Do Angels Draw?

So there I was...driving along the shores of Lake Ontario coming back from the boatyard where my boat is wintering on dry land.  As always, I was in awe of the vastness and power of that large a body of water.  It helped to put things in perspective as it had not been a good couple of weeks for me.  First my boat had been broken into and alot of my tools had been stolen, many of them passed down to me from my father.  Then with much effort and in the cold Kim and I had set up the frame and covered the boat with a new winter tarp only to have it part at the seams and rip itself off the boat with the strong winds.  My best efforts were being rewarded with less than ideal results.  
There was a time some 35 years ago that life was really beating me up.  Sometimes after work I would drive an hour and a half to get to the Rhode Island shore and sit on a break wall listening to the crashing waves.  Here I tried to figure out what I really wanted in life and why things were not going as planned.  One of those evenings, after sitting there for about an hour, a girl walked out to where I was on the rocks and handed me a sketch she had done of me from where she was sitting on the shore.  After I thanked her she smiled and just walked away.  As I looked at the sketch I notice how small I was in relation to how big the ocean was drawn.  That is when I started putting things in perspective.  Don't sweat the small stuff.  There are greater things in life to think on.  There is a much larger purpose for living than my day to day successes and failures.  There is a God and He has plans for me.
To this day, I find myself wanting to be around large bodies of water.  It keeps me grounded.  It keeps me from thinking too much of myself.  It helps me to see things as they really are.

Rocky and Bullwinkle

So there I was...having my morning coffee when I heard the squirrels running on the roof of the house again.  It was common as we have this huge pine tree close enough to the roof to make it easy for them.  I noticed the sound being louder than usual and with a little investigation found the critters to have taken up residence in an upper section of the attic accessible only from a damaged roof vent.  Before I could fix the vent I had to get these guys out but they had no intention of leaving despite my many efforts.  Then I bought the "Squirrelinator" (cue dramatic music).  After mounting this devise to the roof I captured the varmints within a day.  I secured the roof vent so I don't have to pull out the "Squirrelinator" (cue dramatic music) again.  This brings me to my other animal story from several years ago.
So there we were...winter camping on Mt Moosalamoo in Vermont.  My close friends, John and Rich, had been doing this annual excursion together for some 30 years straight and through the years others would join them, this being one of the years I did.  We "Robust Trampers", as the guys aptly named us, would backpack on snowshoes through the 4 ft deep snow a fair distance into the woods to set up a base camp and day hike out from there.  It was usually 3 days in zero degree weather sleeping in tents and cooking your meals on small camp stoves laid on a table you cut out of the tamped down snow.  We came back from a day hike on Moosalamoo to our camp and within a few minutes John quietly turns my head to show me a huge moose that is standing no more than 30 yds from us.  After she effortlessly trots off through the 4 ft snow we go to where she was standing to check her tracks.  My two hands end to end equaled the size of her hoof.  Then we saw her calf, some 6 feet tall, run off in a different direction from the mother.  I put on my snowshoes and told the guys that I had to track it.  After all, moosalamoo is the Abenaki Indian word meaning "trails of the moose".  As I followed its trail I saw where it crossed a snow covered frozen pond where it obviously slipped and took a digger as the snow was cleared from the ice where its body slid.  A memory of the scene from the animated movie where Bambi slides spread eagle across the ice came to mind.  Its tracks leading away from the site indicated that it was walking normal and no harm was done except maybe to its pride.  It was turning dark fast and the thought of the mother moose finding me tracking her young might end badly for yours truly so I headed back to camp.  These huge animals just thrilled me and made my weekend.  Can't say the same for the squirrels.

Upside Down At 3,500 Ft

So there I was...watching the news yesterday as they showed Laguardia Airport in New York covered in water with just the runways showing.  Hurricane Sandy had pummeled the area that I had boated through only a month ago.  Looking at that flooded airport reminded me of a day about 28 years ago when heavy rains in Kansas City, Missouri had left a small outlying airport surrounded by water, but the runways themselves were still usable.  The reason that was important to me that blustery morning was I was about to go up and jump out of a perfectly good airplane at 3,500 ft. hoping to land on dry ground.  Kim and I had not been married long so I wrote a quick will on a scrap piece of paper and had it signed and witnessed by a friend of mine there just in case gravity won and I lost.  I had training the night before and the morning of the jump as I would be jumping by myself and not attached to an instructor.  It is called a static line jump where a tether is attached on one end to the plane and the other end to your parachute so as you jump from the plane the 15+ ft line goes taut and pulls the parachute from your pack.  After a short freefall the air fills your chute and landing on dry ground is all you have to worry about.  As I stepped out onto the strut of the planes wing to prepare my spread eagle exit into open air, I became fascinated with the power of the propellers thrust.  Looking at it as I jumped caused me to fall in a twisting motion and as my chute deployed the lines wrapped around my legs.  I found myself hanging upside down at 3,500 ft with a partially opened parachute and falling fast.  Kim can see the deformed chute from the ground and knows things are not going well for me up there.  All I could think to say was, "Oh crap" and realized I better move fast.  Doing a mid-air situp I started unraveling the lines from my legs until finally I fell upright and the chute filled fully.  After a pleasant flight I made a good landing only 5 ft from the bullseye (a bath towel on the ground), and more importantly, not in the water.  Kim was breathing again but if I remember right she hit me...hard!

We Have History

So there I was...sitting with Kim in my new living room, in my new house, in my new town, in my new state trying to think what new things I can tell you in this blog.  Living on the water allows so much material for this endeavor as change and motion are a constant but what can I tell you now?  As we talked,  I realized that one of the things I treasure most in our 30 year marriage is our history together.  It has never been boring and we tend to fall into adventure on a regular basis.  Let me tell you about one such time.  So there we were...driving through the hills of Southern Missouri in my Toyota Landcruiser FJ40, the best offroad truck ever built.  We hear a call for help and see a young man in real trouble standing at the back of his car.  Seems he was trying to jack up the car to change a tire on an incline and when the car started moving he grabbed the jack trying to stop the motion getting his hand pinned between the jack and trunk lid of the car.  For those younger among us, the jacks we used to have in cars in those days were called bumper jacks and were a slotted 4 ft metal bar that would attach to a cutout in the bumper and a rachet system would raise the car.  It was this metal bar that was now crushing this young man's hand and was holding him there.  We waved other drivers down and several of us, including my 6 month pregnant wife, tried to push the car uphill to release the hand.  In the proccess Kim slipped and bloodied her knee on the gravel.  It wasn't working so I got the front of the Landcruiser against the front of the car and pushed slowly until the hand came free and the boy collapsed on the ground.  The other guys there got him into the front seat of my truck and off to the nearest hospital I sped.  The Landcruiser had bucket seats so the boy and Kim were sitting in the same seat.  Kim was trying to care for him but she does not do well with blood and his hand did not look good.  As I drove down the road the two of them were taking turns passing out.  First the boy passed out then came to.  Then Kim passed out.  Back and forth this went while I'm trying to stay on the road.  When we got to hospital nurses came running out to meet us.  They open the passenger door and see both of my passengers bloodied and passing out.  A nurse looks at me and says, "Which one is it?"  
We never saw the boy again and Kim recovered just fine.  This is our history.  Never a dull moment.

Coffee Tastes Better When It's Cold Outside

So there I was...pulling the boat along side the dock in Phoenix, NY just before the first lock that I would have to go through on the Oswego Canal.  To get to Lake Ontario you have to leave the Erie Canal bearing North onto the Oswego Canal.   It had been cold and rainy all day while traveling to this point.  Though I like the cold, sometimes the rawness of it seeps into my bones when the wet and cold come together.  My bones were telling me to find something warm, quick.  I secured Eventide and walked down the street to a little coffee shop called State Street Cafe.  The owner, Tammy, was incredibly cheerful and sympathetic to my long cold day on the water.  She begins to tell me that what I need is some of her homemade hot chicken and bisquit stew with a hot cup of coffee.  Then I should have a piece of, just out of the oven,  apple pie with a dollup of ice cream melted on top to finish it off and another cup of coffee.  Though normally frugal to a fault at this point I didn't care how much it cost.  What a joy it was to sit there eating and drinking warmth back into my happy bones.  The simplest of things can mean so much.  The cup of hot chocolate tastes so much better after you've come in out of the freezing cold and the tall glass of ice tea feels so good going down on a hot summers day.  It is the extremes in life that produce real living.  To avoid the discomfort is to never truly understand how wonderful comfort can feel.  By the way, it was less than ten dollars.  I know!
I was there too late in the season to take advantage of a group of kids that are called the Bridge House Brats that take care of all of the boaters needs for free.  Pick up groceries for you, wash your boat, walk your dog, and much more.  They will accept tips but there is no charge.  Google Bridge House Brats, you will be amazed.  
Kim drove in to spend the weekend on the boat with me and we went apple picking for the first time in our 30 year marriage.  I don't know why it took so long because that is so much fun.  Back to State Street Cafe for Caramel Apple Crepes that rivaled the crepes we had in Paris.
Kim left on Sunday evening and in the next few days I made my way through the locks and into Lake Ontario.  Not an easy trip to Rochester but I am tucked in a marina waiting for Eventide to be put on dry land for the winter.   Glad to be back with Kim but I don't like living and sleeping in a house that doesn't rock and I can't hear the waves.  Sometimes it's good to switch to tea from coffee for awhile.

Flight of Five

So there I was... at the docks in Waterford NY waiting for Kim to arrive so she could go through the first set of five locks with me.  A guy named Rick on a 40' trawler started talking to me who had just come the length of the Erie Canal from west to east.  I would be going from east to west.  He was from California and boated the Pacific Northwest for years but always wanted to do the Erie Canal.  So he went online, found the boat he wanted, negotiated the price he wanted (which was a great price), flew out to a port on Lake Erie, fixed the boat to his liking and off he went.  When I left him he was heading south down the Hudson River with a finishing point in Florida or the Bahamas.  When he gets there he will sell the boat, at a profit I'm sure,  and fly home to California.  How cool is that?  He gave me some great tips for doing the Erie Canal single-handed since Kim would only be helping for one day.  Speaking of Kim...
She showed up right on time and the next day she drove the car to lock 7 leaving it there and rode her bicycle 16 miles back on a bike trail along side the canal to where the boat was at Waterford.  We spent her 50th birthday the following day doing what is known as the "Flight of Five" or the "Waterford Flight"on the Erie Canal.  These five locks, in close proximity to each other, would lift our boat 169 ft and constitutes the greatest verticle lift in the shortest distance of any locks in the world.  This is twice as high as the total lift of the Panama Canal.   It seemed aprapoe that Kim was celebrating her own "Flight of Five" and so after each lock she would tell me what major events happened in her life during that decade.  A few tears were shed as we went through the locks and the decades.   Not by me of course.  
I went on alone after this and I am tied to a wall at the entrance of Oneida Lake after going through locks 21 and 22 earlier today.  Lock 17 was the toughest with it's 40 ft elevation, the highest on the Erie Canal.  Imagine coming up to a four story building with a long rope hanging from the roof to the ground.  You hang onto this verticle rope trying to keep your 17,000 lb boat from moving all over the lock chamber while water floods in to fill the lock.  My arms were so tired that night.  I have a four hour trip across the lake tomorrow so I'll say goodnight.

Always On The Move

So there I was...leaving Manhassett, on the north shore of Long Island, early in the morning heading for Hell's Gate in the East River toward Manhattan.  Taking a hard right before I got to the "big city", I headed up the Harlem River.  I couldn't stop singing the song Spanish Harlem the whole distance of the river until I came to the Hudson River.  There were no songs for the Hudson River.  Then there was a very bumpy night spent at anchor in the bay created by Croton Point.  This was followed by a drive by of West Point and later that day I anchored in a quiet harbor 2 1/2 miles up a creek in Kingston, NY having a meal at a creekside bar with some very colorful individuals.  The next day I was on to another anchorage in another creek just south of Coeymans, NY where I spent two days of solitude followed by a nerve racking morning feeling my way through the pea soup fog and rain to make it to the marina where I took on 145 gallons of diesel fuel to the tune of $641.37.  The very pregnant young women who helped me with dock lines then took my money with a big smile making that pill go down a little easier.  Off into the rain I went making my way through Albany and onto the Federal Lock in Troy, NY, the first of many locks that I will navigate in the coming weeks.  Just a short distance from there was the entrance to the Erie Canal. As I write this I'm tied to a dock just below the first of 30 locks and 184 miles of canal before I find myself in Lake Ontario, one of our Great Lakes.  Then another 75 miles to get to Rochester, NY.  Why Rochester, you might ask?  That's where Kim, the love of my life, lives.