Author Archives: Steve Mayne

Camping In The Rain

07 Saturday Oct 2023

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Or “Ark/Airstream”

We do like our camping, and in September 2021 we headed out to Science Hill Golf Course, close to St. Mary’s in Southern Ontario. We’re not golfers, but the place has a nice campground in rolling countryside, and it’s fairly quiet there, as well as being well located for doing some walking or exploring.

You can’t tell what the weather’s going to be like when you book, and when we arrived, the owner said that he thought we were in for some poor weather, despite it being quite nice at the time. He said we could camp on any free site and while I was about to pick one a little apart from some of the other trailers, I did note that the ground looked a little soggy, so I sought out slightly higher ground. How prophetic that turned out to be.

Our first night was wet, and got wetter. We’re not unused to rain, but after a slightly rainy start to the following day, thing went seriously downhill. It rained and rained and rained. I took the limping dog out a couple of times for her exercise, but she was sick and didn’t enjoy either the exercise or the rain (it turned out that this was to be her last but one camping trip as we had to have her put to sleep a few weeks later). We didn’t go out at all, just stayed in and watched the rain. It was hard to think that it would get any worse, but it did.

The rain became worse, the wind picked up and we were fairly rocking through the evening, and not in a good way. I’d left the short street side awning out to stop water ingress through the cooker exhaust vent (which turned out to be cracked), but the wind whipped at it and snapped it partly shut, thankfully with no damage.

The following morning I watched as the flood waters rose, the three pictures at the top show the progress of the water. We were on a hill for goodness sake, but a wide river was forming a few feet away from us. I didn’t know at the time, but a storm drain had been blocked and the water that was supposed to be underground, wasn’t. I’d never seen anything like it.

When the rain did subside later in the day, so did the flood. The campground owner was out and about and told us that he had unblocked the drain, which was why the water disappeared quickly. The flooded area, though, was still very boggy and I was glad that I had decided on a slightly higher site. We hadn’t moved off the campground in two days, and the dog was in pain; it hadn’t been a great trip.

My mind moved to how we were going to get off the site without going through the bog, but come leaving day I moved the fire ring and made a sharp, inelegant, left, not skidding on the wet grass and not getting bogged down. That untypical tow vehicle of ours had come to our rescue again, with its front wheel drive and gentle transmission easing us away rather than digging in, as bigger vehicles might have done.

We haven’t had such a wet trip since, and given that it was also the dog’s last but one run out in the trailer, it was memorable. We haven’t been back to Science Hill since, and I have to say that I’m understandably nervous about doing so!

As a sort of postscript, we went to Rondeau Park a few weeks later, and while we had fine weather for most of our stay, the last night there was stormy and again we had to rely on our non-standard tow vehicle to haul us out of a mini-flood. Camping; don’t you just love it?

Houses

07 Saturday Oct 2023

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Or “From The Ground Up”

In my old persons way, I like to watch the construction of new buildings, and there’s been a lot of that around here lately.

Houses are not built the same way here as they are in Europe. Most will have a basement, or cellar, and the wooden frame of the house will be built on top of that. Where you see bricks, they’ll just be an outer skin with no serious weight bearing going on; that’s the job of the wood.

The footings of the house will be much the same though, as the top picture shows, with the exception of the steel rebars, and the fact that they’re normally in a hole six or seven feet deep. The land inside the borders of the footings is often filled with gravel because later, concrete will be poured in on top to form the basement floor. there’s also a sump, or small well, built into the basement floor, and water pipes that collect groundwater from around and under the house will feed into it. This keeps the basement dry, but only if you have a pump set up to remove that which gathers in the sump. There’s a whole debate, for another day, about the utility of a basement sump.

The basement walls are formed on top the footings and make use of the exposed rebars for strength. The formers for these walls are often dropped in from a truck and are stacked in a handy dandy crate with a big loop at the top so that the truck’s crane arm can just drop them into the hole in the ground. When the formers are finished with, they’re stacked back in the crates and lifted out, to be reused on another house. The second picture shows the formers in place, but those don’t look like the little modular things that I see being used. Either way, you can see the walls being formed. The third photograph shows the walls without the formers.

Once the basement is in, the house quickly goes up as a wooden frame. There’s sometimes some steel to hold up the floor on the ground floor (or first floor if you’re a North American), but other that it’s all wood. Wood is cheap here, probably cheaper than cinder blocks and bricks, and the house look skeletal as it’s going up, as the fourth picture shows. When the house is just a frame of wood like that, it’s really simple to install the services like water, waste water, electricity and gas. Internally the walls and ceilings are added using plasterboard, or drywall as it’s known here, and the floors are double sheets of plywood, that’s before any other surface like tiles or laminate flooring is added. Roofs are also interesting with the normal method being sheets of marine plywood that are nailed in place and are eventually covered with shingles, actually strips of roofing felt made to look a little like slates. The advantages of this this system are that they are cheap and come in a whole range of colours and styles, they’re also very light compared to European style clay or cement tiles, or even traditional slate. The disadvantage is that the shingles will need replacing every fifteen to twenty years, which is why steel roofs are becoming more popular, often fixed straight on top of the old shingles if it’s a retrofit, as they mostly are. Steel isn’t as light, but it comes in different styles and colours, too. Even steel, though, will need replacing eventually as it will rust in time.

The outer walls of the houses are thoroughly insulated before an external cladding is added, sometimes siding (wood, metal or vinyl), sometimes brick, usually a mixture of both. As I said before, the outer brickwork has little load bearing ability.

Windows were a bit of a shocker for me. As there isn’t much depth to the walls here, window sills don’t really exist. The windows themselves are usually double or triple glazed, although much to my surprise, many of the new houses being built are just single glazed, which is a travesty given how cold it can get here, and how important insulation is for keeping heating and cooling costs down.

Most new houses here are heated by forced air, pumped around ducts by a furnace in the basement. It’s not the most efficient method, but is easily switched to cooled air in the summer. Most heating furnaces will use Natural Gas to heat the air, and we haven’t really caught onto heat pumps yet.

Back in the basement, people use them for many things, including laundry, workspaces and a favourite here, TV and games rooms. Given that most of the basement is below ground level, they are ideal for cozy TV rooms, for sure. Many new houses are sold with “unfinished” basements, just the bare concrete walls and the service machinery, but you can “finish” them yourself to your own specification, which could include stud walls, carpets and the rest. It is possible to have someone live in the basement, assuming you can get waste water away effectively, although with new places, you need to include an escape route, and that can mean a lot of work for an already finished basement. Whatever you do down there, just make sure that you have an effective sump pump, and a backup should the power go out (as it so often does).

Your average North American new build is still significantly bigger than its counterparts in Europe, space being the key, I think. Mind you, they’re getting smaller here as well, which is more guided by profit per square foot than availability of land.

Which do I prefer? Well, North American house are bigger, and that basement is a plus, but they are comparatively flimsy and I doubt our house, now forty years old, will still be here in a hundred years’ time like so many of their more sturdy European counterparts. I don’t like the shingle or steel roofs here, but even quite major work on timber-build houses is quite cheap and easy. I don’t know, I’m happy wherever I’m living!

Safety First

03 Tuesday Oct 2023

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Or “Who Said This Was A Good Job”

One of my tasks while working full time at the bus yard was to attend any collisions or mishaps that happened while buses were out on the road, and make some preliminary investigations. I thought this picture would be a good illustration as the collision was minor, but did force the bus into a snow bank. Also, there were students on the bus, but no one, driver included, was hurt, in what was an odd collision. Shortly after I took the photo, the Police arrived, cleared the scene for recovery, and the second bus took the kids home, just in case you were concerned.

This was on a quiet back road one winter’s afternoon and the driver was dropping the last few students off. He’d been motoring at just below the speed limit (GPS records this at three second intervals) and was approaching the intersection that crossed his road. Visibility was good and the driver of the bus saw the pickup truck approaching his road, from the left, at right angles. Knowing there was a Yield sign for the truck, although not for the bus, our driver did slow, but the truck kept coming. It didn’t stop, and shot out in front of the bus, with the bus front left side catching the truck, but the evasive action our driver took led him into the snowbank. The truck driver got out of his vehicle, came over to check everything was OK, got back in his truck and drove off!

That was odd, but odder still was the fact the the truck driver dropped his wallet as he got out of his truck, and that his drivers’ licence was still in it. There’s nothing like leaving evidence at the scene. Once the kids had gone and the recovery truck had hauled the bus out of the snow bank, I had to drive the mechanic’s truck back to the bus yard. I don’t know if you’ve ever driven a pickup truck with a massive snow plough blade on the front, but believe me when I say that it’s a strange sensation.

Pulling all the data together afterwards, we felt that our driver wasn’t to blame, although he could possibly have avoided the collision with a little more caution given that the approaching truck was clearly visible, even if it was supposed to yield. The Police rounded things off by saying that the truck driver was probably drunk, although by the time they caught up with him, they couldn’t prove it.

That was one of many similar incidents I had to attend, most of them thankfully minor. The investigation was never fun, though, and sometimes ended up with our driver getting into trouble. Our drivers would often leave details out of their accounts, embellish their account and sometimes outright lie about what happened, but I guess it’s natural to be defensive when you’re likely going to be blamed. Still, we never had to fire a driver, just retrain them, and guess who had to do that!

Pickup Trucks

02 Monday Oct 2023

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Or “What’s The Point Of Them?”

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of pickup trucks. Much of my animosity has been derived from my fellow Airstreamers, or most of them at least, who are implacably opposed to towing their Travel Trailers with anything else. Of course, I don’t tow our Airstream with a pickup truck. The arguments are long and tedious and essentially boil down to “I want a truck because they’re big and manly, and I’ll use my towing requirement to justify the spending of huge amounts of money that are required to buy one”.

But am I right? If you look at the concept of the truck, a rugged utility vehicle capable of carrying loads in the bed, then there’s definitely a market. If your business is towing goose-necked trailers, hauling freight, or dirty and odd sized equipment, then the pickup is for you. It’s a workhorse, and usually a capable one, albeit that the basic technology is pretty ancient.

The problem is that the modern truck has become a status symbol. The engines are huge, the wheels are huge and the radiator grille is huge. They sit so high off the ground, too. Certainly they have all Mod. Cons. these days, as is demanded by the consumer, but for all that they’re still just a utility vehicle. A very heavy, un-sprung body on twisty steel ladder frame, with live axle leaf spring suspension, isn’t the best format for a modern vehicle capable of some quite high speeds. But it is, apparently, what the punter wants. The thing is, people buy these gas-guzzlers for their status value primarily and will never, ever, use it for its intended purpose, that is, hauling stuff. They will use it to tow their $150K Airstream when it really isn’t a great match for such a smart trailer, but they will also use it for their daily commute, to go shopping, even to go on holiday. What they won’t use it for is, God forbid, putting messy and heavy stuff in the bed.

A pickup is really bad at driving, too. It’s heavy on gas, has too high a Centre of Gravity to be safe, has ancient body on frame technology, and rubbish suspension. Why are they so popular then? Well, it’s all about having a big one. Vehicle that is. The owners sit up high, and feel all manly and powerful, usually entirely unaware of what dreadful vehicles they are really driving. Is it true that the size of a man’s vehicle is inversely proportional to the size of their wedding tackle? I wouldn’t know, but it’s a fair old theory.

Here’s a proper Airstream tow vehicle…

North Shore, Lake Erie

01 Sunday Oct 2023

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Or “We’re Really Luck To Live Here”

We live not far from the north shore of Lake Erie, in Ontario, Canada.

We haven’t always lived here, or indeed in Canada, and that is perhaps what helps us appreciate what a lovely place it is to live. Certainly it’s not exciting, there are no high mountains (or even hills!), or deep valleys, but it is bucolic, and pleasantly so.

We drove along the old Talbot Trail for a while, one of those ruler straight roads built by the settlers to allow both access to land, and to get from Lake Ontario to Windsor and Detroit. Because it’s been superseded by the 401 freeway, it’s a very quiet road and you can drive for ages without seeing another vehicle, and yet it’s wide and well surfaced. We use it in preference to the freeway if we’re not in a hurry, and it’s to be recommended for easing your blood pressure. The road links some of the old farming communities; Blenheim, Guilds, Morpeth, Palmyra, Eagle, and Wallacetown, to name but a few. It was in Wallacetown that we took a dive south and followed Fingal Line for a few miles, and that it is even quieter than the Talbot Trail. It also has a few dips and turns as it negotiates some of the valleys scored into the soft land that’s close to the lake, to give some nice relief from the flat and straight of the land further west.

All along this lake-side, east-west route, is intensively farmed land, with Corn and Soy Beans stretching as far as the eye can see. At the westerly end of Talbot Trail, there are far fewer trees and far larger fields, but that vista gives way to more trees and smaller fields as you move eastwards. Because it’s an old road, it’s lined with many mature trees, some native to the area, some not, but as this trip was on the last day of September, most were beginning to turn for winter, with yellow, red and brown showing up in among the green. It may not be as spectacular as Algonquin, but in this more gentle countryside it looked fabulous on a sun-drenched day.

The roadside ditches are filled with Asters, Goldenrod, and Sumac, with the remnant of Milkweed still around after their summer bloom. Despite the heavily farmed fields, it seems that the native plants are not going away, and that pleases me.

Of course all that I have described is the post-Contact world, tamed by generations of European settlers. Pre-Contact, the entire area would have been wooded, mostly Carolinian Forest along the lake’s edge, and populated with native people. They had their own routes to travel, of course, naturally made and never using a ruler on a map. It would be wrong of me not to acknowledge that, and of the treaties broken by successive groups of incomers that took the land from its native population, broken by the people who drew those straight lines and cleared the forests. We can’t go back, but we can accept that we Europeans are recent interlopers and really do not own the land, despite what the maps say. It’s fitting to note that we drove this trip on September 30th, National Truth and Reconciliation in Canada, and did acknowledge our presence on stolen land.

Training

29 Friday Sep 2023

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Or “This Is Easier Than I Thought”

Even before I’d started in my full-time job at the bus company, I had embarked on the process to become a Driver-Trainer. Certainly it was an opportunity to work some more hours, but it was also an intense and satisfying job.

In Ontario, the testing of commercial vehicle drivers has been devolved, mostly, to the commercial companies themselves. Given the correct qualifications, people like me employed by the bus company, were able to supervise training and execute written and road tests on behalf of the Ministry of Transportation. While you might think that there’s too much self-interest involved, that is we could just pass anyone and not bother with proper training, it was all very well run by the Ministry and we as testers and trainers were constantly monitored and assessed. Vehicle collision data involving new drivers was always scrutinized by the Ministry and were we to be cheating and not doing our jobs for drivers who crashed, we would surely have lost our place on the devolved licensing scheme.

There are lots of hoops that you have to jump through to become a tester, not least a week on a residential course, learning to teach others. Fail that and you’re simply not considered by the Ministry. But I passed, and was soon teaching others in the classroom, on the Skills Station (photo above), and out on the road (photo below).

Drivers were assessed daily and booted if they were not up to the required standard, although I only failed a handful, and always at the early stages of training, before they were allowed out on the road. Telling someone that they weren’t going to make it, we wouldn’t enter anyone for their tests if we didn’t think they’d pass, was tough and often involved tears – not mine I should add. One trainee I worked with wasn’t getting it, but I felt that she would, given time. I sent her home for a couple of days break from training, and we picked it up again in a much better place for her, and she passed her test comfortably in the end. Perseverance from both trainee and instructor can work sometimes. The last one I failed simply wasn’t getting some the basics, not even after I’d allowed double the amount of time allowed, and it’s interesting to note that it’s generally those that tell you up front what a great driver they are who don’t make the grade. I didn’t keep track of the number of new drivers I trained to a successful conclusion, but I did do twenty-two in six months one year.

There didn’t seem to be a specific type of person who did well, either. Two of the standout trainees were young women with minimal driving experience, who both caught on really quickly, and yet some of the “old and bold” people, mostly men, with decades of driving experience, were the ones most likely to fail. Indeed, a couple of the oldies who had previously held bus driver licenses were the hardest to train and to get through the test. There’s a rule in Ontario that if you are a school bus driver over sixty-five and you catch two or more Demerit points, in your or car or in a bus, then you have to be tested again by Ministry contractors. Despite spending countless hours training with a number of these fellows, I never got any of them a pass, so they all lost their bus licenses. I think it was a case of trying to teach old dogs new tricks, and none of them wanted to learn.

Mostly, though, it was hard work but good fun. I’ve trained with babies in car seats alongside their mothers, people into their seventies and driving bus for the first time, and lots of folk struggling to get work. All of them, though, once they’d mastered the tricks of the trade, were all really happy to be behind the wheel of the “Big Yellow”.

I’d like to have continued training without having to drive daily bus runs as well, but my employer was having none of it, and that is why I’m now fully retired.

Driving On The Freeway

28 Thursday Sep 2023

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Or “Why Does Nobody Know How To Drive?”

We had occasion to drive along the lovely King’s Highway, better known as Highway 401, today, between Tilbury and Manning Road in Windsor. It’s Ontario’s primary motorway/freeway/autoroute and has a fearful reputation.

Down here at its western end it’s not so bad, though, with three lanes in each direction between Tilbury and Windsor, and relatively light traffic when compared to that in the Greater Toronto Area. However, the wide open spaces do not good drivers make.

Speed has always been an issue. The limit of 100 KpH means to everyone, including the Police, you should drive at a minimum of 120 KpH in reality. Where the limit is 110, then read 130. It’s not really policed seriously, unless you feel like doing 150+, then you may get caught.

Then there’s tailgating, driving too close to the rear of the vehicle ahead of you, which appears to be more popular in Ontario than hockey. That minimum 4 second safety gap is normally 0.4 seconds on the 401, and I’m really not exaggerating.

Today, though, was the day of the left lane cruisers. So many do not appear to know or understand, on a three lane road, that only the right-side lane is the driving lane, and that the other two are passing lanes only; that’s the law. I get it that you might end up in the centre lane for a while if there are too many trucks in the right lane, but today we had car after car cruising along a near-empty road in the left lane. Certainly, they’re only holding each other up and not doing too much harm, but why do they do it? It seems the height of stupidity to me. Mind you, at least some of those left lane cruisers were keeping to the 401’s unofficial 0.4 second gap rule.

It’s long been my contention that driving education and testing in Ontario is sadly lacking. Indeed, the two kids’ driving instructors both imparted incorrect information to their students, one about speed and one about making left turns. If the instructors don’t know, there’s not much hope. As a former instructor, and tester, myself I speak from a position of knowledge.

All that said, if everyone did as they should when driving, what would I have to complain about?

** An after publication edit. Why do so many people visiting from the United States feel that it’s OK to drive at 130 KpH on a Canadian road with a 100 KpH limit? It seems disrespectful to me.

School Bus Tales

28 Thursday Sep 2023

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Or “How Do You Drive One Of Those Things?”

I have a wealth of School Bus stories, but I’ll start with the basics, just how do you drive one of those things?

The simple answer is “quite easily”. They’re big, for sure, but pretty simple beasts and easily handled by anyone who has a mind to do it. Automatic gearboxes, power steering, hydraulic brakes with ABS all round, they’re really not any harder to drive than a car, but you do have to learn the tricks required to make the corners without riding the curbs, and to turn it around without nailing too many mailboxes. In fact in some ways they’re easier to handle than a regular car because you have seven very handy mirrors at your disposal that give you so much more visibility.

To get a licence, though, you do need some special training and that’s down to the fact that apart from the Police and the EMS, school bus drivers are the only people on the road who can stop traffic legally. Those red lights and the extending Stop sign are powerful tools and you really do have to learn to use them wisely. Your cargo is special, too, with up to seventy-two children on board, you have a huge responsibility, when they’re on board, and when they’re approaching or moving away from the bus. What a shame that the pay doesn’t reflect the training and levels of responsibility school bus drivers undertake.

The First Student (my employer) training program was thorough, and it had to tie in with the Ontario licensing programme, which is similarly demanding. Hours driving off-road, trying not to squash plastic cones, hours in the classroom, and hours on the road, before rigorous written and on-road tests to Ministry of Transportation standards. Despite the individual failings of some of the drivers after having attained their licence, you could put your kids on the bus knowing that every driver was trained to a very high standard.

Driving on the road becomes easier with practice, as does understanding how to drive a rigid vehicle nearly forty feet long round some very tight turns, and without clouting another vehicle with the dreaded tail swing, that is the amount the rear overhang of the bus can swing left or right behind you. While you’re driving, you’re also following a pre-set route, with pre-set pickup points, to a fairly tight schedule. Local knowledge helps, but when you start out, or you take on a new route, it can be tough to follow a route, and its stops, often in the dark and often in awful weather. When I started I was covering other drivers’ absences so I could do many different run in a week, and then it was all paper maps and a little light rigged so that you could see it on those dark early mornings. Now it’s an Android tablet PC with the routes downloaded and audibly read back to you as you drive, which is better for all concerned. Of course the down side of that was the driving data collected that was extremely good at catching you if you drove like a dork.

Having mastered all that, then there was the students. The truism that ten percent cause ninety percent of the problems was very true of children on the bus, and with a good bunch of kids you could spend uneventful hours driving around the lanes of the district, almost enjoying it. If you had a few difficult kids, then trying to drive, to navigate and to police the kids was a difficult task. That task was often underestimated by the schools’ administration, and by the School Boards, so working with little support was also not good. However, the ten/ninety rule meant that most times the runs were trouble free.

By the time I’d decided to retire, I could get a new route memorized in two days. I knew the area, the schools and quite a few of the kids, so it all became relatively easy. I had my fair share of incidents (for later posts, I think), but in my seven years driving, I never had a collision and had a completely clear driving record, and of that I was very proud.

More riveting bus stories to come, you lucky people, but I’ll leave you here with the thought that for all my moaning and complaining, I’d always be happy to put my kids, or grandkids, on the school bus.

Get Rich Quick(ly)

25 Monday Sep 2023

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Or “Why Do They Think I’m So Gullible?”

CONDITIONS OF USE NOT KNOWN, FEES MAY APPLY ON USE

WordPress announced my first “Like” for my revitalised blog, so naturally I was curious. Of course, I should have known that it wasn’t going to be from anyone interesting, but with a grim inevitability it was actually from someone touting a Get Rick Quick(ly) scheme. So, no interest in the blog, but plenty of interest in parting me from my money.

The Internet is packed with these people. At one end of the scale it’s a Nigerian Prince who needs you to send him $200 so that he can release $8,000,000 into your bank account (he’ll need those details of course), to the almost plausible ads where they quote returns and show grateful people’s testimony. The one thing that links all of these unsolicited fishing expeditions is that they require you to send them money. I don’t know about you, but I think that is the biggest red flag there is.

There will lots of these scam merchants out there who will tell me I’m missing out of a free fortune, all for the want of sending a stranger some money. The thing is, I can’t think of a single documented case where Joe Blow has sent off $200 to a stranger and made themselves a fortune. It doesn’t happen. I’ve seen the effects of some of these schemes first hand and the results for the unwitting are, to say the least painful.

I was wondering why people think I’d be so gullible as to fall for these scams. I’d imagine, though, that they wouldn’t waste their time if they didn’t get something from all the feelers they put out. It’s quite sad that people can be so desperate as to believe the lies these people spin, all in the chase for a quick and easy buck. There’s the rub, isn’t it? Quick and easy.

I’m quite content to continue ignoring all such approaches, not just in WordPress but pretty much all social media. At least when I get Twitter (Never to be called X) followers I can have a good laugh at all these nubile young women promising me not only fast and easy money, but love as well.

It’s my cynicism that keeps me healthy.

Do You Like The Sound Of The Bagpipes?

23 Saturday Sep 2023

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Or “What IS That Noise?”

We do like to camp. When I say camp I really mean drag the Airstream to a local Provincial Park and spend a couple of days in our mobile cottage, missing none of the conveniences of home.

We have just spent a few nice September days at Rondeau, enjoying the mid-week peace and quiet, and doing not much (other than spending the day with the Grandson, then having to go home to the for a doctor’s appointment). It’s therapeutic.

Our peace was shattered, though, when we both heard what sounded like distant bagpipes, competing with the woodland birds and the rustling leaves. At first I dismissed it, I thought I was imagining things, but I was wrong to do that as the sound became ever clearer and ever closer. It was definitely a lone piper, moving around and treating (!) us to short bursts and truncated tunes wrung out of his (no doubt) tartan-clad wind bag.

It went on for a while, too, although we didn’t catch sight of the piper. With no disrespect to my Scottish or Irish friends, I have to say that a single piper on a quiet afternoon in Rondeau isn’t quite what I expected, or wanted. A full pipe and drum band that I know is about to play, maybe, but someone walking around with a single set of pipes? I couldn’t even think of an occasion that merited this wheezy interlude, bearing in mind that I know they pipe the sun down in Port Elgin every night in the summer.

I was conflicted in my dislikes. The sound of an unsolicited piper on a quiet afternoon, or the fact that someone felt it was a good thing to wander around sharing the sound of his (or her) bagpipes with the other campers.

Ultimately though, he was gone after a mercifully short recitation, so no harm done. I might have to pen a letter to the Parks’ people to ask for a new regulation banning the use of unsolicited bagpipes in the park.