Adventures in Iceberg Alley

Hillgrade:

Okay, so we didn't exactly have an adventure, at least not by dictionary standards, but I thought it was a snappy title.

What does anyone do when they get close to Twillingate? They go see icebergs, that's that. There are so many bergs here now that locals can't remember when they had more at the same time. And that brings the tourists. They tell me that the TCH up to Twillingate the Sunday before last was bumper to bumper.

So we trailed up to Durrell (which is the best place to see the ice) last week, and again this week. Icebergs are living, breathing things, ever changing, every creaking and groaning, rolling and splitting.

Here are some pictures showing the view last week (on the left) and this week (on the right). I didn't exactly line up the lens this week, but you'll forgive me. My intentions were good.

Views of Durrell bergs on July 16 (left) and July 21 (right)

And two more, zoomed in:

The two pics below show a berg which disintegrated before our eyes. Poof! I managed to capture the final cloud of ice. 

Berg before it exploded

What's left of the berg except some splash

Pic below shows a berg-y bit shaped like a whale, or a dolphin, depending on your preference.

Tonight we're going into Twillingate to see the arrival of Captain Bob Bartlett's ship The Bowdoin, as part of Celebrating Bartlett 2009 , a province-wide celebration of 100 years since Bartlett made his first Arctic expedition. I have to say I feel a special kinship, having grown up in Brigus, Bartlett's birthplace, and knowing his family personally. 

So, expect another blog post tomorrow, or as soon as I can get myself organized. It's cold here, so it's a good time for doing stuff like blogging and reading and taking short, very short, walks. Frost predicted for tonight. Good thing I brought my hat and gloves. Odd thing is that I don't resent the weather here, but if it were to be this cold in Ottawa, I'd be furious. (At whom I have no idea!)

Closing in on the finish line

Summerford:

[Note: this post was written from a house we were staying in while our place was being lifted. Many thanks to a great friend Pete who let us stay there rent free for a lot longer than we anticipated.]

We're getting there. On the weekend, I actually went to Hillgrade and had a look at the house. First time I've been there in over a week, although it feels like forever.

It was a bit of a shock to see something concrete (serendipitous pun) under the house. The knee-wall is there too, as I knew it would be. Having seen it now a few times this weekend, I'm not as upset by it as I was at first. They have roughed in spaces for windows should we ever want to put some in. There's a door - extra wide - to the crawl space.

The front (sea side) of the house is now in it's final position. It will not be lowered any further. The back will be adjusted as its time comes to rest on the foundation. They still have to put the block wall in the back and sides and are doing that as I speak, I should imagine. They didn't work on the weekend although the bossman said he would have liked to. However, the fellows haven't had a weekend off in five weeks so John said he thought it was time they had one.

So today, apart from finishing the block wall (atop the concrete foundation), they will put the weeping tile into the trench to conduct away the bog water that was causing us so many problems to start with. (Heck, if it hadn't been for this bog water, our house would probably have stood another century without intervention.)

John figures we'll be back in the house by Friday, which means the men will be finished by then, and John will have hooked the plumbing up. He has more work to do than just reconnect what he disconnected because he decided to move the location of the septic pipe as well as the garden hose. However, he's confident he can get it done in a day. We're not going to worry about getting the furnace hooked up before we move back because the weather has turned nice and we likely won't freeze before the furnace man gets to do his thing.

Here are some pics that I took on Friday. You can see the foundation, especially on the front. It gives a good idea of how things are going. 

John is going to sort through the wood that's strewn on the ground today. It will all become firewood. Our neighbour has a wood furnace and will take whatever we don't want, even if it has paint on it or concrete bits. I'm not crazy about burning painted wood but I suppose it's not leaded paint so....

Looking pretty darn good, I must say. Like a house that will stand for another hundred years.  Tis odd to see 90 degree corners. 

That Solstice Thing Really Works

Hillgrade:

Summer has arrived. Right on cue. Sunday, June 22, was magnificent. The sky was a clear and heart-breaking blue. The temp was 20 when we were driving towards Twillingate. It must have gone higher because we had to take off clothing after that.

Yesterday we decided to take a hike to see the iceberg that is just off French Beach. It's really around the headland that is north of French Beach, but we don't know the name of that headland. There is bound to be a local name and I will inquire. But suffice to say for now that the iceberg is just north of French Beach.

We drove as far as is possible. Parked by the sign that declares the Road Beyond This Point Impassible. We ate the sandwiches we had made, reckoning that it was better to fuel up before we started than to eat them squished later. We packed a bottle of water into a knapsack and started off. We really weren't sure of the route but figured how hard could it be.

As we were tramping in, we met some people coming out. I stopped them and asked if they had seen the iceberg. Of course they had and reported that the trail was a loop. Even if you go the hard way, you can come out the easy way. Oookay. They were tourists and were not particularly friendly, being mainlanders and all.

A fellow coming out in a truck told us that the trail started just by an old cabin. Very good then.

We found what appeared to be the start of the trail and headed off. Before long, we were nearly up to our knees in a bog and had to double back. We took a rockier path, although to get across the boggy part, we had to jump stones. I didn't get my feet wet so I guess I must not be that old yet.

The path took us along the coast and the scenery was breathtaking. See pics below.

We had to scramble up some very precarious slopes, grasping at tree roots (at least I was), slipping and sliding. But I made it up! Yay. I consider it a personal achievement. The last time I was presented with a hill like that, I quit. (That was in Point Leamington a few years ago. And before you start calling me names, I'll say in my defense that I was wearing sandals when army boots would have been barely adequate.) But talk about worth it. We were atop a very large headland. Looking down I got dizzy. Looking up I got dizzy. It must be how astronauts feel. Sky everywhere.


What I remember most though is the smell. I can conjure it up now as I type. It's a scent sweet and sharp, high and low, gets into your nose and your stomach. You can taste it as though you had just eaten it. Like it seeps up through your feet. A mixture of moss and berries, lichen and spruce and juniper, and sunshine. It's enough to make you drunk. Certainly enough to make you cry.

Just when the sweat was pouring off us and we were about to strip off all our clothes, a very cool breeze brought on the shivers. We must be close to the iceberg. Over some more rocks, down a bit, around a bend and there it was.

Of course, we had to take a bunch of pictures. John took more than I did and certainly better ones. I was pooped and lay down on the moss. Got a picture of my feet with the burg beyond. It was glorious lying there. Nothing but me and the burg and the sun and the cliffs. I could have happily lain there the rest of my life. As it was, we spent about an hour out there. Then some tourists from Guelph (I know because I asked them after they had been sitting about 20 feet from us for twenty minutes. Only one of them actually spoke though. Maybe that iceberg had the rest of them tongue-tied.

I took a picture of two of them as we were leaving. I like the way she's leaning as thought she wants to get closer to the berg.

[Reviewing this entry, I realize I MUST spend some time figuring out how this blogger thing works. I absolutely hate how it (or I) have handled this pictures. There must be a better way to integrate text and images so it doesn't look like a ham-fisted job like this one.]
Anyway, I'm off to watch Wimbledon at a friend's house.

Things are still looking up

Summerford:

And by that I mean, the house is still up in the air.

And if you're wondering why I've not posted in a while, I've got no reason. No excuse either. Just didn't feel like it.

This living in someone else's house [left] is for the birds. Don't get me wrong. It's a perfectly good house. And I shall be eternally grateful for the senendipitous collision of Pete's departure and our need for a place to live. Not to mention his generousity in offering it to us for as long as we need it. In my naïveté, I thought we'd be back in our place in a week or so. Alas, we may be here another two weeks.

And here we sit. Well, at least that's what I'm doing. John goes up to the house every day to see what's new, to make sure the workmen are not forgetting where the plumbing lines go through the walls, or the furnace fuel line or the water intake line, etc.

Yesterday the boss man (Coates) said that they might not be working on our place today, that they might be moving a house in Stoneville instead, if Nfld Light and Power was going to come through and move it's power lines. The deal was, if he wasn't at the work site by 9 a.m., then he'd be moving the house. When he wasn't at the house by nearly 10 a.m., John and I and Simon went to Stoneville to see the house being moved.

When we were half-way to Stoneville, we saw one of the worktrucks heading up towards Hillgrade. Probably to our site. But we decided since we'd come this far, we'd go on and at least find the house that was being moved, probably tomorrow now.

Now you'd think that since Stoneville has a population of about 150 or so (my best guess), finding a house that is being moved wouldn't be difficult. I suggested we stop at the one and only gas station and ask if they know anything. Of course, that wasn't a good idea according to John and Simon so we soldiered on. We went as far as the road to the Stoneville dump and turned around, figuring we'd missed it. Then we drove back through the town looking extra carefully. Nothing. So we stopped at what appeared to be the only store in town. I went in to ask if they knew anything. They didn't but said they'd call the gas station to see if they knew anything.

Within minutes, we were on our way, past the town dump nearly to the town of Port Albert. We found the house which I'd describe as a large cabin [right]. The hydro people were there when we arrived taking down the hydro pole and dragging it away. The move is scheduled for tomorrow. Simon knew one of the fellows on the hydro crew who said when we walked up, "You never know what's going to walk out of the woods around here." I'm still laughing.

Below are some pics of our place showing the forms for the footings being made; and concrete being poured for the footings. Today the footings are curing. The men might be working on replacing the rotten sill plates at the back of the house, or they might be dropping plumb lines for the block walls which will be the next step in the foundation. John is supervising, no doubt. 

Post-lift pre-dig

Summerford:

And so it came to pass.

On the first day, the house was lifted. That would be Monday, June 9, for anyone who hasn't been paying attention.

We got up early. John around 7. Me around 7:30. I was coherent by 7:45, sort of. Didn't really matter. What mattered was that I could heft and carry, shove and pull. Choked down some cold cereal with an apple on top. Had to get some carbs because it would be a long day.

We had a few things to do before the lifters arrived.
1. We had to take the top off the living room chimney. (Yes, I know I said in the previous entry that we were going to postpone any action on the LR chimney until later, but the lift man said that the top had to come off now to prevent damage to the roof during the lift. John also had had to separate this chimney from the floors during the previous day or two. I forgot to mention this. He had the pleasure of working in the attic where there hasn't been any fresh air in 100 years and where it is still the temperature of the earth when it emerged from the primordial ooze.
He could not proceed with this work though until the furnace man gave him the go ahead in case he (the furnace man who was due to arrive at 8a.m.) needed to run the furnace before dismantling it.)

2. The furnace had to be dismantled - or at least some of the ducts had to be removed because they would be in the way of the lifters. The furnace man would do all this, freeing up John's time, and also bearing the responsibility for any problems occurring with the furnace when we hooked it back up again. That part is worth whatever we paid him, which was very reasonable.

3. The sewage pipe had to be severed because it is not of the stretchy variety. and would not survive the lift - or the septic tank might be lifted from its resting place.

4. The water inlet pipe had to be severed so it would not get damaged.

As for me, I was tasked with getting us packed up and ready to leave. Clothing. Food. Stuff in general that we couldn't live without. You'd be amazed what's in that list.

By the time John got the chimney taken down to below the roofline, the furnace man was pretty well done with the furnace. John, bless his heart, left the sewage pipe until the very last minute. It's not wise to have a middle-age woman in a house without a functioning toilet for any more than 20 minutes.

The lifters arrived pretty much on schedule. Robert Coates from Glenwood and his crew of four men, two of whom were his sons.

Within the hour, they had cribs (crisscrossed square posts; see top left pic below) started under the house which would support the rails they were inserting from front to back of the house, as well as a place for the jacks which would raise the house, inch by inch.

Within a few minutes of starting to jack it up, the boss realized there was a problem. The floor in the living room was not lifting. Turned out that the living room chimney had been mortared to the sill plate. There was no choice. The chimney had to come down. So the strong fellows bunged a hole in the base of the thing (see top right pic below). John went up to the attic and started bunging the bricks down through and they took them out at the bottom. It was down in less than an hour. And the lift could continue.

By 3pm, with lunch and two coffee breaks, the house was up as far as it needed to go. It is 38" higher in the back than it was before we started. They took a while to get it all level, tweaking this jack or that one to get it just right.

And so it was done. As predicted, my stress level came down as the house went up, although I confess I spent most of the day at a friend's drinking tea and worrying.

We were informed that we were responsible for finding a digger to dig the trenches for the foundation footings. Huh? So why weren't we told this beforehand. We could have had someone lined up to come the very next day. No that would be doing things the easy way. Let's do it the Newfoundland way.

Luckily we had hired a fellow from Lewisporte last year to dig the hole for our septic tank. So we put in a call to him, telling him to call the lifter and arrange a date. We would have see how long this wait might be.

Banging down the LR chimney

In all her glory

 

 

D-Day approacheth

And so it has finally arrived. Okay, almost arrived. The big day. Tomorrow they will lift this house. And I won't be anywhere around. It would be like being awake when they cut you open. Who could watch that?


In the morning John will be in a scramble. He has to take down the living-room chimney to below the roof line and then cover the hole with plastic. He then has to put the furnace to bed (in cooperation with the furnace man who arrives around 8, we hope. Finally, he will cut the sewer line to the septic tank. And thus providing another excuse for me not to stick around. Women of my age have to be near a bathroom.

The house is almost naked tonight. The skirting has been removed from around the crawlspace, revealing the innards of the place. The furnace is sitting on concrete blocks, the sewer and water pipes are all exposed. The crumbling wooden shores are there for all to mock in their last moments of utility. Tomorrow they will mere firewood.

This afternoon I set out a row of onions. Kept some back for setting next week or the week after. Don't want a bunch of onions all coming mature at the same time. As it is we'll be eating a whole mess of onion soup towards the end of summer.

I also rescued some boulders that were dug up last fall when we trenched around the house. Rocks big enough to just get your arms around, some of them. Some not quite so big. All of them heavy as lead. I needed to make sure that they don't get covered with dirt or otherwise buried in the goings-on of the next week or two. I want them to put in the garden I'm going to build behind and to the side of the house when this is all over.

It's apparently 42 degrees on the humidex back home tonight. And here I was complaining about the cold breeze that's blowing up through the cold-air return duct from under the house now that it's open to all the ocean breezes.

So. Here's hoping the relation between my stress level and the house level is an inverse proportion: as it goes up, my stress level comes down.

Back at ya tomorrow night. I hope. Keep yer fingers crossed.

The price of going home

A friend asked me yesterday if we were likely to live in Newfoundland year round anytime soon. This came on the tails of a conversation in which I inquired about tips on closing up a house for the winter, since that is what we will be doing in a little over a month.

My emotional answer is that I'd love to live in Newfoundland year round. Nothing I'd like more. Just the thought of going back to the big city is giving me nightmares. Back to house alarms, pass codes, pool closing, multi-bathroom cleaning, etc. Not something I look forward to.

So what's the problem, you ask? The problem, she answered, is heat. This old house is 120 or more years old. It was built before furnaces and insulation and R-factors and climate change. I've been told that retrofitting a house like this to bring it up to 21st century building code is well nigh impossible since it appears that the structure of the house can't take it and it will rot from the inside out. It has to breathe, summer and winter.

We've had a few cold days and nights so far and I have to say, the house is less than cozy when the wind is blowing or the rain is pelting. The crawl space is quite wet and the dampness moves up through the floors, keeping everything humid (nice in hot dry weather, but not on a cold day). We don't yet know what's in the exterior walls, if anything. We understand it's probably sawdust. There is nothing in the attic except very warm air. We do have a furnace which is bolted to the underside of the living room floor. It does provide a great deal of hot air most of which I fear seeps outside long before we can benefit from it.

And that brings me to my point - can I live with myself if I'm burning barrels of heating oil just to keep the house at a livable temperature? Surely this is not in keeping with how I live my life otherwise - to make the smallest footprint possible.

Saying this here though is not going to win me any friends. Most people here live in old, very drafty homes and crank up the furnace to keep them warm. They can spent more than $2500 a year on heating oil. Surely some of this, spent to upgrade the homes, would be a better investment and a kindness to the planet.

So. Am I staying here this winter? No. Even if the above problems didn't exist, we haven't made plans for it. Much preparation needed if we are to become resident Newfoundlanders again.

Next winter? Not likely, although one of the reasons for my reluctance to live here seems to be falling by the wayside. A comparison of health care experiences is showing the big city to be falling short of what is available here. If what I've learned is true, I would have been better served to have been diagnosed in Newfoundland than in Ontario. Would have gotten attention faster, by far.

Maybe it's time to just start researching what can be done with century old salt box houses. Can they be retrofitted to be energy efficient? I would love that to be the case. Our only problem then would be to find something for John to do as a photojournalist here that would interest the rest of the world. So far, we've not had a not of interest from other parts of Canada in what's happening in Newfoundland. It has been ever thus.

Bliss on a Rock

Bliss on a Rock. Sounds like a drink. Isn't. It's just me being happy in Newfoundland.

We're still pinching ourselves that we're lucky enough to be living here, albeit for only a few months. But then, maybe that's why we're so lucky. We get to enjoy Newfoundland at its finest (in summer) and retreat to our cave in Ontario while everyone here does battle with winter. Some might say that you can't fully appreciate summer unless you've endured the winter. Perhaps. But if I appreciated it any more than I do right now, my face would split from grinning.

I had hoped to write while I was here. However, I doubt if the current novel will get finished or any new novel will be conceived. I'm just too excited to sit still to write anything of any length. Heck, just hanging clothes on the line keeps me blissed out for hours. And I'm dying to go blueberry picking in August.

Blogging will have to suffice. So watch this space.