Paparazzi: It’s not something I ever expected to experience. I’m no celebrity, let alone a beautiful one.
Flutterby, though, is a beautiful lady. So on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 30th, when we finally launched her, there was a veritable army of friends and photographers on the dock.
We woke up before first light that morning, knowing it was going to be a Big Day. First, there was a lot of work to do, like sorting docklines and fenders (and dealing with the icky nest of giant cockroaches in the box with them), completing the steering installation, and emptying and cleaning the fuel tank (also icky, but the ick didn’t move as fast as the giant cockroaches).
Suddenly, it was time to launch — and to be celebrities. For from 2:04 pm, when the Travelift roared to life and headed in our direction, to 3:05 pm, Flutterby was the subject of more photos on more cameras than I’ve ever faced at once. There were over 100 photos taken of and by us in 61 minutes.
Unfortunately, I had not dressed for a Big Day. I was wearing my usual unflattering boatyard clothes, which I hated with a passion. I planned to throw them in the dumpster before leaving the boatyard. Now I wish I’d done so before launching, as they are immortalized in all the photos. (A few days later, I gleefully tossed the pants, shirt, and shoes into the dumpster, keeping only the socks and underwear. Kris’ pants were disposed of in a more interesting fashion. More on that later.)
The entire experience was a blur. Was it hot, cold, or windy? Did it rain? Dale and Richard are wearing foulies in the photos, but I don’t remember weather hampering our efforts. Who was behind all those cameras on the dock? Did I eat anything that day? From the photographic evidence, I suspect we ate tortillas, carrots, pork rinds, and chocolate. (Not at the same time — I’d remember THAT.) I do remember the champagne. It was definitely not consumed at the same time as the pork rinds.
When the excitement was over, we floated serenely in the ways, leaving an empty space where our boat — and our hearts — had been for years.
Photos are below (on the web)…but not all of them.
Thankfully, nobody but the crew could see inside the boat -- what a disaster!In the morning, Kris polished steering hardware while I got fenders ready (the cockroaches moved too fast for pictures).One last picture of our home on the hard. Alex Baker had put the Flutterby logo on in the dark the night before.Eek! The Travelift is coming and we're not ready!Dale maneuvers the Travelift into position. This is a man you can trust to be careful with any boat.Kenny guides the Travelift into place between Bulldog and our Gulfstar neighbor. The whole time we were here, work on the Gulfstar had ceased because the owner is fighting cancer.Kris, in the infamous Tweetie sweatshirt, stands ready with bottom paint, brush, and gloves to paint the last bits.Kenny Bock and Rich crouch under Flutterby to put the straps on. I spent a lot of time crouching under the boat, so I know this area well.Flutterby flies! She's lifted off the blocks for the first time in 2-1/2 years.An army at work on last jobs -- Ted watches, Barry lowers the centerboard, and the other 4 fuss with our zinc.'A bigger brush would have been nice,' said Kris, as he repainted the centerboard at the last minute. I thought he was just going to touch up the keel where the blocks were.Dale said our zinc didn't have enough clearance, so he took it off and filed it down to fit. Next time, we'll use a donut zinc.Where did Flutterby go?A little 2-person parade, dancing along behind the Travelift. I wish we'd had music for this part!An exuberant girl with her boatCelebration!Dale backs into the ways, the Flutterby logo behind him.Lowering Flutterby down into the water.Flutterby's centerboard touches the water. We literally had grown roots on the hard -- there were weeds growing in the centerboard trunk.Flutterby, floating in her native element at last.Meps celebrates with Randy, whose smiling face had greeted us in this same spot when we hauled out in 2007.There were many photos of the christening. Ted's version, with captions, is the BEST. He printed this out and posted it in the lounge. (click to enlarge)
Lottery prizes come in many sizes. There are little wins, just enough to buy another scratch ticket. A medium-sized win of a couple hundred bucks feels pretty good and might pay for a weekend getaway. Then there are the big ones, the Mega-Super-Millions kind, that turn your life upside down forever, but in a good way.
If you’ve ever had a friend bring you chicken soup when you were sick, you’ve won the Scratch-Ticket Friendship Lottery. About a week before Thanksgiving, Barry and I hit the Mega-Super-Millions Friendship jackpot.
At the New Bern Airport with the sign reading "Welcome, Kris! We love you!"
The grand prize in the Mega-Super-Millions Friendship Lottery is this: One of your favorite friends gets on a plane in Capetown, South Africa, and flies halfway around the world. He shows up at your boat, which is propped on jackstands and surrounded by a mess of tools and toxic chemicals, and asks, while unloading a suitcase full of gifts, “Have you left me something in the job-jar?”
Barry and I had known for months that Kris was coming to the US for a vacation, but his plans weren’t fixed. He had about a month to visit his boating friends on the east coast before rendezvousing with his family for a skiing vacation.
Kris is currently between boats, but says that his wife gives him “time off for good behavior” to mess about on friends’ boats. Since everybody who meets Kris likes Kris, he has lots of friends with lots of different boats. On this trip, he started up in Connecticut in early November and boat-hopped his way down to Annapolis. Then he caught a plane to the tiny New Bern airport, where we picked him up. We were standing outside the door of the airport (I told you it was tiny — it only HAS one door) with a giant sign that said, “Welcome, Kris! We love you!”
That first evening, the three of us visited friends in two different New Bern marinas, then trooped over to Cap’n Ratty’s, a New Bern icon, for a celebratory dinner. Much later, we drove back to the boatyard, about an hour’s drive, and gave Kris a tour of Flutterby. He made a nest for himself on the port settee, which affords the most privacy but is a bit narrow for comfortable sleeping. At the time, the headliners weren’t installed, so his bed companion was a roll of insulation, at least three feet tall and four feet in diameter.
At this point, some of you are probably wondering how three people can live on a 33-foot boat that that doesn’t have separate cabins and is crammed with boat parts, Barry’s tools, and Margaret’s accordion. The trick is something we call “implied privacy.” Your crewmate is changing clothes? Turn your back! He or she just farted in the head? Turn off your ears!
Those of us who have crewed on many boats have figured this out. Kris is an expert in all kinds of unusual living situations, both on land and at sea. He’s been crew and captain of plenty of boats, and has done several trans-Atlantic crossings.
Kris wearing his magic pants with the air-conditioned crotch and the infamous Tweetie sweatshirt.
So, on our first morning together, we figured out each others’ routines, made a few minor adjustments, and everything went smoothly. The three of us sat down in the cockpit for a crew meeting, to see what exactly was in that job-jar. Then Kris selected a Flutterby uniform, so he would fit in with the crew.
Flutterby’s boatyard uniforms were, for the most part, completely unflattering, hideous, and mismatched. Each component was marred by paint, expoxy, or unfortunate holes. The trousers selected by Kris sported all three, along with a button fly that frustrated him so much, he simply left it half-buttoned. I would have thought doing up all the buttons would help keep him warm, since he was already complaining about the unique patented air-conditioned crotch.
Something about those pants must have been magic, though. With Kris helping, we started getting 200% more work done.
Perhaps the magic was really in the trailer. Kris had been working with us for a day or so when he needed a tool that Barry didn’t have. “Take him over to the trailer,” Barry instructed me.
You might recall my earlier comment that Barry and I had become “Keepers of the Keys.” The most important keys that we watched over were the keys to Charlie’s trailer, which he’d brought down from Ohio to work on his boat. He had left it stored in the boatyard when family duties called him back to Ohio, almost a year ago. This was the same trailer in which Buttercup had given birth to kittens the prior year.
I didn’t give Kris much background on the trailer, just walked him over there and unlocked the door. He took in the table saw, the drill-press, the circular saw, and the vise. I pointed out some of the other tools — routers, sanders, drill bits, and hand tools. Then I left him to do the job.
He came back, a half hour later, his eyes wide and his voice hushed. “Ooooh — it’s like Aladdin’s Cave!” What Kris had discovered was actually Aladdin’s Man-Cave. Any tool that Barry lacked (not that there were many), Charlie had in that trailer. Between Kris’ efficiency and Charlie’s tools, each job was executed quickly and checked off the list (or pitched out of the job-jar).
Working together, Kris and Barry rebed stern cleats (Barry is folded like a contortionist inside the lazarette)Kris repairs a crack in our rudderKris paints Flutterby's bottom
In just over a week, we were ready to launch Flutterby.
The three of us had: Replaced one hatch, reinforced and rebedded stern cleats and pushpit, reinstalled the binnacle and steering system, installed engine controls, sanded the bottom, painted it with epoxy barrier coat and bottom paint, discovered and repaired a problem with the rudder, and cleaned the fuel tank.
Regarding that last job, I should not say “we.” Some of you might recall that I am an experienced fuel-tank cleaner, having practically crawled into the diesel tank on Kris’ boat to clean it before we went to the Bahamas in 2007. I do not shy from what might be considered the nastiest, most uncomfortable, smelliest, job in the jar. But Kris seemed to think that one good turn deserves another, so this time, he cleaned MY fuel tank. Bless his heart. That’s like another million in the Mega-Super-Millions Friend Lottery.
Along with all this work, we’d also enjoyed a bit of local color and celebrated Thanksgiving. On the holiday, we worked all day and went to the Backstreet Pub at dusk for their annual potluck. Although I was sore in new and unexpected places from crawling around under the boat with a paint roller, I was soaring. I wanted to shout, “WOO HOO! EVERYBODY! I PUT BOTTOM PAINT ON MY BOAT TODAY!!!!!” But I stayed quiet, knowing that nobody at the pub would understand my elation. “Yeah, sure, pass the cranberry sauce, will ya?”
Kris stirs the bottom paint on Thanksgiving DayBarry and I painted the hard-to-reach parts. I only got a little epoxy paint in my hair.
Despite all this talk of a job-jar, the real Flutterby list was on the computer, in Excel. Every to-do item that Barry and I could think of was in that file. A big red line separated the must-do-before-splash items from the rest of them.
The wonderful thing about Kris wasn’t just the third set of hands, it was the third, more experienced, brain. We’d been immersed in our giant set of projects so long, we sometimes lost sight of the goal. It was great to have him point out the jobs that didn’t need to be done right now. Those jobs were “below the line,” and some of them got deleted forever.
Finally, on November 30, there was nothing left “above the line.”
It was time to splash. One good turn deserves another - Kris cleans my fuel tank, 2010One good turn deserves another - I clean Kris' fuel tank, 2007
The clock said two-thirty today,
When the boat ceased to be underway.
We have busted our buns,
For these two little ones,
OK, kids, it is now time to PLAY!
We are moored at Cocoa, Florida, having been on the move (except for three groundings) from sunup to sundown for 8 days. We’re exhausted, but there are cookies to bake and a boat to clean.
Why the rush? We wanted to rendezvous with Barry’s nephews and their parents before they fly back to Ohio. So tomorrow, we get a special treat — a visit from Emanuel and Gabriel. That’s like an early present from Santa! We must have been very good this year.
Now that we’re out cruising, I have a little time to review old writing notes and find stories to share with you. Here’s one from October in the boatyard, with a special treat — a video!
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was walking across the boatyard one morning when I saw a pirate.
I rubbed my eyes, but the image persisted. He was standing on the catamaran named Fellowship, which for years had sat forlornly out in the boneyard. Now Fellowship was parked smack dab in the middle of the yard, in the spot normally reserved for the crane.
At this distance, he was the spitting image of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean — shoulder-length black curly hair, black goatee, red bandana, black leather boots, black eye makeup, torn jeans, and something that I would call a “blouse.”
Women wear blouses. So do movie star pirates.
I went into the office, where Carolyn was staring out the window with a look that could only be called “flabbergasted.” I probably had the same look.
“Er, what’s with the pirate?” I asked.
She shook her head. “He says he’s going to buy that boat.”
Now the pirate was hoisting a large black flag with a skull and crossbones that said “Choose Your Poison.” He had a huge grin on his face.
“Is he legit?” I asked.
“I don’t know — I told him he needed to talk to Kenny. The guy said he’d be over on that boat, and he said, ‘Tell him to look for the pirate!'” Carolyn rolled her eyes, and I couldn’t help but giggle.
Carolyn added, “He FLOUNCED. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man flounce like that.”
Over the next few days, all the boatyard gossip was about the mysterious, dramatic pirate: “Instead of hello, he says ‘Ahoy!'” — “I saw him take down his pirate flag at night, like an ensign.” — “He calls all the boats ‘ships.'” — “He told me he’s more of a Disney pirate.”
The first time the pirate spoke to me, I was sitting in the lounge with my laptop. The door opened, and he walked in carrying a strangely familiar kerosene lantern. This was completely anachronistic, since he went straight to the new high-tech Coke machine, with its illuminated display and fancy purple lights. “Ahoy!” he said by way of greeting. Like several of the older denizens of the yard, I ignored him. We were all afraid of losing our composure and laughing uncontrollably if we spoke to him.
The pirate turned out to be a fairly industrious man by the name of Logan. (“Sheesh, that’s no name for a pirate,” I grumbled.) Even though it was his first boat, he was able to get her launched in about a month. Folks in the boatyard provided him with lots of well-meaning advice. He listened politely, like a traditional Disney pirate, and then did things his own way, like a traditional scurvy knave.
Eventually, Logan-the-pirate started hanging out at Happy Hour. He had a grandiose scheme for Fellowship. He was going to paint her black — black hull AND black deck — and have black sails made. He planned to mount cannons. Then he was going to offer pirate charters aboard his “ship.” Her new name: The Black Lotus.
When I heard the plan, all I could say was, “Brilliant!” Even if you are not a fan of things piratical (yes, we are talking about scoundrels who murdered, raped, and pillaged), it’s a clever business idea. Charter boats are a dime a dozen. But pirate-themed charter boats, with black sails and foot-scorching black decks? And Jack Sparrow impersonators and cannons? There will be only one of those. I know a couple of people who’d sign up in a heartbeat.
Once I gave up being a curmudgeon and started talking to Logan, I decided that I liked him a lot. He was full of infectious enthusiasm. After many years of sailing and a few years in the boatyard, I was losing sight of the goal — this stuff is supposed to be fun! So why not dress in crazy clothes and call “Ahoy!” to strangers? Why not carry a lantern instead of a flashlight? Why be “normal?”
The first time I actually had a conversation with Logan, a few of us were sitting around in the dark, talking and sharing libations. It was too dim to make out details; each person was just a shadowy figure and a voice. I mentioned something in passing about Burning Man, and Logan suddenly sat up.
Aha — another Burner in the boatyard!
This explains a few things. We Burners wear costumes even when it’s not Halloween. Hence me, in my pink-and-white bunny ears, carrying a hula hoop around the boatyard. And hence Logan, the Disney pirate carrying a kerosene lantern. (Which he says he ordered after seeing the ones used by Lamplighters at Burning Man!)
When Fellowship, soon to be the Black Lotus, left the dock, Barry and I were on hand with cameras. Logan-the-pirate was at the helm, grinning from ear to ear. A few moments later, as they approached the bridge, he turned the wheel over to his friend and made his way forward to the mast. Wearing his black leather pirate coat, he climbed the mast steps, some twenty feet to the spreaders. As promised, he danced an ecstatic little jig on the spreader, looking just like Jack Sparrow in the introductory scene of Pirates of the Caribbean — with one exception. Logan’s boat — er, ship — was not sinking.
Even pirates have to apply bottom paint to their shipsWho has more influence than a pirate? The boatyard owner who decides when to launch your boat. Here's Logan talking to Kenny Bock at the launching of the pirate ship.Logan shows off his pirate ship on launching day
We’ve encountered some sand and some rocks,
And we’ve tied up at places with docks,
But the further we roam,
From that boatyard called home,
Then the more I get homesick for Bock’s.
I called the boatyard today to catch up on the news and find out whose boats have splashed. I miss our friends there a lot — both human and feline!
Thus spoke Kris: “Folks, you’re doin’ it wrong,
Three years on the hard is too long.
Yes, the boatyard is great
And the folks are first-rate,
But the WATER is where you belong.”
You are probably saying, “I told you the same thing.” But where are you? Kris put his money where his mouth is, and came halfway ’round the world to help us splash! So he gets the reward … TODAY …
(=<
“If you say this is work, I’ll not stay,”
Said our friend Kris, who’d come all the way
Here from Capetown, to get
Flutterby’s bottom wet,
“So let’s not call it ‘work’ — call it PLAY!”
In two days, Kris and Barry and I have played with … sanders and grinders and saws and drills and dremels and screwdrivers … epoxy and polysulfide goop and solvents … impellers and zincs and hoses and clamps and backing plates … the list goes on and on. We’re all enjoying the work and we’ll be floating very, very, VERY soon!
For those of you wondering how we managed to get the world’s absolute best crew member from South Africa, I wrote about some of our earlier adventures with Kris in 2007 and in 2004.
In a recent post, I mentioned a boat hailing from HAMBURG – GER. There’s another boat here, with a similar name — for the purposes of this story, I’ll call it FRANKFURTER. For some reason, the owner doesn’t have a name; he goes by the name of the boat. We’ll call him “Frankfurter,” too.
For the past few years, Frankfurter and FRANKFURTER have gone south for the winter and returned to Bock to store the boat in the summers. The man always sets off with a crew of four: Himself, Jack, and two crew members he rounds up somehow, probably on the internet. Each year, Jack and Frankfurter return, sans crew.
Laid-back Jack laughs and shrugs, “He’s impossible. I’m the only one who can put up with him.”
This year, Jack wasn’t available, so Mr. Frankfurter rounded up three crew members on the internet. The first one to arrive was a very experienced sailor who worked diligently alongside the captain to make fiberglass repairs and paint the bottom. A few days later came a wide-eyed, clean-cut young man from Europe who didn’t have offshore experience, but was even harder-working than the first. By now, the first one had been driven to drink — I caught her hiding under FLUTTERBY one day, sneaking a drink from a pocket flask.
We told the first crew member, Ziga, that she need not drink alone. With that, she brought her sense of humor and excellent sea stories to the nightly happy hour gathering. She positioned her chair behind Jack’s keel, directly across from FRANKFURTER, so she could keep an eye on her boat without being seen by her captain.
One evening, she peered around Jack’s keel as her captain’s car returned from town. “Oooh, that’s our new crew member,” she said. “Captain’s really looking forward to this one. She’s a dominatrix.”
This took me by such surprise that I swallowed the wrong way and started coughing. Surely I’d heard that wrong? “What!?” I squeaked. Ziga explained, matter-of-factly, “A dominatrix. You know, whips and chains? The captain calls her ‘the fetish lady.'”
We all peeked around Jack’s keel as the captain — who rarely bathed, according to Jack –Â helped a good-looking blonde woman out of the car. The young clean-cut crewman went to the trunk for her luggage. What he pulled out was not the usual sailor’s duffel bag, but a crate you could use for carrying chains and things made out of studded leather. There was something black dangling from her pocket. “Is that a whip?” I asked the group, ducking nervously out of sight.
It was a well-known fact that the captain didn’t dare stop at any port before Key West, for fear that his crew would jump ship. And so the betting began. Would the dominatrix and the clean-cut guy make it to Key West? Would Ziga make it through the winter with a captain who rarely bathed?
When FRANKFURTER was ready to go, several of us pressed our email addresses into Ziga’s hand. “Good luck. Let us know what happens. Please!”
The results were nothing short of spectacular. By that, I mean the three-page email we received from Ziga a few days later.
The email spread around the boatyard like wildfire and was forwarded to friends and cruisers all over the world. Her synopsis went like this: “Landlubber equivalent of this boat trip: Drive an old car that is loaded with junk like the Beverly Hillbillies, with bald tires, faulty brakes and windshield wipers that only work when the sun is out. And the driver really does not care which side of the road he drives on…..”
Before the boat had even left Beaufort inlet, it was taking on water uncontrollably, and they’d deployed the anchor and nearly lost it. From the email: “Hey, Captain, the bitter end of the anchor rode is not secure! DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT, says Captain Frankfurter.”
Then the young clean-cut fellow was knocked overboard by the captain (the boat has no lifelines), and the PFDs were all buried under piles of junk. “Hey, Captain, can we clear some of this clutter and clear the decks? DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT, says Captain Frankfurter.”
Out in the ocean, they set a course for Key West. However, at one point, the captain accidentally started sailing north. The dominatrix fixed that, but the email didn’t say how. I suspect a whip was involved.
After the first day, Ziga wrote, “Told Captain that I was leaving the boat as soon as we reached shore. Told him flat out that he was trying to kill me, and that just won’t do.” This is the woman who was planning to stay aboard all winter.
On page 2, she described how almost every part of the boat, including the charts and food, was soaked from leaks. Only the aft cabin was dry. On page 3, she wrote, “Aft cabin now mostly soggy, because Captain left the toilet on water intake….flooded his own boat. All three of us have now told Captain that we want off of the boat.”
The young clean-cut crew member had been incapacitated by seasickness the entire time, including 20 hours passed out in the aft cabin (before the captain flooded it with water from the toilet). Towards the end of the ordeal, when he perked up, Ziga wrote, “He is a charming fellow, when he does not have his head in the black bucket. That bucket has been his constant companion for a long time.”
This paragraph just about sums it up:
“Engine died just after the sun set. Under the jib, can only sail 330 degrees, boat won’t turn any farther east. The Auto-pilot won’t completely release the wheel. Heading way out into the Gulf Stream now, way, way off course. Cabin is trashed. Unsecured stuff crashing around everywhere. DONT WORRY ABOUT IT, says Captain Frankfurter. Tools, knives and boat parts left wherever Captain sets them. This is the first boat I have ever sailed on where I have to wear shoes below decks, or risk serious injury.”
With a tragedy like this, the betting pool didn’t have a chance. We had argued over which crew members would make it to Key West, not whether or not they’d survive the first 84 hours. None of us expected the boat to issue a Mayday call and be rescued by the Coast Guard. No one bet that they’d be towed into Southport, a mere 100 miles from here.
According to Ziga, despite the loss of his crew and near-loss of his boat, the captain is committed to continuing on. What she didn’t say was how he would find more crew.
I know exactly what he’d say if I asked: DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT.
—
Special thanks to Ziga for sharing the story and allowing me to excerpt it here. If you are ever looking for good crew, I’ll put you in touch with her. I have her email address…it’s at the top of that hilarious 3-page email message.
When Barry and I learned last week that Bill Brown had died unexpectedly of a heart attack, it knocked the stuffing out of us. We hugged each other and cried for a while. And then I imagined Bill’s voice in my head, saying “Enough sillyness.” We got back to work on the boat.
There were a lot of people who disliked Bill Brown, but he didn’t seem to mind. His abrasiveness was a test. If someone concluded the worst, that he was obnoxious, pigheaded, or rude, then he’d plant his tongue firmly in his cheek and do his best to earn that reputation by “yanking their chain.”
Me, I liked Bill Brown a lot. Probably enough to make up for all the people in the world who didn’t like Bill Brown.
Bill was outspoken, honest, and one of the most supportive friends I’ve had in my entire life. We shared our sailboat cruising dreams with him, and he never spoke a disparaging word about how we pursued them. Bill never once teased us about the length of the FLUTTERBY refit. He was not only tolerant of our breaks from the boatyard, he reveled in our land-based travels and told me my writing was as good as William Least Heat-Moon.
Bill made me laugh when he wrote, “Tolerance is learned. Living aboard certainly teaches tolerance. Living aboard in a boatyard has gotta be the postgrad course in tolerance.” It was his way of saying that he understood what we were going through. Tongue-in-cheek, of course.
Right now, I know I should write something funny for Bill. He loved my writing and once said, “You guys have one of the widest ranges of humor of people I know.” I’m not finding the humor in his untimely kicking of the bucket, but because he was so irreverent, he would denounce anything serious as, well, sillyness.
I went through Bill’s most recent emails and decided to have the last laugh. I’m just going to publish Bill — in his own words. Now I’m off the hook, and I can go burble and cry all I want. He’s sure to make you chuckle…whether or not you’re an engineer.
***
“Life is much easier if one doesn’t have to make sense all the time.”
***
“When in a Wal-Mart out of dire necessity, I feel like the Starship Enterprise at the edge of known space in one of those scenes where Romulan and Klingon vessels are all loitering about waiting for the other guy to do something stupid first. I do not belong in a Wal-Mart. But I could enjoy being a tour guide in them. Just keep your phazer on stun. Or perhaps a can of whipped cream would be adequate protection but only if you were wearing your clown suit. ”
***
“There is no such thing as ‘too much sex’. Technically, it is considered self regulating.”
***
“Burning Man has franchises? Imagine that. How are you sure you are at a Georgia Burning Man and not at a KKK event?”
***
“…a cookbook is essentially a survival manual. Look in any Bible. Right after Revelations, the last book, you will find the Book of Betty Crocker stapled right in there.”
***
“Across most of America until, oh, roughly Ohio, a proper tavern is defined by a jukebox that has two songs: anything by Buddy Holly and ‘Party Doll’ by Buddy Parks. Surely somebody has sought to map this? Maybe it’s my calling.”
***
“These are people who believe ‘published’ means print on paper as in a page you can dogear. No way on this planet do I want my computer students dogearing a flat panel display. I am the one they will bring it to to fix. I don’t want to even think about dogearing a CRT monitor.”
***
“Aren’t you glad epoxy isn’t toothpaste!”
***
“My spell checker … does not yet recognize the term ‘Obama’. It does recognize ‘Barrack’… It recognizes ‘Lincoln’, ‘Eisenhower’, and ‘Johnson’. Interesting is that it will recognize ‘Abraham’ and ‘Dwight’, but not ‘Lyndon’… It doesn’t matter which side of the political spectrum you stand. You can neither praise nor condemn without having to deal with this in your spell checker.”
***
“The crap we fill our brains with amazes me.”
***
“Only an engineer type can spell ‘equilibrium’ without rum as a spellchecker.”
***
“I had cause to see if our tax dollars were being well spent so I called 911 as little else civic was going on on a Sunday. Sure enough, they hurried right out and hauled me to the ER where I got to see all of the neat new toys we just bought for our hospital expansion demonstrated to (on actually) me. No problem says they … The toys were actually fun as well as good to have handy…”
***
Regarding a Mac G3 laptop: “There is a story here. How did you come into this toilet seat?”
***
“You are looking way too serious. Rum will fix that. Always has. Always will.”
***
“Mainliners, heroine users, know that cutting pure heroine with talc and all those other contaminants is bad form. Same with rum. You cut it with Coke and other contaminants and, well, you have a contaminated experience. Proper rum has no commas or conjunctions following it with a list of contaminants like soda pop. At least not unless you want the headaches and barfing that come with contaminants. This is not to be confused with solid nutrition being used to supplement rum such as oatmeal, chocolate, coffee, or stimulants such as other medicinal alcohols or sex.”
***
“I am well aware that hitting the forward button is the only social skill, the only social life some people have.”
***
“I’ve always said I go to my high school reunions to see what I’ve overcome.”
***
“Puny Anacortes? We are talking the gateway to the San Juans here, western portal to the fabled Northwest Passage, western terminus of all the great roads west, and all you have to do to get here is hitch-hike the last sixteen miles. We don’t want a great thing to be too accessible.”
***
“From memory of my travels in that area (southeastern Ohio), if you had just gone down the road a coupla more blocks and turned left, you’d have found the Bates Motel – quite quaint and quiet for a forties era clapboard motel as i recall. You’d have wanted to avoid the shower though.”
***
“The title of this book, or chapter, will be ‘How I spent my winter in the Great Pacific Northwest living in a storage locker sorting crap I really didn’t need but couldn’t let go'”
***
“Killer Oatmeal washed down by a Coffee Herbie. Food of the GAWDS!”
***
“‘…squidwaggin’ ” as a verb sort of sounds naughty as if it has something to do with fallopian tubes. But we know it is just exquisite transportation.”
***
“Becoming single, Christmas became fun. BIGTIME! Single people have get togethers. Lots of get togethers. Go to interesting if cheap places. Gather our kids together in a big bunch. Do all sorts of things that we learn about might in some way be a Christmas sort of thing for someone. Theater, movies, tavern hopping, sailing someplace, sing our heads off, helping others as a group, the list goes on and on … I wondered why it wasn’t this way before. I guess it is because suburbia frowns on this sort of thing … Married again for some years now, this is still what we do… sort of.”
***
“Why can’t I make even a passable meatloaf? One of life’s great mysteries.”
***
“What (your boat’s name) looks like is not half so important as what it sounds like when hollering it on channel 16 as part of a mayday call.”
***
In response to my quip, “I should have just gotten into my birthday suit and stood on the foredeck with a bottle of shampoo,” Bill said, “Done this a few times in marinas. Only once, at Westview (Powell River) did anyone care. I had announced my intentions prior to doing so. When nearing the end of my disrobe, the genteel couple simply picked up their afternoon tea, stood, turned, and quietly walked to the the other end of their yacht. It was a very hot day, Sunday, which is the one day of the week in Westview that everything must be closed by local ordinance. That included the marina services including showers. Why else do cockpits have scuppers?”
***
Bill’s response to a limerick about toe amputation: “Hang 9?”
***
“To shinny is the only way to get a tetherball attached to the top of the tetherball pole. Free-climb does not even approximate the task. Free-climb is what you do on a walk to the top of Mt. Everest. You shinny a mast.”
***
“I really don’t have many good feelings about Wyoming. Being Dick Cheney hails from Wyoming, I’m not expecting any.”
***
Regarding a recent colonoscopy: “Frankly, I’ve had … many a drinking bout that ended far more dramatically. These passings, gas and otherwise, didn’t even earn bragging rights among those of a scatological bent … I’d had the fear that I was going to swamp the fifth wheel’s holding tank … Once again, we learn the awful truth. That the legend of The Great Hunt is really nothing more than a long walk on an empty stomach. So much for legends.”
***
“It’s not my place to whine and I’m not very good at it anyway.”
***
“My greatest reward is learning I caused an engineer to chuckle.”
***
“I’m not twisted. But I do think in ironious ways. The world about me, not being flat, is what is twisted.”
(After reading what Bill wrote to us all these years, I might add: And funny as hell.)
“Well, they say that the piggie went ‘whee,’
“When they chopped it off, decisively,
“I look down and count nine,
“But I’m feeling just fine,”
Said my Dad, the new toe-amputee.
It was just a small infection that got out of control and landed him in the hospital. He’ll be out in a couple of days, and then he can figure out how to dance using nine toes instead of ten.
