I found a Nissan Leaf in Haines that looked good for us to take down to our cabin for a car to drive around town. I took the ferry on a glorious day up Lynn Canal, and there were orcas right in Auke Bay on our way north. The seller met me at the ferry terminal in Haines to test drive the car. I’m very familiar with these cars now – there’s about nothing that goes wrong. I asked, of course, what the battery capacity was before I went up, and it was 12 bars strong out of a possible 12 bars – as good as it gets for driving range. I knew if the steering was tight, and the wheels didn’t wobble, and the brakes didn’t screech, that there wasn’t not much more that could be wrong with it, and that I’d buy it. So, I got in, and said we’d drive the few miles to town, and if it all looked good before we got there, I’d take it, and we’d go to the bank to deposit my check and sign over the title. And that’s what happened.
On our conversation on the way in, it turns out the seller used to work at the troll salmon buying scow in Lisanski, but after my time fishing out there. She did know my boat, Dutch Master, as I sold it to a local fisherman in Pelican. The owner of the scow she worked for was a story in and of itself. When I came home from the Peace Corps in 1989, the first job I had lined up was a 2 week position at Hidden Falls Hatchery feeding chum salmon fry. I remembered the RA at UAF, Bob something, who I would check my hunting guns in and out of the dorm safe as required by UAF rules at the time, owned a bed and breakfast in Haines. So, I contacted Bob to ask if I could park my car there while I went over to Sitka for this short term job. Bob said I could!
When I got to the B and B, I met the woman running the place for Bob, and parked the car. I told the woman my story and she said she had recently met a missionary through her church in Michigan who worked in Sierra Leone…..I’d literally had lunch with the guy a few months earlier!
Fast forward 10? years. I’m living in Kodiak, and have a job interview with ADFG in Juneau. I have one friend from UAF here – Val – and she says I can stay at her place. When I arrive, there’s a woman there, also staying with Val, that is a teacher friend from Pelican in town for a meeting. I immediately recognize her from somewhere, but can’t place her. About 2 hours later, it hits me: : she’s the woman from the B and B in Haines! She then remembered, too.
Fast forward another 5 years or more. I’m now married, and got Sara to let me buy a boat and permit and go commercial salmon trolling. I fish my first summer opening out of Cross Sound, and head to the fish buying station in Lisianski – called Shoreline. I pull alongside to tie up. Who do I throw my tie-up line to but the same woman from Haines and Val’s! She and her husband had bought the scow and now ran it in the summer!! Such is this place.
So, back to the Haines adventure this week. After boring the young seller to death with all my stories, I buy the car, drop her off at work, and go drink coffee with Roy til it’s time to leave for the ferry. I can’t get the car on the ferry that day because the 2 EV vehicle quota for the trip is already met. Luckily, there’s a spot open on the next sailing on Friday, and the seller said she would put it on the ferry for me then.
The agent helping me to get the reservation found out I bought the car from the ADFG employee, and she said she used to work for ADFG for 20 years before the ferry job. Then I remembered her – Ron and I would call in to her with our Chilkat River subsistence salmon catches for our permits. Such is this place.
When I got home later, I texted my friend who retired from ADFG in Haines and moved home to Hawaii. I told him I met his former coworker at the ferry. Then he said my late buddy’s widow from Juneau had just left there after a stay with him and his wife. Such is this place.
I parkd the car at the ferry so the seller could put it on the ferry on Friday, and think – I’ll take the binder from the glove box with the owner’s manual and papers to read on the ferry ride home. As we head back down Lynn Canal, I settle in with a fresh thermos of coffee and open up the binder. There’s a letter from Nissan to the original owner…. and who might that have been? Our former next door neighbor in Juneau! We still remember when he and his wife got the car new! He’d sold the car to his son, who moved to Haines, and the son sold it to the person I bought it from! Wow. Such is this place.
The seller in Haines bought a new EV with a longer range so she could get to Whitehorse – or Haines Junction at least, where there’s a charging station. This was precisely the same reason for the seller of the Leaf we bought in Skagway a few years ago – he’d bought a newer car with longer range to get to Whitehorse.
This Leaf will have plenty of range to get us around Craig and Klawock, and should have range enough to get to the ferry and back in Hollis. It won’t have enough range to get to Thorne Bay or Coffman Cove and back, and there are no public chargers on Prince of Wales Island yet. I only go to these towns a few times a year, and can use the truck for that. For deer hunting, I’ll be using the truck wherever I go on the POW road system, as this car is not for driving on logging roads.
We bought the car for $5000 and it will cost another $700? to ferry it down to Ketchikan and over to Hollis. With fuel prices at about $5.40 there, it will be cheaper to run than a gas vehicle, even with the higher electric rates in Craig versus Juneau, so we can stick it to the man. Our electric company there even pays us a $500 incentive rebate once I get the car there.
I also bought a never-used, brand new Excalibur 9 dehydrator this week on Craigslist here. It’s the most deluxe model – with a timer AND temperature control. The person I bought it from said the fan worked, but that it didn’t heat up, and she didn’t want to mess with it. I’m not sure if she checked to see if it was under warranty, but maybe she did, and found out – like I did – that it’s hard to get a hold of anyone there…. AND the part the unit needs is out of stock. Which might be because everyone else who bought the same unit had the same problem. It was the only part on their site that was out of stock.
She was asking $60 (the units are $200-$240 plus shipping new), and I offered her $20, explaining that if I couldn’t fix the unit, I could still use the trays and racks to stage second batches for my same size model dehydrator in Craig. She readily accepted. What else are you going to do with a broken dehydrator you can’t get parts for. She was happy for me to take it off her hands.
I got on You Tube and started troubleshooting. I tested the wiring with a multimenter, and found that it wasn’t the fuse – a common heating failure cause in dehydrators. It was, indeed, the out of stock thermostat that was to blame. I tried to order a similar thermostat from Excalibur’s site for the same size unit that does not have a timer, and would change the wiring to make it work. That thermostat they did have in stock. It was $40 for the thermostat (which weighs nothing) …. and $197 for UPS shipping. If you live here, you know that my UPS shipping quote is not a misprint.
I then tried to get a hold of someone there to see if they would ship it by USPS mail, which should cost about $20. The person or AI on the chat function was no help but gave me a number to call. When I called and was on hold for awhile, I hung up.
I then started trying to figure out how else I could make it work. I looked into 110 V thermostats for things like toaster ovens or heating systems (stove and clothes dryer thermostats are common, but are 220V. They might work, but that’s above my skill level)….Then I thought: I have a bad toaster oven in the garage to go to recycle. I took out the temperature control thermostat from the toaster oven. I had to cut and splice some wires, drill new holes to mount it, etc in the guts of the dehydrator…. but it worked! And heat at full blast looks like it comes up to 165 F – same as it’s supposed to with the stock thermostat !. The shaft that holds the knob for the temperature control is far shorter for the toaster oven thermostat than the stock thermostat, so the female housing on the knob wasn’t long enough to reach it. I found some vacuum hose in the garage that goes over the shaft tight, and that works like a dream. Easy!
So, two rounds of STICKING IT TO THE MAN. What a week!!!!
