I'm all covered in oil again.

Just like old times in fact. What I've been doing is helping Rachel's husband Darren fit a rear differential in his tractor tonight. And if you would like to see the tractor that we've been working on, have a look at this link.

Some tractor isn't it? A 428 cubic inch hemi engine pushing out over 3000 bhp and pulling about 25 tons in that film clip. It makes your eyes water just to look at it.

So what else have I been doing just recently? Apart from the usual family kind of things that you do, I had a few days where I went down to Fredericton for a few things that I needed to do. This included
i)  visiting the blues festival offices to pick up a promotional CD of the acts that will be appearing this year and arranging a press pass for the festival (such are the privileges of being a radio presenter),
ii)  seeing this University Professor who I have been trying to track down for over 6 months, only to find out that his project finished a couple of months ago (as I reckoned that it probably might)
iii) sorting out a few things relating to my property up the road here, such as
    a) paying the property taxes
    b) orgainising a mailing address
    c) discussing planning permission with the rural affairs office
as well as loads more that I've probably forgotten and that I'll remember as soon as I press "send".

I went down to Fredericton Junction where the old railway line up here left the St. John - USA line and poked around all of the railway relics there

Today I've been wandering around the USA border looking at all of the abandoned border posts as well as some current ones, including the controversial one at Forest City. Here, the Americans are busily destroying the environment of this beautifully peaceful valley to build ahuge mega-frontier-post complete with bomb-proof shelter, bullet-proof glass and a couple of prison cells - for a border post that has on average one car every half-hour during an eight-hour working day. If you want a definition of the word "paranoia", you need look no further than this. It really is confirmation that the Americans are the most frightened people on the planet. It was either Goering or Goebbels - one of them anyway and I can never remember whom - said that the best way to control your population is to frighten them - and the Bushbaby and his croneys managed to scare their citizens to death.

In case you are wondering by the way, the Canadian border post here is a small wooden hut.

The most interesting part of all of this was that I had a guided tour of the installations from across the river by a woman named Anne, whose property borders the river that is the international boundary. She told me many stories about the things that go on here. But even better than that, she is someone who is living an alternative lifestyle and is very interested in all of this kind of thing and so we spent a very pleasant morning discussing such delightful topics as rainwater harvesting and composting toilets. It was really enjoyable to meet a kindred spirit.

Tomorrow I have more things to do around here, such as checking out standard Canadian timber sizes, and then in the evening we'll be carrying on reassembling this tractor. First tractor pull of the season is at Grand Sault in three weeks time so we need to get a move on.