By Cam Mather

Last night a 747 landed on my roof. Or at least that’s how it sounded. But first, some background.

As we were preparing to move in to our century-old farmhouse (it was built in 1888), we were passing around some photos at a social gathering. Someone at the gathering took one look at the metal roof and said, “You’re going to hate that metal roof!” They suggested that we wouldn’t be able to sleep during rainstorms. Well, turns out we love the metal roof, and nothing sounds nicer than a heavy rain on a metal roof. Especially since the rain is either watering the garden or filling up the pond. I love rain!

When we first came to look at this house, the metal roof was a mess. The green paint was flaking off and there were large patches of rust. The previous owners arranged to have the roof painted, as a condition of the sale, before we moved in. But in no time, the paint was flaking off again and so we knew we needed to do something about it. We didn’t know whether or not we should completely replace the roof or just fix up the existing one. We had a couple of contractors look at it and they both suggested that since it was the original “tin” roof, we shouldn’t replace it. They pointed out how thick the metal is and said that none of the new metal roofs would be anywhere near as thick. They asked if it leaked, and at the time it did not, so they both suggested that it was best to leave it in place and fix it up.

Luckily our neighbor Ken knew of a company that did sandblasting and painting, so we hired them to work on our roof. First they sandblasted off the many layers of old paint and rust and took it right back to the bare metal. Then they sprayed on a layer of epoxy primer, and then a couple of layers of good quality paint. What a difference. Years of crappy paint over crappy paint that just flaked off finally came to an end.

Now the roof looked great, but there was a new problem. The sandblasting process not only removed all of the old layers of paint, but it also removed the many bits and pieces of “roof patch” in all of the various places where old chimney holes had been patched. During the first rain after our new roof paint job we discovered some new leaks in the roof.  But really, when you live in an old house, what’s a rain storm without the musical “drip drip drip” of a leak?

So we began the process of trying to patch up the new leaks. It took a few different tries by a few different people, but finally our friend Greg was able to slap enough patching material on to stop the leak. At least in one spot… we need to ask him back to patch up a new leak in a different part of the roof.

I have always been attracted to metal roofs. There is a feeling of permanence with a metal roof. I can never figure out why country folk, who can usually least afford it, often choose to install a metal roof even though they are more expensive. I think it’s because they last so much longer, and country people have roots. They have permanence. They plan on being around in that home long enough to get their money back.

I often think about some of the realities of peak oil, and these images of decrepit neighborhoods are perhaps a glimpse into the future.

http://www.100abandonedhouses.com/wp-content/gallery/abandoned-houses/09150402_18_xl.jpg

 Check out the roof. The shingles are often one of the first things to deteriorate. Asphalt shingles are going to be the “Achilles heel” of many homeowners in the future. They are made of petroleum products. Lots of petroleum. And they never seem to last as long as the manufacturer suggests they will. On our house in suburbia, the 20-year shingles that we used on our roof started to look kind of ragged after only 10 years. So what happens when oil hits $200/barrel and no one has any money left after buying gas for their vehicle to replace their roof shingles? Or $300/barrel?

I like my metal roof. I will admit though that a metal roof can amplify sounds. Our house is a 1-½ story, which means it has an upper floor, but no attic. So there isn’t much space between my head and the roof. As I sleep in my upstairs bedroom, the angled ceiling is right above my head with just a layer of drywall and insulation between the metal roof and me.

During the winter, snow builds up on our roof. Then eventually we get a warm spell and gravity being what it is, the snow starts sliding down. I think of the theories on what’s causing the rapid deterioration of glaciers in places like Greenland. Many of the glaciers sit on rock, and warm weather creates lakes, which trickle down to the glacier base, lubricating the rocks so that the glaciers can slide off into the ocean more easily.

And so it is at our house. The weather warms up, often accompanied by rain, and the “glaciers” that have formed on our roof, slide downwards. And they do it quickly, without warning. And man, are they loud! They are deafening. When hundreds (thousands?) of pounds of ice and snow go racing down a metal roof it sounds like a freight train is suddenly in my bedroom... for about 5 seconds.

Sometimes it breaks off in smaller chunks and that noise is manageable, but sometimes it all just goes in one fell swoop. I have a theory that the big breakaways tend to happen at night, when I’m in bed, often in a quasi-dream state where my brain can temporarily incorporate the sounds of a 747 jumbo jet crashing into my home like a special effects scene from “Inception.”

Is it enough to get me to move? Nope. Does it scare the crap out of me? Yup. Can I see an upside to it? Well, it’s just life with a metal roof that has a steep pitch. Our guesthouse has a metal roof but it’s not as steep and it’s much newer and has screw heads sticking up, which seems to make it less slippery. The metal roof on the guesthouse never has big avalanches like the roof on the house. But it, like the roof on the house, will be around for decades. I know that the roof on the house has been around for a century. And I like that permanence, because it’s my last house.

Metal roofs are also great because I can tell exactly when Santa has landed. The kids can sleep through it, but I’m a light sleeper so when a sleigh and 8 reindeer land on my roof, I know it’s just about time to get up and check out my loot!

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By Cam Mather

I left my house the other night. Yup, it was a dangerous thing to do. ‘Cuz the voice that talks inside my head constantly gets just a little crazy when I’m out in the big scary world. Kind of like Travis Trip from the movie “Taxi Driver” but without the guns.

I did my “All You Can Eat Gardening” talk at a meeting of the Quinte Master Gardeners. It was kind of scary, them being “Master” gardeners and all, but I’m always up for a challenge. They meet in Belleville where I lived for a few years in my late teens. It’s about a 45 minute drive from my house. To get there I had to drive on Highway 401. This is Canada’s busiest highway and ranks up there with any in the U.S. in terms of traffic volume. When I got on the highway at about 6 pm I couldn’t believe the number of big trucks. That stretch of highway runs between two of Canada’s biggest cities, Toronto and Montreal, and the volume of truck traffic is staggering. The fact that most of what they’re hauling isn’t on rail cars is ludicrous, but the world being what it is I must accept this.

Some truckers like to drive at night because there is less traffic, which means that what you see is just an endless stream of trucks, burning diesel fuel, getting 5 miles to the gallon, hauling truckload after truckload of “stuff,’ much of which is crap that’s going to end up in stores that people are going to buy. Mind-boggling volumes of crap. Most of it made in other countries. Much of it which will just end up in landfills. I think of this highway and then I multiply it by all the other highways in Canada, and North America, and the world and I wonder how it’s possible. Is it just me or is this really depressing? This mad dash to oblivion.

Once I got to Belleville I had to drive past a Procter & Gamble plant. After high school I was accepted to university (which only cost about $1,000/year in 1978!) but I wasn’t motivated or focused and so I moved with my parents to Belleville. I got a job loading trucks at a warehouse but it wasn’t long before I figured out that the job wasn’t for me and I went back to school. It was during this time that I applied at this particular Proctor & Gamble plant where they make Pampers. I really wanted the job. They paid well and at the age of 18 it sounded kind of cool. In those days P&G wanted lifetime employees. Really … remember the days when companies actually wanted employees to hang around? It was a factory job and I had to get through 3 interviews. The final interview included some line workers. And they caught me. They used their little interviewing strategies and eventually they got me to say “…if I ever go back to school.” As soon as I said it I knew it was game over. The last thing they wanted was to hire an employee who planned to leave to go back to school. They wanted people who were going to make Pampers until they dropped dead. And good for them. Their system worked. I didn’t belong there.

It’s funny how things work out. I went to back to school, had some different jobs, had kids, and used cloth diapers. By the time my first daughter was born I had started looking at things like paper diapers and wondering  if we should  be cutting down trees to make these one-time use disposable diapers. Michelle bought two dozen of the flat cloth diapers. The kind that you fasten with diaper pins and cover with rubber pants. They worked great and after using them for both of our children we used them as rags. At around that time I discovered that it’s technically illegal to send human waste to landfills, but apparently everyone does it, so must be OK. Procter & Gamble began running ads that showed a diaper going through a metamorphosis and ending up as compost. They had set up one demonstration factory somewhere that was doing this to make parents feel better about what COULD be done, but basically no one else was doing it. And to think that I just about worked for the “enemy.” I often wonder if I’d got that job if I’d have used their product. Or really, how long I would have lasted there.

When we moved to our little piece of paradise 14 years ago I still had some clients in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and so every 6 weeks or so I drove the 401 into the city and often drove home with this non-stop parade of planet-destroying trucks. And I was conflicted. I had moved off the grid to reduce my impact on the planet, but found myself  driving way more than I probably did when I lived in the city. It was only every 6 or 8 weeks and it was just a Honda Civic, but it was spewing CO2 into the air regardless. I could rationalize it all I wanted, but I was a hyrocrite. So we made the decision to forego that income and do the right thing and try to eek out a living from here. And it’s hard. Our already meager income shrunk even further. But my soul is no longer as conflicted. I’m more at peace with myself. I still drive, but way less. Hardly ever sometimes. And it’s awesome.

So after days of freezing rain and crappy roads I hadn’t really left the house for about a week. And then there I was, on the 401, at night, with all of those trucks, carrying stuff I can’t afford to buy because I got off the treadmill. I found myself slipping back into that consumer mode of thinking…. “How can I make more money?” “I’ve got to get me a bigger piece of the pie everyone out here is chasing.” “I NEED more money!”

After my gardening talk I drove back home. It was cold outside, but the house was warm thanks to the fire in the woodstove. The fire is powered by wood that I cut and carried and split and loaded. And the lights in the house were on, powered by solar panels and a wind turbine that I put up when I was able to afford them. And the fridge and freezer were whirring away using solar- and wind-powered electricity. My bookshelves are full of books (mostly secondhand) that I’ll be reading for years to come. Once I am home that crazy voice in my head starts to subside. The next morning I look out at my frozen fields that are covered in snow. Under the blanket of snow are about 12,000 heads of garlic that will burst up through the snow in the spring ready to grow and be sold. And the raspberry and blueberries are buried beneath the snow, but they’re going to be awesome this year. The gardens are bigger than ever ready to start planting for our CSA. We hope to convince 10 or 12 families to join our CSA this year. The income from the CSA might cover our taxes and some basic expenses.

There will be no vacations. No new vehicles. No contributions to retirement plans. No fine bottles of wine. No hot tubs. No new hobbies.

There will also be way less crazy voices talking inside my head. Surrounded by trees and ponds and clean air and clean power and independence and fields that can grow food to nurture strong bodies, the voice in my head returns to happy Cam. Why I ever leave this place is beyond me.

Photo of Canadian flag located alongside Hwy. 401 in Belleville by C. Löser (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-2.0-de (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo of paper diaper courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

By Cam Mather

Here’s another reason why I don’t go on cruises… because I’d be the guy wearing my lifejacket from the minute I got on the boat. The staff probably wouldn’t like it. I think the other passengers might find it a little disconcerting at the all-you-can-eat buffet when the guy beside them in line looked like he was ready to abandon ship… at any minute.

My family likes to laugh at my philosophy of “always have a Plan B.” It’s so nerdy. It’s so uncool, when everything is just going along normally.

I have a healthy respect for authority but I have to admit that I find myself subscribing more and more to the “Question Authority” mantra. This crystallized on September 11^th after the first plane had hit the North Tower. There were announcements made in the South Tower telling everyone that everything was fine, and that they should just go back to their desks. I think if I’d been working in the South Tower that day watching what was going on in the North Tower, I would have taken the rest of the day off regardless of what the voice on the PA told me. It turns out that questioning authority and getting out of there would have been the right thing to do. I think it’s what you would have done instinctively. Always trust your instincts.

If I was on a cruise ship and the lights went out after feeling a big bump, the last thing I’d do was listen to the announcement telling me it was just an electrical problem and to relax and carry on. Forget that baby. I’d find my life jacket. Find a lifeboat. Get my bearings. Trust my instinct. And if it turned out to be just a power failure, well, at least I would know where to find my life jacket.

I have a feeling that the people who work on cruise ships today probably aren’t highly paid. And they probably don’t receive the best training. They just aren’t equipped to help evacuate an entire cruise ship full of passengers in 5 hours, let alone 20 minutes. As for the captain … well it looks like the Captain just didn’t give a sh*t about the passengers. It was every man for himself. It seems like things have changed since the days when Captains went down with their ship. But at least we now know the drill. You’re on your own. It’s like New Orleans. You might be standing on your roof in the flood zone for a long time before the authorities come to the rescue.

I remember seeing a TV interview with a Canadian who was working in one of the Twin Towers, in a floor above the impact zone. The elevators weren’t working. But it turned out that he had actually practiced a fire drill, and knew where the stairs were. And when he got down one staircase and discovered that it was blocked, he knew to go back to another, and try it. And when the power went out and the staircase was dark and disorienting, he pulled out his flashlight. Really? He had a flashlight in his office desk drawer? What a nerd! Bet he took lots of ribbing about that by his co-workers.

If I’m sounding like a crazy “Dwight from The Office” kind of character, well I am. Dwight is my role model, although I’m not a big fan of beets. Michelle and I don’t stay in hotels anymore, but whenever we used to, I always took the stairs. This was a pain, because hotels seem to be more concerned about security and bad people sneaking in than they seem to be about people getting out in a fire. Sometimes I would be able to get into the stairs, but then find doors locked when I tried to get out. But I had decided that if I was ever in a hotel when it caught fire I was going to know where the stairs were and where I would end up when I went down them. Michelle would take the elevator and I would take the stairs and that way if I got locked in to the stairwell Michelle would be able to find someone to let me out.

In my book, “Thriving During Challenging Times” I talk a lot about strategies, some of them big picture, some of them little picture, but always with the theme of having a “Plan B.” I once read a book about the people who survive disasters. There was common theme throughout their stories of escaping burning buildings and surviving plane crashes. They had a plan. They sat down in their seat and found out where the emergency exits were and they figured out how they were going to get to them, when there was panic and smoke and confusion. They made a plan and when the panic and smoke and confusion set in, they executed it. Air travel is safe. Most people will never, ever, need to execute a plan like this. So really, why bother?

I understand, you can’t always avoid risk. Bad things happen. I accept this. But I am not going to be taken out in some hotel fire just because I was too afraid of getting stuck in a staircase where all the doors were locked. Someone would find me before I starved to death. Michelle would wonder where I was… eventually.

I will never take a cruise. I have read way too much about the fuel they burn, and how many of them deal with their garbage and human waste. And in a world where there is still starvation and hunger, I find all-you-can-eat buffets repugnant. But if I did take a cruise, I’d be the one at the railing, on one of the lowest decks, in a life jacket… and wet suit… with a waterproof flashlight… and shark repellant … ready to abandon ship at a moments’ notice. Sounds like a fun week!

Photo by S.J. de Waard (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons