Monthly Archives: July 2015

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The trip across country

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JoAnne and I have travelled several times across country in the last 38 years. But this time we’re doing it to get to our last, new home. The ship.

As of today, starting in Colorado Springs and ending in a place called Reynoldsburg OH, we’ve travelled 1611.3 miles. That includes some side trips to Hermann, MO, a trip to Liberty, MO and some side trips around Cincinnati, OH.

We picked up some salmon over in Liberty at the Sprouts, and brought it to the Sause family for dinner one night, a side trip to a winery in Hermann to add some bottles to our collection for the boat and we had to travel back and forth in Cincy to meet up with Ryan, go to dinner, find out hotel (a couple of different times) and so forth. So the mileage isn’t all straight travel.

Tomorrow we meet up with Bob, our friend from WAYYYYY back in the White House days and his wife for dinner.

On Monday evening we hope to be in Woodbridge, VA to meet with another friend of the family, Phil at his place.

We are hoping to leave Wednesday and likely be in Stony Point NY around Thursday or Friday (taking our time, pulling a trailer, and then finding a hotel in the area… the latter being mostly likely the most difficult thing we have to accomplish, other than paying for the boat storage, painting and maintenance).

I did create a new photo storage area… if I can remember where it is, so we’ll post some images.

We have NOT taken any photos with friends. Most of them we aren’t going to post images of. Some, like me are rather reluctant to place images up, and for the protection of my friends I won’t do that 🙂 — There’s a good reason for this, which I will not explain on this blog, but suffice it to say the lot of us have had government jobs, held positions we would rather not go into details about or don’t want to have our faces all over the Internet.

Fortunately for those of you reading the blog, I’m one of those free spirits who simply doesn’t care all that much and my “enemies” know how to find me anyway 🙂

LOL

Ok, back to the regularly scheduled blogging.

Tomorrow we get to see Bob for dinner. We have not, to the best of my recollection seen him in 25 years, and JoAnne seems to think it was when we travelled from DC in 1989 moving to Colorado. That means that every time we move to a new home, we get to see Bob I think. Perhaps he and his wife will come see us on the boat next time? We shall see 🙂

The good old Ford F150 is hanging in there with 206467 miles as of tonight. The trailer is handling the trip well. I’m not so sure about my guitar which keeps getting shoved into the truck bed under the shell. It’s pretty hot so, I’m hoping it’s doing ok. I tuned it a couple of days ago and it was off a bit, but was holding it’s notes pretty decently.

Ryan – my friend Ryan whom I had never met until a couple of days ago, is an awesome young man. (I say that because I’m turning 58 in a few days and he’s significantly younger than me), He is, like we are, beer aficionados. While JoAnne and I like to make beer, Ryan likes to buy various types of beers, taste test them, and even post some reviews of various beers.

Before we left, he basically loaded us up with several bottles of various types of beers that he recommended to us. I’m currently enjoying a Bell’s Oberon, from Comstock Michigan. It’s a wheat ale, rather fruity, a little hoppy and a little spicy. Very good stuff!

JoAnne happened to run into a six pack of Root Beer…. ok, well, not really Root Beer. It’s “Not your father’s root beer” – a hard root beer, 5.9% alcohol by volume. I am NOT a fan of Root Beer, however, I tasted it and it was… very wonderful. I can see me making a hard root beet float with it, lol.

The weather, with the exception of a few night time thunderstorms through the travelling has been pretty hot. We’ve had a couple of 100 degree F days. We did have quite a storm come through in Kansas on the way to Missouri, but nothing too bad.

Let me see, what else. Wifi has been a bit of a pain in the behind a few times. We couldn’t get it on our phones more than once and even had to reset our phones a couple of times due to lack of data connections. T-Mobile said they weren’t sure what was happening, but helped me fix things. The idea of our phones is to be able to use them as a hot spot when nothing else is available.

We can’t stay in hotels forever – and we’re hoping to be to the boat by this coming weekend if not sooner.

I’ll write more in a few days.

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On the Road Again….

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On Thursday evening last week we received several calls about the Jeep.  The first person to show up with the money got it.

We got the full asking price we wanted from a very nice man who was an Air Force Retiree like myself.  He loved the Jeep and came in early Friday morning with the cash in hand (Friday the banks had already closed when he looked it over).

JoAnne and I had finished our packing and hooked up the trailer, and were ready to leave when he arrived.  All that remained was to give him the title, collect the cash, load our cooler and grab ice and snacks for the road – which we did.

We were finally on the road at 11:15, on 17 July.  We stopped in Salina Kansas at a Day’s Inn when we got tired.  We’d stayed in that Day’s Inn many times on the way to our normal destination (Mike and Cindy’s home in Richmond) but this was the last time we will stay there.  The clerk was rude, the place was a mess, the rooms smelled bad and the lights didn’t work in the room (most were out).  We complained but no one would listen either that night or the next morning.  They simply made excuses.  So… never again.

We arrive at Mike’s house on Saturday afternoon around 1pm.  We’ll stay here until Friday morning, when we will head out and drive to Cincinnati Ohio to visit Ryan from the Transasian Axis web site.  Ryan and I have never met, but have been friends for many years from the days when I helped run the Anomalies Network.  Ryan is the owner of http://www.transasianaxis.com site.  Yesterday he was grilling and a tornado passed right by him.  He posted a Youtube video of it.

After we depart Cincinnati we’ll head for Columbus Ohio to visit Bob (Another friend, like Mike, from our White House days in the 1980s).  Finally, we’ll stop in Virginia to visit Phil.  Another friend from the Anomalies and TAA web sites.  He’s agreed to hold on to some equipment we’ll be delivering until I can bring the ship down to Chesapeake Bay a few weeks later.

Tomorrow we drive back through Kansas City to the west side and down on 435 to visit a friend who owns a paddle wheel boat we’ll tour.  If I can, I’ll get pictures of the boat and post them here.

That’s all for now.  I’ll update in a few days.

Oh yeah, this little guy was waiting for me in the yard this morning to get his picture taken when I walked outside to go get gas in the truck.  If anyone is missing their pet bunny….. Probably not. LOL

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Rick

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Retired – Finally a couple of years later than planned

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We planned to retire almost two years ago, at the “end of the Five Year Plan”.  Then JoAnne was diagnosed with cancer, we had to pull the house from the market and regroup.  Which we did.  And JoAnne is doing very well today, one year later (yesterday) after ending chemo.

As you all probably know I had a heart attack on the 13th of May, went through surgery to replace a valve and have a bypass done at the same time.  The bypass was done “because we’re in there and it will cause you issues in the future”.  I didn’t want future issues.

On a tuesday about three weeks ago I saw the doctors and they released me to go back to work, and as of today I can go back to lifting weights, albeit slowly and carefully planning my training program to get my strength back in my upper body.  I went from 178 lbs down to 161 lbs at the lowest, but I never stopped walking and exercising as I could.

Last Friday was our last day at work – both of us left our jobs on the 10th of July.  Our house is sold.  Our belongings pared down to a small trailer with some tubs of kitchen items, some radio gear, personal belongings we can’t bear to part with yet and we’re ready to go.

Today I finished the paper work for our mailing address (St. Brendan’s Isle), and that will be mailed tomorrow.  Our last, and final step is selling JoAnne’s jeep.  It’s a 1999 Jeep Wrangler Sahara Edition.  She’s asking 7800 for it – KBB is listing it for our zip code at 8200.  Wish us luck.  Let us know if you’re interested 🙂  Adventure.Rick.JoAnne@gmail.com or click on the link on Craigslist!

We have nothing preventing us from leaving tomorrow (except the Jeep).  We were shooting for Wednesday this week, but might not be able to leave until Thursday or Friday assuming the Jeep is sold.  Either way… we are ready.

The bottom of the boat was painted last week, new zincs installed and a new boot stripe was put on.  I’ve asked them to stand by on commissioning the boat and splashing until we arrive – probably in about two more weeks, as we have stops to make across the country.  We plan to stop in Missouri, Ohio, and Virginia. Then off to New York we go to collect the boat, unload our junk and collect some other stuff from a storage container – all of that boat parts and such.

So here we are, 57 years old – and having worked collectively for over 80 years now… we’re done.  From now on the only work will be on our ship…. or if we run out of funds.  Which I don’t foresee any time soon.

I’ll document some of our trip.

What I won’t do is post exact locations or exact dates here.  Old security practices die hard 🙂

To my friends at the Agency, my co-workers, boss and the rest – all my best and thanks for 18 years of challenges, successes and friendships.

Here’s to the next 20 finding new challenges, new successes and new friends.

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Departure

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I’m hesitant to state dates and times and things like that, but my last day at work is this Friday the 10th.  JoAnne should be resigning effective that date as well.

During the next few days after we are through with work, we’ve got a few things left to accomplish like getting new tires, I’m having a problem with the truck that need’s fixing, and we’ve got to set up our medical insurance as well.

The trailer has been packed, unpacked, repacked, unpacked and repacked again.  Several times.  We keep eliminating things hoping to cut down what we’re taking.

We’re down to a few tubs of items for the galley, some navigation tools (like rulers, compasses, pens, pencils, some starting charts and cruising guides), some books and some random things we think we will need, but aren’t sure.  I’m positive once we arrive at the boat more stuff will wind up being tossed out or given away, but until we arrive, I just can’t be sure.

My tools have been gone through and I’ve tried to eliminate some, things I’m sure I won’t use.  But, I still wound up with a lot of tools.  Again, I’m sure I will get rid of more.

Sometime after the weekend, we’ll be departing.  I’ll try to document some of the trip, without every, single boring detail like where we stop for gas or to go to the bathroom, lol.

If we take cool pictures, which I am sure we will, I’ll post them here (or links to them).  I’m in the process of setting up an image hosting location so it might be a few days before that’s working.

That’s it for now.

 

Fair Winds!

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Finally time?

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I returned to work nearly seven weeks after a heart attack, six weeks to the day from my surgery.  I’m still on light duty, no heavy lifting, pushing, pulling, etc.  As of last Tuesday I was released from most restrictions, except the weight.

The lady who saw me said I looked wonderful and she wouldn’t have known I had a heart attack by listening to my heart, and not seeing the scar on my chest.  Which, speaking of that scar it really doesn’t look like a “zipper” because they put it all together from beneath.  In fact, the scar looks pretty decent, though it’s still a little off-putting if I have my shirt off, lol.

On Monday I told my co-workers and boss I wasn’t staying past the 10th of July.  I’ve come to the conclusion that at this time in my life (and in my wife’s life) we need to get going, we need to do this thing, we need to go sailing.  God willing, we will too.  Soon.

Right now the plan is simply to get going.  So we have a few people to see, a few things to close out, a few things to set up and a trip across country to plan.  We’ll be stopping to visit friends along the way and we plan on getting to Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia and then to New York.  We have a long way to go…. and we’re doing it all with plenty of time still.

As most of you know (or might not know if you’re not sailors) hurricane season just started in June and runs through November.  We are trying to get to New York where the boat is located, commission her, change the name sign, and prepare to move to the Chesapeake Bay area.

What we hope to accomplish is to do some minor repairs, check out all the systems that have not been checked, and run the boat a few times back and forth around the Chesapeake to do our “shake down”.  Hopefully it won’t break much.

I have not checked all the navigation, radar and radio systems.  Just didn’t have time during the survey (which we were more concerned about safety of the vessel, whether the hull was in good shape, etc).  So those things I’ll be checking as we go.

We will probably spend most of August around that area, and then plan our trip south for September… of course this all depends on what JoAnne’s thoughts are, how much work the boat requires, whether we’ll have to have our sails worked on, and all the other little glitchy things that happen.