,MNBVCXZ

I finally found the problem. Didn't Edison say that success is built on failure? Well, I failed multiple times yesterday to fix this keyboard. The map below is the bottom membrane of the keyboard. The bottom is the space bar and the next level was the one not working. Why? Well, see the screw hole in the bottom right hand corner? That had some rust on it and that rust affected the graphite or carbon circuit. That alone was a eureka moment for me huddled in my van with the wind blowing outside Churchill falls. But how to fix it? I videoed several attempts involving dielectric spark plug grease pencils and finally, in a stroke of genius and creativity that has my step a stone lighter than it was yesterday, I cut a piece of circuit from the redundant number pad and glued it over the damaged circuit only barely covering half the center dot since one half worked and the other was corrupt. But glue isn't a conductive, right? So I didn't glue the circuit, I only glued along the edge to keep the bridge in place, then I cut a piece of surgical rubber off a guitar wall hanger and glued that on top of the bridge so when I screwed it all together the rubber would press down and bridge the circuit. It was only that one dot that was bad. It's the one where the comma is and since that is where the rubber shim now sits sometimes the comma is stubborn and I'm not going to go back and fix it, dig?
Let this be recorded in the history of bush engineering as maybe the most delicate repair ever. Allen's transmission repair on his sailboat when an internal bolt sheared off in Panama still stands as the most labor intensive and complicated fix but I challenge anyone to fix a computer keyboard in wild Labrador with super glue, nose hair scissors and a guitar hanger.


Just because I can't get enough of seeing myself in print.



Yes, I know I'm not represented as Oggy Bleacher from the future but despite my rehearsals when it came down to the gun I could not say it. The whole point is to have it on video and this would require my getting the tripod out starting the camcorder and asking a reporter to hang out in the rain while I don my silk shirt and 70s polyester bell bottoms so I could state I'm from the future and looking for the arctic wolf. Not only would the reporter not hang around or give my mission actual coverage but she'd call the police and I wouldn't get anything on film. That's why this whole thing needed a cameraman so I didn't do it all myself but because the world is full of cowards and excuse makers who would rather sit in front of their computers and television watching spooks dance in shadow ecstasy I am alone in Labrador and the documentary on a time-traveler is nearly impossible to make at the same time as I am fixing computers.
I love typing again. My venomous resentment toward the world is so much easier to communicate with ten fingers than with the single letter entry method.

wolf man

The computer keyboard front has seen some advances and some retreats. I'm at the point with computers and automobiles where I can take it apart and put it back together without breaking anything but I might not fix anything either.

Somewhere in this maze something is preventing the lower row of keys from working. "ZXCVBNM<" all of those keys fail to work. The rest of the keys work.

I plugged it into this public computer in Churchill Falls Library and the same keys didn't work so it isn't my computer. But I can type now at least and try to appease my eager fans. "What is Oggy up to? Where is Oggy?" The fan mail is probably piling up at my door in NH.

Well, this is the big land. Alaska is the western Labrador, not the other way around. No Canadian wants to hear Labrador called the eastern Alaska. The Viking found this place first.

I found so much firewood here that I blazed a fire that almost melted my camper top. Wouldn't that've been funny?

The other day I was picking litter up in the parking lot where I camped, as is my habit, when a reporter dropped by and found my arctic wolf awareness tour worth publishing. This is a big step in the right direction for wolf health. The Aurora is Labrador City's main paper, keeping people up to date on the ore industry.

There's a picture of the front page with my transient wolf costume in full display. I'm under the news about an iron ore shipping president and an environmental assessment for new ore drilling.

Lana, the reporter pictured below awarding me with a paper, will probably lose her job for highlighting a hippie's insane quest to save the arctic wolf when the arctic is exactly where all the big drilling companies have their eyes set. She's probably getting mysterious calls right now saying, "One more 'hippie does good' article and you'll be writing obituaries in Nunavut."

But that's what the whole wolf quest is about, speaking truth to power. And when the news includes a wolf enthusiast traveling through Labrador City to spread the news that the arctic wolf is imperiled then that goes in the paper with the discovery of new oil deposits in the arctic. Thanks to Lana for her integrity! Good luck in Nunavut!

the aurora newspaper. The aurora is not a free paper though you might be able to get a preview subscription. You've all read the goals of my quest before but it's interesting to see them in a newspaper. I stopped to get gas on the way out of town and the boy at the pump said, "You were in the paper." I'm not sure if the response would be positive or reactive. A town based on resources like ore is like a town based on oil. Any suggestion that animals are in fact effected by human occupancy of Earth could be taken as a slight. But I know frontier towns and it's hard living under the best of circumstances so making it even harder by not stepping on a Lemming nest is sort of out of the question. But I moved on.

This big truck was in Fermont, Quebec. I wanted to capture the scale of this monster but ended up creating an optical illusion. It's a big truck. I was in Fermont for the solstice night hike up Mont Severson. Quebec folks love a hike like Mexicans love dancing. So, we went out with headlamps to welcome in the turning of the earth in the celestial orbit with rain in our faces. Sun up at about 3:30am. They had a fire going for our arrival and soup. Merci beaucoup, Fermont!

Lastly, this is a walleyed, landlocked salmon that weighed as much as a small baby. A Labrador fisher gave it to me and I happened to have some butter so I did the best I could with a gigantic fish. How would you prepare this on a wood stove inside a van? I cut the head off, cut the tail off so it fit in the pan, put half a stick of butter in there and grilled it until I could filet the meat off the spine with a knife. Then I grilled the meat for another 30 minutes, slowly roasting it in butter and salt and when it was all done I had the best meal in weeks. A few rib bones were left to spit out but I didn't do bad for a hippie from Los Angeles. That was a secret location on the way to Churchill Falls that I can't give away because it's too ideal.

I do want to add that the van's ignition timing seems slightly off. Either that or a hundred other symptoms could be causing a slight erratic idle and a sluggish shift from first to second gear. It's only after countless miles do I notice every change in performance. This far from a mosquito free garage I take everything into account. Labrador City garages were booked up until August so it makes my choice easy. I either fix everything myself or it doesn't get fixed. I need a timing light and the emissions specs for a 1969 E200, specifically the idle speed and timing details. I think it could be a timing issue or a vacuum leak in the intake manifold or a carb adjustment or even old spark plug wires. This is on my mind like a bad tick.

I drove from Labrador City without problem but if you are a praying person then pray to the transmission gods to safely see me back to the small land.

Sunlight

this is a mountain lion tracking a moose. i had bug spray as defense.


Still looking for northern lights. keyboard is really broken. basically texting this post with on screen keyboard. I...w...e...n...t l...o...o...k...i...n...g...f...o...r...w...o...l...v...e...s. Tedious. everything breaks.
Trust has been a theme to ponder. is it a substitute for love? wolf pack dynamics make sense to me. but when human alpha males are movie stars and we regurgitate $11 to see them fake kiss dominant females then a funk envelopes my orphaned soul. as a submissive member of this fractured species i am lost.

why did the partridge run from oggy? it was injured I think and so is my back.



kids in the library here play a computer game where an ore truck delivers trucks of pellets over a bumpy road.

Exploring Labrador City

I hiked a long way to get a shot of Labrador City and when I get to the peak after miles of bushwacking and crossing streams and feeling I was being tracked by a mountain lion and getting lost and hurting my back and falling in a ravine, I get to the top and the clouds move in and I get a picture of fog. And my camera got wet. Have not seen my shadow in five days. Since Quebec City.


This has to be for night skiing but I didn't see many lights. and the ski lift is totally falling apart. I think it is for rugged skiers.


This was a very tame Canadian Wolf. Hardly even moved.
I learned a lot about the iron ore mines and the hydro electric plants up here.



II seem to be having computer problems. Keyboard___is___broken. must use on-screen keyboard.
more pics

will box up and send this skidoo to the chicken farmer so he can post on craigslist "Vintage snowmobile. Needs work. Best Offer"

wait, the keyboard is working now. odd. must clean it. or might be the different frequency of electricity that is messing with it. I am one hour earlier than east coast folks. And they speak English now which is a relief because I'm out of money and need work.

I went for a long hike around the mountains to find that open country I had heard about.






I should mention the van is running good. time for a shower at city hall. I can feel my brain being cleaned by the wilderness.

Labrador City

Did I remember to check the electrolyte level in my batteries? No. Would that oversight eventually bite me in the ass? Yes. Would it bite me in the ass at the worst possible most remote location between Nowhere and Dead Meat? Oh, yes.



That's the tailpipe and a piece of the exhaust inside my van.

Here I am troubleshooting the battery problem on the tundra. That telephone is the nearest one for 200km so I decided to stop there and do my work. That work was fruitless but the situation was getting desperate. One battery, the main one, was holding no charge and because it couldn't even give me 3 volts the axillary battery would not automatically kick in. This meant I had to jump start the van using cables from the cabin through the window and out to the main battery. Because the exhaust had fallen apart somewhere 200 km back in the taiga, I was forced to drive with the windows down as the cabin was filled with exhaust smoke, except for the smoke that was heating up the fuel tank to dangerous levels.
It was a few hours of tense driving in 100km of twisty with the windows down, rain pouring in, smoke pouring out, unable to stop because I had to jump start the battery with my one remaining battery and I had no idea how long that would work...and I had already shorted out fuses trying to use the deep cell marine battery as a main battery. It was truly Labrador or Bust.
Can you count the wildlife in this picture? Perfectly camouflaged. I asked two French Canadian hikers in the Mont Groulx park where we met what it was. I thought it was a wild chicken. Then it flew like a turkey. But it sort of looked like ptarmigan from Alaska. Turns out we agree it was a Partridge. I didn't get a picture of them. We were all 40 years old and destined to meet on the edge of the forest.

All this adds up to an adventure to get here:


Labrador City's auto parts stores now know me by first name as I required all kinds of attention to set things right again. My dead battery was 6 years old. Replaced it. The tailpipe could only receive a replacement flex pipe that will last another 6 months before rotting out like my teeth.
These repairs are not part of the wolf expedition but for the time they enable the wolf expedition. I can't lose sight of that. They are here.

I went for a wolf sighting hike but freaked myself out because I was in an uninhabited area as big as New Hampshire and wolves and bears, if I saw them, could have their way with me. They'd probably be rabid. I was scared of the Partridge. And which way was the van?

I heard the term "Open Country" for the first time since Alaska. It's used to describe park land that has no trails. I can thank the Labrador City McDonalds (still horrible food) for the Internet access but I thank the Vikings for finding this continent and setting in motion the chain of events that led to a hippie fixing his exhaust pipe in the pouring rain in a Walmart parking lot.
If the weather ever clears up I might still see the Northern Lights. We get darkness from 10pm to 5 so it's possible.