Go North Young Boaters

Underway again,



Here we go. With the new exhaust installed and the turbo charger rebuilt, we are once again heading out on our epic voyage to points unknown. Well, not really unknown, just up the way a bit to the Chesapeake Bay. We figured that leaving on April Fools day was a great idea. That way if something goes wrong...it wasn't us.

The boat is packed, the fridge is full, the rum is loaded and we are all set. Tomorrow we will set sail for the beach side town of Wrightsville Beach, NC. With a weather forecast of morning sun followed by afternoon rain and the chance of thundershowers it sounds like our kind of day.

Cross your fingers out there. We hope to be in Norfolk within 10 days. Then we can take our time going up the bay. We should be able to post daily with at least our position information. You never know what young teenager has left his home wifi signal unlocked.

Until next time, good night and good luck.

P & J

AC/DC said it best,,,

We're "looking for a truck". We are waiting for a part that will make it possible for us to start up the engine and point the bow north. James asked our boat guy Pedro to please point out the person he had to sleep with to get this part faster and he replied that a rather large, hairy truck driver would be a good start. The jury is still out on that one.

So meanwhile back at the ranch, we have turned into every working persons dream; Slackers that sleep until 10; then play on the computer until lunch. After that, there is usually a trip to the store to buy food, maybe some reading, or a "Gilmore Girls" episode. James putters around the kitchen making snack plates with drinks, we grill out dinner, maybe a nap before the Daily Show and Colbert Report...all in 70 degree weather. You get the picture. And we have a slow hairy truck driver to thank for this. Maybe James should sleep with him?

I have been listening to a lot of music and have once again discovered my love of Nine Inch Nails. What a coincidence, I have extra time on my hands and there is a great viral campaign for the new NIN "Year Zero" concept album. In case you haven't been following along, it involves the end of the world; websites with detailed characters, organizations and events leading up to 2022 and leaked tracks of the disc. More fun than Lost. I also bought the "Beside You In Time" concert DVD the other day and we played it on the big screen with the sound blasting. OK, I played it while James had on head phones listening to his IPod full blast. A quick note to the uninformed, Jimmy Buffett does not drown out NIN even with the volume on full blast. Sorry Jimmy. We do tend to have different taste in music with some similarity in the middle.


Happy Pat.



Happy James.

Another interest that has raised its ugly head is the HGTV network. Everyone is rebuilding, remodeling, flipping, selling, and re-doing a house. You know that you watch to much of this stuff when the "True and Amazing" vacation home theme song is stuck in your mind. With all this new knowledge we are sure that we could buy a nice place in the Northern Virginia area and fix it up to make us millions. Its all in the crown molding, I'm telling ya.

Anyway, I am sure these obsessions will fade when we finally load the boat and head out onto the water. At least I hope so.

Say a prayer we get that part delivered , otherwise James might discover the QVC network and I will never be able to pay the Mastercard bill again.

Enjoy,
P&J

Culture shock DC style

Oh my goodness, we leave the world we know for a few months and it went kooky. Where did the extra 10,000,000 people come from on the DC beltway? I will tell you a secret, in a few months you can become a traffic wimp. Without our all important FastPass, I think we went through 100 quarters in a weeks time. Lucky for us our friends were gentle and took great care of us.


I don't remember the 495/267 intersection being this bad

We only had time to visit a few of our friends. The list would include:
Laurie, Layla the Brave, Kevin, Lisa, Larry, Sandy, Dan, Bob, Ann, John, Beth, Sue, Sue, Sue, Gary, Jen, Doug, Tom, Deb, Fran, and of course Sammy the Pug. If we didn't mention you it's because we are bad people with bad memories and we apologize.

While we had many tasks planned for the week, we did get to see some new things. We hit a great new restaurant downtown called Temperance Hall. Good brunch with a classy neighborhood bar feel. Doug worked on the menu and did a wonderful job.


3634 Georgia Ave NW is a great place to meet.


The gang having a little brunch.

In fact I think we gained 10 pounds from all the fantastic meals. We were lucky enough to be in town for a dinner party hosted by John and Beth. Beth created food to die for and John just kept opening incredible wines as a complement to the meal. James couldn't decide what he liked best; the food, the wine, the company or the gorgeous kitchen with copper pots everywhere. He was in culinary overload.

The weather was another story. From sunny North Carolina to cold, snowy, windy, Virginia. Who knew that a couple hundred miles could make such a difference. Our blood has thinned out quickly and horror of horrors, we had to find our socks.


Ole Blue with a fresh coat of the white stuff.

We had other more mundane tasks to accomplish on this trip north. Fun things like getting our taxes done, going to the DMV, getting our hair cut, making sure we still had jobs to come back to. You know little things like that.

We spent a good amount of our time trying to figure out where we would live after bringing the boat back north. Since we had downsized our lives, we could choose any kind of lifestyle we wanted. Did we want to buy something or rent? If we rented, where and what kind of unit? Way too many choices that made us nightmare clients for our realtor Sue Fitzhugh. She had seen our kind before and Sue was great to show us about 200 apartments and townhouses in just a couple of days. We think that Reston will be the where we hang our hat, but we have not yet pinned down the exact location. We will leave that for when we return.

For now, we have a boat to get ready. We need to resupply the food and drink, as well as give Helios a quick shakedown to check the idle systems. The trip north should prove to be a great time. With room for crew, we look forward to having some visitors. Hopefully the weather will be nicer to us then it was on the way down. Knock on wood.

Right now we are snug in our bed in NC reading the Sunday paper and watching HGTV. While there is a lot to do to get ready, you don't want to push yourself to hard.

Enjoy,
P & J