Two is Better Than One

While living the bachelor lifestyle for the most part the past year had a couple perks, it is definitely nice having my wife (and the dogs) on board.  Sure, there was no consensus to be had when deciding what to do for dinner, but sharing this lifestyle definitely makes it better.

Right now one big benefit is having a helping hand with all the projects that have been on hold since I couldn't complete them by myself.  Today the big task was making one of the large storage areas a dry storage area.  The Leopard 38 has a big storage area at the front of each hull, above the watertight buoyancy compartment.  And with no openings to weather, it should make a large and dry storage area.

Of course, on my boat, it hasn't been all that dry.  A pulpit rail mount and the pulpit seat mount have both been leaking a bit.  The result is some water made its way into this compartment, and that doesn't make for a nice storage location.  And the reason I haven't fixed it yet...you may have guessed...is because I need two people.  Both of these mounts go entirely through the hull (thus the ability to leak) and so I needed someone in the compartment to turn a wrench on the nut while someone else was outside keeping the bolt from turning.  Since I don't have an arm that is 20+ foot long with several elbows, it is not something I could do myself.  So, like so much of the hardware on this boat, a helper is needed to loosen and tighten the bolts.

With a helper, it was a simple task to remove the bolts, clean the mounting surfaces, apply some butyl tape (an excellent option for re-bedding through-bolted hardware), and re-mount the hardware. Given my previous experience with the tape, I have confidence that these two leak locations are now resolved and shouldn't give me trouble for a long time.  Unless I missed a leak, I think we now have one more large storage area at our disposal...which will come in handy right now.  Now we just need to repeat the process in the other hold.

In other news, if you find yourself moving on a boat and another boater is moving off, hopefully you have made friends with them.  In my case, my friends Gary and Joan have not only beefed up our provisions but also had these mini milk crates that may help me get my refrigerator organized (the details of organizing a top-loading refrigerator are deserving of its own post).  Thanks guys and good luck with your future endeavors!

On To The Boat

Waking up in Mobile, we were greeted with another overcast day.  But, since it wasn't raining...yet...we decided to make a quick detour to the gulf coast. We drove down to Dauphin Island to see the ocean...and to give our youngest dog, Tucker, his first taste of it.

He was a little unsure of the water and waves but seemed to be having fun overall.  We had a nice walk along the beach, then it was time to get back on the road.

The weather deteriorated throughout the day with more cloudiness and rain...just not the weather to do much sightseeing.  Since the weather was forecast to last several days, we made the decision to just make a run for the boat.  The hotel stays were getting expensive and annoying anyway, and I think the dog's "big car ride" was getting to be more car ride than even Madison liked (and she loves car rides).

We made it to Tallahassee, Florida, that evening.  We could have pushed and made it all the way to the boat by late that day...but I didn't want to arrive at the boat late in the evening and then have to clean it up and prep it for a stay that same night.  We stopped at a Sonny's BBQ for dinner and were surprised by the crowd that was still there at almost 9pm...until we found out that they were doing a tax day special.  I completely forgot it was tax day, and they were having a 2-for-1 rib special that was a nice treat after a long day on the road.

The next day we departed Tallahassee for the last leg of the drive.  It was mostly an uneventful trip, covering much of the same part of I-10 that I took the first time I made this drive.  The only thing of note is that I came up with a new axiom for driving across the U.S.  If you see a pickup truck with Texas plates and it is not in Texas, there is a 1 in 3 chance the driver is a jerk.  I don't know how many times I saw trucks weaving in and out of traffic, cutting people off (including semi trucks), and generally just being discourteous drivers, but in almost every case it was sporting a Texas license plate.

A Jerk that almost took my bumper off .

The truck pictured above apparently felt he was more important than the other cars trying to pass a semi and so he sped up in the right lane and then cut me off.  Guess he just couldn't wait the additional 3 seconds to be two cars behind me...where he would have been if he were courteous.

We made it to the boat around 3pm on Thursday.  I would have made this post then, but unfortunately when we arrived at the boat we found the dehumidifier had malfunctioned at some point.  Don't know how it came to the decision that the "tank was full" when the tank was bypassed with the hose that led directly to the sink drain...but it apparently shut itself off at some point.  The result was that the boat was a bit stale and musty smelling with a little mold starting to appear in spots on the walls.

So, the last couple days we've been on mold patrol.  Cleaning and re-running some laundry and generally drying out the interior of the boat. We also spent some time getting the systems back in operating order. It's good now, and the sun is even coming out for the first time since we arrived so it may be time to wash the outside of the boat...after a visit to the beach.

Unlike my first marathon trip that took just over 3 days, this one took 6 days and just over 2100 miles.  It was a much more pleasant trip than the first one. Too bad we had to skip a few of the things we wanted to see along the way...but with the boat we should be able to check them out at some point if we want to. And the house is under contract too.  Things are finally coming together.

And The Rains Came

Before we left Austin on Monday, my wife wanted to see the state capitol building. I guess after spending so much of her career in the one in Colorado (no she is not a politician), she likes to compare them. So I walked the dogs around the grounds while she went and took a peek inside.

We also met another friend of mine for lunch before heading on. I met Jean when the company I was working for at the time hired her company for an online billing system solution. In a similar fashion to some of the people I've met through my blog, we became friends using electronic communications long before we ever actually met. Since I didn't know what route we were taking for sure until Saturday morning and since I only had her work skype contact, I wasn't able to get in touch with her until Monday morning when we were in Austin, but we still managed to meet for lunch...how cool is that. We had a nice chat before heading on down the road.

The drive through Texas was quite green and pretty...sorry I keep saying that...but it is very different from all my memories of Texas road trips. Maybe it was due to the fact all the family trips were either middle of the summer or during the Christmas school break, but most of my memories are of a much more bleak landscape.

We made it to Iowa, Louisiana (no, that's not two states but a town in Louisiana just east of Lake Charles), where we spent the night.  Not much to be said about the place except it had a LA Quinta (important since it is a hotel chain that has WiFi, allows dogs, and seems to have a reasonable standard of cleanliness). We spent most of the evening pouring over the flood of 14 offers we received on the house in the 4 days it has been on the market. That is a lot of legal mumbo jumbo to read through...but I'm not complaining...I know we are very fortunate the market is so hot in Colorado right now.

The next morning we awoke to the rain the weather men have been threatening would happen all week.  In fact, they had some poor slob out reporting about flooding in New Orleans when we flipped over to The Weather Channel (why do they always send someone out to a place to tell us not to go there?). Guess where we had hoped to visit today. Oh well, guess we can check it out by boat sometime...probably a better option anyway.

The rains sound like they will be sticking around all week, so we are debating if we should just drive on to the boat. That is what we are doing as I type this...heading down I-10 in the rain, making our way to our next hotel stop near Mobile, Alabama.  There we will be digitally signing paperwork so the house will be under contract and rejecting the 13 other offers.

Wife just made the comment that she bets California would like to have some of this rain. I know Texas is glad to have it and I agree there will probably be a lot of thirsty Californians that wish they had it too.

So, past rains made for a pretty drive through Texas. Then it rained legal paperwork on us. And now we have some actual rain to deal with. Guess the weather men were right after all...depending on your perspective.

Friends and Family

After getting to the big town of Snyder Texas at midnight, we got a bit of a late start.  We opted for the "free" hotel breakfast and spent most of the morning visiting with my aunt.  We went to the local park and took the dogs for a nice walk, and I think they appreciated getting out and stretching their legs more than just the rest stop breaks we had the previous day.

The trip Sunday was much shorter, only about 6 hours, to Austin, Texas.  A good friend and former coworker lives there and I wanted to say hi.  My wife also has a fascination with state capitols so I thought she would like to check it out.

The drive was nice.  For a state that has historically been big into oil for as long as I can remember (my dad used to tell stories about working for oil companies), they sure seem to have embraced alternative energy...at least wind generation.

Field of...windmills

I guess central Texas has been getting some much needed rain, and it was actually green and quite pretty.  Very different from the trips I remember as a child...or the one through the panhandle yesterday.

Roadside wildflowers south of Abilene...I think it was.

We got to Austin and checked into the hotel around 6pm...after making a bit of a detour.  The highway system around the hotel is undergoing some construction and is quite confusing.  The turn by turn guidance program we are using (Navmii...which allows you to download maps for offline use so you aren't using so much cellular data...more on this in upcoming posts) didn't have the correct exit number and we ended up getting a scenic tour of the hotel area.

Traveling with the dogs has made finding hotels a bit more tricky.  I had heard that more and more are allowing people to bring their pets, but it isn't universal yet.  So, finding reasonably priced and clean hotels that have free internet and accept dogs has been a bit tricky but we are doing OK so far.  Some hotels, such as the Baymont in Snyder charge an extra $20 per dog while the LaQuinta we are in today lets them stay for free.

Traveling can be tiring

It was nice to see my friend John again and finally meet his family.  They treated us to some Texas BBQ (having family from the area, I love good Texas BBQ) and good conversation.  I know we were a bit tired from all the travel, but hope we were good enough company. Thanks for your hospitality John and Michelle, we will definitely need to return the favor on our boat sometime.

On tap for today we will go visit the capitol, make our way east...somewhere, and meet with our real estate agents who reportedly have some good news for us.

On Our Way

Once we managed to get the house cleaned up and on the market, it was finally time to pack up the car and head out to our new life.  Of course that sounds easy until you try to condense all of your possessions and necessities into a Prius...the very same Prius that is supposed to carry two people and two medium-sized dogs. Well, thanks to the skills gained when I worked at UPS, we got most of the stuff into the Prius.

Practice for stowing things on the boat.

After a farewell dinner with family and one last load of laundry, we departed Denver Saturday morning. The original goal of the first leg was to head south to see my aunt in Texas. Of course, weather in Texas and the I-10 corridor had us second guessing that decision...but after realizing that similar weather was also predicted for the middle of the country, we decided to press on.  We left Denver around 11 AM, a bit behind where we probably should have as that will put us at our destination quite late. We made the very familiar trip south along the front range past Colorado Springs and on through Trinidad (at one time we considered buying property in southern Colorado and made several trips there).

The Air Force Academy grounds near Co. Springs.

We crossed the border into New Mexico and turned east out of Raton and headed toward Amarillo, Texas. Just outside of Clayton, New Mexico, we ran into the only bit of bad weather on the trip...if you can call it that. There were a couple rain showers that came with a lot of wind. The wind caused a bizarre migration of tumbleweeds like I had never seen before. It was like they were being herded across the highway in lined up groupings as if they were part of some tumbleweed ranch herd.

We passed through Amarillo just about dusk and didn't arrive in Snyder, Texas, until just around midnight. I had always told my wife that making this exact trip a number of times as a child was one of my justifications for getting my pilots license...and now she understands.  Most of the dry, flat, beige New Mexico and Texas panhandle are better when viewed from 9000 ft and 150 mph.

Sunset with no Mountains...not in CO anymore.