Two Captains Gone Aground in the USA

The Two Captains are Back in Fiji

2008-05-05T03:06:00.000-07:00

The Two Captains have flown back to Fiji. With luck I will eventually catch upon our last weeks in the States -- great last visit with the kids, some Harley riding with the Legion Riders, a successful Oakland Boat Show.

But, that's all old news now. The new stuff is happening in fiji and you can stay apprised by switching you browser Favorites to: http://www.thetwocaptains.com/blogs/fiji2007/

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March 13-23 2008 – Road Trip – Part Three – North Carolina

2008-03-24T07:13:00.000-07:00

The last destination of our road trip to the mountains was Western North Carolina. Our intent was to camp in one or two state parks in the mountains and ride more mountain roadways before making our way to my sister's home in Hendersonville for the Easter weekend with family. This plan was stumped when it turned out that western North Carolina doesn't have many state parks for RV camping and what parks they do have don't open until April 1! On top of that the weather turned cold and drear (apparently why the parks aren't yet open!), so we ended up making my sister's lovely home our home base for the week.

Once again, the management of Champion Hills found us an undeveloped cul-de-sac to stash the RV during our stay. Each time we have done this (this being the third time in three years), it has been a different cul-de-sac, but we speculate that this will be our last time to enjoy this very considerate courtesy since the development is almost fully built. In view of that future, Don and I spent one of our rainy days in the truck scouting out regular RV parks in the vicinity. None measure up to the beauty of a state park, but at least we have located a few convenient options, and at least they are open year round .

Our rolling home may be snug, but it is hard to match a cushy couch, a flickering fireplace, and a good book when the weather gets inclement. We'd hardly settled in when my brother-in-law Bob passed on a must-read book called Three Cups of Tea: One's Man Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time by Greg Mortensen & David Oliver Relin. Talk about a three-way culture shock. In the mountains of North Carolina, I put down Paul Theroux's Pacific island travelogue The Happy Isles of Oceania; Paddling the Pacific, and found myself transported to and immersed in a saga of cultural bridge-building in Pakistan. This true account of Greg Mortensen's ongoing life work kept me spell-bound for several days, and Don is currently in its grip. Anyone who needs an antidote to our current administration's warmongering should read this book NOW.

Monday morning finally brought a sunny, if chilly, morning. The temps were forecast to climb eventually into the sixties, so Don and I layered back up and got the Harley out of the garage where we'd stashed it during all the rain. We rode west over the mountain to Brevard and from there up into the Pisgah State Forest, winding our way up steep switchbacks to the famous Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Blue Ridge Parkway runs a total of 496 miles from the Great Smokey Mountains National Park in North Carolina to the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. When I was a child in the '50s, my parents used to drive this road south from Washington, DC to drop me off at summer camp in Brevard while they escaped the summer heat at a painting camp called Seecelo in Burnsville. Much of the Blue Ridge roadway runs along the spine of this Appalachian mountain chain affording unparalleled vistas on either side. Like the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi, the Blue Ridge is, at least where we rode, mostly a two-lane, limited-speed roadway designed for sight-seeing. Despite breath-catching drop-offs, guardrails were few and far between, which loosed the butterflies in MY stomach, while for Don, wearing sunglasses and a smoked visor, it was the intermittent tunnels that were unsettling. Fortunately, the road's twists and turns were augmented by many pull-offs for scenic overlooks.

We came down from the Parkway just this side of Asheville, and after a warming lunch in a roadside diner, made another long loop on Rte 176 to Saluda and Tryon, picturesque mountain areas to the south and east of Hendersonville along the South Carolina Border. Unfortunately, the morning's weather did not hold and the afternoon temperatures began to drop again long before reaching even the mid-fifties. Under increasingly gray skies, we grew too chilled to enjoy ourselves, and we cut back onto the Interstate the better to scurry back to the fireplace.

Somewhere along the way, Don had discovered that the coach had a leak in the left rear dual axle seal. While I'd been wandering around in the mountains and villages of Baltistan (in the book), Don had been glued to the phone not just ordering the last of the boat parts we need to take back to Fiji, but also tracking down a service center that would honor our extended warranty on the RV. The appointment he made for us at Tom Johnson Camping Center in Marion, NC, even though it was about a two hour drive away, couldn't have been better timed as the weather turned crappy again. Wouldn't want to waste any fine weather on a service run!

Lying east of Asheville, Marion turned out to be nestled in more gorgeous country near Black Mountain. The service center, which we kind of thought might be some hick camper dealer, turned out to be a beautifully conceived high-end dealer with five lines of motorhomes, a slew of campers and pop-ups, and a rally campground equipped to handle about 350! The trim repair facility alone had 35 service bays plus its own 66 camping spots plus a nice lounge with snack bar, fireplace and Wifi! Wow! We spent Tuesday night there in order to make our 8am appointment, and then amused ourselves while the tech guys diagnosed our problems looking at new RVs…always a diverting pastime. When parts had to be ordered, we left the motorhome behind until Friday and drove back to Hendersonville in the truck.

Thursday finally brought gorgeous weather, and we hopped on the bike keen to get another ride in. This time we explored south from Brevard over Rte 178 to Rte 11 in South Carolina. It seems steep and twisty Rte 178 is a popular ride with the local crotch-rockets, especially on the South Carolina down-slope. Made us feel very sedate as these guys in their jumpsuits caromed past us on the tight turns, especially since we'd seen so few other motorcyclists the whole month! Seems these guys just ride up and down the mountain like a ski slope! It's also popular with the serious cyclists, and we passed several ambitious pairs doing what we do on their own pedal power. My nephew John and his wife Gay are part of this peculiar breed, and though we respect them, we can't even imagine doing it ourselves! At the base of the mountain we buzzed off east on Rte 11 and then climbed back over the mountain on Rte 276, a twin to 178, with more bikers of all ilk as well as hikers on several State park trails, everyone out enjoying the beautiful day. It was a grand ride through terrain we will have to give a serious second look on our next visit!

Friday morning we were up early to make the round trip to Marion to pick up the coach and still have enough time for another ride before my nephew Gregg and his daughter Jackie arrived from New England in the late afternoon. Their arrival inaugurated the beginning of a packed family weekend. It had been three years since we'd last seen Gregg or Jackie, and, while Gregg is as handsome as ever, Jackie has grown into a tall swan of an eleven-year old! My other nephew John and his family, with whom we spent last Thanksgiving, arrived by car on Saturday. Speaking of bikes, John and Gay had their light-weight wonders in the back of their Honda Odyssey, and they took off on the very same 25-mile circuit we'd squeezed in before Gregg's arrival Friday. They did it in two hours.

As family weekends are wont to have, there was plenty of fine eating, music (Tom and Karen on the piano, Karen on her flute, and Tom and Greg on their guitars), walking and loving on Cecily's Shih Tzu Tikka (both girls are dog lovers), and rides on the Harley! Cecily herself kicked this off by swapping shoes and jackets with me after we'd followed the others out to lunch, and the line-up after that never stopped. The girls were both pretty cute enveloped in my leather jacket and helmet on the back behind Don. They both dubbed it "awesome," and the rides definitely coaxed some smiles out of oh-so-cool Tom.

The weekend wrapped up with a huge Easter Buffet at the Hendersonville Country Club. Sometimes having to get dressed up can take the fun out of these events, but there is something about taking off the winter duds and donning an Easter outfit that everybody is willing to do. It was a mighty fine looking table of ten over which Bob presided, and he observed to Cecily at the far end that he could never have imagined such a moment during his days at the Coast Guard Academy fifty-some years ago!

We are currently southbound on I95 heading for home in Crystal River, and while we will both admit to being ready for a little "spring break" Florida warmth, I don't think anyone can know how much we enjoyed this road trip in the mountains: the great Harley riding, the solitary camping, the time with friends and family. Thanks to all of you who made it possible.

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March 9-13 2008 – Road Trip – Part Two – North Georgia Mountains

2008-03-16T10:02:00.000-07:00

In our Harley Road Atlas, the page on Georgia’s northern mountains is strewn with symbols for scenic motorcycle rides. And by God, they aren’t kidding! We spent a glorious week tackling those rides from two different bases: Unicoi State park, just north of Helen and the driveway of our friends’ new home in Toccoa.

We had been to the area once before, back in March 2005, as part of our drive to Florida from California and Phoenix right after buying the RV. Back then our friends, Bob and Kathy of sv Briana, had been looking for property in Toccoa where Bob had spent most of his medical career. They had taken us on a tour to Helen, a touristy town that has imported a Bavarian alpine motif. We had also picked up a brochure on ownership RV parks in the area from the Tampa RV show that had piqued our curiosity. Things are frequently not what they seem.

But sometimes they are even better. When none of the ownership RV parks were available for nightly rentals, we went instead to the Unicoi State Park. What an elegant set up! Tucked into the folds of the mountains, the park has several forested camping areas and a nice hotel. Again we had the campground almost to ourselves, and we spent every evening around a roaring campfire with hot chocolate as well as other warming libations.

But it was the rides that were grand. The first afternoon we unloaded the bike, bundled up and made our first circuit, up, up, up a winding road alongside horse farms and high mountain lakes with quaint boat houses, to Rte 76, an east-west highway linking the towns on the top of the ridge. The sky was crisp blue and the sun bright. As the afternoon waned quicker than we thought, we cut our loop in half and came down, down, down the tight serpentine curves of Rte 75. This is as far from Florida riding as you can possibly imagine. Don was definitely working overtime, shifting and leaning right, then left, then immediately right and so on. It was a jump from novice to advanced, and he did a great job! It was everything we’d imagined mountain riding to be: beautiful, challenging, rewarding.

And cold!

Our second day we went the other way to catch the second half of the main loop. The highlight would have to be a stop at the Walasi-Yi Interpretive Center, perched in Neels Gap where the Appalachian Trail crosses US19/129 high on Blood Mountain. The stone building was built by the CCC in the 1930s and operated as an inn until the 60s. Its future was uncertain until it was leased from the state and turned into Mountain Crossings, a store and hostel for hikers passing through. The view is stupendous, but as we enjoyed our hot chocolate on the stone terrace, we felt a bit silly in our layers and leathers as the hikers passed us in shorts.

Also on this route we found ourselves passing several of the RV parks named in the brochure. We stopped twice before we blew it off. Not a one came close to our imagining, nor to our home base at Nature Coast Landings. And frankly, this kind of RV park wouldn’t be what we’d want in these parts anyway.

What we would want would be something almost exactly like what our friends Bob and Kathy have built for themselves on 4.5 acres of woods in Toccoa. Part of the rules for this trip was not planning further ahead than a day or two, so it was simply our great good luck that when we called them they had just arrived back from the boat in Thailand. We moved to their driveway on a cold and drizzly day, and spent the afternoon around their roaring fireplace getting our cruising enthusiasm pepped up by all the tales of their adventures in Australia and Indonesia. Then, when the weather cleared again, we rode more mountain loops from their place up into Highlands and Cashiers, NC, a highlight of which for me was the warming new age lunch we stumbled over at the Wild Thyme Bakery and Café in Cashiers. (The new owner may be changing the name, though!)

I can’t tell you how much we appreciated the hospitality of parking in Bob and Kathy’s beautiful woods-shrouded driveway and then sharing breakfasts, dinners and nightly fires in their inspiring new home. Sure, just when we have ourselves persuaded that the full-time gypsy life really suits us, they have to go and throw at us such a perfect counter argument. The only negative we could see about it is that our kids are a long way away.

March 6-8 2008 – Road Trip – Part Two – Atlanta & Lake Allatoona

2008-03-13T08:08:00.000-07:00

Looking at the map, I determined that Rte 278E looked like a good and attractive way to cross Alabama to the Atlanta area, and the choice was corroborated by the host of the Allegro Park in Red Bay. Our two GPS nav systems, however, wanted nothing to do with it. Both – the Streets & Trips program on the computer and the Garmin Nuvi -- wanted to route us out of our way north or south to a proper Interstate. We ignored both ladies (to their mutual frustration) and took 278, which proved to be a fine divided highway most of the way.

We came into Georgia northwest of Atlanta in the Cartersville area in order to camp in the only Army Corps of Engineers campground (of nine) open on Lake Allatoona. McKinney Campground is on the eastern shore of the Lake, just south of Red Top Mountain State Park. It has several sections, and though not all sections are open all year round, they had just opened the whole park up before our arrival. This was not in response to any evident demand, as, having walked the whole 155-site park, we counted fewer than ten other campers in the place. The lady that checked us in gave us what she said was the most sought after spot in the park which turned out to be a site all alone, 100' feet or so out on a peninsula with a 30-40' drop to the water on all sides. Even with the lake's water level down some ten feet thanks the region's severe drought, it was a spectacular spot with a helluva sunset view.

Not that any spot in this park wouldn't be special. By far the majority of the park's campsites are arranged along the water to maximize both privacy and view. Fortunately, the evening we arrived was still balmy enough to sit outside in shorts with cocktails. It was a gorgeous sunset, although the moment the sun got low, the temperature began to drop fast. Fortunately, this close to Atlanta, we had great TV reception for LOST on the batwing antenna. We slept well and woke with all out window shades open to the view.

Unfortunately, Saturday dawned gray and chill. Just as we had with our arrival in Red Bay, we had a forecast of another nasty weather front approaching, this time with strong winds and possible snow! The night's heavy rain had filled the bed of the truck, parked nose down on the slope, with about three inches of water. Given the forecast, we had left the Harley loaded, so to dump the water we took the truck and Harley for a spin up to Cartersville Harley dealer to get Don some heavier riding gloves.

In the evening we'd invited our friend Adam Royse, who sailed with us on several legs in the Caribbean and who now lives in Atlanta to join us for dinner in time for the sunset view. Batching it for the weekend while his bride made a 10K race in St. Augustine, Adam was game for the adventure, but got sufficiently lost in trying to find McKinney park (only 15 minutes from his house!) that he practically missed daylight altogether. It was little matter because Don has grilled in the dark before! At about 8:45pm headlights blazed in the windows and a knock on the door followed. It was the park host come to advise us that there were tornado warnings! Yikes. We were in a hellluva spot for a tornado. We turned on the local TV station for an update, and were relieved to find the tornado warning expired. Fortunately, we left Adam's car outside the park gates which close at 9pm because the three captains ended up eating, drinking and reminiscing until midnight! When Don drove Adam back to his car there was a herd of five deer grazing alongside the road who were nonplussed by his going or his coming back!

By God it got cold that night, and sure enough when we peeked out from under our down comforter in the morning there were bits of white stuff flying in the wind. It was also an hour later thanks to what feels like a somewhat premature daylight savings switch. We did NOT walk. Instead we tried to stay warm until it was late enough to drive to Adam's house for lunch.

Last we saw Adam on the pages of this website, he and his father were running a sailing school/charter/boat sales business in St. Augustine, FL. With the wisdom of recent marriage upon him, Adam was casting about for something more economically secure than the marine biz, and in the course of climbing the rungs of pilot's licenses, stumbled into a fabulous job opportunity – claims adjuster for a national aviation underwriter. This brought the move to Atlanta. With hindsight, it was a timely opportunity to sell off their tiny Florida house before the subsequent collapse of the Florida real estate market. Their new house is a pleasant two-story home with a charmingly wooded and private back yard. We are sorry we missed seeing Ilinke, but we met the two Yorkie puppies Marmot and Potcake, and Adam fixed us a mighty nice lunch.

On the way back to the campground, we hit no fewer than six big stores – from Target to Lowe's – hoping to buy a ceramic heater to bring some extra heat into the coach, especially at the front where I sit and work on the computer. I had just seen stacks of these things in Florida, but evidently Atlanta retailers had their eye on spring. Finally, in our second Walmart I ignored the head-shakes of the salesclerks, and canvassed the likely department, and scored! The rest of the afternoon and following night we gave that little sucker quite the workout.

Sunday morning dawned substantially warmer again. We had thought we might try a stop at one of the camps on Lake Lanier for some motorcycle riding there, but a check by phone revealed none of those campgrounds were open until next month. Instead, we hooked up and headed out bound for the mountains of North Georgia

March 1-5 2008 – Road Trip – Part One

2008-03-11T02:32:00.000-07:00

Life can be grand! But it can take a bit of doing.

Don survived his training in loading the motorcycle into the truck. It was not quite the piece of cake his mentor made it out to be, but neither was it quite the terrifying endeavor that Don had feared. The system uses three folding ramps, laid onto the tailgate, with a ratchet to the hitch securing the ramp against the truck. In the bed of the truck is a big plywood board with a wheel chock at the front for the front wheel of the bike and an aluminum channel at the back for the rear wheel. The objective is to ride the motorcycle up the ramp into the chock in the truck bed and then secure the bike with ratcheted straps to the four corners of the truck bed. Coming out is a little more problematic as Harleys don't have reverse, so the rider must back the bike down using the clutch to brake it since rolling backwards at speed on a motorcycle is NOT GOOD!

Anyway, after experimenting with several loading and unloading sites, Don was much more confident that the procedure would work for us, and Saturday afternoon, with great gratitude to our neighbor Mike for the loan of all the gear, we loaded the Harley in the truck for real for our departure Sunday morning.

Sunday was a gorgeous day. Highway 19 Northbound was all but empty of traffic so even I took a turn at the wheel…(only my second time driving the coach at speed, and I must say it went MUCH better than the hair-raising first experience on the I75 last year!) We followed pretty much the same route to start that we took a year and a half ago up to Indiana, up 19 to I10 to 231 through Dothan and stopping overnight at the same little campground in Ozark. The next morning we finally charted some new territory when in Birmingham we bore off to the NW on Interstate so new that neither Microsoft Streets & Trips nor our Garmin Nuvi knew anything about it. This was very frustrating to both ladies as from their point of view we had set off overland!

Just past Hamilton, Alabama, darn near to the Mississippi border, we turned north on a small county road leading to the town of Red Bay. The weather, which had started out as gorgeous as the previous day, had begun clouding up from Birmingham on. Forecasters had been warning of a strong storm front due to sweep across the south since before we'd left Florida, with much talk of thunderstorms and tornadoes. We were very keen to get parked at Red Bay as soon as possible.

Home of Tiffin

Why Red Bay, Alabama? Well, Red Bay is the home base of Tiffin Motor Homes. This company, started in 1972 by Bob Tiffin, is essentially a family owned and operated business which is renowned for its personal customer service and for building a coach that gives more than typical value for the dollar. They currently manufacture two gas coaches – the Allegro and the Allegro Bay – and three diesel coaches – the Phaeton, the Allegro Bus and the Zephyr. The Phaeton in particular is a helluva a coach. There have probably been a dozen of them in our park this year, and every owner speaks happily of the coach and Tiffin's service. One of our neighbors told us about the Tiffin factory tour and how great an experience it was, so for no better reason than it gave us a destination to shoot for, we made Red Bay our first major stop. It didn't hurt that just over the border in Mississippi ran the Natchez Trace Parkway, an historic National Park I've long had an itch to see that just happens also to be a "featured" Harley motorcycle route.

We reached Tiffin's Allegro Park with twenty minutes to spare for the afternoon plant tour, so we dropped the coach with two other SOBs ("some other brands"). Three other couples were assembled for the tour. Our tour guide was 81-year-old Floyd "Red" Davis, who qualified himself repeatedly as "never having worked a day in the plant himself"! That may be, but he was very knowledgeable. Red was very soft-spoken, but that was no matter as Tiffin provides receivers and headset as you might find in a fine museum. He led us up and down the gas and diesel production lines which snake side by side through the main plant, starting with bare chassis and ending – 27 days later -- with finished coaches. Several major steps – like welding, wiring and painting – take place in other buildings, some, like the paint, as much as 15 minutes away, so you quite often see unpainted coaches on the roads around Red Bay. They also pre-fabricate things like cabinetry and shower stalls and window dressings off the line and bring in the pieces as needed. Tiffin does not build a coach until it is sold, so the two assembly lines have different sizes and models all mixed in sequence. Whoever is in charge of stocking the line is a person to be respected.

We have looked at Tiffins at RV shows, and honestly never quite been sold on one. They have stuck with what I think of as a traditional layout with a pass-through bath where the toilet cubicle is on one side and the shower and sink on the other, although it turns out (reading the history) that Tiffin actually pioneered that plan. However they have just introduced a computer/dinette option which incorporates a laptop and printer station in the buffet cabinet alongside the dining table. Hard to describe, it is an ingenious improvement, providing practical space for computer work without taking any other furniture out. (Typically RV manufacturers have offered a computer desk that replaces a couch!) We had to work hard to find a unit with this new option, but Tiffin not only lets you come back and wander through the plant, but you can go into any of the finished coaches you can catch. I say "catch, because they move them out very fast. Currently Tiffin completes 13 motorhomes a day!

Anyway, we came out of our Tiffin experience with a good idea that a 40' Phaeton with the "QTH" layout with a computer/dinette would suit us just fine…..when we win the lottery.

We stayed in the Allegro

Riding the Natchez Trace Parkway

Park three nights. The nasty weather moved through without any tornadoes nearby, nor even much in the way of thunderstorms. After the big buildup, it was a huge relief. However, behind the front did come a mass of very cold air. It was not looking good for the second objective of our stopover here. On Tuesday afternoon, Don and I drove the truck (with the Harley still in the back) through the chill drizzle over to the Natchez Trace and drove a short section of it, just so we could say we'd seen it. Although I was surprised that the parkway was only two lanes (one in each direction), it was as beautiful as I thought it might be. We also took the opportunity to get a look at the huge lock at the bottom of Bay Springs Lake and the head of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, an important canal connection in the 485-mile-long Tombigbee Waterway, one of America's popular inland cruising routes.

The Natchez Trace – stretching from Natchez, Mississippi (on the Mississippi river down near the Gulf) to Nashville, Tennessee --was originally a footpath used by the many Indian tribes of the region. When the white man came, they turned it into a trade route, building inns along the way. The parkway, running alongside the old Trace pathway, was begun in the 1930s. . I first learned about the Parkway from the novels of Nevada Barr, who is/was actually a park ranger on the Trace. The Park provides a great map of the roadway with dozens of historical sites, self-guided hikes, overlooks and picnic spots annotated along the entire route.

Luckily for us, Wednesday dawned bright and clear, so despite the brisk temperatures we unloaded the motorcycle and, bundled up, went for a ride that lasted the whole day. First we went south to Tupelo, stopping at the Pharr Indian Burial Mounds along the way. In Tupelo we took a ranger's recommendation and stopped for salads at a Sweet Chili's restaurant. Afterwards we headed north on the east side of the Tombigbee on a delightful back road we found while hunting up the Army Corp of Engineers park there. Back at the Lock, we got back on the Trace and rode it north back into Alabama almost to Tennessee, before finding our way back to Red Bay via the GPS .

This day was everything we'd imagined traveling with the Harley the might be. Seeing the countryside from a motorcycle is hard to match. The crisp blue sky backing the towering pines and bare hickories as you take the curves and the hills as a unit lifts the soul! Florida riding is fun (and warmer!), but this new terrain was exhilarating! My only regret of the day was looking back over the map and realizing that my mother's birthplace in Aberdeen was only about twenty-five miles beyond Tupelo!

February 2008 – The Pace Picks Up/Miami Boat Show

2008-02-28T01:44:00.000-08:00

You might think that with the Indianapolis Colts out of the picture Super Bowl Sunday would have been a non-event for us, but in fact, since we have a long-standing rivalry with my sister and brother-in-law who are Patriots fans and since our son-in-law and grandson are Giants fans, there was plenty of suspense to the occasion. Transient neighbors across the way invited us to quite the party with their local friends, centered, thanks to nice weather, on the outside TV station of their high-end Beaver coach.

Several days later, Lou and Robbie Kestner, friends of Don's from his Indy work era, rolled in in their Fleetwood diesel and parked across the street for a several-day visit. During their stay we had a couple of evening bonfires, two big lunches at our latest restaurant find (a hangout called The Freezer in Old Homosassa where you can buy seasoned peel-and-eat shrimp by the pound box and pitchers of excellent beer for $7), plus a Mardi Gras party and potluck with an Elvis impersonator up at the clubhouse.

At the end of that week we had a surprise visit from Art and Joan Schuck, currently of sv OK Fine, but formerly of That's It and the charter biz in St. Thomas. Art and Joan have kept up with us by email newsletter over the years, so it was amazing to realize it had been a full ten years since we'd last seen them. Incredibly, they didn't look a day different, which I am quite sure no one would say about us! Art and Joan, who lost That's It in Hurricane Katrina in Biloxi, are also doing the part-time thing these days with a mobile home in Alabama's Gulf Shores and the boat in Central America.

That Sunday Don and I hitched up the new truck and set off on our first real road trip with it south to Ft. Meyers for a two-day visit with Don's folks, followed by our annual week in Downtown Miami for the boat show.

Miami Boat Show

As we did last year, we spent Tuesday night in the rest area at the east end of Alligator Alley before staging a dawn arrival at our parking lot on Biscayne Boulevard and 2nd St. in downtown Miami. Also like last year, we'd committedto pick up my boss Steve at the Ft. Lauderdale airport at noon. Unlike last year, the weather Wednesday was horrid, line after line of black storm clouds bringing thunder, lightning and torrential downpours. I was very uptight driving the new truck in I95 traffic in those conditions, but drive I had to, since Don was tied up elsewhere and since we'd need every spare inch of the truck's quad cab to squeeze in all the bags Steve brings for the booth. Fine time for the truck bed to look like a jacuzzi !

Despite all the heavy rain, the Sail America Team got the show started on schedule the next day again with perfectly beautiful weather. This year not only was I working the show with SeaTech, but Don was manning his own booth in the Strictly Sail section (conveniently just two booths from ours) for Spectra Watermakers and the local dealer Murray Marine. In the past Spectra and Dick Murray have only had the one booth in the big convention center, which is where Don worked for Dick last year. We were all pretty worried how the current economic climate would affect the show, and Don felt himself particularly on the line. Fortunately, although the crowd actually seemed pretty good, maybe even more qualified than normal for Miami ,(i.e. real potential buyers), most vendors, including SeaTech grumbled about slower sales. Don, however, did very well, and Spectra, Dick Murray and we were quite pleased.

Boat shows are never only about the show. There's the social stuff with old friends, the parties, and the dinners out with "the bosses". Steve of SeaTech took us to dinner twice at our favorite Bayside eatery, the Argentinean buffet grill – The Knife, plus we dined twice as Spectra's guests in Miami Beach. Kathy Parson's and I did our Women and Cruising Seminar again on Saturday, to a great response, even without our third cohort Pam Wall who was in Portugal with her husband rebuilding their boat engine. And, of course the Latitudes & Attitudes gang (my other bosses) threw their usual blast of a party on Saturday night.

By the end of the show on Monday night, our legs ached, and Don was coming down with a cold. To beat the muggy weather and drown out the traffic noise, we had taken to running our generator and air conditioning during the nights. Imagine our chagrin when our generator stopped of its own accord at midnight, suggesting a fuel tank down to ¼! Worse, when Don went to start the engine at 4am for our departure, the gauge read dead empty! Yikes! How could it be? Don lowered the jacks. No change. We were calculating the cost of fuel at the downtown station a few blocks north and whether it would be open yet not to mention whether we could get to it, when the needle finally deigned to rise. By the time we pulled onto the road it was up to half again. We made it to a more reasonable suburban station before we had to actually "fillerup", a very painful thing to do with an RV in this day and age. But by golly, we hadn't gone more than a few miles to our staging spot in Ft. Lauderdale when the needle was pegged on empty again. It seems our gauge is broken! Fortunately we know we can easily go 400-500 miles on half to two-thirds of a tank, so we will use the odometer until we can get it fixed….probably sometime next year!

We exited Miami this year much as we did last year, escaping the parking lot with the RV at 4am and then, in the parking lot behind Lester's Diner in Ft. Lauderdale, awaiting Steve, who followed in the truck with all the booth luggage later in the morning. After dropping Steve at the airport, we headed for Crystal River, stopping only for a cookie break in Ft. Meyers with the folks, which unfortunately put us in Tampa at rush hour. We got home to Crystal River at 8pm – which made it a helluva long day for the driver! How he did it with his cold is beyond me!

Pet Sitting in Clearwater

We had only one-day of R&R before we were back on the road for Clearwater. This time we left the RV behind, because the objective was to house and pet sit for the kids and Cindy while they all went off to Ft. Lauderdale themselves for the wedding of Tiffany's Indianapolis friend Kristin. It just a shame they didn't need us to babysit at the same time (an occasion we kook forward to with anxious anticipation), but Kai, as ring bearer, had an important role in the wedding party

It was a peculiar situation. We lived during the day at the kids' house – strangely silent devoid of Kai's animating energy – doing our cooking, our showering, our laundering, our computering, and, yes our TV watching on the big HD cable TV, but we slept over at Cindy's in her guest bed with Stoney the cockatiel yodeling at bedtime and two ancient dogs -- Tiffer's Yorkie Tyson and Cindy's Pekinese Bridget -- snuffling at beside in the mornings. At least we didn't have to actually walk the dogs. All we had to do was get them outside a half dozen times a day, which occasionally involved carrying them out! There was also the cat Stella, whose only interest in us was at meal time, and two turtles – one large and one small. Quite the menagerie.

It did afford us the chance to socialize with some St. Pete area friends. On Friday night we met up with Lee and Jan of sv La Boheme who rode aboard Tackless II for our ignominious last place arrival in the Musket Cove Pirate Race last September and whose boat is also at Vuda Boat Yard in Fiji. Lee and Jan have an utterly gorgeous condo on the ninth floor of a high rise overlooking the St. Pete Yacht Club. They had gutted and redone the space (officially a three bedroom corner apartment connected to a one bedroom unit next door) to create one of the most gracious homes I have seen in a long time. We enjoyed wine while the sun set and heard about Jan's campaign to thwart the city and governor's intent to built a new waterfront stadium in front of them. Afterward we had a nice Italian dinner at a sidewalk pasta place on Central Ave.

Saturday evening we again returned to St. Pete for a home-cooked dinner at our friend Dee's condo at which we were celebrating her happy new job. Don, Bill Church (who was also on hand), and Dee were all friends during Don's early days with Tackless II, and Dee has more disaster stories to tell about T2 than I do. Well, if not more, then maybe more dramatic! Dee was on hand for Don's first (and only) serious grounding when a squall caused them to drag anchor onto a shoal bank and an outgoing tide left the boat laid over on her side! If I remember the story correctly, that was a first date! Then there was the rough weather on Don's maiden open-water passage to the Dry Tortugas. And let's not forget Dee's visit to St. Thomas during which T2's prop shaft fell out in the middle of Drake's Passage. To Dee's credit, the point of resurrecting the story was to reflect on how in command she thought Don remained as he calmly asked to come below and put her hand over the hole in through which a copious amount of water was rushing! A good evening was had by all.

Sunday morning, while I stayed home to work on my column, Don went back down to St. Pete again, this time to help Bill with a few two-person boat projects on his Endeavor 37 Geodesic, like installing his new Stackpac mainsail cover and lazy-jack system. Don was back by the time the wedding guests made it home mid-afternoon. On our side, the animals were all alive and accounted for and cleaned up after (although Tyson managed to leave a puddle at the last minute barely five minutes after we'd had him out), while on the travelers' side it was clear that some people had had way too good a time and way too little sleep. So exercising the great discretion of parents everywhere, we took them to a balanced meal out, loaded up our car and got ourselves out of there!

Now we are back in Crystal River where I now have the cold Don kindly shared with me, and we have a list a mile long of things to get done before our road trip …with less than a week to do it. This trip north may be a bit premature as the forecasters are calling for a four-hour freeze here tonight! And it may be a moot point because Don has yet to survive his lessons in loading the motorcycle into the truck…to which we are selling tickets tomorrow morning!!! I'll let you know how it comes out!

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January 14-30, 2008 – At Home

2008-02-27T06:45:00.000-08:00

After the holidays and the cruise, our lives finally slowed down to something closer to the laid-back retirement life advertised for Florida RVers. Units came and went in the rental spots around us, neighbors kibitzed about gardening ideas, we started making some of the park social events, we caught dinners-out and movies with friends, and I settled into a regular yoga class in town with some new lady friends here in the park.

The weather this year in Crystal River has been colder and wetter than we remember it, forcing us to repeatedly drape the lot in white sheets to protect new planting. It has also curtailed our Harley riding a bit. The cold is not so much an issue, but the wetness is! Still it's hard to complain about the rain when the area so clearly needs it.

Perhaps it is because retired folks don't have enough to occupy themselves, but it seems like the bug to acquire something new is making the rounds of the park, despite the economy. Our biking buddies Chuck and Sandy from Vermont exchanged their Newmar coach for a Holiday Rambler fifth wheel exemplifying a trend to staying put. In fact, every unit I can see from where I sit this morning is a fifth wheel. Because they are not self-propelled, fifth wheels are less expensive per unit than motorhomes with more flexible interior layouts. Of course, if you actually want to move them, then you have to add in a costly diesel truck.

Other neighbors have bought houses. Our next-door neighbors Dale and Shawn, motivated by some health issues, surprised everyone by buying a new home back up in Missouri and putting their lot here up for sale. My gardening mentor Tom and his wife Mari stunned us the other day with the news of their new purchase of a house in the big Sugarmill Woods development in Homossassa. Thanks to the abrupt popping of Florida's real estate balloon, there seems to be a sense of opportunity among the people already here, despite the headlines about Florida's high taxes and crushing insurance costs.

We have not been totally immune. We continue to give real estate a thought. But we have no idea of what or where. When every line of thought we follow ends up with us fixed in one spot, we panic. For us, a more likely change may be upgrading the RV. We have owned ours now three years. The warranty is out, and worse, our manufacturer – National RV – recently went out of business! A bigger diesel RV would give us more living space and storage, plus a beefier machine to handle adding the motorcycle to our entourage when traveling. Plus, it would also automatically take care of upgrading our TV to a bigger HD unit! (You laugh, but I suspect the HD flat-screens have driven more recent trade-ins than any other factor!)

January, of course, is the time of the big Tampa RV show. We spent a day there and saw some very interesting units, but came away having spent on nothing more than a couple of burgers and a sign for the yard with our names on it (which says "If we're not here, were sailing." )

Although the fantasies continue, we have actually gone another way to solve the entourage issue. We have bought a truck, a 2005 Dodge Dakota Quad Cab 4x4. The Quad cab (four-doors) means not only will we have an enclosed vehicle for ourselves, but we can take passengers and stuff in a full-sized back seat; and the 4x4 (4-wheel drive) means we can tow the automatic truck four wheels down. The idea is the motorcycle will load into the bed of the truck (with the tailgate down), and we will then tow the truck behind the coach. Several of our neighbors with motorcycles have chosen this exact setup, so we benefited from their research and experience.

The search for a pre-owned truck took up a great deal of the month. Apparently, this is a popular model, and we found very few available on Car-Max, Ebay or in the classifieds. It seemed like all the trucks we were finding were fire-engine red or white. What we really wanted was a dark grey or khaki. We ended up buying 2005-midnight blue truck from the Dodge dealer in Ocala. It is a surprisingly handsome color with a very nice interior, and although it doesn't match the coach, at least it doesn't clash. I guess our next coach will have to have some blue in it!

After buying the truck, it then had to be fitted with a tow bar and a brake assist system. Our old car – the 1999 Saturn wagon we fondly call "the go-kart" – was so light it wasn't required. We chose the SMI Active Brake system which responds to an electronic signal from the coach as well as an independent surge brake. I must say on our test drives with the new set up that the brake system is very comforting on those quick stops!

Everything about driving the new truck is nice except for its gas consumption, which is mid-range (18-22mpg). Ecologically speaking, we always felt like the Saturn's 30 mpg helped balance out the coach's horrid 8 mpg, We considered keeping the Saturn as a second car, and would have for sure if we were stateside full time, but it made no sense for us to pay for two tags and two insurances. That's on top of the coach and motorcycle! As good fortune would have it, the kids had a neighbor inquire about buying their old gas-guzzling Ford Explorer right at the same time, so instead of trading the Saturn in, we sold it to the kids for what they got for the Explorer.

Our motivation for all this effort is a road trip we have conceived for the month of March. After all, we didn't buy the coach just to sit in a park! Although we are content with this area for what it is, we're not ready to settle down. Since the time of year we are able to be back in the US precludes our dream trips out west, our plan is to take the "entourage" to the hills and mountains of northern Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina and explore the areas by motorcycle from our RV base.

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January 3-14, 2008 – Cruisin’ by Cruise Ship

2008-01-21T07:46:00.001-08:00

It was sometime back in October-November -- shortly after the several great grandparenting outings we had after our return from Fiji yet well before the holiday season was more than a glimmer on our social horizon -- when we got seduced into a booking a cruise. Tiffany was very gung ho about her association with YTB Travel and the money-making potential of her YTB Travel Website, so when an opportunity to book a short 4-day cruise to Cozumel at a big savings came up, we were easily persuaded that it would not only be a great family outing, but a sensible broadening of Tiffany's experience – cruises being the most lucrative travel to book.

By the time January rolled around – after a long holiday season, taxing both physically and financially -- we were somewhat less enthusiastic. Plus, we were booked on a Carnival Cruise. Carnival's slogan is "the Fun Ships", and while they have a reputation as good for families with kids, they also have a bit of a reputation as the cheap cruise line. So, as we headed south to Tampa to board our first every cruise, suffice it to say that our expectations for our "great deal" and slid hand in hand with our enthusiasm.

That said…we had a ball! From start to finish we can't say enough about the smooth organization of the operation out of the Port of Tampa or of the friendly international crew aboard the Carnival Inspiration. It may be that all cruise operations are this efficient. They would pretty much have to be, I suppose. Our cabin was far nicer than I imagined: a king-sized bed (with incredibly comfortable bedding!), in an attractive cheery room with a vanity/desk, TV, plenty of closet and drawer space, and very a nice bath and shower unit. As far as we could tell, even being down on the bottom deck back towards the stern was no compromise. In fact, we kind of enjoyed "doing watch' out our window the first and last nights as the pilot boat powered alongside.

Being neophytes in this sort of thing, we had a lot to learn about cruise-ship cruising. As the ship left port we wandered all the outside decks, checking out the pool and hot tubs (smaller than we'd imagined), the walking track and putt-putt course (with a driving cage for golf lessons with the pro) on the top deck forward, and the huge waterslides and park on the aft deck. Aft of the pool deck was a dance stage with a terrific calypso band (reggae by any other name) playing tunes that had us all grooving while lubricated by several of the departure cocktail specials. Tampa's skyline at sunset made for fine vistas, and Don and I were on the forward top observation deck as the ship drove under the Sunshine Skyway after dusk. Of course, all that exploring, dancing and back-seat driving caused us to miss our early dinner seating (hell, we'd only just had lunch!). It seemed like no loss as there were bountiful options available at the cafeteria style-Brasserie Restaurant. However, after catching dinner the next night, with gourmet menus and the attentive service (we had our own table!), we were sorry we'd missed even one meal in the Carnivale dining room!

Inside the ship were even more entertainment options. There were several bars, most with live music of some kind or another, a sushi bar, a coffee and pastry bar, a disco, a teen-only disco, a jazz nook, and of course the large lounge/theater for special Vegas-type extravaganzas. There was a library and a busy Casino we never set foot in. Likewise there was a Camp Carnival for little kids in which we registered Kai but of which never made use, plus a spa and a gym equally ignored. There was a game room in which Kai and Derek spent a lot of time (surpassed only by the putt-putt course and water park), and the peaceful Serenity Deck mid way up the stern that attracted Tiffany, Don and me. A major activity on board is the taking of portraits, not only at events, but against maybe a dozen prepared backdrops! All these photos are magically printed up and displayed for purchase, although with no obligation to buy, by far the majority are wasted. We only bought two, one of Kai alone against a backdrop of the ship and one of us all posed with a "Mayan Indian" as we exited the ship in Cozumel.

Our weather was perfect, with the exception of some wind the first evening and some sprinkles the last afternoon. Our Friday day at sea was hot and sunny and drew most everybody aboard out to one of the multiple decks to take some sun. That day was the most aware we were of the mass of humanity traveling with us on the ship. Somehow, the rest of the time it never seemed all that crowded. I suppose in part it is that half the passengers take their pleasure predominantly during the night hours.

We all four did make the two revues: one Friday night and one Sunday night. Kai was agog at the pulchritudinous dancers bedecked with spangles and feathers dancing and singing their hearts out. The first show featured a rock & roll theme and started with a cute motorcycle routine that caught his (and his grandparents') eye, and ended an hour or so later with a stunning modern dance with laser light by a Russian couple achieving unbelievable lifts and poses. It's hard not to wonder how they manage it when there is any sea running. The second revue, the last night, had a Latina theme which was fun but in my view, despite my fondness for Latin music, didn't measure up to the first. As international as the crew was, the cancers were pretty white bread (but for one very tall guy of some Asian extraction!)

As for our day in Cozumel the ship offered dozens of excursions that ranged from snorkeling and diving, to jeep expeditions to dolphin encounters to tours of Mayan ruins. They had a trip to a golf course, parasailing and even a treasure hunt and of course they had shopping. With a three-year-old in our five-some, we elected not to commit to anything. Quite honestly, never setting foot off the ship would have been fine with us, and, except for an early morning stroll through town to the Mercado, that's pretty much the option Kai and his Daddy elected. Stirred up by the incredibly clear water, I lobbied to take a snorkel trip we were able to book from the dock on which Don and Tiffany gamely joined me. Fortunately, we got a good price booking ourselves, because however you booked it, if snorkeling was your actual objective it was an utter waste of money. I should know better. Between heavy tourist traffic and recent hurricanes the chance of living coral existing at a depth accessible by snorkelers within reach of a day boat is totally unrealistic. To people with our experience, what we were shown was practically criminal! BUT, that said, the water was crystal clear and warm, and there were a few fish to see drawn by the leaders feeding them, PLUS the boat crew brought along iced Coronas and Tequila shots to create the mood (and cloud the mind?). By the time we got back to the dock, everybody was happy enough! And you KNOW that any afternoon on the water is better than almost anything else in the world.

After a quick shower and change, Don, Tiffer and I went back to town on the hunt for authentic tacos. Our lead from the snorkel crew took us to a nice restaurant that had everything but tacos; we made do good ceviche and excellent margaritas. From there we followed another lead for tacos to another restaurant (all names lost in the tequila haze). We three have a tradition of bonding over margaritas (see Bonaire 2000 & Puerto Vallarta 2003!), so if nothing else we had some good family time! Plus I got to exercise my Spanish which rose to the occasion with only a few French words sprinkled in, and Don found a deal on some black boots for Harley riding

The major activity of our return day at sea was the afternoon football match between the Indianapolis Colts and the San Diego Chargers. The ship was nicely equipped with large screen TVs distributed among its many bars on which the satellite pictures were distinctly better than on the TVs in the cabins. Don had previously zeroed in on the ship's Chopin Cigar Bar as his venue of choice and had bought himself a couple of Romeo & Julietta Cubans while ashore to go along with a bucket of cold beer. So he was all set up to watch the Colts victory. Unfortunately the team let him down. Losing is never fun, but by unfortunate chance the Chopin Bar had also drawn several obnoxious fans, a Greek from Boston who philosophized that Don had only to choose whether he wanted his team to lose this week or next because the Patriots were fated by the Gods to go all the way undefeated this year. This is a perfectly appropriate view for a loyal fan, but not over and over every few minutes! Then there was the loud group behind us generally cheering against the Colts, but bad-mouthing every body, every play and every call. Don was not in a good mood by the end. The chief redeeming development of the day was the victory by the Giants, Derek and Kai's team. Derek is a die-hard Giants fan, even though he rarely actually WATCHES!

By first light Monday morning, the Inspiration was back on the dock in Tampa. I can't in all honesty say that we woke up on the dock as the pilot boat at 0200 and the thrusters around 0500 did wake us. The kids ignored it all better than we did and were still snoozing when we went up for coffee. Of course since everybody had to be off the ship by 1000 so they could start taking on passengers for the next cruise by 1100, the captain was not likely to feel too bad about disturbing anyone's sleep that last morning! Still there was plenty of time for a last breakfast together before self-disembarking around 0930, at which time we all breezed through customs out to the parking garage and out of the Port of Tampa without any delays whatsoever.

Not a bad way to spend a long weekend!

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November 8, 2007 - January 3, 2008 - The Holidays

2008-01-18T12:37:00.000-08:00

It happens to me every year. As the holidays bear down with the calendar packed with doings, I panic and abandon all attempts to keep up the website. It seems ironic because, of course, there is so much going on to write about, at least for family and close friends. This is all pretty gushy family stuff, so if you aren't into that, skip this entry!

Our first event of the extended holiday season was a midday Thanksgiving feast at Kai’s pre-school. Here we got to see Kai and his class on stage singing “A turkey is a funny bird, his head goes wobble wobble, he only says one funny word, and that is ‘gobble gobble.’” This, the first of a long line of such performances, is the stuff of grandparents’ dreams. Kai’s grin was a show stopper.

The following Monday we drove up to Florence, South Carolina to spend the actual Thanksgiving holiday at my nephew’s. Since marrying into the Wilson clan and since my sister has stopped choreographing the elaborate Hamlin family Christmases, I have been feeling that my connections to my own family have been getting a little thin. So I was very pleased to be invited for the holiday. John & Gay win the award for the best residential campsite. From the street their neighborhood appears a tightly-packed, brick-faced suburban front with no place for a bulky RV. Yet, when we back the coach up the driveway, we can just keep on rolling into a huge tree-studded back yard! John & Gay’s kids truly appreciate the RV, and not only relished showing it off to friends, but Karen slept aboard with us every night we were there, despite temps plummeting into the thirties!

John and Gay put on a perfect family gathering, with my sister and her husband in attendance as well as Gay’s brother and his wife. Instead of a single sit-down meal, turkey day (and the day after) was one continuous graze from sun-up to sun down. Gay’s brother Mark works for Lego, so he brought a Lego engineering project that kept family members engrossed for hours, while my sister, currently an aspiring poet and I (currently an aspiring magazine writer) compared writing projects. We also made a family outing out of a matinée showing of Enchanted, Disney’s semi-animated spoof of its own famous fairy tales as well as an afternoon game of Risk, where Tom looked primed to take over the world from the rest of us. Among many other things, Tom plays piano and guitar, just earned a brown belt in karate, and carries a school schedule of advanced subjects, while Karen has taken up the flute and piano, takes horseback lessons, loves to cook, and carries her own challenging school sked. These kids hadn’t seen us for two years, and yet they welcomed us as if it were yesterday! John and Gay and Tom and Karen demonstrate very clearly that one can raise a bright well-balanced family in this trying age, and I LOVED feeling a part of it.

From Florence we drove to Hilton Head to rendezvous with our great friends Dennis and Lisa of Lady Galadriel, who were southbound on the ICW. Dennis and Lisa had spent a whole year working in Annapolis on the boat and at West Marine. Then this past summer they cruised north up to New England as far as Maine, before turning southward for the Bahamas. We had thought to meet up with them at the SSCA Gam in Melbourne (see last entry), but like many cruisers’ their progress had been delayed, so this was our second shot. What luck that we were able to find an RV park with its own marina! We caught up over an expansive seafood feast at Crabby Bills, and then were able to run them around on errands the next day. Again, it was instant rapport, like we hadn’t been apart for years.

No sooner than we got back parked in Crystal River, than Don took off on the Harley for boys time, stopping first with Bill Church for a night to help with some two-man bot projects on Bill's Endeavor 37 Geodesic II and then with old friends of his from Indiana – two retired state troopers known as the two Toms – down for a fishing vacation in Sarasota. This gave me the chance to join a gym, take a yoga class, and catch up on my writing.

The day after Don got back from Sarasota, we turned around and drove down to Tampa with our friends Diane and Alex for dinner at Colombia’s, a famous Latin restaurant in Tampa’s Ybor City followed by a night at the Tampa Performing Arts Center for "The Nutcracker." For so many years, the Boston Ballet’s Nutcracker was an annual highlight of the spectacular family Christmases my sister orchestrated before they moved to North Carolina. It had been about five years, I think, since my last Nutcracker, and I was in withdrawal. In fact, it’s been a long, long time since I’ve attended ANY cultural performance, so I was really looking forward to breaking the ice here in Florida. The Tampa performance, unfortunately, was not in the same league as the Boston Ballet’s, particularly the fun first act, nor did the theater itself hold a candle to the opulently-renovated Wang, with its sell-out audience of adorably dressed-up yuppie children. But then, for years I did not think Boston was in the same league as American Ballet Theater with Baryshnikov at Lincoln Center. Eventually, I came to find witnessing the Boston company’s growth exciting, so perhaps the same will happen here. It’s tough when you start out at the top!

On December 7^th, Don and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary at a new Thai restaurant in Crystal River called Thaipoon. God knows how this jewel dropped into our back yard – land of fried chicken and BBQ, but it is outstanding! The trick will be finding people to take there; our neighbors do not demonstrate much gourmand interest. Thank goodness Diane and Alex will drive for a good meal!

The Wilson early-Christmas plan in Indiana came extra early this year thanks to the 2007 calendar. We flew up with Tiffany and Kai on the 11th and were back in Florida by the 17^th! Last year the Wilson clan had enjoyed their traditional Saturday night gathering in the house Don’s nephew’s family had been in but weeks. This year we were able to truly appreciate a year’s worth of improvements, including a roaring fireplace in the new basement family room and Sam Adams ale on tap! Plus it snowed just enough so that Kai could have his first snowball fight, make his first snowman with his cousins, and even get a little sliding in on a shared flying saucer. Unfortunately, the snow kept some of the family from making the trip into town, and also cut the numbers back at Aunt Margaret’s Shelbyville family Christmas the next day. Still, for Floridians a little snow does add atmosphere.

After Indiana, we had four days to catch our breath in Crystal River, before it was time to move the RV to its slot between the kids' and Cindy’s houses for our Florida Christmas celebrations in Clearwater. With Kai’s birthday just two days after Christmas, the holiday gets seriously extended. This year started with a shared birthday party with Kai’s best friend Tovar and all their schoolmates on the 22nd in a park over in Safety Harbor. Tiffany and Tovar’s Mom, with some major culinary input from Cindy, put together a great spread for the kids and their parents. Don and I did our best to contribute with schlep and decorating. A highlight of the party was a visit by a real fire truck from the station down the block, since that was Tovar’s theme. Kai’s theme was “Jeff Gordon” and though there were plenty of Gordon plates and NASCAR party favors, our side was unable to recruit a race car driver to make an appearance.

After the party, Don and I went to cement the deal on Kai’s big B-day present: a big boy bed. For those of you too old to remember, the abandonment of the crib is a huge step in a kid’s life…and in his parents’ lives, as well. There is the worry whether or not he will like it, the worry that he will fall out, and the worry that it will fit in his room. I’m proud to say that we scored big in all departments with a bare wood trundle-type bed with six drawers underneath it, bedding in a sports motif, and a safety rail to prevent the falling-out. Kai likes it so well that he has betaken himself in for naps on his own accord, AND better yet, he has slowed up on the early morning visits to Mom & Dad’s bed.

Christmas itself was as festive as it can be in a place with palm trees and no snow. Both Tiffer and Cindy had lovely Christmas trees and decorations, while we bedecked the coach with bows and wreaths and lighted garlands. Dinners were highlights, what with not one, not two, but three culinary-minded women. I took care up the lead up dinners; Cindy made a Christmas eve feast of shrimp, mussels and crab legs; and on Christmas Day Tiffer’s kitchen produced a rare roast beef, mashed potatoes and pear, pecan and blue cheese salad. Fortunately, this year the sweets got cut back substantially!

The big boy bed actually arrived on Boxing Day, but the Family celebration of Kai’s third birthday party still took place with cake and ice cream on the 27^th. You might think that heralded the end of all the family doings, but nay, nay…we’re not done yet. On Boxing Day we got a call from Don’s brother Greg, who called to ask how we’d feel about a visit. Of course, we said, "Great, when were you thinking?" He said, “Tomorrow!” So, while the seconds on the cake and ice cream were being served, we made a late trip to the airport to pick up Little Brother.

Greg stayed with us a week, got to ride the Harley, hiked the back forty, picked around the green veggies I insisted in putting on his plate, read novels on the deck and generally relaxed. Greg’s ailing father-in-law has recently moved in with them, and I guess, with school out (Greg is an elementary school principal) and the blizzards blowing, he just needed a break. His timing was good as the senior Wilsons pulled in with their RV on Sunday to spend a few days with us, too. More big family eating opportunities, including a New Year’s cookout with a bunch of our neighbors and biking buddies.

So not until all the Wilsons were departed – Jim and Ginny south to Ft. Meyers and Greg back to the frigid north of Indiana – did the ping-pong match of our holiday season finally roll to a stop. Which left us a week before our cruise to Cozumel.

…Our what???!!!!

6 November – 11 -- The SSCA Gam in Melbourne

2008-01-18T12:05:00.000-08:00

The annual convention of the Seven Seas Cruising Association (SSCA), across the state in Melbourne, once again followed hard on the heels of the St. Pete Boat Show. After we wound up our extended stay at the St. Pete Pier, we found ourselves with just two days to kill before our reservation in Melbourne, so instead of heading home to Crystal River, we made the dangerous decision to spend them at Lazy Days RV Center’s Rally Park.

Lazy Days Temptation

Stopping at Lazy Days is always a risky decision because not only do they have the world’s largest selection of RVs, but they surely have the world’s most polished sales force. Our interest this time was their previously-owned units, our curiosity sparked by several other RVers we met at the St. Pete boat show. A couple of the guys we’d met last year had traded up to used 40’ units since we'd seen them, plus we’d made friends with another couple Bill and DeDe who’d pulled into the show grounds pulling a 27’ coffee and ice cream concession trailer behind their 42’ Monaco. Bill and DeDe pursue quite the retirement career building and selling these concession trailers in between working them at special events in whatever part of the country they have the itch to be! With our “new” split identity as part-time stateside residents raising our living costs, Don was intrigued with the idea of Bill and DeDe's successful-while-mobile business.

To make a long story short, we did NOT buy a new coach at Lazy Days…which is not to say were weren’t seriously tempted, because in fact, after we sat down and gave our salesman the item-by-item description of desired amenities, features and décor, damned if he didn’t come up with one that seemed near perfect – a 2006 Monaco Camelot with a cherry interior and a bath and a half layout The most amazing (and frightening) thing about RV shopping is how easily you can persuade yourself that six-digit numbers are a good deal! Hah! Fortunately, reason prevailed…this time at least. Well, actually we were saved when someone else bought the coach out from under us. We’ll never know what might have happened otherwise, but I can tell you the relief was unanimous!

However we did enjoy a full 24-hour day as temporary Crowne Club members. Lazy Days is well known for providing free hot dogs and burgers to any RVer or wannabe that stops by. The Crowne Club takes that another step UP. It is Lazy Days’ upscale social center for its high-end coach owners, providing with free drinks and gourmet buffets several times a day in a country club style atmosphere. Like proper cruisers, we made used every hour of our pass before slipping out and continuing on our way. It is a seductive amenity.

SSCA Gam

Every year Don and I seem to have more invested in the Seven Seas Cruising Association's annual Melbourne Gam – seminars we are participating in, speakers we want to hear, friends we want to rendezvous with. This year I had also contributed to SSCA’s big membership and attendance drive by writing an article on the organization for the November issue of Latitudes and Attitudes. Unfortunately, with hurricane season seeming to linger later and later every year, many of the southbound ICW (Intracoastal Waterway ) cruisers were held up farther north by requirements of their insurance companies, so despite all the efforts at the shows and in the press, overall attendance was lighter than hoped. The good news is, it was probably balanced out somewhat by a great turnout at the smaller Annapolis Gam in October.

This year Kathy Parsons, Pam Wall and I were invited to bring the "Women & Cruising" seminar we do at the boat shows to the Gam. On Friday morning, we conducted a “forum” in our usual format in the large seminar room, while on Saturday Kathy and I continued with a more informal roundtable gathering. Both were fully attended, with great questions and exchanges. I’m not quite sure why our seminar is always so successful, over others that try to do much the same thing. I think it is because there are the three of us, with our different backgrounds and resumes. We make a visually and intellectually interesting dog-and-pony show, plus we have put together some very nice handouts. While at the boat shows, most attendees are neophytes, at the Gam, of course, many of the women sitting in are at least as experienced as we are, if not more so! It was a very rewarding exchange, and I was able to recruit several more Admirals to contribute to my Admiral’s Angle column.

I also had been invited to be on a panel called “Working Your Boat Offshore” where I was the sole woman panelist with august speakers like Jim Corenman, Dave Abbott and David Lynn. The moderator, SSCA board member Jack Tyler, had chosen to focus on four main topics – watch standing and collision avoidance, MOB prevention and general safety, avoiding and dealing with illness offshore, and preparing for and managing heavy weather. Each of us led off on one of the topics, while the rest of us followed up with our comments. Jack’s format was a lot more controlled than the open forum we usually pursue in Women & Cruising and I was afraid that it might end up more stilted, but in fact I think it ended up quite informative. I know I picked up a lot of ideas for my column.

Meanwhile Don had another good turnout for his hand-on roundtable about watermakers, once again with the help of Dick Murray of Murray Marine who again brought up a working demo model of one of Spectra’s popular units. Don also got recruited to man the booth selling Clamp-Tite tools in the vendor’s hall by company owner Sonora. Since Don was given his first Clamp-Tite four or five years ago, he has been an avid promoter of this handy gizmo, so it was natural for him to become an actual salesman. My only complaint about all the time he spent selling Clamp-Tites was that he missed attending some of the other lectures with me, like the Abbot family’s “Circumnavigating aboard a Catamaran” (the Abbots, in addition to Donna’s being one of my Admirals, are friends of our friends Tom and Bette Lee aboard Quantum Leap.) and “Using Your (Offshore) Medical Kit with More Confidence.” Wow, that one was an eye-opener!

As usual, one of the best parts of the Gam is the chance to socialize with friends cruising in other parts of the world. The Gam’s official social events are the Friday Cocktail party and the Saturday BBQ. The cocktail party was a good time this year, with a chance to meet lots of new people. The BBQ night however was too damn chilly to be relaxing. Fortunately, our friends Dave and Sherry of Soggy Paws made November their month to visit Stateside from the Rio Dulce, so Friday after the cocktail party we were able to have dinner with them and fellow CSY owners Ed and Daisy of Siesta up from the Keys, as well as get to the annual CSY owners breakfast Sunday morning attended by probably a dozen CSY fellows. Sunday evening after the Gam packed up we enjoyed a laid-back evening at the RV with Kathy and her partner Bill over grilled steaks and football. Kathy and Bill are taking off for six weeks in Argentina while they consider swapping Bill’s Hale Kai for a catamaran! Kathy’s and my friendship takes place almost exclusively via email and Skype, with our paths rarely crossing other than during the seminars. God, cruisers make for such interesting and flexible friendships!

24 October-6 November 2007 -- St. Pete Boat Show

2007-11-25T19:53:00.000-08:00

We were on our way home from our visit with the kids – actually on Rte. 19 northbound in a gloomy drizzle – when I got around to turning my attention ahead to the next big activity on our calendar, the St. Pete Boat Show The official start date for the show was Nov. 1 more than a week away, but I had the idea to do an article on the behind-the- scenes set-up process, for which I thought we'd want to get there early. So I called my contact at the show headquarters (with whom I had talked about the idea last year) and he said, "Turn around! They are splashing the docks today!"

Which is how we came be parked right downtown on the St. Pete waterfront for almost two weeks. Scott Hawkins, Strictly Sail's Operations manager met us in the parking lot for the show grounds, a rectangle of ground with the Vinoy basin on one side and Tampa Bay and the St. Pete Pier on the other. It was the first official day of set-up, and Hawk himself had just arrived, but the contractors for the docks and the tents had gotten a head start on him. The two big tents were already up, and the almost 1300 feet of floating docks had been unloaded into the water from their flat-bed trailers.

Over the course of the next five days I followed Hawk around as he oversaw construction of the show's underpinnings. I watched the dock guys manhandle the docks into position and secure their connections and the piling barge guys set all the temporary pilings for the show boat slips. I watched the floor contractors lay the flooring under the tents, electricians hang the lights and run all the cabling in the tents and docks, the carpet guys lay the signature blue carpeting in the booth areas, and the "decorators" bring in all the pipe, drape and tables to create the booths. The office modules were trucked in, lines of portable lavatories delivered and activated, and a complete water system installed on the docks.

Up through Sunday the gray and rainy weather had hung on. On Saturday morning, Don and I walked up through the rain for a standup breakfast at the St. Pete Street Market. Although billed as a fresh farmers' market, there were only a few booths of the kind of lovely organic vegetables Tiffany pines for from her California days. Mid-morning Derek and Kai drove down for the day which included a visit to the second floor aquarium at the end of the pier. This turned out to be a perfect stop for a kid Kai's size with bright and colorful aquariums he could easily see and a whole section with "touching pools" of crabs, starfish and urchins, the very kinds of things we would love to share with him in the wild someday. Afterwards, the four of us had lunch on the observation deck from where we watched planes and boats go by. We also got in a little soccer time in our semi-private playground, only a tad hampered by the big ruts the heavy machinery was gouging in the soft ground.

At the end of the day on Sunday Scott admitted to me that "This is not a typical set-up. Things are going unusually well…I'm worried."

Monday morning dawned bright and breezy, and the advance freight shipments from vendors began to arrive for set up. Moods couldn't help but lift in the sunshine, but the forecast was double-edged: yes the skies would be blue the whole rest of the week, but the high pressure system ushering them in would bring strengthening winds from the northeast, the one direction from which the Vinoy Basin is exposed. And if that weren't enough, Tropical Storm Noel was forming to the south and, at the very least was likely to enhance those winds as it passed by Florida.

Sure enough, by midday the docks were jumping and jostling from the 2-3' swells rolling in through the basin entrance, and Hawk was hastily called to one of the big tents where he found the electricians bear-hugging the tent poles to keep the tent from lifting off. After Monday night the decision was made to delay the show boats from coming onto the docks until Wednesday, so while the tents and grounds filled up with vendors, trailerable boats, and concessionaires, the hard-constructed docks remained empty, patrolled constantly by the dock guys Pete and Jason, checking and troubleshooting problems as the cropped up.

So, it wasn't until the very last day before the show that the exhibition boats were finally allowed in. They came in a steady stream, one right after the other. Docking is never fun with an audience, but in the high wind conditions (still blowing 25 as they entered) and the time pressure, there was lots of excitement packing the boats into place.

Despite it all, the show opened complete and on schedule Thursday, and the weather was gorgeous, if still breezy. By the weekend, however TS Noel had finally made the predicted turn off toward the Atlantic, and local winds and seas calmed right down making for perfect show weather. I worked as usual inside the tent for Sea Tech Systems as well as giving three of the Women & Cruising seminars I do with Kathy Parsons and Pam Wall. Don, recruited as a volunteer coordinator for Strictly Sail's Discover Sailing program, spent his days down on the dock managing the crowds that lined up for the free 50-minute rides in one the three sailboats provided by vendors. This turned into a full-time thing for him, but he reaped the rewards of his dedication when Tiffany, Derek and Kai arrived early on Saturday and were able to have a trip all to themselves... Kai's very first sail!

Any boat show is a social opportunity for cruisers, but as St Pete is in our back yard so to speak, the numbers go up. Plus after three years of doing the shows during our winters back in the US, we have a whole network of show-associated friends. On Sunday night for example we had an impromptu party on board the coach ostensibly for the Colts football game that exemplified the mix: with Kathy Parsons and her partner Bill (Kathy, the author of the Spanish & French for Cruisers Books we originally met in Trinidad), Diane & Alex (our friends in Hernando beach who are refitting their first boat in ten years, but whom we originally knew in St. Thomas), Sherry & Dave (the cruising friends we introduced and who are now married and cruising aboard the Tackless II's sistership Soggy Paws in the Western Caribbean) as well as Ray Carter, the Sales Manager of Spectra Watermakers, for whom Don will be working at the Miami and Pacific Expo Boat shows.

St Pete is a funny show. Everybody involved enjoys this venue: from the Sail America organizers, the contractors setting things up, the vendors who pay to come and the ticket holders making a day outing of it. But every year the show draws fewer and fewer people and therefore, obviously makes less and less money. This is of course in part a response to the contracting economy in general as well as a reflection of the slowing boating industry. There is also a big boat show in Ft. Lauderdale the week before which siphons off some interest, and cruisers southbound on the ICW have been held back up north by the lengthened hurricane season insurance restrictions…a point emphasized by TS Noel's flirtation with Florida this week. Who knows for sure how long Strictly Sail will continue to put on the show here? So far, it's a go for next year. Guess we'll take it one year at a time!

It's amazing how fast the show breaks down. What took eight days to put together broke down in less than two. By Monday morning the tents and grounds were largely deserted, By Monday afternoon all the boats were gone, and by Tuesday morning as we backed our RV out, the docks were coming out of the water and only one tent remained standing! It is a prodigious effort by a wide array of people...and all for the entertainment of Florida sailors!

16-23 October 2007 - Grandparenting continued

2007-11-17T00:36:00.000-08:00

Our First Grandparents' Breakfast

This grandparenting thing can be a fun deal! A few days following the kids visit to NCL, we dusted off the coach tires and rolled the big box out on the road and made our way south to Clearwater to be on hand for a 'Grandparents Breakfast" at Kai's school.

Kai, at two and a half, is in his second "semester" of school, this year going for a half-day, five days a week. School has been a wonderful experience for him, giving him the chance to interact with other kids in an environment of educational play. He has positively bloomed.

We arrived and were ushered into the auditorium where we sat with his best friends Tovar and Darra along with their Moms and special guests, along with over a hundred other guests. Breakfast was a nice buffet of bagels and muffins and fruit salad. Afterwards grandparents were ushered into a Scholastic book sale where we could buy books to donate to the classrooms as well as for our own kids. We came home with a cute book called Tyrannosaurus Reg and, with Halloween around the corner, another called Bats on the Beach.

Birthday at Fort De Soto Park

That afternoon we drove to the Clearwater office of Pinellas County's Ft. De Soto Park. The Park itself occupies the beaches and islets at the southernmost tip of the St. Petersburg Peninsula and offers camp sites right on the water. With my birthday on Saturday, it was my heartfelt wish that we could get a site there and have the kids come for a camping weekend together. It was a rather naïve wish as Ft. De Soto, like most Florida parks, can be booked up to seven months in advance, meaning that weekends even in the off season are usually sold out. However, luck was with us thanks to the recent addition of three RV spots that don't come up on the computer.

We drove down Thursday to cement our claim only to find that the new site, unfortunately, was not only not right on the water but, being new, looked a lot more like a regular RV park spot that a wilderness campsite. I hated to be ungrateful, but it was not exactly what I'd had in mind.

Our first afternoon Don and I made our bicycling debut of the year by following the bike trail out to the beaches some 4-5 miles away. Reconnoitering first by car would have been smarter because the trail offered no shade and in the afternoon sun the temps soared to the high 90s. There were two pretty unhappy captains by the time we straggled back to camp. On Friday we made the trip back by car with chairs, books and a couple of tall lemonades from concession stand. Now this was more like it. Lots of people-watching. The outgoing tide made a perfect place for boys to slide on their skim boards while two young girls rode the one foot waves over and over to the beach. By the end of day, however, a threatening front had moved in and seemed like it might blow out all our plans. The silver lining to the gloomy weather report was it resulted in a bunch of cancellations Friday afternoon, and when we happened to be in the office when someone canceled out, we were able to move to a much neater site -- still not on the water but embedded in woods near one end of the island. Much more atmospheric!

The kids arrived Saturday morning with a pan of birthday cupcakes from Cindy and all the gear to keep us shaded on a hot beach. Ironically, the cloud cover that rolled in with the front and dumped heavy rain inland cooled off the beaches without shedding more than a drop or two. As a result our beach time was spent kicking the soccer ball in long sleeves rather than swimming and sweating! Quite interesting to Kai were a bunch of Japanese tourists who arrived with the usual cameras as well as a volleyball. Kai made it his personal responsibility to chase down their ball whenever it got loose and return it to them with a vigorous kick. They were most impressed with the little blond-haired kid.

We also visited the historic fort for which the park is named to check out the cannons mounted there. I think Kai got as much of a kick out o the cool windowless subterranean rooms that were once magazines for powder and shot, but for Kai made great echo chambers.

Back at the campground, there were kids everywhere, riding bikes, throwing footballs, and fishing from the banks. We did pretty much all of the above ourselves the rest of the afternoon and into the long evening. We divided into teams and played some football in an open grassy area. Kai can not only throw the ball like a pro, but he is a wily runner when he gets a hand-off from his Dad. Only hitch is, I think he likes to be tackled! Later he made friends with a boy about five years older who was very impressed at Kai's ability to throw, and they tossed the football back and forth as we went for a walk around the grounds. Another kid who was obviously experienced at being an older brother patiently demonstrated how to catch a fish, baiting the hook with a shrimp and casting smartly into the green water. There was a lot of catch-and-release going on, adults as well as kids. You'd think the fishies would vacate the area, but maybe it's worth it to them for the free bite of shrimp! Anyway, all this activity is what I love about this kind of park experience, and indeed it was exactly what I'd had in mind for the weekend.

On Sunday morning we finally initiated our grandson into boating by renting two two-man kayaks and taking him on the one-hour paddle tour. We were quite touched that Kai opted to ride with the two captains, which we thought showed his good sense. However Derek revealed a previously unreported talent, and the grandparents had to work hard to keep up...despite Tiffany taking a distinctly passive, Cleopatra-like role! Most of the tour was through quiet mangrove waters, but in the open the wind was up, making a pretty decent chop in the one exposed leg. Kai took it all in stride and did not get antsy or restless, enjoying the herons and egrets on the banks, the pelicans and terns making headlong dives, and the crazy fish that seemed to be popping out of the water all around us.

The kids headed home Sunday afternoon leaving us to enjoy a quiet evening on our own. We could have had our choice of any number of waterfront sites that night as the weekend campers emptied out. Instead, we got our private beach fix the next morning when took our coffee to the peninsula's East Beach to walk and watch the sunrise over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. We were the only people there.

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9-15 October 2007: the Home Front

2007-10-29T12:26:00.000-07:00

Our home base in Crystal River, Florida is a lot we own in Nature Coast Landings, an ownership RV park up near Citrus County's northern border. It has proved itself a perfect solution for our lifestyle: a safe place to leave our rolling home when we return to the boat and a pleasing place to roll to stop every once in a while when we are back. To the northeast of us is a county park with birding trails we enjoy walking -- around a quiet lake or along the barge canal -- as well as a boat ramp and a bike trail to the Gulf. The villages of Inglis and Yankeetown are just across the bridge in Levy County; Dunnellon and the Rainbow River, with its lovely kayaking are to the East; and Crystal River with its famous springs and manatees and associated water activities is to the south. And last but not least, the whole area has proved to be a fine area to ride motorcycles with many miles of roads through rolling rural countryside, dotted here an there by friendly watering holes and restaurants.

The lots in NCL are well spaced, and now that construction is complete the landscaping is filling in as individual owners have built decks and planted trees and flowers. For the most part our tentative efforts in that department fared pretty well through the long, hot, and reportedly dry summer. The new maple looks good (although not quite as good as those belonging to some neighbors who had irrigation!), and the Knock-Out roses and Mexican petunias were bushy and full of glorious color. The ligustrums, however, looked pinched, with leaves about half the size of when we left them except for clumps of full-sized ones. I suspect they lost leaves to drought and regrew these smaller ones. At least they are alive which is more than I can say for the wax myrtles. Our lot had three wax myrtles planted across the back by NCL that were full and bushy when we left. Upon our return, only the one in the lee of our shed was alive! Very sad. All up and down the park, this was the story – survival here, failure there. The wax myrtles throughout seemed hardest hit. However the silverthorns, also planted by NCL but which we moved back against the fence, are all thriving. My other gardening effort before departure was grass, and from across the street our "lawn" looks pretty good. Only when you walk across it do you see the sandy patches where it just won't grow.

The good news is the wifi is up and running . at least it is now without a lot of users online. Hopefully it can stand up to the job.

Don and I had about a week to hang loose at NCL. Only a few of our neighbors were back, so things were pretty quiet. We used the days to unpack, to walk in "our' park and ride the motorcycle here and there, but our style was somewhat cramped as we couldn't find the key to our storage shed! Fortunately, our neighbor Dale, still home in Missouri had the spare, but we had to wait for it to arrive in the mail.

The highlight of our first week at NCL was the arrival on a beautiful cool Saturday of the kids for a one-day visit. Derek ha to make a run up as far as New Port Richey for work, and he suggested he, Tiff and Kai make a day trip of it. In every way this was a perfect grandparent experience; everything that we imagined, in fact, when we bought the place. The kids arrived mid-morning with all of Kai's favorite paraphernalia – his bike, his scooter, and his soccer ball – to which we added our Colts Nerf football and several golf clubs. NCL, especially NCL with few people around, make a great playground, especially for the bike. Kai is mighty cute pedaling heartily away, especially with his bike helmet, now several sizes too small, sitting on top of his head! Don and Derek had conspired to raise the training wheels about an inch, so there were a few "smokes" when the bike teetered unexpectedly. Kai takes his "smokes" – whether crashes on the bike, trip-ups when he is running flat out, uncaught balls on the noggin or in his face -- all with amazing aplomb. He rolls to his back, stares at the sky for a few moments, and then picks himself up and plunges into the activity all over again! Rarely does he cry.

After the first round of sports, we borrowed a golf cart from neighbors for a ride around the park. Then we drove around the corner for a "hike" in "our" county park, on the hunt for turtles in the lake. After that we barbecued hamburgers for lunch, and after a suitable digestive break we went swimming in the club pool. This, I am embarrassed to admit, was our first time at the pool, which I had promised Tiffany was heated. We found a thermometer that claimed 80 degrees, but it sure felt brisk. Derek and Don were wimps and stayed dry, but Kai, Tiff and I braved that briskness. Kai is at that stage of his swimming lessons where he will boldly jump into the water under assurance that someone will catch him. He may trust his receivers, but he doesn't yet trust the water enough to get properly horizontal, and therefore squanders all his energy in the inefficient bicycle motion. He does kick on a kick board, and he knows how to do the Spiderman creep along the poolside until he reaches steps or a ladder. He even impressed us by hoisting himself up over the side of the pool once or twice, something I never managed until I was big enough to touch bottom!

This day distilled the reason we interrupt our cruising and come back to the US. Kai's joie de vivre runs full bore until, of course, he runs out of steam. And here's the good news: when the kids come for a day trip like this, they pack up and go home leaving the old folks to peace and quiet! What could be more idyllic?

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28 September – 9 October 2007: Once Again, Back to the US of A

2007-10-26T13:36:00.001-07:00

The silver lining to traveling solo from Fiji to LAX is there’s a better chance of getting a row to oneself to stretch out in. When Don and I fly together what usually happens is we are seated together and then after I doze off in a pretzel-like curl, he prowls the plane for an open row to himself. I wake up in a knot with the unused space of the vacated seat(s) mocking me!

This year the best priced itinerary – which we booked through daughter Tiffany’s easy-to-use new travel website (www.thetwomomstravel.com) – was aboard Air NZ to L.A. and US AIR from LAX via Las Vegas to Tampa. Ignoring the fact that LAX was a mad-house of crowds, slow luggage (mine was last!), uptight security people and expensive coffee, both halves of my trip went smoothly. Having a stopover in Vegas was actually kind of nice, breaking up the long wait we usually have in LA, although I’d have swapped all the jangling slots in the Vegas airport for a sit-down restaurant option for dinner. As you might guess, the approach and take-off over the city of lights was impressive! You could pick out individual casinos! It did make the red-eye part of the flight, and therefore any chance of sleep much shorter, and when I landed at 6am, Tampa was still dark.

A Welcome Dose of Family

How nice to have a son-in-law meet you in the terminal, collect your luggage and roll it and you to the parked car! How nice to have a grandson – who hasn’t seen you for six months – welcome you despite the early hour with a sleepy “GZ!” and arms outstretched for a hug! I’d allotted myself four whole days to wallow in the delight of our little family while trying to adjust to the eight time-zone difference before facing the Annapolis boat show. Tiffer’s #1 Mom Cindy, who lives next door, made me welcome in her guest room. I spent the time between my late-awake nights and my late risings kicking soccer balls, throwing footballs, racing Jeff Gordon NASCAR models, and marveling at the dare-devil figures Kai cuts with the two-wheeler he could barely pedal when we left! Not yet three, this is one athletically gifted kid. How much a child grows in six months! Gone are the baby talk and (for the most part) diapers, but never fear, he’s still a cutie patootie with a million-watt grin.

One of the best parts of my long weekend with the kids was the sense of optimism in the air. For Tiffany this is owing to her involvement in YTB Travel. YTB Travel is an internet-based company that seeks to revive the concept of making money from travel. For more information anyone interested can read about YTB on Tiffany’s website -- www.thetwomomstravel.com – or email her at eberharttiffany@yahoo.com

The 2007Annapolis Boat Show – October 4-8

This must have been a record year for the Annapolis Boat Show. Where last year a nor’easter had the tents billowing, the rain falling and us shivering in as many layers as we could find, this year saw five days of 96-degree sunshine. My suitcase was packed with all my show clothes from Oakland – jeans, turtlenecks, fleece! Fortunately I checked weather.com the morning before my flight and added in shorts at the last minute.

Officially, the “Annapolis Show” is the United States Boat Show, and it takes place in two parts run back-to-back: The Sailboat show the first week and the Power Boat show the second. Each show is squeezed into the tight harbor right off the Annapolis waterfront, with the show boats and interconnecting docks meshed in like a jigsaw puzzle. The changeover between shows begins promptly at the close of the final day of the Sailboat show, and the spectacle annually draws a huge crowd. The shoreside vendors, on the other hand, are strung out in a rabbit warren of tents crammed into any available tarmac around the harbor. If you don’t make a sale to a customer while you have them, who knows if they can ever find their way back! My boss Steve of SeaTech Systems, like many vendors oriented to cruisers, only attends the Sailboat Section…for which I give many thanks! As it is, it is five long days on your feet!

I think it was a good show for SeaTech. Certainly the good weather brought out the crowds. The traffic on and off the show boats must have set a record, since the show is notorious for losing one or two days to obnoxious weather. Ironically, for us in the tents the heat became pretty wearing on the soul, and between my jetlag and my colleague Marti Brown’s night shifts at the hospital she works in, there were two women in the booth with screwed up bio-rhythms!

For me, salesmanship does not come naturally. What makes working for SeaTech relatively easy is that I use the products I am selling and I know what today’s cruisers are using out there! Incredibly, a little quick accounting reveals that I have been working for SeaTech now for about three years! More and more customers are coming into the booth looking for me because they talked to me in the past, either here at Annapolis or at other shows like Philly or Miami. Additionally, with my Admiral’s Angle column in Latitudes & Attitudes Magazine now more than a year old, I am getting name recognition and feedback from that. Furthermore, there were not a few people who introduced themselves as fans of this website! All in all very gratifying for the old ego!

The Women & Cruising Seminars that I have been doing with Kathy Parsons and Pam Wall add to that. Although I was not officially on the bill for the Cruising World Magazine-sponsored seminar in Annapolis (I had not thought I would be back in time), we had a great turnout, some 180 people! Cruising World, which has just added its own new section for women cruisers (Hmmmm???), was very pleased by the enthusiastic response of the audience to our format! I am officially on the bill for the next three presentations of Women & Cruising scheduled for the St. Pete Boatshow (Nov. 1-4), the SSCA Convention in Melbourne (Nov. 9-11), and the Miami Boatshow in mid February.

One of the main highlights of working the Annapolis show usually is running into old friends. By good fortune our friends Dennis and Lisa of Lady Galadriel were passing through town on their way back south from their summer season in New England, so I was able to have dinner with them one night aboard and see first hand all the refurbishments they wrought last year. Uncle Bill, who was with us in Fiji in August, passed through the booth looking at equipment I may have persuaded him he needs, and Elaine Lembo, my contact at Cruising World also touched base.

I also had a wonderful sit down lunch with Amy Ullrich, Managing Editor of SAIL Magazine. Amy and her two adult children came for a learn-to-dive week with Don and me aboard Whisper back in 1996 which resulted in a great article in SAIL. Our lunch gave us a chance to catch up (and share grandchild pix), but also to explore the possibilities of my writing for them as well as Lats & Atts and Cruising World. This writing stuff is starting to get serious!

Finally, this year saw the debut of the first ever Lats & Atts Party in Annapolis. Annapolis has traditionally leaned a bit toward the more formal yacht club mentality. A fixture of most of the Sail America Boat Shows, the Lats & Atts crew bring back the element of fun with the rockin’ beachy sounds of the Eric Stone Band, free beer and pizza, along with raffles for prizes that Bob always manages to talk vendors out of! The party was officially part of the SSCA Annapolis Gam and was held at the close of their day-long event out at the Port Annapolis Marina in Back Bay (I think!). A super venue for it, the marina had a covered pavilion that made a great dance floor, and the band was the best I’ve ever heard them. Unfortunately for the SeaTech gang, the turnout was bigger than expected and the pizza we’d been counting on for dinner ran out before we got there. Since Steve has to stay to the very end to give out one of the two grand prizes (a free satellite phone!), this made for a very long evening for us. Still I managed to dance much of the night away with Lee Chesneau, the NOAA weather expert, which made up for the big omelets we all had at Denny’s at 11pm.

Don Returns

Back in Florida, Don arrived Stateside by the same routing I took exactly one week after me. (For details of his last week in Fiji, see the final entry in our Fiji Blog…which I HOPE HE WILL SOON WRITE!) Don, too, enjoyed the delights of the kids, the grandson, the backyard sports, and the two-wheeler antics. On Monday afternoon, however, Derek drove him up to Hernando Beach where we had the Harley stored in Diane and Alex’s garage, from where, after he figured out how to get it started (!!), Don rode it the rest of the way up to the coach in Crystal River.

Don found our rolling home in good shape, but the battery all but dead on the Saturn. Unfortunately our jump charger was equally dead, but a neighbor was able to step in and help get the car running again so that Don could collect me from the airport in Tampa the next day. The Suncoast Expressway straight to the airport made that round trip a piece of cake, and I can sure tell you that there were two captains ready for a quiet break!

We have a whole week to ourselves ....before we hit the ground running again!

2C Update 070427

2007-04-26T21:15:00.000-07:00

Read about our activities aboard Tackless II in Fiji from April 27-October 25, 2007 in our Fiji Blog at:

http://www.thetwocaptains.com/blogs/fiji2007/

Gwen & Don, aka The Two Captains

2C Update - 070424 - Oakland

2007-04-24T07:43:00.000-07:00

The Oakland Boat Show

The Strictly Sail Pacific Boat Show in Oakland wrapped up Sunday, April 22, and with it Don's and my last boat show of the season. As usual I was working in the SeaTech booth with Steve and Capt. Marti, but for the first time Don was working for Spectra. Don worked for Spectra dealer Murray Marine at two shows this year in Florida (Stuart and Miami), but out here he was working with the company itself in their section of the huge Svendsen's booth. The good news is they sold 24 watermakers in five days; the bad news is he wasn't on commission! Nope, he was on an hourly rate here, but at least it made a big dent in the cost of our travel back to Fiji. Still, it was great experience for him and he earned a lot of brownie points, I think, with Spectra's sales manager.

The weather here is pretty chilly for these two captains: a temperature range of about 49-60. It's hard for us to imagine anyone wanting to go sailing, even though the bay sure is gorgeous. Yet, sail they do. Generally speaking, we had pretty decent weather most of the week (the weather forecasts seemed almost never in sync with reality) until Saturday night, which was, of course, the traditional Lats & Atts Party with the Eric Stone Band and free pizza and beer. Despite the cold rain (you could see your breath!), the crowd pressed into the lone tent and danced to the wailing guitar of Eric's new young lead guitarist! Wow. (Sorry, don't have his name or picture...he's cute, too!) Now that I have my regular Admirals' Angle column in the magazine, I kind of feel like one of the family. Plus, not only is SeaTech a long time sponsor of these parties (Steve usually gives away a satellite phone), but this year Spectra joined the ranks!

Saturday night's rain made for Sunday's flooded tent. We arrived to find a fleet of guys with large Wet-Dry vacs trying to suck up the water that pooled in the center of Tent B, with our booth pretty much at ground zero of the mess! Fortunately, none of our product was in harm's way, but we did lose some of our brochure packets.

Ironically, Sunday itself was gorgeous, and Jack London Square where the Show was held opened up into a festive plaza with organic vegetable vendors in tents next to exotic food vendors selling tempting items from gourmet sausages to crepes, all overlooking the marina full of new production boats with their banners snapping in the breeze. I'm not sure from a vendor's point of view that gorgeous weather is a good thing, since everybody would rather be outside. Jack London Square is immortalized as the "stomping grounds" of the young author who wrote such classics as “White Fang,” “The Sea Wolf,” and “The Call of the Wild”. There are bronze wolf prints scattered throughout the plaza "left by" a striking bronze wolf statue, that catches me off guard every time I pass it. Near the wolf is a reconstruction of a cabin London is said to have holed up in (it's very small) to write many of his books, and a few more yards away is Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon a tavern dating from the late 1800s that is set deep into the plaza at the plaza's original level. With its floor at a steep tilt, the tavern is still operating, and the 2Cs, of course, enjoyed a draft in honor of the origins of good literature.

The best part of the show for the Two Captains was the chance to visit with far-flung friends. John and Janice of Splashes, a boat that crossed from Mexico with us and which is currently in the care of our friends Larry and Sheri in Tonga, came up from their home in San Miguel for a few days, and took us to a delightful restaurant called Quinn's Lighthouse in Alameda. Over some fine beer (this part of the world really appreciates their beer!) and a nice meal, we enjoyed an evening of sea shanties, a regular Thursday night thing there.

Another night we were treated to a fine "California gourmet" meal as the guest of Don's Spectra boss Ray Carter at a favorite restaurant of his a few blocks away. I'll have to see if I can get the name of it later, but it was a lovely evening enhanced by the chance to get to know Dean Carmine and his wife Kopie (sp?) of sv Martha Rose. Long time cruisers, Dean was a roving rep in Mexico just as Don got started, but they were pulled back to the Bay area for an ongoing family medical situation, and so Dean now heads the Spectra Tech desk.

Sunday night, after the booth was broken down and packed away, we split off again to rendezvous with Diane Keaton (not THAT Diane Keaton), a high-school classmate of Don's from Indiana. Diane guided us to an amazing sushi restaurant/jazz club called Yoshi's, where we had quite the feast while the two Hoosiers caught up.

I can't say we were broken-hearted to close out our boat show season. It is hell on your feet and joints! But you do get to see different parts of the country.

Free Day - Road Trip Up the Coast

The highlight of both my trips to the Oakland Boat Show -- last year and this -- is Steve's annual excursion out of the city and up into the beautiful coastal country of Marin and Sonoma counties. Last year, guided by a customer who was a retired Sonomoa county sheriff, Steve and I had visited the Armstrong Redwoods preserve and Fort Ross, an historic Russian fort built in the early 19th century, along with more nooks and crannies of the county than typical tourists ever see (along with a lot of policeman stories to go with them!) This year Steve and I hoped to share what we'd so enjoyed last year with Don and Marti, as well as boatshow friends John and Libby of Hotwire Enterprises of Tarpon Springs.

We ended up spending most of the morning, however, visiting Point Reyes National Seashore. Cruisers in the Pacific know Point Reyes as the strong radio station from which come all important NOAA weather faxes. Historically it was also the location of the huge antenna arrays that made up AT&T's KPH marine radio station. Since Marti, with her two Idiyacht books, is the today's guru of marine radio, Steve felt it was an appropriate pilgrimage. Afterwards, we continued out the twenty some miles to the Point Reyes Lighthouse (here is a link to a camera at Point Reyes! Today -- April 24 -- fogged in!).

The drive reminded us of the terrain of Easter Island, rolling hills with few trees fringed by surf crashing on rugged rocks, only instead of the field being populated by horses, these were grazed by huge cattle herd with the occasional black tailed mule deer! (Steve was very keen to see the park's herd of elk, but we discovered that most of the elk are up in the park's northern reaches.) Our exquisite weather afforded us incredible vistas, and from the lighthouse itself (what remote duty for the park rangers!) we sighted a mother and calf gray whale poking along well inshore on their migration north.

From Pt. Reyes we stopped for a delightful lunch in the town of Inverness. Inverness is sited on Tomales Bay, a long skinny gulf along the San Andreas fault zone. Then we drove around the southern end of Tomales Bay and then north along the coast on Rt. 1, through the lovely rolling farmlands and dramatic coastline of northern coastal Marin county. At the Russian River -- Rt. 116 -- where we came out to the coast last year, we turned inland in order to take everybody to the Amstrong Redwoods. WE reached the preserve after five, and down in the gorge where the redwoods grow for water they need all was quiet and dim. These giants are simply amazing, growing to heights of 300 feet. Their bark is roped, like giant corrugated cardboard. We followed a twisty road that brought us up through the higher oak forests to the top of the ridge where the sun was still bright and we had a superb vista of the hills of this part of Sonoma.

Our very full day was winding up quickly so we turned our car's nose south and headed back to Oakland for the last motel night before heading back to Fiji. One last note: about the only NEGATIVE thing I can say about our time in Oakland was the dreadful rental vehicle steve was given at the airport. Having reserved a minivan (for the four of us and ALL our luggage: Steve's five and hour four), he was given a Jeep Commander. Maybe if you were a couple and wanted to look tough, this would be a good vehicle, but for such a huge presence (we called it the pseudo Hummer), there was very little space. My knees were jammed behind Steve in the driver seat the whole week, and while the Commander offers a third row of seating in the back, John and Libby had to climb in over the seat and perched with their knees to their chin the whole day. Also, the windows all around were small (the better to repel attackers, I guess) so ill suited for sightseeing! I don't complain much, but there...I feel better now. I just hope it will get us to the airport this morning!

Which we've got to go do NOW! Bye.

2C Update 070417

2007-04-17T08:24:00.000-07:00

The 2Cs are well and truly on our way. Everything has been squeezed into our four bags, the Harley is stored, the coach cleaned and put away, the deck furniture and bikes packed into the shed, and we have had our farewells with the kids. Tiffer and Kai drove up to Crystal River yesterday after school and we had a great afternoon riding bikes. Yes, Kai is actually riding his new two-wheeler (with training wheels). If you need a demonstration of how fast kids learn, less than two weeks ago, on Easter morn when the bunny brought the yellow Elmo bike, the young man hadn't a clue about pedaling. Now, he can ride it like he's been doing it for years. His only catch was when he got so the training wheels straddled the V-dip in the road, and the real wheel had no purchase! They spent the night, and after a BIG breakfast at Grannie's this morning, we zipped down the Suncoast parkway straight to the Tampa Airport.

Which has free wireless!! We have a couple of hours before our flight to Oakland, CA and Don is getting an airport haircut. I THINK we are looking forward to our week in Oakland: a little income ( we are both working), several get togethers with West Coast friends, the Latitude & Attitudes Saturday night party, and a chance to catch up three time zones. The only hitch to the plan is that we will be girls in one hotel room and boys in another! steve, my boss, provides two hotel rooms, and he has kindly offered Don the bed in his room so nobody has to pay for a third.

Final departure to Fiji is Tuesday, April 24.

March On! -- March 2007

2007-04-09T11:47:00.000-07:00

Family Stuff – Fitting It In

The phenomenon of our jam-packed calendar has amazed us. On the boat we avoid having a schedule like the plague. Yet in the States, if we didn’t have our little book, we’d be lost! And whenever a few boxes gape open, it seems we can’t resist filling them up.

Given that the reason we come back to the States at all is to be in the lives of our family, it may seem that we have not spent as much time with them this year, at least with the kids. Well, it’s been all part of a new strategy, which is to give the kids space to live their own lives and nip in every few weeks or so for quick and intense visits. Of course not only does this enable them to live their own lives, but it has left us time to build a Florida life of our own.

February ended as it began with a long weekend parked in the kids’ side yard. The highlight of this visit was our annual trip to the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa. This year we were much shrewder and purchased the annual family pass so the kids can take Kai back over and over during the year. The zoo is always a big hit with Kai, and this year at two he was definitely more engaged. He likes the monkeys, and the mama and baby elephant, and he rode the camel with Mommy and Gz. But his favorites, I think, are the giraffes, who at Lowry Park will come right up to you and take crackers from you hand. There’s a picture somewhere of me about Kai’s age pressed up to an iron fence with a tall giraffe up against his side. Zoos have come a long way.

We were back at NCL just a few days when Don’s folks pulled in to park right across the lane from us for three weeks. They had spent a couple of days on their way north in Clearwater visiting with the kids before coming on up to Crystal River. Our part of Florida is too cold for their idea of a snowbird winter, but it makes a perfect staging location in March when things have warmed up but they’re not yet ready for Indiana.

I think Don and I had imagined that our pace would slow down in March, that we would hang about the whole month, lolling in our deck chairs (catching up on our tans), swapping dinners and catching the ice cream socials with Gma and Gpa, and riding the Harley. In fact, our schedule remained about as hectic as before. Suddenly the weeks were counting down to our return to Tackless II, and we still had parts to order for the boat, annual checkups to the doctors and dentists to get through, and, with the tentative approach of spring, some homeowner obligations in the maintenance of our plot of dirt.

In the midst of it all a spontaneous family gathering on my side of the family came together when my Vermont sister Jo flew down to visit my North Carolina sister Cecily for a week. Jo’s daughter Katie and husband Jason, who live just a few hours away in Columbia, SC, were coming up for the weekend, so we decided to make it a full house. Leaving the coach behind this time, we made fast tracks up in the more fuel-efficient Saturn and stayed for about five days.

Is the weather always perfect in these mountains? It sure seems that way to us. After our visit in October, we’d pursued by email a few leads on real estate in the area, thinking someday we might want a mountain getaway. We spent our first day in Hendersonville with a realtor checking out the best leads, and when the last one caught our fancy, it made for a nice family activity to take everyone out there for their opinion. A retreat with a nice mountain vista in an area with hiking, golf, and –oh, my – some rather tempting motorcycle roads, could make a nice complement to our Crystal River pied-à-terre. And in case I’d forgotten the appeal of having some cultural activities to ice the cake, my brother-in law Bob, who is on the board of the Hendersonville Symphony, took us all to hear their performance of the Brahms Requiem on Saturday night.

Sadly, it’s worked out that our great find wasn’t meant to be. While we tried to clear up some confusion on just where the property boundaries were, a better informed buyer got a bid in on it before us. It’s probably just as well. We are already living life with a foot in two spheres (quite literally in two hemispheres!), and adding a third, even one conceived as an investment for the future, might have been more than our circuits could take.

Soggy Paws Wedding via a Cross Florida Ride

On March 24, after the Saturday morning pancake breakfast here in NCL with Gma and Gpa Wilson, we loaded up the motorcycle with our new biker suitcase and set off for our first overnight trip. Our destination was again Melbourne, and the trip combined the pleasure of our first long ride to actually go somewhere with the honor of being on hand for the wedding between our two friends Sherry Beckett and Dave McCampbell.

It is a mighty fine feeling to witness two people you like, whom you actually introduced, who have the special dream of cruising, commit themselves to one another. It was lovely informal occasion bringing together a gathering of friends and family for a sunset ceremony on the shore of the Intracoastal. A nice reception follow in a friend’s back yard, put together largely by the all-woman racing team Sherry is leaving behind. Appropriately, the newlyweds spent their wedding night aboard Soggy Paws in the canal out back, while we, Sherry’s daughter, and another guest divided up the accommodations of the condo.

Our ride across the state on shady rural routes crossing above Orlando had been great. Getting back by way of Lakeland where we’d planned a lunchtime rendezvous with former cruising friends Mac and Sam proved to be a bit more problematic. Wishing at almost any cost to avoid Rte 4 and its sweep by Disney World on a Spring Break Sunday, we laid out a route staying south that we hoped would keep us clear of the stop-and-go traffic of Kissemee and Lakeland. Much of the ride was idyllic, with the air laced with the heavy perfume of flowering citrus groves. But the sun was hot and a wrong turn somewhere drew us way out of our way before we caught it, making us quite late for our get together. (A GPS is on our list for next year.) Good friends, however, are patient and we had a nice lunch in Lakeland, before heading north two more hours to get home.

Goings on at NCL

Our March wound up with several local events of note. The first was a Wednesday night concert in the clubhouse by a duo called the River Rats. Don and I aren’t much into country, but we thought it’d be something Gma and Gpa would like. Well it just goes to show you that a good performance is a good performance in any category. The two guys, seniors themselves hailing from a place identified as Mountain Air, Arkansas, gave a most entertaining show blending comedy and music. All four of us had a real good time.

Next was a mid-week visit TO US by Tiffany and Kai. Gma, Gpa, Don and I drove down to meet them first at the Homosassa State Wildlife Park I'd visited with my cousin in February. Kai really enjoys animals, and he has a special fondness for birds, of which this park has loads. The weather this time was much nicer, and the otters which had hidden on my first visit were very actively swimming laps in their pool. However the manatees were more shy and the bird life more limited.

After our afternoon at the park, Tiffer and Kai came on up for a BBQ dinner and overnight affording us the chance for some multi-generational family pix.

At the end of the month was NCL’s final park-wide party of the season. This last blast is a potluck with a Luau, complete with roast pig. We’d missed it last year, which pained me because, if there’s a theme we should be able to get into, you’d think it would be this one. Although it seems like we have spent a lot of time here this year, we have repeatedly been away for most of the big events. So I planned a couple of dishes to take that would be quasi-authentic Polynesian dishes (along with a backup in case it didn’t come out right!), and shopped hard to find approximate ingredients. Of course our little motorcycle group couldn’t resist a ride in the fine weather that morning, which of course got us back late, so it was all a rush in the end! I pressured Don into wearing proper Pacific pareos to the event, but I don’t think a single person commented on his wearing a skirt!

Our First Poker Run

Finally on the last weekend of the month came the event Don had been waiting weeks for: our first poker run. Poker runs are pretty common fund-raising events in the motorcycle world. This one was organized by the local American Legion to benefit families of reservists posted in Iraq. About a hundred motorcycles gathered for the ride that would string together seven stops at biker friendly bars, restaurants and Legion Posts where the riders would collect cards in sealed envelopes, paying $10 per hand. At the end the envelopes would be opened, hands registered, and prizes awarded to the best four.

It was a beautiful day and the route covered ground familiar from our own wanderings. The pack was pretty well divided between what we still think of as “real” bikers (guys and gals with lots of tattoos and leather) and what I think of as middle-aged boomer-zoomers (in other words, us!). There were about a dozen bikes from NCL (accounting for a tenth of the turnout), and we are all in the latter category. Surprisingly, the brotherhood of the road seemed to have room for us all! It was a very friendly day, with plenty of mutual admiration of bikes and leathers. I did chuckle a bit at the overweight middle-aged rockers who wailed away on the bandstand at the final party as our prim activities director Pat (whose recent courtship with one of our Park bikers has her riding behind him in borrowed leathers and her red cowboy dance boots) covered her ears.

And speaking of ears, mine could hardly believe it when my name was called as third place winner! My prize was an impressive leather jacket already bedecked with an array of biker patches! I was the envy of all! Unfortunately, the jacket is a little big on me, but of course fits Don just fine. He suggests I will be able to better admire it on him! Maybe, but I for sure wore it home from the Legion Hall (despite the heat) which earned me lots of whistles and thumbs up as we roared away.

You know, I’m actually kinda getting addicted to the Harley rumble! Who’da thunk it?

Speaking of the Harley rumble, if your guts stir at all to the thought of riding free, be sure not to miss the current flick Wild Hogs. Even if they don’t stir that way, it’s a fun movie. Don and I caught the premier showing, and it is the first time in ages we’ve been in a packed theater where the audience laughed from beginning to end.

February Frenzy

2007-04-07T19:19:00.000-07:00

Cousin Patty’s visit the first weekend in February, however crappy the weather, was an island of calm in the storm of our busy calendar. Almost the moment she was on the plane, we were back on the road again.

First stop was the FMCA’s (Family Motorcoach Association) southeast regional convention in Brooksville, Florida. Brooksville is just a hop, skip and a jump away from Crystal River, and, since we’d never attended one of these things, we’d signed up. The convention took over a good part of the Hernando County Airport, and motorhomes were parked one after the other in three rows down the length of not one but two runways! What a sight it is to see a couple thousand motorhomes in one place!

I cannot tell you how impressive the organization of this event was to us. There were four full days of seminars going on in a half-dozen tents, with coffee and donuts for all in the morning and entertainment at night. Volunteers drove trams – either school buses or trolleys towed by trucks – from first light to the end of day. And of course there was the field of new models on display.

The main activity Don and I participated in was an RV Safe Driving Course. Graduation earned us certificates that save us $ on our insurance. Although the two session course was mainly a review of principles we should already know, I think we both found it a worthwhile refresher. The other meaty seminar we sat in on was the one on tire safety. We went right over to the vendors tent and purchased a tire monitor with senders for the six tires of the coach and the four on the car. With this in place we can keep a close eye on the pressures as we go down the road, and an alarm will sound if any tire’s pressure drops by 12%. After our flat on the tow car last year, this seemed a no-brainer.

From Brooksville, we drove south to Ft. Meyers for a few days visit with Don’s folks. Let me emphasize the “WE.” Flush with my RV safety course, I was determined to drive. Up to now I have avoided it, with just a short stint on a light-trafficked road and around the parks. This time I got behind the wheel just south of Tampa and drove most of the way to Ft. Meyers on I75. It was terrifying for all concerned. Don makes it looks so easy, but the damn thing does not track straight. I’d be going along just fine when before I knew it the starboard tires were going whumpa, whumpa, whumpa on the safety grooves along the shoulder, conceived to awaken a dozing driver. I wasn’t dozing! To get it back in the lane required a correction that threatened to put me into the next lane! As snake a wake as I was making, I must point out I never did cross into the other lane, but when I suggested to Don that a sign identifying me as a novice driver might be wise in the back window, he said, “I think they know.”

Still and all I did it, which is comforting to know in case of an emergency. With all the writing I do to motivate women cruisers to be proactive, the least I can do on the RV is manage to drive it.

However I don’t think it will become a habit.

We had a nice if short visit with Don’s folks who’d got themselves a primo parking spot right at the head of Upriver Park in North Fort Meyers. From here they could sit on their patio and watch all the comings and goings, it was an easy stroll to the post office or the ice cream socials, and their daily loops for exercise offered several routes, including, our favorite, a stroll out to the waters of the Caloosahatchee River.

From Ft. Meyers we drove east to Miami for a week working the Miami Boatshow. Like last year we had a pass to bring the coach downtown to park in the exhibitors’ lot right at Bayside. So like last year, we drove our rig into downtown Miami at 5:30 am to avoid entangling ourselves in urban traffic.

I was again working for Sea Tech Systems in the Strictly Sail Tents at Bayside. Don was working for Spectra Watermakers down in the main convention center (where the power boaters hang out!) This pretty well meant our day split after morning coffee, and rejoined about dinner time. Dinner was usually with the Sea Tech group at our restaurant find of the year – an Argentinean place called The Knife, but a couple of evenings we got off on our own with friends. With both of us working, especially since we are both getting better at it, the week-long investment of time is really starting to pay off. Plus, we have been enough that we are starting to feel like regulars. People know us; friends come by. It’s turning into a good way to keep the sailor side of us alive while back living on dirt!

From Miami we drove North to Melbourne for couple of days visit with friends Dave McCampbell and Sherry Becketts. I have little experience playing matchmaker, but we introduced Dave and Sherry last year when both were looking for a cruising partner. Now, Dave’s boat Soggy Paws (a sistership to Tackless II) is docked behind Sherry’s condo, and the two are on a determined campaign to consolidate their lives and take off cruising by the end of April! If anyone can do it they can! I have had a few second thoughts about making this introduction, however, since Sherry has been my webmaster these past couple of years and now she’ll be gone!

In fact, the official reason for our visit was to refresh my memory on how to makes posts to my own website. I am embarrassed to admit that I have no gift for this and have relied heavily on others to make happen all that you (dear reader) have seen on www.thetwocaptains.com! But it looks like I am going to be saved by Blogger.com. Blogger.com and Sailblogs.com are the Internet’s gift to the mobile sailor. Although I have squirmed at the concepts of the “blog” phenomenon, I am a complete convert. Not only is it practically idiot-proof (as you can see by these past postings), but once you have it set up you can simply post your updates right to your Blog by email. In Melbourne Sherry gave lessons to me and another cruiser, Jean Service of the CSY Jean Marie, and Jean and I spent a great day together practicing. By the way, Jean and her husband Tom are soon to take off on their second circumnavigation, this time via the Horn. Check their new blog out at: http://svjeanmarie.blogspot.com/

With our departure from Melbourne, our calendar promised to return to a more homely bent. We had a visit with the kids in Clearwater ahead, Don’s folks were scheduled to bring their RV to NCL, and the new Harley called.

What's Up with the Ground Hog????

2007-04-07T19:01:00.000-07:00

Cousin Patty Visits

Sometime in the fall, my cousin Patty made plans to visit us during February. I was pretty excited because she hadn’t yet had even a glimpse of our new life as RVers and grandparents, let alone bikers. Plus I was eager to show her the natural Florida we had discovered around Crystal River. All Patty asked for was a guarantee that it would be warm and sunny. I told her that while the odds weren't bad and while it was a good bet that it would be warmer here than Middletown Springs, Vermont, even in Florida, guarantees were not wise.

No truer words were spoken. We collected Patty from the Tampa airport and took her directly to lunch at a favorite restaurant, Frenchy’s Saltwater on Clearwater Beach. The sun was out that afternoon, but it was not warm. After our grouper sandwiches, we went out to walk a bit on the beach. Clearwater Beach is the quintessential beach, the largest expanse of sugar white sand I have ever seen. That afternoon there was hardly a soul out because the chill wind was driving the sand in a stinging blizzard that even the most determined souls (us) couldn’t face for longer than twenty minutes!

That night, after a fine family dinner where Patty got her dose of our grandson Kai, we went "home" to the coach which was shoe-horned into the kids’ yard. In bed we turned on the TV to see if the weather report had magically brightened! Hardly. Thunderstorms were forecast for the middle of the night for the whole area, and there were actual tornado watches out for the north part of Citrus County, right where we were headed the next day!

Sure enough we had lightning and heavy rain in the night! I kind of like rain on the coach -- the pitter patter on the roof and all, I swear the ONLY rain we get in this part of Florida occurs when we are parked in the kids’ side yard, where our heavy RV is steadily gouging out huge ruts in their lawn. We woke to a chill overcast outside and the nagging ache of swollen glands on my inside! ANY OTHER WEKEND and I would have rolled up in my comforter with a good book and wallowed in being sick, but Patty was here and I had a full agenda for us. I was NOT going to be put off!

It was on our way north that Patty got the phone call from her husband urging us to call her mother and reassure her that we weren’t casualties of the tornadoes! A call to our neighbor at NCL reported many inches of rain and several trees down, but two strong twisters had touched down in north Lake County, less than an hour’s drive east, damaging more than 1500 buildings and taking nineteen lives! Holy cow, the warnings had come about!

The dank gray weather did not get any better the whole weekend, and neither did whatever bug was trying to pull me down, but we ignored both, and everything on my agenda got done. On her first afternoon, Patty and I visited the Homosassa State Wildlife Park, which has a collection of Floridian wildlife, from wild cats to shorebirds, deer to snakes, otters to owls, and of course manatees to alligators. Oh, yes, and a for-real two-headed turtle! The only non-native animal in the park is a hippopotamus named Lucifer. Lu, a retired movie star, came to the park when it was a more generic zoo. A very popular fellow, he survived the conversion by being made an honorary citizen of the state. I don’t know, there’s something wonderful about a hippopotamus. I’m glad he’s there.

Patty was keen to try some kayaking, so Saturday, we reprised the three-hour kayak trip down the Rainbow River. This time, thanks to the gray and chilly weather, we had this beautiful river largely to ourselves. As before, we saw lots of turtles poking their heads from the surface, anhingas and cormorants drying their feathers on shore-side branches, and white ibis digging in the weeds. This time we also saw a huge flock of wild turkeys!

The other major activity I wanted to fit in was a walk in the trails behind NCL. Our home RV park, Nature Coast Landings, backs up to the Felburn Park Trailhead and Withlacoochee Bay Trail. This little park includes the five-mile bike trail to the Gulf which Don and I discovered on our first visit to NCL and which at the time had a great deal to do with winning us over to the area. The Trailhead Park itself, a collection of picnic tables with a playground, didn’t reveal its hidden treasure to us until this past fall. Lurking behind the playground, down an unmarked and unmapped dirt path, is a whole network of walking trails! The glimpse of the Florida Barge Canal we might have anticipated, but who would have guessed that there was a whole lake back there surrounded by whispering reeds! I want to call it untouched by man, only its shape, a network of rectangles, suggests it may have once been a quarry. Still, now it is wrapped by scrub and forest and is a great refuge for birds and wildlife. Every time we go we see strands of animal tracks threading the trail before us. Don and I have taken to a mixed program of morning exercise, alternating between the bike trail and long walks in this park. Patty, being a Vermonter, might legitimately feel her state has a corner on natural beauty. I am quite sure that she, just like I, never imagined Florida could have such secret niches.

The only activity Patty missed out on was a ride on the Harley. It was offered, but it just didn’t seem to be high on her priority list. I’m sure it was the cold weather. The other activity that probably wasn’t high on her activity list was the Superbowl, but even she realized there was no getting out of watching the Indianapolis Colts in their moment of glory. We made up a huge batch of chili and Patty cheered for the Bears just to add more spice!

It was inevitable, of course that the Monday morning drive to Tampa airport took place in beautiful sunny, if still brisk, weather. When she got home, she said the temps in Vermont were about the same as she'd had in Florida.

What can I say?... I told her there were no guarantees!

And A Harley New Year

2007-04-05T05:48:00.000-07:00

The bike was sitting in our driveway with a cover over it when Don’s folks pulled into Nature Coast Landings on New Year’s Day. They managed to ignore it for a couple of hours, but just before coming inside for the welcome dinner I’d fixed, Don’s Dad finally asked, “is that a motorcycle?"

They took it well. Well, they took it quietly. I see now where Don gets his poker face. Don rode it around the loop a couple of times, showing off its cool green ‘neon” lights that light up the chrome in the dark. How could they not be impressed?

Other than the demo turns, however, the bike stayed in the driveway during their short visit. There were no takers for test drives, and we sedately went to dinner at Peck’s – a quintessential Florida seafood joint at the end of a great motorcycle road (74 curves) out into the marshes of Ozello– in the back seat of Dad’s sedan.

But the folks moved on south to their winter RV grounds in a couple of days, so we were back in the saddle before the dust settled. We rode everywhere we could at the drop of a hat. The motorcycle contagion was spreading with two other neighbors buying bikes (both Hondas!) and a third buying the old Interstate! So in addition to our solo explorations, we had group rides, usually to places to have lunch. We even took a long ride to Webster, FL where there’s a huge motorcycle swap meet once a month. Harley Davidson is the master of merchandizing, and motorcycle riders in general enjoy a unique wardrobe. Week by week it seemed, our closets bulged with new and unusual items: leather jackets, chaps, gloves, black jeans, and of course a whole array of Harley T-shirts.

To show you just how addicted we’d become, we actually turned down the chance to deliver a sailboat! Our friends Diane and Alex, both formerly sailors in the Virgins like us, finally found the boat they’d been hunting for: a 42-foot Endeavor fixer-upper for the right price that could become Alex’s next project while they sit our the two-year homesteading requirement on the house they just finished building. Over their Christmas vacation time they had done their best to bring the boat from North Carolina back to Hernando Beach, but the weather was not cooperating, and as the lasts days ticked down, they’d only made it to Cape Canaveral. It troubled us a little that we were proving to be such fair-weather friends, but hells bells, we are definitely fair weather sailors, and the 40 degree temps January had ushered in were just too brisk for us!

The real reason we couldn’t help (well, the real reason after the Harley), was that the boat show schedule was about to kick in again for both of us. I was due to fly up to Philadelphia mid-month and Don had been recruited to work with Dick Murray of Murray Marine, the East Coast Spectra Watermaker dealer whom he’d met during the SSCA Gam. It’s hard to argue with positive cash flow!

The Philadelphia Boat Show

Although I was none too sure how this fair weather sailor found herself working a boat show in Philly in January! No worries! The Philadelphia Boat show takes place in the fabulous Pennsylvania Convention Center. Part of this huge center occupies the renovated Reading Terminal Trainshed, the oldest surviving single-span arched trainshed roof structure in the world, and the only one of its kind remaining in the United States. The show was in one large hall on the second floor, while the largest program of sailing related seminars I’d ever seen went on simultaneously in one of a dozen conference rooms on either side of the corridor. To make things really sweet, the center is connected to the Marriot Hotel where we were staying. There was no need to go outside at all. Fine with me since the mercury was low and it even snowed a couple of times!

This was the first indoor boat show I’d ever attended, and I really didn’t know what to expect. Steve had advised me that this wasn’t traditionally a big-selling show for him, so I pictured something small. I was pretty amazed to find the second-floor hall filled with sailboats! And not just little boats! Full-sized coastal sailers (with their masts unstepped, of course)! And the coolest thing to me was the large foot-deep pool created in the center of the room where attendees could sign up to race one of a fleet of radio-controlled model boats! And what’s to criticize about a show with real restrooms instead of port-o-potties!

My cohort in Sea-Tech sales (actually Steve’s first line saleswoman at these events) is Captain Marti Brown, author of SSB for Idiyachts, a comprehensive overview of all the things SSB radio can do for the cruising sailor. However, for the first time in memory, Marti was unable to come, thanks to some major surgery she’d recently undergone. This meant Steve had to cover the half-dozen seminars she was scheduled to give and I had to stand on my own two feet as a salesperson. On the other hand, I got to have my fancy Marriott hotel room all on my own! Now there’s luxury! A queen-sized bed with down topper, shower and bathtub with infinite water. Only flaw in the package deal was that they wanted to charge $10 a day for Internet! Instead I watched the Indianapolis Colts secure their slot in the Super Bowl. Egad, who woulda thought the day would come when I would watch football by myself!?!

The Stuart Trawlerfest

No sooner than I was off the plane in Tampa than Don and I were in the coach and on our way to the East Coast of Florida for the Stuart Trawlerfest. Dick Murray, the east Florida dealer for Spectra Watermakers was enough impressed with Don’s watermaker know-how at the SSCA Gam to invite him to work this show with him. He even had a place for us to park for free, in the large side yard of a charming old Florida beach house he had up for sale!

A completely different kind of show from the Strictly Sail shows, the Trawlerfest featured large power boats, both new and brokerage, with a far smaller emphasis on equipment. At Stuart there were no more than thirty vendors in a tent set up in the Marriott parking lot, and I don’t know if it was a case of the chicken or the egg, but there didn’t turn out to be much traffic through the tent. It could also have been the weather, which was cold, wet and blustery the first two days. Or it could have been because it was the first time the Stuart show had been at that venue.

On the other hand, the catering at the show was very upscale: cocktail parties each evening and nice prepared lunches everyday for which Dick had provided us both with tickets. Ironically, it was schmoozing with the folks at our lunch table that brought in the only watermaker sale, to a couple that bought it for a sailing friend prepping to leave for the Bahamas!

So it didn’t turn out to be the financial bonanza we’d hoped it might, but the fact that I’d done unexpectedly well at Philly softened the blow. Plus Don had the chance to get to know Dick better and cement the opportunity to work for him in the Spectra booth in Miami, a far better prospect.

Visitors & Kayaking

January was not all motorcycles and boat shows. Early in the month we enjoyed a nice visit with Don’s classmate from high school, Roger Batton. Rog is a farmer in Morristown, Indiana. He is also an avid golfer. Put the two together in the middle of the cold wet winter, and you have a good excuse for a visit to Florida. Rog’s cousin Greg winters in Sebring, in a house on a golf course, so Rog spent a week on the greens, before getting together with us. We rode the motorcycle to Lakeland to rendezvous for lunch with Rog and two other of their classmates, and then Rog followed us back to Crystal River for a few nights.

Now before the motorcycle took over our lives, I was keen to get into kayaking. The area boasts seven spring-fed rivers and infinite winding salt water estuaries for paddlers. Canoe and kayak rental businesses abound, and several of our neighbors at NCL have their own. Back in December friends Dan and Jan christened us on a afternoon paddle in Crystal River’s King’s Bay where we paddled out to see the manatees. The manatees are big business for the Nature Coast and tourists were thick, most getting there by tour boat. Still the mantatees came out from their sanctuary to nudge at and sometimes scratch their backs on our kayaks' bottoms. Since then I’d been chafing at the bit to paddle nearby Rainbow River, a waterway renowned for its clarity.

So off we go on a sunny Sunday to Dragonfly Watersports with our Indiana farmer in tow. Although I wouldn’t say were pros, over the years we have at least had kayaks on Tackless and Whisper. This was Rog’s debut. Delivered to the launch ramp, we paddled first upriver about an hour to the headsprings in the State Park, before turning around and traveling downcurrent about five miles. The river was as advertised, gin clear and liberally populated with turtles and bass and with anhingas, cormorants, and ibis decorating the bank-side trees. Sadly, no manatees, as they ar preventing from coming upriver by dams. Don did thinkhe saw an otter. Much of the river course is built up, but so far the houses have avoided the pompous architecture so prevalent in Florida. Pontoon boats, runabouts, and canoes were tied up at backyard docks, and families cannonballed into the water said to be a constant 76 degrees year round. In the summertime this is a big tubing destination for sweltering Floridians seeking to cool off. Since it was a Sunday and pretty day there were plenty of fisherman out drifting in the current and an amazing number of dive boats putting an even more amazing number of scuba divers into the water for shallow drift dives! Arm weary, we pulled the kayaks out at the SR484 bridge about three and a half hours after we started. Rog was a tad concerned he might not be able to raise his arms to the wheel to drive home the next day, but we all woke the day following with no lasting effects. (Sorry, no photos; didn't trust ourselves with the camera!)

A Very Merry December

2007-04-04T10:09:00.000-07:00

It was inevitable wasn’t it? Give a guy an inch and he’ll definitely take it where he can. We didn’t have the RV back in Crystal River more than a day or two before the rumors of Don’s new motorcycle endorsement made the rounds of the park. And we’d already noticed the old silver Honda Interstate sitting unused on the pad over in the oldest section of the park …right next to a bright shiny new one. By the morning of December 7^th – our anniversary – Doug, the old cycle’s owner and Don had initiated negotiations through Ellis, a Harley owner, and by the end of the day, the Interstate was sitting in our driveway.

Now we didn’t exactly buy it. At 22 years old, the venerable old bike had an awful lot of years on it, even if it was fairly low mileage. Up close it turned out to have a lot more rust on it, and it was a discontinued model for which parts could be hard to find. But since it was just sitting there, Don was willing to go so far as to rent it on a month-by-month basis, just to see how I might take to being a biker babe.

That very first evening we rode it out the winding roads of Yankeetown to the Gulf. And it was grand! The sky and tree-tops whizzing by, birds flying overhead, the marshes rustling in the sea breeze…It was not unlike scuba diving where you are totally immersed in the natural world.

We rode it every day that week, on group rides with our neighbors and on solo runs along winding roads through the pine forests to the north. We were well and truly hooked.

Not that we publicized our new activity over our Christmas visit to Indiana!

Family Christmas

The Wilson clan celebrated Christmas the 15^th & 16^th this year, a little extra early thanks to Christmas being on a Monday. Don’s Dad drove the car to pick us up at the airport, and he walked about the house without so much as a cane. Obviously he has been working hard on his recovery from his September surgery.

The annual Wilson Saturday dinner took place at nephew Dane and family’s brand new house in Greenfield. Tiffer, Derek and Kai were also on hand, as well as cousins Tisha and her family, and of course Don’s brother Greg, his wife Karen, and son Adam drove down from Valpo. Only Brooke, now living in Las Vegas was missing. I think this is the fourth “new” house I’ve had the Wilson Christmas in since joining the clan, but I think this is the one they’ll be in for a long time to come! And on Sunday we all ferried down to Aunt Margaret’s house in Shelbyville for celebration with Gma’s side of the family. Since several of Aunt Margaret’s children ride Harleys, there were some quiet conversations in out-of-the-way corner about our newfound enthusiasm!

Thanks to the early timing, we had a whole five days back in Crystal River to ride the Honda before repositioning ourselves to Clearwater for Christmas with the kids. Now two and talking up a storm, Kai was much more into the gift receiving side of things than last year. (And of course the indulgent grandparents complied.) Kai is one of the happiest and energetic children I have had the pleasure to play with. He has a definite preference for “outside” as does old Gz. One can spend hours in the front yard or back messing about with balls from golf ball size to giant soccer, and Christmas added “tennis”, lacrosse and hockey to the activity list. He’s not the greatest catcher in the world, but he throws and aims better than I do!

Santa finds the 2Cs

It was the day after Christmas that Santa found the two Captains. We were whiling away some time before a dinner get together with friends, and Don was complaining about how, on the old Honda, there really wasn’t enough room for his big feet to manipulate the shifter. We’d stopped in a Honda dealer to see it the new models were any better than our antique, but nothing on display in the Honda, Suzuki, or Kawasaki line fit the bill.

So as we are driving down the road, I said, “So how’s the room on a Harley?” And he said, “I don’t know.” Poof, on the right appears as if by magic Fletcher’s, Clearwater’s Harley dealer! We, of course, turn in.

The showroom must have had sixty bikes of various sizes, models and colors. The only thing really suitable for us two grande-sized captains (since I am not willing to hang on from the back fender) is the top-of-the line Ultra Classic touring bike. The salesman scooped us up right quick and let us sit aboard a shiny 2007. Sure enough, there was lot more room for Don’s big toes. And with both of us aboard, the bike would balance with just one of the salesman fingers for support! It was a catchy sales technique, and Don was smiling (hell, he was sold on a Harley before we came in the door), but I was still leaning toward the quieter, smoother Honda Goldwing, of which (I rationalized) we could surely find one used (just not quite as used as our rental Interstate). Fortunately, the 2007 price tag wiped the smile right off of Don’s face, and we were on our way out the door when the salesman said, ‘Before you go, you ought to take a look at the one we just took in on trade.”

It was love at first sight. I tell you, I actually felt my stomach and heart go splat on the floor. It was a teal green (our mutual favorite color…even if we perpetually disagree whether it is a blue or a green) 2003 Ultra Classic, all duded up with most of the chrome accessories the Harley catalog has to offer! Dig this, it even had woven leather handlebar grips with trailing tassels. “It used to belong to the President of our local Harley Owners Group,” the salesman explained. “He just traded up to a 2007.”

I won’t document the steps by which this vision of motorcycle loveliness became ours, but I will confess that we weren’t ten minutes away after getting out the door when I heard the words – “That bike’ll be gone in no time” – come out of my mouth! In two more blocks we’d called on the cell and put a hold on it, and the next morning we were in borrowed helmets taking a 70mph test drive (behind Scott our salesman) on the Bayside Bridge!

There was just one hitch. We couldn’t take it home to Tiffer’s. It was not so much that Tiffany didn’t want us riding a motorcycle (after all, it is just one more wrinkle we put in her brow), she just didn’t want Kai (or was it Derek?) to see it. On top of which, that afternoon was Kai’s birthday celebration, and even we couldn’t argue with the fact that it would not be cool to usurp center stage. And then there was the small dilemma of how to drive it and the RV back to Crystal River, since I don’t drive either one.

So we left it at Fletcher’s for a couple of days while we drove the RV home, returned the Interstate to Doug (after a farewell ride of appreciation), and made a return trip to Clearwater by car! Even then, we were not exactly home free, since Gma and Gpa Wilson were due at Crystal River with their RV New Year’s day! There’s nothing to make you feel like a kid again more than when you’ve got a secret you haven’t told your folks!

A Busy November

2007-04-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

The St. Pete Boat Show -- Nov. 2-5, 2006

Such a deal we had at the St. Pete Boat Show! Unlike other shows where one has to fly in and stay in hotels, we were able to drive our coach in and park right on the show grounds! There were about ten exhibitor RVs in two rows right along the edge of the marina basin. There were even power hookups and water available. Many thanks to the Sail America guys for making it happen, and making it happen so nicely.

As in Annapolis in October, I was working the show for Sea Tech Systems. SeaTech sells The Cap'n electronic charting programs, Icom HF radios, Pactor modems, satellite telephones, weather fax software, etc all designed to work with PC computers on the nav stations of cruising boats. Although I am neither a computer genius or a particularly natural saleswoman, I do use all this stuff on board Tackless II (after Don has gotten power to it, of course!) , so I am in a good position to help customers consider what is important and what is not. This made my fifth boat show for Sea Tech, and I would finally say I'm beginning to get the hang of it!

In addition to working the booth, my friends Kathy Parsons and Pam Wall were both on hand, so we three reprised our Women & Cruising Seminars which were again a popular success. You may remember that it was the first Women & Cruising seminar we did in Miami last February that led to the Admiral's Angle column in Latitudes and Attitudes Magazine.

Speaking of Lats & Atts, Bob Bitchin, Jody, Woody, Dave and all the gang were on hand as they are at most of the Strictly Sail shows. Although St. Pete is not the biggest of the boat shows, it is traditionally one of the biggest of the Lats & Atts Saturday night parties where the Eric Stone Band rocks and Bob gives away free pizza and beer. Sea Tech always hands out lots of free goodies to the party crowd, so we were upfront and in the middle for most of the good times.

All in all the St. Pete show added up to a pretty good time for a week of work! Of course it didn't hurt that being practically in our back yard we had lots of friends come by: Dave, of our sistership Soggy Paws with our webmaster Sherry; Dr. John of the trawler Knot So Fast; Ron & Dorothy of the CSY Memory Rose; Diane and Alex from Hernando Beach who are hunting for a boat; Carey, formerly of Cajun Waltz, and his sister Ann; and Nurse Dee from St. Pete. This kept Don pretty busy escorting them to and from the coach for bathroom, air conditioning and cold beer breaks!

Reunion Time -- Judy and Bryan do the SSCA Gam with the 2Cs -- November 7-14

From the Boat show, we drove up to Clearwater and parked in our kids' side yard with just a day to prepare for a week-long visit by Judy and Bryan of Ursa Minor. Many of you know that Judy worked with me in the charter business for several years and skippered Tackless one season while Don worked with me on Whisper. We'd last seen each other in Margarita, Venezuela in 2000 and our kids' wedding in the Virgin Islands in May 2003.

Judy and Bryan recently retired from the charter business and have been in Trinidad several months, deep in preparation for taking off in our wake to cruise the South Pacific. We planned this visit so that they could travel with us in the RV to the SSCA Gam the week after St. Pete. Of course, they had to fly into Tampa in order to meet our grandson Kai. And we weren't the only ones who wanted "Aunt Judy" to meet new family. Old friends from St. Thomas Terry and Karen Galvin, now living in Sarasota, orchestrated a wonderful dinner at their home so we could meet their new son, nine-year-old Daniel. It's amazing what happens when you do see folks for a decade!

Early the next morning we were on the road to Melbourne so that Judy and Bryan, new to the joys of HF radio email, could attend the special Sailmail Seminar offered the day before the Gam. Don and I dropped them off and parked the RV in a park right off Eau Gallie Blvd. Positioned for snow bunnies wanting easy access to the beach, it was a little pricey, but it put us less than a mile from the Gam. Several of our friends park their C-class RVs right on the streets around the Gam, but ours it a little to big to get away with that!

The annual three-day Gam (def: "a social visit between sailor at sea") is the SSCA 's main event of the year, and all four of us had our schedules full with seminars we wanted to attend and all the various social events. Don and I also were scheduled to give presentations: me on writing articles while cruising and Don on the care of cruising watermaker. A highlight for me was meeting Gregory Newell Smith, author of a wonderful new collection of essays called The Solitude of the Open Sea. Plus there were so many people we knew and wanted to visit with, like many of the women who correspond with me for my Admiral's Angle column (including a few new recruits!) as well as not one but two get-togethers over dinner and breakfast with fellow CSY owners!

We'd wondered how well it would work out having four people on our 34' coach for that long, but I guess because we were all boaters and accustomed to small spaces, it worked out great. It probably didn't hurt that each couple could go to bed with their own TV, especially since I noticed we didn't choose to watch remotely the same programs! After the Gam, we managed to get Judy and Bryan back to Tampa in time to catch their 8:30 am flight to Michigan by staying overnight in a park just a few miles from the airport.

Thanksgiving Gatherings

We had less than a week to recoup from all these goings on before it was Thanksgiving weekend. Our family (by which I mean the kids!) had been invited to a friend's brother's home, and the invitation kindly included the senior generation. At first I was a bit disappointed because, well, there's nothing like the tradition of cooking your own turkey, picking at it in your own kitchen, and stewing soup up from the carcass afterwards.

But, what an experience! It was kind of like going to a movie star's home! The house was full of well-thought out indulgences like the delightful room for the one year old, with hand-painted murals capturing a child's dreamscape from morning to night and a Polar Express train circling the room on a track suspended from a starry ceiling or the playroom for the grown-ups, with movie theater seats before a huge screen with trompe d'oeil murals and original classic movie posters on the walls. The piece de resistance, however, was the elaborate screened-in grotto in the back yard with waterfalls, jacuzzis, pools and koi pond all knit together with luxuriant tropical plantings. I haven't seen the likes of it even at some of the most upscale Caribbean resorts! As you might guess the catered dinner was elegant and plentiful. We all left as stuffed as one should be on Thanksgiving and each toting a bag each of tasty leftovers to stock the fridge!

On the weekend we drove the RV north up to the St. Josephs State Park in Florida's Panhandle in order to rendezvous with Dennis and Lisa of Lady Galadriel, who drove down from their own family Thanksgiving gathering in Alabama. After two years cruising and traveling with them in Mexico, our paths had parted, with Dennis and Lisa finding their way through the Canal and the Caribbean to Annapolis where the boat has undergone a major refit and the crew has improved the cash flow by working there for West Marine!

How great to see them and what a great place to do it! Mother Nature conspired by sending us perfect fall weather just as all the other folks' holiday weekend ended! For two days, we had the park virtually to ourselves to enjoy beach walking and cycling, sundowners and blazing campfires, not to mention the great chemistry of good companionship!

Motorcycle School!

That's not a typo, nor an insert from somebody else's blog. When we left the serene beach of St. Joseph's, we had to hurry along the road to downtown Ocala, where we parked the coach in a lot at Central Florida Community College so Don could roll out of bed in the morning and onto a Suzuki 250 as part of a three-day class to get a motorcycle endorsement on his Florida driver's license. Although we didn't have a motorcycle, a little research had revealed that one can RENT a HARLEY by the day from Harley Davidson dealers worldwide. That one might want to has been prompted by our neighbors at NCL who have a Harley trike. Don, who once owned and rode a 750 Triumph Bonneville in his younger, wilder days, has been reminiscing since we closed on the lot. I, who have had all but no experience (two rides in my own younger (not-so-wilder) days), remained skeptical, but open-minded.

Need I say he passed!

2007-02-21T14:45:00.000-08:00

October 28, 2006

Wrapping up Indiana
A month has passed since the last post, and it is a month that has been jam packed!

Most importantly is the great progress Gpa Wilson has made. Although the hospital kept him a week longer than anyone felt necessary, here it is a month of physical therapy later, and the walker is long since retired. He is walking well, often without even his cane, and last week he started driving again, mostly to the Bluebird for morning coffee with the boys, but also a couple of longer trips to Greenfield. As we understand it the first drive came the morning after we left!

North Carolina
We pulled the coach out the Wilson driveway Oct 18, driven out by the first frost! We took a day and a half to drive south to Hendersonville, North Carolina aiming to spend my birthday with my sister Cecily. The Smokies put on quite a show for us as we traveled, with moist foggy weather in Tennessee where we overnighted in a crowded little Escapees Park and then with brilliant foliage as we climbed up into the Blue Ridge Mountains via I40.

As they did last time, Cecily and Bob arranged for us to leave the coach in one of the few remaining undeveloped cul-de-sacs in Champion Hills, the mountaintop golf community where they live, which meant we had to move off for our four-day visit. Darn, if they'd just let us live aboard in those cul-de-sacs, it would be so fabulous! It seems like every nook and cranny of Champion Hills is beautiful. Of course living in my sister's gorgeous home is always a pleasure...it just means we have to make a couple of trips back and forth to the coach to collect all the appropriate clothing for all the scheduled activities.

To start with, for my birthday, Bob and Cecily arranged a golf lesson for me with their club pro. I was pretty keen for this until the night before when I started to fret for the first time that I might not actually be able to connect with the ball. Honestly, it had not occurred to me before! After all, it has been 34 years since I'd even picked up a golf club. That summer was the year my nephew John, then eleven, spent with my parents (and me) in Williamstown, Mass, and one of the best distractions they could come up with for the two of us "kids" was golf lessons at the club's driving range. John and I smacked a lot of balls that summer, but we never went out on the course.

Incredible as it may seem, my first swing smacked the ball straight out in a nice lofty arc. Cecily was very impressed. Unfortunately, things gradually deteriorated from there. Or at least it felt that way to me. My arms got pretty sore. But I learned a lot of things from the pro to watch for and think about. After the warm-up and lesson, we broke for a wonderful lunch at the Club, which quite simply has a million-dollar view. (Probably that's a billion $ view in this economy!) Afterwards, the four of us took two carts and played about seven holes on the actual course. As I said, this may actually have been my first time ever on a real golf course, and this one is steep! My repertoire of shots from the driving range did not apply too well on 45 degree inclines in the rough, and Don's slice (or is it fade?) regularly took him from side to side and into the woods. More than a few balls were lost!

However, who cared! The course is gorgeous. The brilliant foliage was perfectly accented by the emerald greens! The sky was clear and azure blue, the sun warm, the air crisp, and the company great. It was definitely one of the nicest birthdays I have ever spent!

And there was more. From the course we hurried home to change for a "mixer" dinner back at the club. The sun set in the picture windows as neighbors mingled over cocktails, after which we all turned to a laden buffet table of grilled vegetable antipasto, followed by a seafood saute station with a choice of sauces and pastas to mix with it. Yum! There was also a main course table and a dessert table, but neither measured up to the first two!

The rest of the weekend was spent in a mixture of dog walking, hiking, eating, perusing mutual writing projects (the girls), watching football (the guys) capped off very nicely with a musical revue at the Flat Rock Playhouse. I must confess I was expecting community theater. Pretty surprised to get professional "summer" rep. The play, called "I Love You, You're Perfect...Now Change", was very well done and quite amusing. It's been a long time since I've attended anything like that!

From Hendersonville, Don and I ignored the GPS's insistent recommendations to get east to I95 and instead drove south to Florida by way of small highways through South Carolina and Georgia. This turned out very well for us, with almost no traffic and pretty scenery the whole way. Plus it didn't take us much longer than the GPSs forecast, given that we stick to 55mph for gas mileage even on the Interstates.

Back in Crystal River
Our first stop back was our lot in Crystal River. This gave us a few days to relax on our own, although there didn't seem to be a lot of kick-back time. We walked every day around the park checking out our neighbors' improvements, and on our first bike ride down the trail to the Gulf in the late afternoon we saw a bobcat and an armadillo! Two firsts in one shot! The armadillo was right along the trailside and never even flinched as we rode by. The bobcat leisurely crossed the trail ahead of us, and only darted into the brush as if on second thought as Don rolled quite close. To be honest, we didn't totally process what we were seeing until we were past. How kewl! (now that I write for Lats& Atts Magazine I get to spell it that way!)

The big event of our time in NCL (our RV park) was the purchase and planting of trees for the lot. We now have a 14' tall "summer red maple" and two ligustrums (evergreens which can grow as a tree or be pruned into a shrub), plus two "Knock-Out" rose bushes, a spontaneous purchase for color. No sooner were they all planted than we got a night of heavy rain, so the next day we ran out and bought grass seed and a spreader to resow our blotchy "lawn". There is probably no woman my age with LESS experience in this area than me, and I had very little idea what I was doing, but with my Better Homes & Gardens "gardening for dummies" book and advice from the nursery man, I'd have to confess to having myself a good ol' time messing about in the dirt! Yikes, what has the world come to!

This morning we drove down to Clearwater in time for a Halloween brunch at Lenny's, where the staff, including our son-in-law Derek, were all dressed up in Halloween costumes. That evening, we were on hand for Kai's introduction to trick or treating. Kai, in a Frankenstein costume (sans mask!) and trailing a retinue of five adults, was at first a bit non-plussed by the whole scenario of approaching strange houses where unknown adults, often in scary costumes, greeted him with baskets of brightly wrapped candies -- stuff that he had never seen before. But once he realized -- incredible of incredibles! -- that these complete strangers might drop "suckers" into his sack, he must have thought he'd died and gone to heaven!

Boat shows

I had quite a good trip to the Annapolis Boat Show, by the way, even though the weather ran the gamut from October perfection to a howling nor'easter. Haven't gotten my commission check yet, so I'm not sure just HOW GOOD. But I saw lots of old friends: lunch w/ Bill of Geodesic...aka Uncle Bill , dinner with Dennis and Lisa of Lady Galadriel, and pass-by quickies with Elaine Lembo (my Cruising World connection), Amy Ullrich (Managing Editor of Sail Magazine who wrote the great piece on Whisper in 1996), Chris Garrity (Maptech), Jan Robinson (of all those Ship to Shore cookbooks), and Big John of CYOA Yacht Charters (the last three all former/current Virgin Islanders.)

Now comes the St. Pete Show, practically in our own back yard. Wonder who I'll see at this show? At Annapolis I only worked the booth; no seminars. But in St. Pete I will rejoin Kathy Parsons and Pam Wall for our Women and Cruising Seminar from which was born my Admiral's Angle column in Latitudes and Attitudes Magazine. People might actually have heard of me this time!

The 2Cs in Indiana

2007-02-21T14:38:00.000-08:00

September 19, 2006

I'm sitting here writing you all from the 2C rolling home, parked in Gpa & Gma Wilson's back driveway with a soybean field out the front window, a towering fir off the port bow, and Gma Wilson's kitchen full of tempting sweets inside the back door about 20' away. It's been just gorgeous weather up here this past week, Indiana at its best..., although we 2Cs don't think much of the current cold front that rolled through yesterday dropping temps to the 40s this morning!

The headline news is, of course, that Don's Dad's surgery went very well and that his recovery seems to be progressing better than his first go around three years ago. This is not to say that there haven't been a few dips in the highway. Jim gets a little impatient with the pace of hospital life and of his own recovery, but everybody else is pretty impressed.

Don and I and our jetlag pulled into Morristown a week ago today (Tues). Don's brother Greg came down Wednesday night , so Jim went in on Thursday with a full support team in his corner. This time the surgeon used a post-surgery nerve block in the groin area which seems to have knocked down a lot of the pain. Who knows why they didn't do that last time? On Saturday, Greg and Karen were back down, granddaughter Tisha was up from Evansville, and of course the tireless team Dane and BJ were all on hand. It was almost sounding like a party in room 382 with the whole clan gathered.

It is looking today that Jim might be able to come home Thursday. Of course, there is a long road of physical therapy ahead, and everybody agrees that Don is the coach who will get him through it all. Don is a firm task-master!

Meanwhile, it looks like I will fly to Annapolis for the big US Sailboat Show there Oct. 5-9, once again working in the booth for Sea Tech Systems. I'm told this is a big selling show, so there's some hope of bring home some $! Then if Jim's progress continues as well as it has started, we hope to start south to Florida early enough to fit in a side trip to NC to visit with Cecily and Bob in Hendersonville before we need to be back to Clearwater on Nov. 2. After that we start on a very busy sequence of the St. Pete Boat Show, arrival of Judy and Bryan from Trinidad, and the Seven Seas Cruising Associations Gam in Melbourne.