Monday, October 27, 2008

Annapolis Boat Show

What a great two weekends we had. We got to see our daughter in Indiana, and had a great time visiting. Big Ten Football was a plus, but mainly it was a nice time having the four of us together again. Kelly was there too! After the family gathering, we took time for ourselves, and headed to Annapolis. It's a great town, as many of you know, and we enjoy walking around town, and seeing all the new and insanely priced sailboats. How do people afford these things? Anyhow, the food was good, though the veggies were scarce. Felt bad eating that crab. He was good though. The beer was good, and we spent some quality time in McGarveys(?) People watching is pretty cool there. Lots of folks from everywhere. Saw Don Street, but didn't get to say hello. Missed Suzanne Giesemann, see Libertysails blog to the right. Saw some friends from the home port, and heard some others were there, but never bumped into them. Chic, I know you were there. Kind of cool recognizing some of the folks seen in magazines. They look taller in print. We roamed the tents, and managed to find a mattress we liked. Even got to lay on it. I always feel awkward laying on the bed in front of everyone. I should have curled up in a fetal position, and stuck my thumb in my mouth, but I didn't have any hand sanitizer. We also found a "Mack Pack" to make it easier to put away the mainsail, before I kill myself climbing the mast to get the cover on. The pack will stay on the boom, the sail will fall into it, and I will zipper it up. Neat. Hope it works. I'm tired of my dock mates sipping wine, while I climb like a monkey all over the deck trying to stow the main. Kind of looks like this: I took a look at some of the LED lighting at the show, and Imtra had the nicest. I would like to replace all the lights with LED before we shove off. Deb knows I'm a watt watcher, and battery monitor, so to keep her sane, I should upgrade the lighting. Speaking of battery's, does everyone remove their batts from the boat in the winter? I left mine on board, and just maintained a charge all winter, but I'm hearing that removal and storage in a warm dry place is better. I have 2 8D batts, and I would have to have emergency hernia surgery if I lifted those out. So unless it's crucial that I get those out, I think I'll save my groin instead. I'll have to take pictures of the frame I assembled on top of the boat for the cover. People are calling it an ark. I figured that if the economy continues to slide, and it all falls down, I still have the boat, and can live on it. So I better build a good cover to keep out the elements. Hmm, water could be a problem at 10 below. Better re-think the boat as a home at latitude 43. Well, I better get ready for bed. Got to build those emission controls for the new Chevy Camaro coming soon. Buy one, save an engineer. They are rated at 25 MPG! When I got out of junior college, I was on my way to Boston to finish school, and party my ass off in between Bruins games, and classes, but I never made it past Rochester. Worked out great, but if I could do it again, I would go south to to Annapolis. Great town. Now if they could just get a hockey team.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Politics

I try to keep this blog just about sailing, but sometimes the political season creates some great stuff, like these videos, which are one sided for sure, but funny, and poignant. Remember the Waaz Up commercials for Bud? Here's a remake... Remember this guy?
See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Boilermakers

We hit the road again, for Indiana to visit the little engineer. We did manage to tailgate too :) That trip gets longer every time. One thing we did notice along the way, was the traffic volume was very low. A bad sign for our economy. The highway between Columbus, and Indianapolis is usually clogged with trucks, but this year I could relax, and cruise right through. Good for me, not for the economy. We will make ONE more trip to West Lafayette, and that's for graduation. Yee Ha. I will miss the tailgating, as we've met some great students, and parents over the years. Enough to know that this red state, blue state crap, as far as I can tell, is just that. We're all Americans. A liberal New Yorker can have a beer with a conservative Midwesterner, and laugh and have a good time. We all want the same thing, peace, prosperity, and freedom. We have differences, but so what. If we were all the same, we wouldn't be America.

Will Purdue ever win another game this year? Yikes. Maybe Nic is a jinx, and needs to graduate, for the sake of the team.







The trip would have been a bit shorter, if we didn't have to wait for "Bladder Boy" all the time.