Oliver

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A Zanier Morning

WHEW! I did in 4 hours what I normally do in what I have thus far considered to be a ‘busy’ 8 hour shift! Our till system also went down for about an hour. The manager tried to lock the doors, but customers were persistent and I was doing well manually calculating things, so we persevered with the customers who were paying cash. Once I got everything entered after the till came back up, we just about balanced, so I think the manager was glad that we stayed open for these cash-only customers. There were a few little tax-related discrepancies because BC’s taxation system is quite different from any other I’ve experienced in this country and I haven’t studied it in depth.

I have a really hard time finding anything special about this season of over commercialism, but this year it sure is easier to be cheery about it.. Compared to last year in Oliver, this week has been pure heaven. Last year, I spent this week moving snow, being responsible 24/7 for the RV park, and being %#( upon by the manager. I also  had the stress of dealing with the continuing cold snap while preparing for my departure from Hell-iver. There was also the not-so-fun job of trying to be cheery with customers and get into the spirit of things for our potluck.  Last year I did get a nice dinner from the manager at the RV park (fainting almost ensued) and this year, to my surprise, I got a little bonus at the gas station even though I’ve been working there less than two months.

(It was also a year ago tomorrow that I moved the blog to WordPress!)

My only plans for the 25th are to have dinner with the mother and step-father of one of my best friends. What are the odds that they’d live here? I’ll be working 10 to 6 and then heading over there for turkey. If I hadn’t done that, one of my former colleagues at the gas station was going to bring me leftovers from their dinner. I might be a solo RVer, but solo does not have to equal alone.

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Travels Without Miranda, #10: Melrose, Scotland

My month’s journey backpacking around Scotland taught me that there is no reason why I can’t have something I really, really want. I woke up one November morning in 1997 and announced that I was going to Scotland the following summer. I spent six months saving up, and even losing a month’s income to the Ice Storm of ’98 didn’t deter me from my goal.

The most amazing month of my life was drawing to a close when I landed at the youth hostel in Melrose. It was a grand old Victorian house, but it was for the abbey I had come. My month had been one of following the steps of Scotland’s hero William Wallace and one of her kings, Robert the Bruce, and it was at Melrose Abbey that Bruce’s heart was buried.

Melrose youth hostel

Melrose youth hostel

There wasn’t much left to my trip, just a few days. I was due back at work in a week. I was heartsick to be giving up my travels, but excited that my life was about to begin. I was starting university in the fall and would move out on my own, events that made it a little easier to say goodbye to Scotland.

My last night in Melrose I sat on a bench watching the sunset behind the abbey ruins. It is one of those moments of my life that I remember with shattering clarity. It was a perfect moment in time when I knew that I was at the right place and that everything in my life was exactly as it should be. I was flooded with a feeling of peace and well-being and rose from that bench clearheaded and ready to face whatever the future had in stock for me.

Melrose Abbey. The Bench would be just offshot to the right.

Melrose Abbey. The Bench would be just offshot to the right.

It didn’t take long after that for my life to completely derail and I ended up spending the better part of a decade grasping for that perfect moment again.

While I’ve never had such a strong feeling of contentment since hitting the road with Miranda, I’ve had several glimpses of that peace I felt in Melrose. With that reference point in mind, I have been able to identify moments that are completely the opposite, when the universe is shouting at me to get out, to move on, that where I am is the wrongest place I can be. I haven’t shared the full story of what went on in Oliver, but I think that what I didn’t say in my announcement that I was leaving was pretty clear.

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Weather Forecast

I’ve found Campbell River to be very balmy so far. In fact, I’ve taken two blankets off the bed and am sleeping without socks, something I haven’t done since early September! I just checked the forecast for the next week. Now, I know those things are rather variable, but the lowest low it predicts is PLUS five and the highest high is TWELVE!

Needless to say, I keep reminding myself that Oliver was very mild until early December last year. *cue in horror movie music*

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Hookup Location

Over the course of the past six months, I’ve found that there isn’t really a standard for how hookups are located in an RV park beyond them being on the driver’s side of the RV. The best hookups I encountered were at the park in Oliver where I worked. There, it was exactly ten feet from my tank outlet to their intake, meaning that my sewer hose was stretched out completely and at a slight slope, making for easy dumping. The water intake and electrical plug (as well as phone and cable jacks) were in a pedestal next to the sewer outlet and just a couple of feet from the rig, meaning that I was able to cut my water hose down to six feet, necessitating less heat tape.

Here, the hookups are not working for me!

Water and electricity is provided at a pedestal at the back of the site. My 30A cord is almost stretched to the limit and my 25′ water hose was stretched so taut someone took it upon themselves to provide me with an extension! Yes! I came home one night to find that my hose was hooked into an additional 10′ length! I actually kind of resented that because the 25′ length had enough give that it did not risk pulling away from the tap and spewing water everywhere and it did not rest on the ground. Since I’ve had the extension, the hose has frozen a few times in temperatures where it didn’t freeze when it was hanging in the air. But if it makes the ‘extender’ feel better about some ill-perceived threat, well… *shrugs* 🙂

But the real issue here is the sewer placement. This isn’t a universal problem here; some of my neighbours are hooked up perfectly. But the way Miranda needed to be tucked into this site meant that her tank outlet and the sewer  intake are practically right on top of each other, meaning that my hose is way too long. Once a week, I have to go and shake it a bit to drain the grey water out (lesson learned when my shower flooded!) and let me say that draining the black tank is difficult. Thankfully, proper tank maintenance means that I won’t have any long term repercussions, but each time I go to drain and have to flush the tank with several buckets of water I kick myself for not buying a new hose and cutting down the old one!

So, hookups that work for me need to have the electrical plug and water tap near the electrical cord compartment and water intake so that I don’t have to worry about tripping over my cord and hose, but the sewer needs to be about ten feet from the tank outlet. Seems like someone is slowly figuring out how to spot a good site from a bad!

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Adopting a New Grocery Chain

One of the things I found very difficult in my cross-country RV journey was figuring out which grocery stores to frequent. Grocery prices out here are a lot higher than they were in Gatineau/Ottawa and every grocery store I visited left me feeling rather ill with sticker shock. I learned very quickly that Safeway, a major chain out west, is the worst price offender and I now avoid it at all costs.

Oliver had two supermarkets, Supervalu which was neither super nor offered any value for the dollar, and Buy-Low, a discount store with decent prices (for a small town), if poor selection. It was in my infrequent trips to Penticton that I discovered Save-on-Foods. Their prices were also very high, but if you join their (free) discount club and shop wisely, you can get very, very good deals. Since I moved to south Surrey, I’ve been alternating between the nearest S-o-F and the Super Walmart, which has a huge grocery section. Walmart is the place to go to get basic groceries, but it’s at Save-on-Foods that I find the little luxury items that make grocery shopping so much fun:

Two of my favourite food groups in one (Guinness cheddar!!!)

Two of my favourite food groups in one (Guinness cheddar!!!)

On a recent shopping trip, the cashier took a moment to better explain the rewards program to me and let me know that there is a scanner near the door that prints out personalized coupons. The more you use your card and shop at Save-on-Foods, the better the coupon selector becomes at offering you bonuses you will use. Today, I got a handful of coupons for products I buy almost every week and which were on sale, offering me a double discount!

I like that the discount card can be used at other businesses, like Chevron gas.

Some RVers have written in their own blogs that one of the things they dislike about RVing is having to relearn how to grocery shop at every new town, but I find that half the fun of traveling is scoping out the local grocery store for products you don’t have ‘back home.’