Trip East to Date

6-13-12 - Evansville, IN

The trip East has come to a rapid slow down.  That was the point of all this wasn't it?  We made it to Evansville, IN, (Elizabeth's hometown if you are wondering why a person might stop in such a place) last Saturday.  I would qualify this week and next as the calm before the inevitable storm of wedding preparation that will be at the end of the month.  After going thru a month of accumulated mail Elizabeth's parents have been holding for us and dealing with some other; you quit your job, have no address and plan to travel for a year; stuff, we have settled nicely into doing little or nothing.  Actually, if you know us you know that that's a lie; we are not good at doing nothing and are just spending more time doing what we want and enjoying the little things. 

Elizabeth hanging out with Lexie with the Ohio River in the background

Me, cocktail, Ohio River - oh, and it's 2:00 PM on a Tuesday!

Some thoughts and facts from the trip so far:
1. We've driven about 2,800 miles
2. Averaged 28 MPG and 67 MPH (that's pretty good considering all the junk we packed into the little Volvo)
3. Both of Elizabeth's plants have made it safely to E-ville (although we got some weird looks as we carried them in and out of the hotels each night)
4. Both of Elizabeth's guns made it back to E-ville safely (although we got some weird looks as we carried them in and out of the hotel each night, especially at the Union Club at Purdue)
5. We slaughtered approximately 15,234 bugs of varying size and color on the front of the car.
6. We traveled thru 9 different states, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana.
7. We visited with both sets of Elizabeth's grandparents
8. We stopped at Purdue (where we met and went to university) for the fist time in 12 years since we graduated.

Sweeeet Suite!

9.  Nicest hotel - Union Club in W. Lafayette.  Mostly because of it's location.
10. Crappiest hotel - Comfort Inn in Rawlins, WY.  Mostly because of it's location.  We stayed in a suite that had two folding chairs in place of the couch.  Tough times in Rawlins I guess.
11. Nicest hotel proprietor - Super 8 in Phillips, WI.  An Indian guy who let us borrow some lawn chairs so we could watch our first lighting bugs in many years and then brought us out some "spicy" food that he and his family had prepared for dinner.  It was good, but not as spicy as some Nevada food.

Old Phillips Water Tower

12.  Hillbilliest restaurant - "Bucks" in Rawlins, WY.  "Do you have any IPA's on tap"  - "Huu?  I think we have Bud Light will that be ok?"  "Yea, just bring a couple of Bud lights"
13. The number of deer/elk/moose size things we saw dead on the side of the road in Wyoming - about 25.
14.  The number of corn fields we saw after leaving Wyoming - Haha, that's a joke that the Midwestern folks get.  You can't count that high.
15. Boringest state - by far Nebraska.
16.  Most interesting state - Nevada, but I'm biased.  Next would be Utah.  Salt flats to mountains.

Made it to Indiana

So there are some of the highlights.  Hopefully I can update you on the more meaningful parts of the trip in the near future.  But now I'm off to watch the barges slowly push their way up the Ohio River, onto the next lock.  It's oddly relaxing.

Farewell Reno

6-3-12 Reno, NV and places East

Goodbye Reno

Sunday morning at 8:00AM; we finally bid farewell to Reno and headed East.  It was the typical warm blue sky day we seem to have an endless supply of in Reno; reminding us of just why we loved living there for so long.  Everything we will need for the next year is either already on the boat or packed into the one additional bag of clothes we each took for the trip East and then back West.  Everything else we own from the last 12 years of living in Reno is packed away into our storage unit patiently awaiting our return.

Oddly enough, the finality of all of this does not seem to be sinking in quite yet.  We simply got on I80 and started driving East.  My brain is still waiting for me to tell it to think about work, as if we are just taking a little trip to go camping and we’ll be back in a day or two.  But with ½ of Wyoming, Utah and Nevada behind us, it doesn’t look like we’ll be turning around anytime soon.  1^st stop: Philips in Northern Wisconsin, then Evansville in Southern Indiana (some call it Kentuckyana is so close to Kentucky) then on to Cleveland, Ohio.  It seems this adventure we have been planning for so long is actually going to happen. 

1 state down a bunch more to go

Dude Where's my Boat?

5-11-12 Alameda, CA

"Where's my boat?"

I suppose this is yet another installment of "how the world of boats works."  Apparently, this world is not the same as the outside world where customer service is paramount and when promises are made they are kept.  That may seem a bit harsh and it really is, to some degree.  On the other hand there seems to be a lot of "just go with it" and "don't worry, we'll get it done" attitude when dealing with boating related industries.  Being an obsessively punctual person who believes you should never promise something you can't deliver this sometimes frustrates me.  Thankfully I'm getting over this little by little as our departure date nears.
For instance:  We had contacted a local boatyard to replace our standing rigging. (That's the wires that hold up the mast for non-sailboat folks)  They told me they would retrieve our boat and take it to their yard, remove the mast and return the boat to our slip.  Sounds easy enough to me.  Understand that this is equivalent to giving the Cable guy your keys and asking him to fix your TV while you are not home and will not be home for a couple of weeks.  This whole operation entails quite a bit of trust.
Thursday night we arrive at 10:30 after a day of work and a 3 hour drive, unload our stuff and cart it down the dock to our boat.  Mind you at this point I really only gave it a 50/50 Chance that our boat would be there.   Even in the dark of the night I could tell there was not 9 tons of boat sitting in our slip.  You feel sort of silly staring at an empty slip with all of your stuff at you feet.  Knowing that the boat was probably at the marina next door we head back to the car and re-load our stuff and drive next door.  We must have looked trust worthy when trying to get through the gate because the security guard let us in as long as we signed his paper work.  No problem, now all we needed to do was find our boat somewhere in the marina of about 400 boats.  Elizabeth keenly spotted it after checking out only a couple of docks.  This was a nice relief as we didn't have a place to sleep at this point.  Autumn Wind looked naked without any of her rigging or mast.  She also looked really big with clean decks.  I guess this is what it's like to be a power boater.  We hopped aboard and headed to sleep knowing the yard guys would be working on the boats around us early in the morning. 
So I guess it all worked out.  We decided it was a good lesson in "Just going with It".  I am sure there will be many more to come and we might as well get used to it.
All this being said, we met the rigging foreman early the next day and he was nothing but helpful and a great guy.  He even helped us not be a "Barney" when we were deciding on line colours for our halyards. 
So that's the story of how we lost and found our boat all in one night.

The End is Almost Here

5/2/12 - Reno, NV
I suppose I can finally release the confidential information for public consumption....The End is Near!  And I couldn't be more excited.  As of today we have officially given our American dream back to those who gave it to us.
 8320 Opal Station is legally not ours anymore.  I never thought I'd be happier to say I am NOT a home owner.  It has been a long battle to get to this point and I would not wish our predicament on anyone; and now it's finally over!  Everything (and I mean everything except a bag of clothes and our boat) we own is packed into a storage unit; paid cash upfront for 2 months in a little furnished condo; and have truly been enjoying the new found simplicity and togetherness we have gained by not inhabiting 8320 Opal Station.
As of today we have both informed our employers of our plans to leave and travel for a year or so.  There's probably nothing scarier for a guy like me than to tell your boss that you are going to be leaving a great job you enjoy and have been at for 12 years and going to be unemployed, by your own choice.  It seems fairly backwards, especially in this economy we find ourselves in.  Don't worry these facts are not lost on me.  Sometimes you just need to make a decision....Looks like we did.

View from Eagle Rock

 Finally, The end of my single life is here. I proposed to Elizabeth last weekend; and thankfully she said yes. I guess she stuck with me for 14 years so far, so we must be doing something right, right? All I can say is thankfully you only need to do that once, I was nervous as hell trying to remember my rehearsed speech, which I pretty much botched, but apparently I got the critical part out and I believe she said yes. Those moments were mostly a blur to me. Atop Eagle Rock on the West shore of Lake Tahoe seemed appropriately beautiful to pop the question.

Thinking: "I hope this goes as planned"

"Why are you acting so weird"

So life's moving forward at quite a pace right now.  I can't wait to be moving forward at 5 knots in the near future!

looks like we'll be together for a while

The Great Bicycle Seat Adventure

4/17/12 - Grand Marina - Alameda

Who would have known that something so insignificant could be such a coveted item and better yet what an ordeal it could be to replace it.  Some not-so-nice person stole Elizabeth's bike seat off her bike in Alameda.  I guess that in itself isn't that big of a deal, more of a lesson to us suburbanites that if it's not locked down, it's free game in a real city.  We accept that fact and go to replace it.  Little did we know, the non-bicycle enthusiasts that we are, that they make a bunch of different sized seat posts, so the lady at the bike shop really can't tell us what post to buy unless we bring the bike in; which is obviously a little more difficult now that there is no seat on the thing.  We feel fortunate that we have a car and stuff the bike into the Little Volvo; Ellie holds on from the front seat while the bike hangs out the back of the trunk and I drive.  We get there, they measure, they tell us they don't have the correct size.  The bike goes back into the trunk, but at least now we know the size we are looking for.  A few calls latter we find it in Oakland, not too far away.  Off we go; a few one way streets and some good luck latter we find the store, they have the post and we are set...Almost.  I don't know if we have the right size hex wrench on the boat so E runs back in to have the nice guy attach the seat to the post.  While this goes on I sit in the car in a no parking area as the parking ticket guy writes tickets to a couple of other cars, gives me a mean look but carries on.  E come back seat & post attached and we head back to Alameda for a quick bike ride to Lucky13; a cool bar with great beer.
This all leads me to think how much more difficult everything must be in a real city, and I can't even imagine how this would have gone down without a car.  It takes a mind shift from small suburban Reno where everything is a car ride away, traffic isn't bad, you can park where-ever for free, your bike is safely locked in your garage and all you tools are organized and ready to use; to living in a bigger city and a smaller boat.

The upside of our little adventure is Elizabeth found someone selling flowers on the street on our way back from Oakland, so now the boat looks colorful,  Notice the french press vase! We have some new bike seat decorations on the mast ... And it all started when someone decided they needed E's bike seat more than her.  I hope they got the correct size seat post!

Holes in the boat

3/31/12 - Grand Marina, Alameda, CA

Today I drilled some holes is the boat.  For some reason this is always hard for me to do.  It seems so permanent.  You can't undo a hole one you've drilled it.  So you better make it right the first time.  I have to mentally prepare myself for these type of activities.  I'm a planned by nature, but when it comes to drilling permanent holes in the boat, I almost plan myself into inaction.  Just like today, I measured 6 times to make sure everything is centered and looking good.  (Trying to level something is somewhat futile on a boat, especially one that lists ever so slightly to port) I mock up the fit with tape to check it out...and then when I'm confident everything is perfect... I drill.  Still it never seems to turn out the way I expect it to.  Just a little off, not quite perfect.  And then I remember that it's a boat, and nothing is quite perfect, and I go on with life. 



Where are these holes?

Today's mission was to install a couple of pad-eyes in the cockpit.  These are so we can clip our tethers to them and reduce our chances of being lost at sea on a cold dark and lonely night.  The last part might be a bit embellished, but the point is to stay connected to the boat no matter what, and better yet, to let the person who's not on deck know that the person on deck is safe so they can relax down below.  Anyway these little things involved drilling some holes in the boat and that scared me.  I finally got over my fear and started drilling.  It went just fine, except that the bolts I bought were too short.  We'll remedy that tomorrow at the local WM.  (FYI any C34 owners who do this, the bolts under the companionway need to be 2.5" long to get the nuts, washers and acorn nut on)  The story of a boat project.   On the upside, I wandered into our local marine consignment shop, The Blue Pelican, and all of the misc. nuts and bolts hardware had a "FREE" sign taped to them.  I took them up on the offer and found almost all of the hardware I needed.  Very nice.


Who knew something so small could be so scary?

Ellie "helping out"

Makes for a pretty exciting day if you ask me!

Elizabeth's Dinghy

3:30 AM the alarm goes off. Wow that's early for a Saturday. What are we doing I ask myself? Then I remember...We've got a dinghy to buy.

Somewhere along the way we decided that buying a used dinghy would be a good place to save some money while outfitting the boat. Basically rationalizing that if you were going to buy something used, a dinghy would be a better choice than say, a liferaft of EPIRB. Just our thinking, I'm sure others have done it differently.

The search for a decent used dinghy on Craigslit has been long and frustrating. They are too big, or little, too expensive, way too old, the good ones get sold quickly or are in the Bay area while we are stuck in Reno with winter storms making Donner pass a mess. Ellie has spearheaded this operation for a few months and has diligently checked Craigslist every day hoping to find the right boat at the right price that we can get to before it gets sold; and this was it. So here we are at 3:30 AM packing the truck and making sure the thermos is full of coffee.

4:00A we are fueled up and on the road to Brannen Is in the California Delta, to meet a guy at 8:00A to look at his dinghy. I might add, the emails and discussions about dinghies always lead to a smile. ie, Ellie replies to guy: "I'm excited to see your dinghy". Or E to me: "I hope his dinghy is as advertised" Anyway, we make it to Perry's Boat Harbor and find the dinghy just as advertised and Ken, the guy selling it to be honest and great to deal with.  Like most of the marinas we have experienced in the Delta, Perry's is super relaxed and pleasant; with big grassy areas below the levees and no big parking lots full of cars.  I can see how a person would enjoy Delta boating.We take it for a test drive in chilly morning breeze and all seems well.  Ellie is all smiles as this dinghy is a lot more sturdy and stable than our previous one.  That makes her happy, so that makes me happy.  With the slightest prodding Ken knocks $100 off the price and we shake hands.  He even scrubs the bottom off for us as we disassemble the boat.  The boat gets deflated a little to fit in the truck and we head towards Alameda.  It's always great when these type of dealings go well and everyone walks away feeling good.

9:00A we leave Perry's and head thru the interesting world of the California Delta, where the water is always higher than the ground around it.  Sort of like New Orleans, I guess that explains why there aren't a whole lot of permanent structures built around here.  Farm land, sheep and birds for a bit, thru the tunnel under the Oakland hills and hello big city!  10:15A finds us at Grand Marina in Alameda, unloading a months worth of boat stuff in a steady drizzle.  Dinghy, bikes, generator, anchor, and 6 bags of misc stuff disappear into the boat.  12:00 we say goodbye to Autumn Wind and head for Reno. 

4:15 P and 567 miles later we are back home, tired but happy that we finally found the right dinghy for us.  One more box checked off and Ellie's happy with her dinghy.