All too often when we (all of us) return to the island after a trip we find our trucks unwilling to resume their purpose with out some love and attention. If an island truck isn’t started over the winter or even a couple of weeks, the batteries will likely die. It might be the alternator which proves to be the problem or perhaps the engine just refuses to start for no good reason at all. My experience though, is that it is usually the batteries. Temperamental is an under statement.

To make sure the island fire truck is able to start in an emergency no matter the month or how often it has been driven there are a group of full timers who take turns driving the truck around the island for one half hour each week. It was E’s turn today. There is only one road and it’s about 5 km long. I went along for the ride.

One advantage of tagging along with E while he served his civic duty was that I was able to take some pictures of the swamp on the other side of the island.

It was cold today. Blue skies. A particularly beautiful day. The water in the swamp was like glass with the most amazing reflections of the near by cliff. If you look closely you will see

what I mean..