Ten Years

I just noticed my blog is over ten yrs old. Wow! Over ten years of nonsense written down and published for the World (10 people) to see. It's been a long run of odd ramblings. I understand that I might be a little different than your average sailing blogger. That's OK. I wasn't going to be a blogger who documents our every experience every day. That's just not me. When some weird or peculiar thing happens to us then I will publish, or if I find the need to dump the random thoughts in my head, as in the Morning Tea posts. There is usually no lack of material to write about because I am very much a weirdo magnet. Not sure why but if there is someone strange in the area they will find me and talk to me. This magnetism has led to many blog postings. There are also complete fabrications that started with some small grain of truth in them like when I burned down a row of boats in the marina. I had to go back and edit the damn post so people would stop emailing me.

Here is the link: My Last Post. Goodbye.

I also noticed I picked on religion a bit over the years. I have no problem with God. It's her fan club I don't care for. For anyone who read the blog over all these years you probably know I'm not a very religious person.

I was such a poser. After the photo I wore the rosary on my head
and the bow tie was a mustache. On the way home I tossed a cherry bomb
through the front door of a funeral parlor. "Loud enough to wake the dead"
I said. To this day I worry I gave someone a heart attack with that stunt.

I might be more like a Pagan only without the creepy rituals. Actually I don't fit any spiritual mold. I have a feeling we're here and gone, just life and then atoms scattered into the universe. If we didn't worry so much about where we're going maybe we would take better care of where we are.

Reincarnation would be cool as long as I don't come back as a bug or anything that eats bugs, or a Horse. Holy shit imagine me coming back as a horse! No doubt I would be a pony. Deb says more like a Jack Ass.

Slipping into other dimensions would be completely awesome as long as you knew you were continuing life in another dimension. Maybe you get a glimpse of your other lives just before you wink out in one dimension and then you continue on in another. Like a collective conscious of your previous lives.

In other dimensions you made different choices. Maybe I chose not to ride my bike down the driveway into the path of a Chrysler thereby not missing third grade which helped me become a math genius and I grew into my head size and was now over six feet tall. I sell my tech company and retire early to a horse farm where my wife raises champions and I run the Church of Equine Spirit when not on TV as the New Bozo the Clown kids show host which got cancelled after I got elected to office and eventually became President. I destroyed the economy for lack of wars and became labeled the Clown in the White House which pissed me off so I resigned on the white house lawn dressed as Bozo and flipping off the public.



Flipping off the public didn't sit well with the Church of Equestrian Spirit members and soon it went bankrupt which lead to a divorce and half my income. As I leave the white house for the last time someone takes a shot at me with a crossbow because I banned guns and the arrow pierces my rubber nose and my brain. I become a martyr for the Clown Wars which divide the country into Red States and Clown States. Eventually the Bozo Republic is formed and prospers for a few years only to become a failed state because they were just a bunch of fucking clowns after all.



Maybe we're just bio robots programmed to rape the planet for our alien overlords but something went wrong. Maybe our overlords were sucked into a black hole and we were left to ourselves with no more firmware updates so we just kept raping the planet until we killed it and ourselves. We're basically proof that artificial intelligence is bad if left unchecked.

You may have also noticed I go off the rails from time to time exploring loosely related subject matter :D

OK back to the blog...
This blog covered many of our sailing mishaps and adventures. The mishaps continue and the adventures are a little less dramatic and infrequent. Is this because I'm getting older and boring? I don't know. I think it's because we are just enjoying where we are right now. We island hop and pretty much see the same stuff with some new experiences sprinkled in here and there. Maybe we need new adventures. There is still talk of sailing west to the ABC's and beyond but we're not ready. For many years I dreamt of sailing the Caribbean chain of windward and leeward islands and I'm not ready to move on. Still so much to see here. Maybe some day if the mood strikes us we will venture westward. Maybe we will head back to the States from here. We really have no plans anymore other than relaxing in the islands and spending time with the kids and grand kids back home. The pull on the heart strings is strong. I realize this is the so called "downfall" of a lot of cruisers with kids. We take it day to day. Some days I want to fly home and scoop up those kids and hug them all day long. Other days I'm floating beneath a waterfall or watching the sun set over the warm waters of the Caribbean sea. It's a balance. When the balance shifts we will make other plans but for now Latitude 43 is still a sailing adventure blog. OK maybe sometimes it's a sailing adventure blog and then sometimes it's a "What's wrong with him?" blog. Either way it's been fun writing stuff here.

 Read about Frenchy and his "kitty" here: Weirdo magnet in action.

Before I go and leave the blog for possibly another few weeks I would just like to say thanks for following along. I never anticipated anyone other than maybe some family members, close friends or flippin weirdos reading any of this. It was primarily meant for my entertainment only because I enjoy writing what makes me laugh and I am laughing most days. Even at the most wrong times to be laughing I tend to see the humor in all of my experiences. My daughters know instantly when I am finding humor in something. "OK Dad, what's so funny?" They know me too well. At work people would be wondering what the hell I thought was so funny. "This is serious Paul! Not sure what you find so funny about all this." You know how many times I heard that? All through school I got yelled at - "Wipe that stupid smirk off your face mister!"

Even at my Dad's funeral it happened. I was carrying his ashes around out in the lobby of the church talking with family members. Some were crying. I had a smirk. All I could think of was a time my Dad tried to leap into our old backyard pool with a running start, failing to clear the side with his knees catching the top rail which fell off, bending the side in and starting the rush of water that flooded three backyards and sent water into basements as my Dad got swept away into the grass. Funniest thing I ever witnessed. I got a few odd looks in church as I walked around laughing to myself.

So, when I start to see the humor in something out here I promise I will try to write some of it down for you. Some of you will laugh and some of you will shake your head.

Cheers!
PJJB

You find all this amusing Mr. Bryan?!