Homer’s big trip to London
(Lou, Vancouver Airport)
A girl’s dream has come true! I’ve often thought, when paying some mechanic for work on my car, I bet I’m getting fleeced here. I wish I knew more about engines.
Well, piece by piece, I’m learning how a two-stroke engine works. Three days before we leave for England and one day before we have to take our very large husky, an impossible amount of laundry and various other things to town, the bloody Polaris Widetrak broke down again.
It exploded in spectacular style with toxic luminous green coolant spraying out from under the hood like a psychedelic geyser.
It is, I now know, simply a broken belt on the water pump that we can easily replace. If we had one. And if we weren’t leaving the country imminently.
We had to get to town early the next morning and so abandoned it. In fact, we were quite tempted to leave the damn thing to go out with the ice in spring break up
Thank God we had our little ’94 Polaris Indy Lite, Piccolo. We set off, Neil, me, Homer and everything else stacked up like a Thai moped with a whole household plus a couple of chickens piled on.
I wrote last week about March being the easy travel season, with long, warmer days and good trails. I forgot, that only lasts for a week, max, and then you are into soft snow and fucking crazy overflow season.
Someone flipped the spring switch and temps suddenly shot above freezing this week. We rounded a corner and where there had been trail was now a pond. As snow begins to melt on the hills, creek water levels get higher and water seeps up through cracks and round edges of the ice forming slushy green lakes.
I gunned Piccolo and hoped we could water ski. High speed is the only way to cross overflow. I raced into the green slush, water spraying up behind me. I could feel the track sinking and the machine slowing as I drove. Please, please don’t let us have to unpack the whole sled, knee-deep in water, hand haul everything out, and then drive to town soaking wet. Please.
Piccolo just made it. Poor Neil had to wade through. Homer sat in his newly reinforced box unaware of the drama.
Homer was on his way to the lovely Brian Wilmshurst of B-line Kennels. Brian is a musher and racer, and also does dog sled tours (Click here for B-Line's website.) He will be boarding Homer for us whilst we are away in England.
We were worried that Homer might demolish his box en route. With nearly 40 miles of travel and chewing time, we decided to reinforce it.
Actually he didn't. Probably because one of us was in view, riding the sled with him (and shouting “Homer. NO!” each time he started munching on the plywood).
Also, we told a little white lie that we were taking him to London with us, figuring London/ Dawson City might be much the same to him.
He coped very well with the Big City. Mostly.
It was quiet so I let him run around at the bulkhead. He was perfectly well behaved until he spotted a group of school kids, ran directly at them and harried them like a herd of caribou.
People have asked me if he has wolf blood in him. No, but he is a big and rather skittish looking husky. The teacher was trying to stay calm but I could see a look of horror as the idea of a world headline-making prosecution for criminal negligence crossed his mind.
We were sad to see Homer leave with Brian. He’s been our closest buddy this winter and wonderful muse for this blog. We’ll miss him.
Or so we thought until we watched him happily skip off down Front Street with not even a glance back to us, his faithful owners.
We left 3 full days to pack and prepare for “going out”. Plenty of time to get everything done. That's if we didn't have 2 trips and lots of assing around downriver with the bloody Polaris Widetrak.
The cavalry came in the form of our friend Earl who, in the end, drove 20 miles with his Skidoo to stick the bastard thing on a sled and keep it until we can fix it. I would love to post a picture of him, but I was so stressed I forgot the camera.
That left just one very long day to do EVERYTHING before leaving on Tuesday.
Empty gas cans, kerosene, any smelly, chewable items from the yard had to go up in the cache. This will keep them safe, we hope, from bears and rodents.
We drove Piccolo into Homer’s pen and piled anything heavy we could grab on top of it as bear defence. Last summer, a bear chewed the seat off our Widetrak. They are fond of the smell of petrol and soft, chewy things.
We had to remember to leave out things we would need on our return, like the wheelbarrow. There’s no way we’ll get our supplies up the bank without it, so thank God we didn’t put it in the furthest corner of the pen and balance lots of heavy stuff on it. Oh, you guessed it- that’s exactly what we did.
And we remembered to top Piccolo up with gas (to keep condensation from forming in the tank) right after we’d wrapped it in tarps like an Egyptian Mummy and buried it behind pallets.
But by then we were at the ”Fuck It” stage, so we just ploughed on.
Inside the house, we packed everything into plastic totes to keep the lemmings from nibbling and weeing on clothes/ crockery/ food stuff etc. then set mouse poison.
Our last job is putting fearsome looking bear boards (plywood studded with hundreds of nails) over the windows, door and porch steps, and then scattering less fearsome-looking mothballs everywhere.
Would you believe it, bears don’t like mothballs.
The evidence is only anecdotal, and they certainly weren’t put off munching on the snowmachine seat by them, but it’s worth a go.
Our only way to Dawson was by helicopter. It is hugely expensive, but our friend who lives further downriver needed to come out too, so we split the cost.
And it is just fantastically amazing to be collected from your yard by chopper.
We seldom see the land in panoramic view. Living in our cabin, edged in by hills and cliffs and tall white spruce, it’s easy to forget this land is epic. It is unending, empty, wild.
Nothing but nothing stirred below us until we reached Dawson. Not a man, not a bird, not a moose or wolf.
We skimmed over hilltops dotted with stunted spruce, the steep clefts of valleys and creeks turning green with overflow. The mountains of Tombstone National Park glinted on the horizon, and we saw, for the first time, the vast dip of the Tintina Trench between them and the cliffs edging the river valley. And, of course, the river itself.
White, broad and, from the air, flat as an iced Christmas cake. It flows through every day of our lives here and every blog I’ve written. We will soon swap it for another great river, the Thames. If we lean dangerously far off the balcony of our council towerblock flat in SE London, we can just about see a sometimes silver, sometimes grey patch of that river too.
We both felt sad to leave this year. We’ve spent 5 winters on the Yukon now, but this was our first winter properly settled into our home, as proud and grateful Canadian residents, without the terrible worry of where the hell we would live next winter.
And with a supply of firewood and dry food to come back to, one working snowmachine, and possibly a loving and loyal pet husky, if he can ever be bothered to see us again.
At least we had friends to see us off. Our pal Aedes donated her fantastic anti-Trump Pussy Hat so I could arrive in Britain in grand style.
and our kind friend Sarah relieved us of our last minute trash and shuttled us to the airport.
Sarah filmed us landing too. Here's a link to the video-
Landing in Dawson
(Check out her Youtube channel for more videos of Dawson and the Yukon Territory - klondikesarah videos)
We were headed to a bathroom in Vancouver, via Whitehorse, with Air North.
"Hotel bathroom" is where our transformation back to city life begins. All our winter fur must be removed else we'll look like Canadian Werewolves in London. Beards, legs, pits, bikinis, I'll leave it to your imagination to work out who's doing what.
The sink and bath looked as if they had an infestation of fluffy caterpillars which I was too ashamed to leave for the maid clear up.
So here we are, shaved, dyed and blown dry at Vancouver airport, wondering about our return to London.
Read next week's blog to find out what state the tenants left our flat in. A few hints from the inventory- door broken, milk left in the fridge, knickers in the washing machine, everything filthy. A couple of small black bears might have created less fucking mess. I think we'll forget renting and just put up bear boards there too when we leave.
A girl’s dream has come true! I’ve often thought, when paying some mechanic for work on my car, I bet I’m getting fleeced here. I wish I knew more about engines.
Well, piece by piece, I’m learning how a two-stroke engine works. Three days before we leave for England and one day before we have to take our very large husky, an impossible amount of laundry and various other things to town, the bloody Polaris Widetrak broke down again.
It exploded in spectacular style with toxic luminous green coolant spraying out from under the hood like a psychedelic geyser.
It is, I now know, simply a broken belt on the water pump that we can easily replace. If we had one. And if we weren’t leaving the country imminently.
We had to get to town early the next morning and so abandoned it. In fact, we were quite tempted to leave the damn thing to go out with the ice in spring break up
Thank God we had our little ’94 Polaris Indy Lite, Piccolo. We set off, Neil, me, Homer and everything else stacked up like a Thai moped with a whole household plus a couple of chickens piled on.
I wrote last week about March being the easy travel season, with long, warmer days and good trails. I forgot, that only lasts for a week, max, and then you are into soft snow and fucking crazy overflow season.
 |
| Our ramp was so slick we spun off it and got stuck before we'd even left |
Someone flipped the spring switch and temps suddenly shot above freezing this week. We rounded a corner and where there had been trail was now a pond. As snow begins to melt on the hills, creek water levels get higher and water seeps up through cracks and round edges of the ice forming slushy green lakes.
I gunned Piccolo and hoped we could water ski. High speed is the only way to cross overflow. I raced into the green slush, water spraying up behind me. I could feel the track sinking and the machine slowing as I drove. Please, please don’t let us have to unpack the whole sled, knee-deep in water, hand haul everything out, and then drive to town soaking wet. Please.
Piccolo just made it. Poor Neil had to wade through. Homer sat in his newly reinforced box unaware of the drama.
 |
| It was actually a stunningly beautiful misty journey |
Homer was on his way to the lovely Brian Wilmshurst of B-line Kennels. Brian is a musher and racer, and also does dog sled tours (Click here for B-Line's website.) He will be boarding Homer for us whilst we are away in England.
We were worried that Homer might demolish his box en route. With nearly 40 miles of travel and chewing time, we decided to reinforce it.
Actually he didn't. Probably because one of us was in view, riding the sled with him (and shouting “Homer. NO!” each time he started munching on the plywood).
 |
| On his way to London Town |
Also, we told a little white lie that we were taking him to London with us, figuring London/ Dawson City might be much the same to him.
He coped very well with the Big City. Mostly.
 |
| "Oh boy, London! Hey, is that the Eiffel Tower?" |
It was quiet so I let him run around at the bulkhead. He was perfectly well behaved until he spotted a group of school kids, ran directly at them and harried them like a herd of caribou.
 |
| Loping like the wolf |
People have asked me if he has wolf blood in him. No, but he is a big and rather skittish looking husky. The teacher was trying to stay calm but I could see a look of horror as the idea of a world headline-making prosecution for criminal negligence crossed his mind.
 |
| Safely back on his chain |
We were sad to see Homer leave with Brian. He’s been our closest buddy this winter and wonderful muse for this blog. We’ll miss him.
Or so we thought until we watched him happily skip off down Front Street with not even a glance back to us, his faithful owners.
 |
| “Hey Brian! Thank fuck I’m away from those English assholes. So you’re a racer? I got some ideas for next season. I can lead the team in the Yukon Quest, maybe the Iditarod too…” |
We left 3 full days to pack and prepare for “going out”. Plenty of time to get everything done. That's if we didn't have 2 trips and lots of assing around downriver with the bloody Polaris Widetrak.
The cavalry came in the form of our friend Earl who, in the end, drove 20 miles with his Skidoo to stick the bastard thing on a sled and keep it until we can fix it. I would love to post a picture of him, but I was so stressed I forgot the camera.
 |
| Dumping moose bones out on the river so as not to attract bears to the property |
That left just one very long day to do EVERYTHING before leaving on Tuesday.
Empty gas cans, kerosene, any smelly, chewable items from the yard had to go up in the cache. This will keep them safe, we hope, from bears and rodents.
 |
| Snowmachine (and wheelbarrow) in there somewhere |
We drove Piccolo into Homer’s pen and piled anything heavy we could grab on top of it as bear defence. Last summer, a bear chewed the seat off our Widetrak. They are fond of the smell of petrol and soft, chewy things.
 |
| Left this mental looking note to scare people away |
And we remembered to top Piccolo up with gas (to keep condensation from forming in the tank) right after we’d wrapped it in tarps like an Egyptian Mummy and buried it behind pallets.
 |
| State of my bloody nails... Just did them that morning |
But by then we were at the ”Fuck It” stage, so we just ploughed on.
 |
| Digging out the coaxial cable to our satellite internet dish for storage |
Inside the house, we packed everything into plastic totes to keep the lemmings from nibbling and weeing on clothes/ crockery/ food stuff etc. then set mouse poison.
Our last job is putting fearsome looking bear boards (plywood studded with hundreds of nails) over the windows, door and porch steps, and then scattering less fearsome-looking mothballs everywhere.
 |
| Porch steps at Fort Knox |
Would you believe it, bears don’t like mothballs.
The evidence is only anecdotal, and they certainly weren’t put off munching on the snowmachine seat by them, but it’s worth a go.
 |
| Waiting for the chopper |
Our only way to Dawson was by helicopter. It is hugely expensive, but our friend who lives further downriver needed to come out too, so we split the cost.
And it is just fantastically amazing to be collected from your yard by chopper.
 |
| Take off |
Nothing but nothing stirred below us until we reached Dawson. Not a man, not a bird, not a moose or wolf.
We skimmed over hilltops dotted with stunted spruce, the steep clefts of valleys and creeks turning green with overflow. The mountains of Tombstone National Park glinted on the horizon, and we saw, for the first time, the vast dip of the Tintina Trench between them and the cliffs edging the river valley. And, of course, the river itself.
White, broad and, from the air, flat as an iced Christmas cake. It flows through every day of our lives here and every blog I’ve written. We will soon swap it for another great river, the Thames. If we lean dangerously far off the balcony of our council towerblock flat in SE London, we can just about see a sometimes silver, sometimes grey patch of that river too.
We both felt sad to leave this year. We’ve spent 5 winters on the Yukon now, but this was our first winter properly settled into our home, as proud and grateful Canadian residents, without the terrible worry of where the hell we would live next winter.
 |
| Little Dawson City from the chopper |
And with a supply of firewood and dry food to come back to, one working snowmachine, and possibly a loving and loyal pet husky, if he can ever be bothered to see us again.
Wee video of our landing in Dawson
At least we had friends to see us off. Our pal Aedes donated her fantastic anti-Trump Pussy Hat so I could arrive in Britain in grand style.
and our kind friend Sarah relieved us of our last minute trash and shuttled us to the airport.
 |
| Sarah looking jolly, green and giant, with me looking unbelievably tiny |
Sarah filmed us landing too. Here's a link to the video-
Landing in Dawson
(Check out her Youtube channel for more videos of Dawson and the Yukon Territory - klondikesarah videos)
 |
| Whitehorse airport |
We were headed to a bathroom in Vancouver, via Whitehorse, with Air North.
 |
| Hillbillies at the Best Western Chateau Granville, Vancouver |
"Hotel bathroom" is where our transformation back to city life begins. All our winter fur must be removed else we'll look like Canadian Werewolves in London. Beards, legs, pits, bikinis, I'll leave it to your imagination to work out who's doing what.
The sink and bath looked as if they had an infestation of fluffy caterpillars which I was too ashamed to leave for the maid clear up.
So here we are, shaved, dyed and blown dry at Vancouver airport, wondering about our return to London.
Read next week's blog to find out what state the tenants left our flat in. A few hints from the inventory- door broken, milk left in the fridge, knickers in the washing machine, everything filthy. A couple of small black bears might have created less fucking mess. I think we'll forget renting and just put up bear boards there too when we leave.
 |
| Peace and quiet. End of |
Comments
Post a Comment