July 18, 2005

July 18, 2005

West Hawk Lake day 62 of 113

YEAR 2 DAY 31

 

Today was cloudy, drizzling, and downright cold. Much colder than the middle of July should be. What ? Manitoba's summer is over ? ? ?

Last night, after I had gone to bed, there was a knock on the door around midnight. It was an unhappy camper, complaining that there was raw sewage flowing down the road in section G. I told him I would have it taken care of. As I got dressed to go outside and check, I was thinking. HUH ? Raw sewage flowing down the road through the campground ? ? ? I walked down to section G to discover ... yes, raw sewage flowing down the road. The septic system that serves the whole town site of West Hawk Lake is in that area of the campground. I couldn't see exactly what was the source of the problem, but there certainly was a problem. I returned to the trailer, and checked our phone list. I didn't seem to have a phone number that was appropriate for this particular problem. I walked down to the pay phone near the registration office. Out of order ! Story of my life ! I walked over to the pay phone in front of the tennis courts. I phoned the Falcon / West Hawk Ambulance / Emergency number, hoping they would have a better list of phone numbers than I was provided with. Sure enough, they had a home phone number for a maintenance foreman.

This morning the maintenance foreman came over to fill me in on what had transpired. He got the call from the ambulance dispatcher and drove over to the campground to assess the problem. He found the problem in the handicapped camping site. It's the only site in the campground with a sewer connection. The sewage was coming up out of there. He spent 2 hours, in the dark, with a plumbing auger / snake, and cleared the jam in the line. The septic system will need more work today, but at least he got the problem temporarily fixed last night. This campground is about 50 years old, and the infrastructure is crumbling. The section we're in, section B, used to have a sewer connection at each site, but 10 or 12 years ago they removed the sewage services due to deterioration.

We drove to the Manitoba Border Information Centre. While I went inside to retrieve e-mail and update my blog, Joanne stayed in the truck with Bo, and made phone calls about businesses and cottages for sale. There is an interesting business for sale at Clear Lake, in Riding Mountain National Park. We'll have to discuss whether to go see it, perhaps right after Labour Day.

We had lunch, I read, then napped. Actually, I slept for the entire afternoon. I was feeling ill today. When I woke, I did a small amount of work outside. Joanne went off to section H to pick wild raspberries. She was able to pick enough that we each had a bowl full for dessert after supper. I took Bo for an obedience training walk. He did great today. Ann came by for her daily firewood selling tour. I settled accounts with her. She generously did not charge me for the 2 bundles that were stolen. As we were eating supper, our "supervisor" Courtney came by to tell me to "cease and desist" selling firewood. Somebody ... she didn't say who ... feels it's a conflict of interest for "volunteer" campground hosts to be engaged in "commercial" activity. Reading between the lines, I surmise that Tina, the petty pissant campground attendant supervisor, complained to Courtney's boss. It's really rather astounding, because it's a win / win all around, especially for the campers who find it very convenient to be able to get firewood from us at any time. As I'm typing this, Joanne is musing out loud about how "customer satisfaction" is not something given consideration by bureaucrats.

The sky cleared and it turned out to be a nice evening. After supper I took Bo outside for a play session with a tennis ball while Joanne went to shower.

DSK