Happy New Year

4 Jan 2009


This can pretty much sums up retirement. If you are not finished with what you were doing yesterday, you have all day today to accomplish it.

REFLECTIONS

After being off of the boat for over a month I can go back and look at the trip in a different light. What a fantastic opportunity and experience it was. It is not something that many people get the chance to do. We met new friends, saw new places and had lots of good times and bad.

Apologies to Jude's brother and sister-in-law, Jim and Marygael Veselenak. They were an important memory on this trip and I did not give them credit where credit was due. They live in Springfield, Ill, and on two separate occasions came to visit us on the boat giving us the opportunity to taste some of the local fare that could not be sampled with out a car. They drove north for a hour when we had just escaped from the flooding in Ottawa and took us to a great little dive bar for some great cat fish. A week later they came down to Grafton, Ill, another hour drive and again we had a fine dinner in that town. A tardy, but well deserved thank you to Jim and Marygael.

In the small world department. While we were in Demopolis we met a guy on the dock who knew of another sailor who has a daughter that runs the Iditarod. When asked, we discovered that their daughter is Aliy Zirkle. Now we have met her in passing in Anchorage and thought that was kind of cool. Her parents being sailors probably explains why she would want to run the Iditarod. (Something about genetics not being quite right!) A couple of days later Jude and I are sitting around waiting for repairs on Danny's Fault. A man and his wife come up to where we were and I noticed that he was wearing a "Yukon Quest" shirt. Now the Yukon Quest is another 1000 mile dog sled race that goes between Fairbanks and Whitehorse, alternating start points on opposite years. I inquired as to how he was connected to the Yukon Quest. He proceeded to tell me that his daughter ran in the race! It was Aliy's parents. To say the least, we were a little surprised to meet them. I think they were more surprised to find someone in the middle of Alabama who knew about the Iditarod, let alone the Yukon Quest. Oh, by the way, Aliy was the first woman to win the Yukon Quest.

Other thoughts about the trip. All of our Great Lakes friends told us not to get to Chicago before Labor Day. Stay ahead of the frost and behind the hurricanes. The frost and hurricane thing is a good idea, but if we were to do it again, we would have left earlier. The biggest disappointment on the trip was the speed we had to travel. I wish we could have spent more time in the Tennessee River and Kentucky Lake. That area has some great anchorages and deserves more than a quick pass through. We never got to just sit around in some nice anchorages and enjoy the day. Was it fun, yes, would I do it again, probably not. I have already seen the rivers. Will we ever finish the loop? I doubt it. I have no real desire to head up the east coast; expensive and crowded.

FAMILY

Carrie and Eric's House, Christmas Eve, 2008

Over Christmas we flew up to Seattle to see Carrie, Eric, and the kids. We got there the day before the snow hit. Boy, were we lucky. Hundreds of people got stuck in the airport and could not get out. They ran out of de-icing fluid. Seattle is not prepared to get a foot of snow over a couple of days. The city had about 20 snow plows and those plows have a rubber strip along their lower edge. The initial snow came down then froze to the streets. The rest just piled up. Things did not begin to clear up until the day before left when it was 40 and rain. They did not want to use salt because it was "harmful" to the environment. Now I am very concerned about protecting the environment BUT HEY, the salt would wash down to the OCEAN!! The salty ocean!

This is one of the side streets 3 days after the snow.

One of the highlights (?) for the trip was that on the last day there, we hit a second hand/antique store in Seattle. While I was there I picked up a pair of Mickey Mouse Boots for Iditarod time. Now, these are the white ones, good to -60F. I know I am not good to that temp, but at least my feet will be! The boots were new and I got them for only $40. Even with the snow there is not much demand for them in Seattle.

Air travel was typical, PIA. No problems leaving from New Orleans but the plane was late out of Seattle and we ended up spending the night in Houston, at the expense of Continental Air Lines. Boy, do they leave something to be desired.

The kids were fine, they are not 2,4,5, and 8. Even at that age all they seemed to do was eat. Grazing might be a better term. For Christmas we got them a family pass to the aquarium for the next year. We had the chance to go along with them and see the sea things. This is their Christmas card photo. They all went as penguins for Halloween this year.

Amanda and Julius were trying to fly down on a military hop, but that did not work out. Too bad.

We will be heading back home to Alaska at the end of February for the Iditarod and to buy a house. The market is a buyers market up there right now, as everywhere, though not as bad and some areas, like Michigan or Florida. Every once in a while we get the idea of maybe buying a place here on Grand Isle. That lasts all of about a millisecond. Just what I need is a place that will be washed away in the next storm! We do like it here however.

I suppose that is about all for now, Bob and Judie Scranton, part of our football gang will be down here this week. I know that means that the Judies will be plotting and scheming.

Best to All

Rob