RV.  It’s by the river.  Walking Madigan I found it Madigna’s hot and walked right in,  Very picturesque.  Reminded me that there’s a lot of lovely places around Chilliwack It’s a great town.  I once lived here half a year.  26 years ago.   

Last night I put Madigan in his box on the back of my HD Nightster Specail.  I dorme him to the off leash park.  I explored it all on his own having a jolly good time until he got bored and came back to me.  Back on the Harley I drove us down town, quite the ride .  Met Laura in the West End and had fish and chips and burger at Mary’s on the veranda.  Great milkshakes. Terrific visit.  She’d been house sitting and will be again this week. We’re planning to be together sept 1 for camping and bow hunting. Then a week later in sept. We were missing her too.  She’s Madigan’s favourite person and he’s beside himself when he sees her.  She was wearing a blue summer frock and looked lovely.  She said it was past her work week bed time. “I”m in bed reading not long after 7.  I’m so tired from the clinic.”  It’s a busy job I’ in bed by 9 though might read till midnight .  Still it’s not the latte evenings of not that long past when I did night school and went to meetings.  I had more energy with the business schedule.  his is a laid back time.

I’m loving this summer.  Reminding me of good times in Winnipeg summers, Fort Gary, mom and dad.  Such fond memories.  

Paul Sobey and Paul Farnham have gone to Calgary because the addiction medicine political position there is more enlightened than hereRaju invited me.  I’m happy here without the stress of years of College persecution. They’re actually civil.  I liked the clinic and patients and liked the loook of the next 6 months and alot of virtual work.  happy and grateful for now.