On my way!

Today I was at Goodwill to drop off my 4th load and I got quite emotional. It was just an aquarium but along with all that stuff goes so many memories. I have dropped probably 20 boxes of stuff off at my son's house. I have cleared out my house of all of 20 years of kid rearing activities and now I am ready to put my house on the market. It actually feels pretty good to have a clean house. I have re carpeted the house, installed new granite counter tops and painted galore. The next part will be tough I am guessing so I am stealing myself for all the low bidders, and people criticizing the house.

Sheep

When I look around at all the other cruisers, they are all old guys and that annoys me. On one hand it is comforting knowing that there are other kooks out there like me, and that if I get stuck on a problem, there is a wealth of knowledge out there that others are more than willing to share. But what rubs me up the wrong way is that I hate being put in a box. I hate following in others footsteps like a sheep. I would prefer to forge the way to new heights. Also it is all wrong to go cruising when you are knocking on death’s doorstep. Not that I am ready to go down to the river like an elephant just yet.  It should be done when you are young and can climb a mast in a gale without fear.

 

Don't fit the mold

So It has been said that I am not the cruising type. I’m not a big one for parties, and I am not a drinker which most cruisers are. It seems that beer is the primary goal for most cruisers and it is hard not getting sucked into alcoholism from peer pressure. After 2 drinks I always get a headache in the morning and feel like rubbish. I can mitigate it by having a glass of water between drinks and that does help a lot but it is really the staying up late after midnight that gets my goat in a big way. The other thing is that I don’t relish the thought of getting dressed up in a white suit on a hot, humid day and sanding down the outside of a very dirty hull. That or crawling around in tight spaces beside a hot engine trying to undo a nut from a rusted bolt using my third hand. But there are other things that drive me to do this. Like the sheer beauty of the glassy ocean, first thing in the morning. The sound of bubbles rising up from the deep to stir the imagination. The dark stormy sea or the white out from a sudden squall. I want to at least try it out and if I don’t like it then I will move on.

chattahoochee

I got up at the crack of dawn with my 14' portabote and went down to the river where I met Mark and Lois for a row. Glorious morning, with lots of cloud around and not too much wind. Took a few pictures and they are on my flickr account. That is only the 4th time I have used my boat. I need to sell it but I want to use it a few more times this autumn. I need to get rid of it because I will not have enough room at our new house.

hypochondriac

I took a couple of ibuprofen yesterday and that helped. By the end of the day I was walking normally without a cane. It still looks real bad, swollen and with ugly looking bruising and my challenge now is to get through 5 hours of mowing lawns and to somehow convince my step son to come and help me. I am a bit of a hypochondriac generally but everyone has been saying that I should go to the emergency room or at least see a doctor. I don't want to of course because in this case I think that it will repair itself in its own good time.

Twisted ankle

I am sitting on the couch feeling like an idiot for walking backwards today and twisting my ankle. It hurts but what hurts more is knowing that I will be limping around for the next 2 weeks not being able to walk properly.

Starting off with a hiss and a roar

I always do this with something new. Go like mad for the first bit, cruise along for a while and then slow down or stop when I get bored with it. And perhaps it will be like this for my blog. If so, so be it. But for right now I am enjoying this. OK I am not a writer and I will not win any Pulitzer prize but hey, who cares. Just don't read it if you feel this way. I am managing a project at the moment that I call the Alf project. Before he died, my dad wrote down his memories in a book of questions for my kids so that they would be able to look back in the future and see what sort of person their grandfather was. Well Dad also wrote down his observations in a travel log after he retired. I have a few of them. Trouble is they are so hard to read. Indecipherable. (That's a big word for this time of the morning.) I would quite like to read them but it is too much work. Anyway, that's where this blog comes in to play. At least it is easily readable.