“My car keys are at the bottom of the lake”…based on a true story that is my somewhat comical and slightly dramatic life.
My 160 sq ft. tiny home, SUP board and Wrangler….these are a few of my favourite things.
“It's not the shit we face that defines us, it's how we deal with it.”
― Ahmed Mostafa
It was a full week working through more adventures of tiny cabin life off grid. Renting a tiny cabin for a weekend and owning/living full time in one are two very very different experiences. I’ve started to prepare the cabin for the winter months which is not an easy feat and costly, this involves a lot of research and learnings on my end, having never done this before. When living in the city we take for granted the luxuries of running potable water, flushing toilets, heat and electricity all at the touch of a switch. Currently my water comes from the lake but once the lake freezes over 6 months of the year I have no running water. A few days ago I had a well installed which gives me pure cold, crisp and clean drinking water, untouched by chemicals, pollutants and fluoride that we find with city water. I hired a local company to drill the well which ended up going 220ft deep to hit water, providing 2-3 gallons per minute. That was the first step in order for me to be able to turn on a tap and run water.
Drilling the well
5 hours of drilling on Day 1 to hit 220 ft.
The finished well. From here the plumber comes in and installs pump/piping and trenches 4ft below the freeze line.
Next comes upgrading my solar system to be able to handle pumping the water from the well to the cabin, not to mention finding adequate off grid heat sources to keep the pipes warm so they don’t burst! I also have to clear a few trees for more sunlight, particularly for the winter months when the sun drops lower in the sky and you get less sun and therefore less solar energy. A plumber will trench 4 feet below the freeze line to install the pipes and pump into the cabin from the well. After that comes installing a septic tank for a toilet upgrade, a flushing toilet! I am currently using a Separett compost toilet - check it out here https://separett.com/en which is a genius invention, the toilet is inside and miraculously has no smell thanks to an internal fan (which broke and I proudly changed myself thanks to youtube). For those wondering, I do have a full bathroom, with a shower with on demand hot water via propane tanks. The only downside is every few weeks emptying the compost toilet, which requires removing the bag of waste and driving it to the local dump, not the month's highlight. Needless to say, in order to get running water it's a very costly and long process but only a few more weeks till it is complete. Learning all of this and finding the right trades to make it work has been overwhelming but very rewarding now that I understand the process and am close to completing it. After this project I feel slightly more confident in my off grid living skills and for those interested I will write more details on how/where to start. It does take a lot of work but it is very much worth it if you like this sort of thing.
Ok so back to my original story…dropping my keys at the bottom of Sharbot Lake.
After 5 hours of watching the well company drill the ground for water with no luck they finished for the day so I decided to go for a late afternoon paddle to decompress, just a quick easy paddle and be home in time to make dinner and enjoy a relaxing Friday night. I’ve been an avid Stand Up Paddle boarder for 7 years, going out on the lake with keys and phone in a dry bag strapped to my body. I have even taken my dog on the board for many paddles during her time.
On a routine paddle, in flat perfect conditions, I went to lay on my board for a little sun and as I removed my pouch the keys slipped out and in a split second sank faster than I could catch them. It was a total fluke and a rare chance that would happen. I watched in horror as the keys sank faster and disappeared into the depth of the lake. Plunging my arm in to grab them with no luck, I jumped in after them but they were gone and the lake was deeper than I could get to the bottom. Believe me I tried. With the keys at the bottom and out of sight I climbed back on my board. Numb.
Paddling Sharbot Lake
I sat on the board for several long moments with this running through my head... “did that really just happen” “this can’t be happening, that did not just happen” “universe what is the reason for this happening” “what is the lesson to be had with dropping your keys at the bottom of the lake” “the keys will magically appear again, cause that didn’t just happen” “this is a nightmare” “I wonder if a cottage would lend me goggles” and then panic started to set in as I ran through the scenario ahead of me. My house keys, phone, wallet were all in the locked car and I was in a soaking wet bathing suit and it was going to be dark soon.
Staring at the non visible bottom of the lake on a zero visibility day I had about an hour long paddle back to think of a plan. All the cottages were closed up for the season and everything also closed in town, my options were looking pretty bleak, so much for my de-stressing paddle. On the way back I kept looking at different parts of the lake saying why couldn’t I have dropped them there where it was shallow and I could see the bottom, this would have been so much easier.
Just as I pulled close to the boat launch, a couple emerged outside to enjoy the sunset with a glass of wine. I asked to borrow their phone to call CAA. My wait time would be 40 minutes which wasn’t as bad as I thought. They wished me luck and I paddled back to wait by the car. 40 minutes goes by and no tow truck and no phone to call. I walked to a nearby park and tried a pay phone outside of a closed restaurant but it was dead - because pay phones became extinct a decade ago. I stopped someone else to borrow their phone and CAA told me it would be another 30 minutes. I waited, freezing in my wet bathing suit, sun setting and then finally my tow truck rescue came! I expressed that I could not have been happier to see him, he wasn’t as excited but seemed more impatient to have to deal with my problem. When I told him what happened he looked at me like I was … well to put it nicely, an idiot.
Back when I had my keys at the boat launch.
He unlocked the car but the problem didn’t stop there. The alarm was blaring and with no keys to shut it off he disconnected the car horn and handed me the horn fuse to put back in later. Then he said my battery would probably die and I would need a jump tomorrow when I get my spare keys. Then he asked me …”where is your ride to get you home?” My ride?! I had no ride lined up and where I am there are no taxis, the closest would have to come from Kingston, 60 minutes away and costs $100. My home was a quick 10 minutes from where we were but because of the pandemic he wasn’t allowed to take passengers, even with all the protection measurements in place. CAA failed to mention that one. So I was stuck trying to figure out how to make my way home with the paddle board! Funny enough when the transmission on my Ford Escape died last month an amazing human saw my instagram story showing my car being towed away leaving me without wheels in the country and no one to call up here for help, which is a big problem. She sent me a message and said she would happily get me to town (35min drive) to get a rental car, so naturally to thank her I gave her a giant zucchini (google it) from the farmers market. Out of one challenge, I made a new great friend who happens to live 5 minutes from me, who is also another independent female who left city life and bought a more affordable larger lake house in the country instead of a very small and expensive house in the city. Having friends out in the country is your best form of currency, especially when you are single. So here we are two single women, building homes in the country one off grid and one on grid but going through very similar challenges, living 5 minutes away from each other. What are the odds? Slim, but they are definitely in our favour.
Back to present day car trouble…
To my luck, once the car was opened I grabbed my phone and called her, she just so happened to be around the corner and picked me and the SUP board up. My not so friendly tow-er decided that he couldn’t wait 5 minutes for her to pick me up so he left to do another job which he claimed was around the corner. He said he would be back quickly and that I wasn’t the only one that needed his help. So now it’s 6:30pm the car is unlocked but still needs to be towed to my cabin, so I waited another 90 minutes for him to return from his “quick other rescue”. At this point I’m still in a wet bathing suit and freezing and it’s almost 8pm and dark out. Sara gets me home and I wait for the tow truck to bring my car back. CAA relies on a third party tow company in the local area… Reid’s Towing. I call Reid’s dispatch and she says she will get the tow-er to call me. I finally get a call 20 minutes later saying that he can’t get down the road to my cabin (it’s about .6km off road) even though many giant trucks much bigger than a tow truck have made their way down without problem, like the well drilling truck earlier that day or the other Reid’s tow truck to pull my Ford out. (see photo above)
I put on my headlamp (no lights on the road and it is pitch black) I run up the road to meet him to see him offloading my Jeep on the right lane (not even on the side but right in the middle of the right hand lane forcing people to drive around into the left hand lane) and saying that’s the best he can do and my job is taking too long so he’s leaving (even though he left my job for 90 min to do another job). I begged him to move the car to the other side of the road (a quick u-turn) where it could be tucked away safely off on the shoulder in the grass and not on the actual road! He refused and proceeded to sit in his truck to sort out his next job.
At this point it was 9pm… 4 hours into this ordeal and I wasn’t winning this fight. So my Jeep is now on the right lane with the alarm disconnected and the driver's door unlocked because there are no keys, there’s no street lights so it's pitch black and it’s a black car and it’s going to be there for the next 24 hours. In my head all I could think of was someone smashing into my car in the middle of the night (the car is only 3 weeks old to add salt to the wound). I called his dispatch and explained the situation, now frustrated and panicked. The tow-er spoke to dispatch on speaker phone and I got the luxury of hearing the phone call which started out “Oh my god this girl is nuts...” The tow-er got out and took some pictures of my vehicle as proof of where he left it, saying that it was totally safe and he was leaving. Now in the time it took to have this argument which was about another 30 min he could have easily made a u-turn and parked the car where it was safe on the shoulder, but nope. The best that dispatch said was to call CAA again, which I did and they said they would send another tow out to move the car, so I waited. 20 minutes later they called back and said the tow truck company refused to move the vehicle, that where they left it was perfectly safe. So I waved the white flag and walked back to the cabin.
The following morning, checking my car where Reid’s Towing left my car in the right hand lane.
Imagine this in the dark, no street lights, black car, pitch black night blocking the right lane.