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 drtomorrow@shaw.com
FLOATING CYBERDEN
03 Sept 2000
The most common question people ask me is: "Why do you live on a houseboat?" Although some say boathouse, some say raft, others ask, "Is it a 747 jet?" Fishermen say it looks like a whale. I say it's everything, a peanut, a 747, a whale or a woman's back -- depending with which you are most familiar.
I have had this floating cyberden, seen here, since 1976.
For a decade I lived the bachelor's life aboard this perfect playpen. By having my well-designated living quarters upstairs on the second floor and my office occupying the entire main floor (ground floor doesn't seem right on something floating and "water floor" doesn't cut it either), I could legally write-off 80 percent of houseboat expenses, with only the balance regarded as living quarters. It was a good business decision. Everyone likes to visit my office.
It is an ideal working environment. Nature's constant movement of the tides keeps me in touch with the environment. The tides carry me four km (2.5 miles) a year without moving. Up and down four times a day. I am in the middle of the city yet remote so quiet and calm. Only in Vancouver, you say?
After 10 years I jumped into the ocean of matrimony (second dive). With two people the houseboat was cozy but with my growing work and authoring syndicated columns and best sellers and doing numerous media interviews on top of a grinding globe-girdling speaking schedule took up as much room as two other people. This is simply not enough space for all this activity. My collection of jungle artifacts and exploding computer peripherals left little room. Our "river cottage" residence is in the only wilderness area right in the heart of Vancouver. Best home ever. Both locations suit our varied lifestyles. Carol, my travel writer wife (thegypsyscribe@aol.com) has visited 120 countries and writes from our river cottage. Now the floating cyberden is 100 percent office.
The houseboat walls are a firm sandwich of Fiberglas outside and inside plus three-inches of filling of polyurethane "meat" in between. It's a firm and good insulator and the sloping walls sloughs off wind and snow. The windows are optical Plexiglas, more expensive than glass and with three times the insulating quality of ordinary window panes for heat, cold and sound. Also with five-metre (16 foot) high ceiling at one end (the half at the top of the spiral staircase makes up the "storey and a half" size of the structure) and a four metre (12-foot) high ceiling at the other end provides maximum light throughout. To see the view from my computer station, bring up my website: drtomorrow.com Then click on Palm Cam in the right-hand column to see what I see. The full "Virtual Tour" is right above the Palm Cam.
In Vancouver, heat isn't the big deal it is elsewhere in Canada (notice the two large palm trees outside aboard my boat). Used as a heat pump (take heat out of water to make ice cubes and lower the temperature in the refrigerator) the Amana fridge provides a constant source of BTU's. When it gets cooler, a small electrical heater cuts in and in February an oil painting by explorer Norman Elder of the artist and I in the Papua New Guinea jungle (at the same spot where the crocs reportedly got David Rockefeller) provides more heat. The painting is directly on an infrared panel that heats only mass -- people and things but not the air -- at one-third traditional heating costs. You can zoom in on this painting directly -- or anything else in the office -- during the Virtual Tour.
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