G'day, greetings, and welcome
It's been almost three months since the last one and I wish I could say that it's because my life has been too full for me to take time off to write newsletters. Sadly though, life has been relentlessly quiet and I've simply not done enough to justify broadcasting it to the world.
Still, in an effort to maintain the fiction that my life is incredibly exciting, here goes.......
As you may recall I was living on a small, tatty, boat in a floating trailer park, my life brightened up by the sealions, pelicans, egrets, champagne, and the occasional showers of pelican shit. Partnered by the irrepressible Cadence I spent much of my time tearing holes in my clothes (and my body) with the aid of my roller blades, and was trying to avoid becoming employed by a timeshare company.
I succeeded in that much at least; America is very big on "covering your own back" and no-one in the company wanted to be responsible for making the decision as to whether or not the work permit I showed them was real - so they just avoided talking to me until I got bored and wandered off. Seems like a funny way to run a business, but it takes all sorts I suppose.
Anyway I ended up telemarketing for an aviation training company and now spend 4hrs a night chatting with pilots all over the country. I've spoken with a few complete nutters, and all sorts of interesting types too. There was the 62 yr old lady in Texas (I enjoy talking to Texas most of all) who recently decided she wanted to learn how to fly helicopters, so she bought one and started learning. Her husband got all excited and decided to do the same, only he wanted to build his own first - so he did! Then there was the guy in Alaska who landed his Cessna on a river bed and couldn't get out again until a big wind came up, countless farmers who've been flying for years but never got a license, a couple of people that own jet aircraft FOR FUN!, and no small number of wannabe airline pilots mortgaging their souls to pay for their training.
Some of the names are interesting too. I've got James Herbert, Kevin Klein, Mohammed Ali, and Knut Mbignot in my database. One of the girls told me she's just left a message on Sandra Bullock's voicemail and there's a guy working for the company called Roger Nutter. I laugh every time I open the catalogue and see his product endorsement, would you base your career as a commercial pilot on the recommendation of someone called Roger Nutter? I wouldn't, although that could be because I saw him practising his golf swing in the kitchen.
Naturally I'm getting all excited about learning to fly, but every time I schedule a loan of the company aeroplane I get hit by bad weather. Still, I'm sure it'll all come together. I called the Federal Aviation Authority and the flying I did in the UK 15 years ago counts towards getting a license here. All I need to do to get a license is pass a) a medical, b) the written test - easy, and c) a flight test - which will take a little bit of preparation, but is at least affordable.
At least it would be affordable if I had any money, but I'm only working part -time, and don't feel inspired to do more. As previously mentioned, wages are horrendously low in this part of the country and the cost of living is unreasonably high. Plus all spare cash seems to disappear into this "hole in the water" that I'm living on;
The boat looks a lot better than it did, after being hauled out of the water at a nearby dockyard and subjected to a severe superchris-ing. Scraping all the shit off the bottom and repainting it was not a big deal - I've done a lot worse jobs in my life - but the keel is made of cast iron and was in a pretty bad way.
Once the seawater gets through the million layers of old paint it starts to eat holes in the metal and I spent several days slaving away doing repairs - grind it back to 'bright' metal, prime (several coats), fill all holes and get it back to a smooth finish, prime another million times to prevent the water getting to the filler, then paint ad infinitum with magic life-repelling paint to prevent things ever growing there again. The boat was resting on the keel, which is about 3' deep, so I was always working in a confined space under the hull, surrounded by the tarpaulins you have to erect to stop your detritus escaping into the environment.
Personally my green tendencies were starting to give way in favour of self preservation, I'd rather see all that muck in the water than in my lungs, but I persevered. After about 3 days of work with power tools I was able to take the tarps down, and do away with the greenhouse effect, but still managed to get sunstroke on two successive days afterwards. We were living aboard in all the mess as well, which helped me to get really fed up with it all and pretty grumpy for a while.Talk about glad to see the end of that job!
(Try getting up for a pee in the middle of the night and having to climb down a bloody ladder to get to the bathroom. Then try getting back up, when you've done 12hrs hard graft in the sun.)
Still, it's all over now and the boat looks a treat. We painted the hull dark blue, with a yellow stripe, and I'm supposedly just finishing off repainting the topsides white. I say supposedly because progress is terrifyingly slow, but we're getting there. Cadence fixed the plumbing so water now drains out of the boat, and has almost completed the new sailcover and curtains which, along with the cushion covers and seatbacks, really completes the effect. I'm coming over all motivated just from talking about it!
Naturally we felt the urge to move to a better neighbourhood and managed to find a slip in the old America's Cup Harbour, which meant we had to sail on the ocean for over three hours. That was pretty exciting, not least because there are extensive kelp beds just offshore, and I spent an hour or so standing in the bow shouting directions so that we didn't get tangled up in the big floating masses of seaweed. Then I fell asleep, and was woken up by Cadence to tell me that we were surfing into the bay on the waves. Splendid!
The new marina is a bit cramped and we had to make our way between two rows of parked boats, under sail because the outboard chose that moment to get cranky and Cadence was desperate to find a toilet - you can't really hang over the side in full view of the San Diego yachting community, although I did have a tremendously liberating wazz in the open ocean earlier.
Anyway, the wind moved around behind us at the last moment and we didn't really know what we were doing so by the time we got the sail down we were going at a hell of a clip with no way to stop and no room to maneuvre. I was at the pointy end trying (ineffectually) to figure out a way of not demolishing the floating pontoon directly ahead. Cadence was at the back, supposedly steering but
actually doing a convincing impresion of a penguin, when she spotted an empty slip to one side and flung the boat into it, nearly putting me in the drink in the process.
I rallied magnificently (though I say so myself) and jumped on to the 'finger' that runs parrallel to the boat, then sprinted ahead to absorb most of the impact - but not all of it, we still hit with a bit of a crunch. A lot of the shock was transmitted to my bare feet, which were on rough-sawn timber - Ouch!
Cadence did her bit by sticking one leg over the side, like kids do to slow their bikes down, and impaling herself on a 2 inch splinter, before disappearing in tears for a while. Stressful stuff, and it was several hours before we could talk to one another at all. By that time I had the engine running again and we were able to move to the slip we were supposed to be in before anyone saw us - luckily there weren't many people around so we don't have too bad a reputation yet.
We can laugh about it now, the splinter wounds are healed and we've got the hang of coming in under sail or power, but at the time it was pretty traumatic. For a moment it looked as if we were going to arrive at our new home and drive straight over the dock. Hardly a good start when you don't even have your insurance set up yet, but disaster was averted and we both learned from it. We've discovered since that the marina is unusually cramped and even experienced sailors have problems fairly regularly. It's not unusual to see people struggling to get in or out, and no-one takes much notice, so no harm done, eh?
The new marina is a joy, there's even a guy comes around every morning and washes the birdshit off the dock so it's always clean and inspiring. The ladies in the office are frighteningly efficient (compared to the doddery old gits at the old place who couldn't care less that our dockbox was falling into the sea as the mooring disintegrated). We don't have to contend with whale watching trips setting off from directly behind us, the showers are clean, and even the phone lines seem to work better - although the wildlife is a bit different.
There are lots of herons, especially at night, a small herd of ducks, terns plumetting into the water every time you turn around, and several types of grebe - comical looking buggers when they swim underwater - but sadly no sealions. They're all asleep on the bouys out in the bay whenever we go sailing so we do at least get to say "hi" occasionally, or make stupid barking noises at them like all the other big kids in boats. They just blink resignedly at us and go back to sleep while we go check out the aircraft carriers and submarines, of which there are plenty.
It looks like we'll be here a while, $'s are in short supply and it's getting into the bad weather season down in Mexico. Personally I'm getting itchy feet, but there's nowhere in particular to go right now that's going to be any better so I'll have to content myself with occasional trips away.
Last weekend I called Cadence from work on Saturday morning to tell her that we were going camping that afternoon, and a few hours later we were pitching my tent at 6000'. We did the "where does this road go?" routine and ended up in a jolly nice spot where we even found a high valley to fly Cadence' new kite. Then the string came untied and it set off into the wild blue yonder on it's own - some how catching an updraft and receeding upwards and westwards until we couldn't see it any more. We spent the evening sitting by the campfire and speculating about where it would end up - over a bottle of champagne and some strawberries of course!
You know, maybe my life isn't so dull after all. Maybe I should do some more work on my website?
I did very little with planetchris for several months, but I've recently added a few articles by friends of mine. You can find out about Pat's asian adventures, and Amanda's ocean crossing from NZ to Tonga, plus my latest moment of madness ...... I've adopted a rocket.
I discovered this mad university lecturer in the UK who is building space vehicles and trying to raise money for them by selling advertising space. I, rather optimistically, offered to see if I could rustle up some sponsorship in the USA for him. I'm just waiting for my business cards and official email address, and in the meantime I've made a few calls just to see what I'm getting myself into. It would appear that there's a remote (but real) possibility that some thing fairly big could come of this, and that's the other reason I'm not planning on leaving in a hurry. I'm contemplating asking Wendy (the fundraiser in Portland) for advice. Anyone that can persuade the local gentry to buy rocks with their names on must be able to help: "Your name on an asteroid, sir?"
If anyone can get to Morecambe Bay on 8th June then that's the place to be to see the next launch. Details available at my planetchris website.
What more? Gloria continues to struggle gamely along, although she's rattling a bit at the front end and spent a couple of weeks dead due to electrical problems. I occasionally find yellow envelopes stuck under the wipers by the traffic wardens because her tags expired in October. I just post them on to the guy who still legally owns the car, with a note asking him to pay his fines and sign the forms making the car over to me so that I can renew the tags. People really amaze me sometimes, or should I say that people really depress me sometimes? I'm beyond being amazed at the wiful stupidity of the human race.
Erm, scouring my memory for more interesting events I come across Patty Wagstaff. (Not literally of course!)
Patty is a world champion, and 3 times US champion, aerobatic pilot and she gave a lecture at the aerospace museum a little while back. I took the evening off work to go, and promptly ran into my boss when I arrived - but that's life. We (Cadence and I, not John the boss - he's a little fatty) were both starving hungry and stopped to grab a drive-thru burrito on the way. Imagine us walking in wearing jeans, clutching the remains of our fast food, to discover that everyone else has dressed up and is helping themselves to the smorgasbord provided by the event's organisers. Oooops. I poured my plastic bottle of Gatorade into a nice cup, threw the burrito away, and headed for the place by "The Spirit of St Louis" where you could dip your strawberries in molten chocolate. Lovely.
The lecture was held in a big room containing a 1930's transport 'plane, a MiG fighter, assault helicopter etc, all hanging from the ceiling. In itself it was not all that great, but the 'support band', for want of a better term, was excellent. He's a photographer called Russell Munson, and he did all the pics for "Jonathan Livingstone Seagull". His show that night was a trip along route 66 in a 30=yr old Piper Cub - a two-seat taildragger painted bright yellow. Some of the pics were excellent and he picked up a lot of interesting stories along the way too. I talked to him afterwards and he told me that he rarely flew above 500' the whole way. It sounded like quite a trip, and got both of us all enthused about flying. All in all not a bad evening out, and Patty (who has a sponsor!) wold me that her ambition is to fly in space......
Cadence spent the day on a racing sailboat a few weeks ago after meeting someone in the bathroom, and I had to recruit some guy I met over the internet to come and crew for me so I could go sailing. We all happened to be in the same bar later on, which worked out pretty good, and Cadence' boat managed a fairly respectable showing. Overall winner was called "The Stars and Stripes", which is apparently quite well known around here - and elsewhere in sailing circles.
So that's about it as summer hits San Diego. The last few days have been extremely hot and sunny (eat your heart out Grahame) but today looks like being a painting day. Sigh.
Keep in touch
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