Beautiful B.C.

Ed flies a helicopter around here and there occasionally and gets to see much more of the varied border terrain than do those of us who just hang around Point Roberts (that would be me).  A couple of weeks ago, he found a lovely pinnacle up in B.C. with, he reported, a spectacular view.  He had his camera with him, so he tried to do a 360 degree view of the sights in the nearby high mountains.  However, he didn't have a tripod with him and it didn't do it justice.

So, this week, he went back with a tripod and got it.  You can see it here.  Mt. Baker (the highest mountain around here next to Mt. Ranier, which isn't quite so much around here) is in the background of the first part of the picture that you see (the farthest left part).  We got the ocean, we got the mountains, we got it all.

Pie and Coffee from the Sky

With everything in the financial world going down, I thought I might spend the day hiding under the bed. On the other hand, perhaps a perfect day for going up. That was Ed’s thinking, so he went helicopter flying today. To fly the helicopter, he must cross two borders each way plus about 100 miles of driving each way. Unfortunately, Canada has no tradition of renting helicopters to licensed pilots. In Canada, if you want to fly a helicopter, you have to either own your own, fly one for your employer, or be a student. Not in any of those categories, Ed takes the long drive down to Skagit County, in Washington, to find an available helicopter. It’s about the size of a large dragonfly, but it holds two people, as long as his passenger doesn’t weigh more than 240 pounds.

He left early this morning with a long list of other things to do (Home Depot, Trader Joe’s, etc.) after the flight; during the flight, he was going to visit a friend up on the Washington border who actually does own a helicopter. But his friend’s helicopter has been in Los Angeles for about six months having itself rebuilt. This rebuild has to be done every 2200 hours and it is a very pricey activity; definitely enough to make you think very carefully about actually owning one of these machines. But apparently it is not a very rapid activity. Obviously, it doesn’t take six months, but I guess there are some people who get priority in the line to have one’s helicopter rebuilt and our friend is not one of those people.

When I realized that a futon bed frame actually doesn’t have enough room for me to hide under, I went to the quilt workshop to entertain myself, to detract myself, and to get something done—primarily making fabric portraits of financial titans of our time for a spring show (portrait 1 above). Around 2:00, there was a knock on the door. Almost nobody comes knocking on the door of my workshop except the quilting students and it wasn’t time for one of them. To my surprise upon opening the door, there was Ed--who had landed in our neighbor’s field--asking whether I’d like to join him in a cup of coffee. Not even Valentine’s Day, but a pretty lovely day when one’s spouse flies up to have a cup of coffee. Not really possible to land a helicopter in your neighbor’s yard in Los Angeles, unless you have a neighbor with a very impressive estate. But here in Point Roberts? Easy as pie. Also, it almost made up for that additional 500 point drop.

Up in the Air, Down on the Ground

Once Ed saw the photos of the project to photograph all of the California coastline and put them on the Web, he’s been thinking about doing the same for Point Roberts. Now that the Point is once again threatened by development, it seemed even more important to get that project done so there would be a record of what it looked like right now, not yet built out, not yet a destination, still a funny little exclave, 'a spit of land dangling below the 49th parallel from the mainland of British Columbia’ as the Seattle Times described it this past week. Still not that far away from a hundred years ago when settlement by Americans was first authorized.

The California project went on for a long time, of course, but so did the Point Roberts project what for one reason or another. The helicopter wasn’t available, the photographer wasn’t available, the right camera wasn’t at hand, the weather wasn’t cooperative. I was the reasonable photographer for this project (even though Ed’s a better photographer than I am), because Ed has to fly the helicopter. But I don’t like flying in helicopters because of the noise and because I just don’t (no reason needed, in my view). Furthermore, my digital camera doesn’t have image stabilization and any pictures I took in a moving helicopter would be of dubious quality.

So we needed to find someone who wanted to fly, was available to fly on short notice, and had a fancier digital camera than I did. And we needed the helicopter to be available. Last Thursday, everything came together at once because the adventurous 18-year-old granddaughter was here with her fancy camera at the same time that the helicopter was available and the weather was beautiful. And now the Point Roberts Coastline Project is up on the web for the world to see at ross-park.net/prcoast/

In some ways, these pictures show the reality of Point Roberts better than any words I could ever write. But in others, my words and Ed’s and Gianna’s pictures go together perfectly to illustrate The Whole Picture that I had in mind when I first started this blog, seven months ago. Enjoy!