Week one May 1st to May 7th.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013 Ft Lauderdale

I need to get a quick note off before we head out to sea after we head out then at&t gets more difficult.  2870 miles to the next stop.  We arrive next Wednesday at Ponta Delgada, Azores.  The ship is beginning to untie lines and fire up the engines.  I have about 4 books on my iPad to read, with only a couple of hours of internet connection each day I may go into withdrawals. 

I have been following a blog on tiny houses; our cabin reminds me of that blog.  It amazing how you can be totally comfortable in a small space.  Kind of makes you wonder why we have such a big house. 

This cruise is full of people who have made multiple cruises.  I was looking around at the muster drill and I saw only about a half dozen couples younger than us.  I think there are about 6 kids on board.

Tuesday, May 2, 2013 at sea

What would Columbus have done?

We are about 400 miles from Florida and about 2500 miles from our next stop.  How do I know that; I looked on my phone.  Poor old Columbus left Spain thinking he might fall off the edge of the earth.  When he got to where he was going he didn't know where he was.  He had to abandon part of his crew in this new place and then couldn't find them on the next trip.  He may have been called the great navigator but if he was alive today his wife would make him stop and ask for directions if he was driving.  Today all we have to do is look at our phones and see where we are in the world with about 6 ft accuracy.  I think it is totally amazing.  It has made it where any fool can cross the ocean (as long as their batteries last) without any technical knowledge.  I don't know if that is a good thing.  (BTW, Carole still wants to make me stop and ask for directions.  She doesn't trust Google.) It is also possible to connect with people all over the world from the center of the ocean with an internet connection.  Although I must admit it isn't quite as easy as it is from streets of Pell City.  Posting the blog thru the ship's wireless system is somewhat of a hassle and is expensive.  I may have to go to posting every few days rather than each day. 

Our course is 75 deg with a speed of 19 knots.  (My phone told me.)  We are currently in to an 18 knot head wind which puts the apparent wind at 37 knots on deck.  (I had an engineering course in vector analysis that taught me how to do that calculation.)   For anyone who doesn't deal in knots that is about 42 mph.  Either way if you are in an exposed area it makes walking difficult and cool since the air temperature is 72 deg. 

Tonight is formal night, so it is put on the tux and look like someone important.

Friday, May 3, 2012 at sea

It is Friday and how do I know that?  My phone told me!  Otherwise I wouldn't have a clue.  The days are running together.  The view well it hasn't changed much in the last couple of day.  We are in the "shipping lanes" so you do see ships from time to time.  We spent most of the day passing a cargo ship.  I first saw him around 9:00 this morning and he disappeared about 4:00.  We must have been making about a half a knot more speed than he was making.  And that my friends, was the total excitement for the day. 

We had a very unique dinner tonight.  We have two other couples we share a table with at night.  One couple is from California and are a lot of fun, the other is "interesting" and I will leave it there.  The interesting people were no shows at dinner.  The California couple had been to the Martini Bar.  You know they say martinis are like boobs.  You really need more that one, two is perfect and three makes you really strange.  The guy had enjoyed at least three before the meal and had one waiting on him at the table.  He may have been one of the funniest drunks I have been around in quite a while.  He is a retired mechanical engineer (he is not prototypical).  After he retired he went to school and became a hair dresser, then to school to become a furniture maker.  Now he is just retired.  His wife worked in health care for her lifetime and recently helped establish a clinic for children with a very rare disorder.  It is the only one like it in the US.  They have children from all over the world come there for treatment.  I told them we would meet in the Martini Bar tomorrow night before dinner so we could be entertained again.  Pat the wife vetoed that idea.  Arlen was led away to bed at 8:00. 

The entertainment other than Arlen was a piano player.  The guy had the largest hands of anyone I have ever seen.  His playing was amazing.  He will do another concert tomorrow at 2:00.  I will be there to see him. 

I bragged on the internet at sea too early.  Tomorrow I will take the iPad to the Internet cafe and see if I can get a connection.  So far I can't get the wireless to recognize me.  Where is Mike Ash when you need him? 

Saturday, May 4, 2013 at sea

I looked out the window and saw ocean.  OK that is all I have to tell you.  There is just ocean and more ocean. 

This internet thing just isn't working for me.  I was able to download email today but then when I started deleting them it locked up the iPad the connection on the uplink because it was so slow.  I guess I am going to have to wait until I find at&t in Europe to upload the blog. 

I had gumbo for lunch.  Bless the cook’s heart he would have been killed for calling that stuff gumbo in Mobile. The same is pretty much true for grits. I was afraid to try southern fried chicken after those experiences.  I guess you have to have been raised in the south to understand how to fry food and cook BBQ.

Sunday, May 5, 2013 at sea

There is a nice swell in the ocean this morning.  The boat has a nice rocking motion, so much so Carole isn't having anything to do with getting up.  It is like rocking a baby to sleep.

We have gone thru our forth time change so we are officially four hours ahead of Alabama time.  Carole struggles each year when we change to daylight savings time and this is really giving her a hard time.  So when I wake her up at 8:30 she reminds me her body thinks it is 4:30 but then I have to point out she went to bed at 6:00 last night.  Yea, I know never argue with a woman, the only way you get in the last word is to say "Yes dear".                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

I have been reading Rick Bragg's book "It is all over but the shouting".  It is a book my mother wanted me to read.  It is unusual for her to ask me to do something so when she does I generally do what she asks.  Besides, the book looked interesting.  It is autobiographical and based on his life in the Jacksonville/Piedmont area.  I think mother had ulterior motives for wanting me to read the book.  It is very much like the lives we had growing up.  OK I want to qualify that real quick, my father wasn't a drunk who abandoned the family.  He did drive a truck in his earlier years and would be gone from time to time for several days.  We didn't have indoor plumbing until I was eight years old.  I do remember taking baths in the wash tub and having a pee pot under the bed so you didn't have to go to the outhouse in the middle of the night.

The book is an accurate view of the south during that period of time.  If you grew up in a southern mill town then it describes your life, your relatives and the people you grew up knowing.  It has everything from the town drunk, town idiot, to the uppity white ladies who had maids’ everyday to clean their houses and take care of their children.  It deals with the prejudice we all have.  If you live in the south yours are just different than people in the north or west.  We are, I think, just more willing to be open about them than they are.  If you want to understand the rural south you should read this book.

Rick was driven by his fear of failure.  I can certainly identify with that internal drive that forces you to work harder and longer than anyone else.  I discovered a long time ago that if I wasn't the smartest or best at something, if you worked hard enough you could certainly get about 95% of the way there. 

The best part was when he discussed his aunt Edna which was pronounced Edner.  My mother's name on her birth certificate is "Edner".  They spelled it just like they said it.  While she has always used her middle name of Dean there are a few of the great aunts who always called her Edner.  When I want to make sure I have her undivided attention I will call her that now.

I officially gave up on posting a blog until I get a good connection.  After 45 minutes I finally got my mail to sync with the office. I had to do it early this morning when no one was on the Internet on the ship.

Monday, May 6, 2013 at sea

OMG. Will the view ever change!  I am not a very relaxing person; I have to be doing something every day.  So the fifth day at sea is getting to wear on me.  Carole and I took a vote last night and decided to limit further trips to no more than two days at sea.  I think I will ask the captain if he has any woodworking projects on board that he needs help completing.  If I get truly desperate I might even volunteer to paint something.  At least we are down to about 800 miles to the next port.

This morning around 9:30 the boat took a right turn of about 110 degrees and headed due south for about 2 miles, reducing speed to 12 knots, then back on course and speed.  I don't know why but it makes you wonder.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013 at sea

There is nothing but ocean out here, maybe I am not made for long ocean passages.  I have always wanted to cross an ocean on a ship; I will officially be able to cross that off my list and don't think I will ever want to do it again. Our table mates, the interesting ones, do it twice a year.  There are several places we have been that I like to go back to see again.  Virgin Islands, Wooden Boat School and Alaska but to spend six days crossing the Atlantic twice a year for ten years, it would make me interesting too.  Hell no it would make me the town idiot! 

April 30, 2013

And so a new adventure begin.  We are off for about 7 weeks.  We will cross the Atlantic on a cruise ship and then spend time in France, England, Scotland and Ireland.  

We flew to Ft Lauderdale today to catch the ship tomorrow morning.  It was pretty hetic in trying to get away.  Lots of last minute details that had to be taken care of before we caught the big bird south.  We won't talk about packing, we had 2 large suitcases each weighing close to 50 lbs each plus backpacks and roll on's.  It makes it hard to get thru the airport and shuttles.  

Thanks to Candice and Nix for taking us to the airport in her van.  I don't think all of the stuff would have fit in any of our cars.

26 hours and 3 quality points

Not many people know that in addition to my engineering degree I have a minor in English.  By understanding this you may come to realize why my writings are the way they are. 

English was never my strongest subject.  Mostly because my spelling is very creative, not that is wrong it just doesn’t conform to the way the rest of the world thinks it should be.  It started in jounior high school.  I was your basic straight “A” student that coasted thru school well ecept for this one course in English.  Acutally the spelling thing started back in gramer school.  I just hated to memorize anything so my best spelling test were in the 80’s.  (That is test score not years.)  By the time I got to junior high this English thing was a pure bore.  I hated it!  I would love to blame it on the teacher but it really isn’t his fault.  He was also way my math teacher and I just loved math, algebra, geometry, it just made perfect sense.  I just couldn’t figure out why this English stuff was so important.

On to high school and another great teacher who I dearly loved and still think the world of today.  Even though he tried very hard to pour the information into my head it just seem to run off or flow through from in one ear and out the other.  He even tried beating it into with the “board of education”.  Of course I had a limited attention span that pretty much didn’t go past the girl with the big boobs that sat near me.  She was a hell of a lot more intresting than the teacher.  Probably the best think he did was let us choose the books we wanted to do book reports on that year.  I picked “Munity on the Bounty” and was totally hooked on sailing for the rest of my life.  The romance of the see, tropical islands, large ships under sail and RUM!

One of the true benefits of going to engineering school was you didn’t have to take as much math as the other students and no foreign language was required.  Well that was only true if you did good on placement test.  Well I didn’t do good on any of the placement test.  So I had to take remedial engish.  I don’t  think the U of A does that anymore.  If you can pass the placement test they just tell you to go somewhere else.  So I was doomed to take an extra course in English.  So instead of two 3 hour courses and one 5 hour course.  I was up to three, 3 hour courses.  Well at least I didn’t have to take a foreign language.  Although it could be argued that English was a true foreign language for a boy from Sycamore. 

Actually English wasn’t the only remedial class I had to take, I had about 12 hours of remedial work before I could officially start in my classes.  The classes include a couple of math classes and physics.  Maybe Winterboro wasn’t the best college prep high school in the nation.  Out of a class of fifty only about eight of us went on to college and I know of only one other person to graduate from college out of that class. 

If I struggled in high school, I was totally lost in college.  Actually I even struggled in math classes.  This was a totally new experience for me.  No one to tell me when to go to bed, tell me when to get up or tell me I need to take a bath.  Did you know our dorm had a pool hall in it!  That was just too cool.  They also had all the donuts you could eat every Sunday morning if you got up before noon. 

I am going to shorten this story a little but at the end my first sesmester in college which was summer school I had a rip roaring 0.8 GPA.  “F” in English, two “D’s in Math and the only “C” was in a drafting class.  Two semesters of that and you were off Viet Nam.  Well the fall semester rolled around and incase you haven’t heard the University of Alabama has a football team.  Football season at the University is a special time.  You are supposed to be able to go to football games and have plenty of time left over to go to classes.  Well at the end of that semester I had things completely under control, knew how to do this college thing.  At least I was consistence with another 0.8.  If I hadn’t started in Summer school I would have been out on the street and in the line at the draft center.   

I had to get my act together!  So in the spring I didn’t take English which guarnetted I wouldn’t make at least one “F”.  I had to learn how to study, change my life style and get new friends.  It worked!  Spring semester saw a 2.5 out of 3.0 GPA and I was off probation and the draft board was just a distant memory for at least a few years.  (By the way, none of those friends lasted thru to the next fall.)

Well I finally got my life together, took english over and over until I got my “D” and was so damn proud of that grade.  I actually was finally able to make a “C” in my last English class.  In the end thanks to W² Wilson I was able to make it in to graduate school.  (That is another story for another time.)

Graduate school was a dream except for one thing, I had to write a thesis.  It wasn’t easy and took two years to get it approved.  They kept finding misspelled words and I would have to do it over.

I am so thankful that we have word processors and spelling checkers.  Word processors, very good administrative assistance, and a wonderful wife has let me survive in this world.  I have been able to have several technical papers published and have author parts of many documents that are in print today. 

I have purposely not run a spelling check on this document although many of the words were auto corrected.  I didn’t get Carole to edit this for me so you could get a snapshot of the true me.

I don’t know if there is a moral to this story.  If there is, it would probably be keep trying until technology catches up, have some good help and a wonderful spouse along the way. 

The great yachting adventure

Well 99% of this story is land based.  About 15 years ago my brother-in-law John bought a boat.  Now you have to remember that new or even slightly used isn’t a word in his vocabulary.  For the most part, if it doesn’t need some work on it, he doesn’t buy it.  Maybe that says something about my sister.  Yea I ain’t headed down that path.

Back to the story.  John found the boat on Lake Guntersville.  It is was a very cool boat.  Very classic, maybe one of the first in a series of fiberglass boat.  That would have made it about 25 to 30 years old when it bought it.  It was your classic cabin cruiser, with great classic form and lines.  The running gear was in good condition but it was pretty tired on the inside.  I really thought it had a lot of possibilities and was looking forward to spending some time on it.  I even thought we could take a few weeks and take it down the river system to the Gulf.  It would have been a fun trip thru all the locks. 

After some deliberation John thought the best course of action was to have the boat trucked to his home in Talladega County to do the work there.   He was right, the hull need some cleaning and a LOT of sanding and polishing.  He constructed a shed over the boat to keep it out of the rain and elements, and started to work.  Well this wasn’t his paying job, so it didn’t get his full energy, his paying job keeps him in Montgomery a lot and thrown in a couple of weddings, moving and remodeling a house, the boat project suffered.  So after 15 years the boat is still under the shed and he has completed about two of the eighty weeks of work required for the project.  My sister may have had something to do with this decision but John decides the boat needs a new home.  Ads are placed on Craig’s List and EBay.  You know there aren’t a lot of people jumping up and down to buy a 45 year old boat in sad condition.  Even photo shop isn’t doing a lot of good here.

I have never been told what he paid for the boat but I think he accepted the offer $1,500 from one person in the entire world who wanted the boat.  (John called me and I have to correct the amount to $2,500.  He doesn’t want anyone to think he sold it too cheap.)  Everyone else just offered to remove it, but at least it would be gone.  Now you have to realize that John rarely fails to make a profit on any of his transactions so this has to be a troubling return on investment for him.  He does realize that sometimes you just have to take your loss and move on.
 

After several phone calls with, we will call him, Jake; John isn’t real comfortable with the guy buying the boat.  Jake has to bring money with him, no checks!  Jake is an old guy, probably a not a lot older than me or John but he is really old.  On oxygen, so he is pulling a little cart around with a thermos of oxygen.  He is taking the boat to some Midwest state and putting the boat in a small pond to be his getaway place.  Jake can’t move very far without stopping for a rest.  So how in the hell is this guy going to crawl around on the boat up and down ladders pulling his oxygen cart?  You just have to wonder what the lack of oxygen has done to his brain. 

Once John finds all of this out, he is pretty sure the guy is crazy.  After a few more phone calls, where the guy wants to stay on the boat while it is moved John is sure.  Being used to selling used cars to people who can be in “PeopleofWallmart.com” photos, John lays down the law.  It is a cash deal!  No one can stay on the boat while it is on the property, any injuries or damage, Jake is responsible.  John and “Friday” (John’s almost full time helper) won’t do any work.  Jake has to arrange everything.  John also stresses the importance of having professional marine movers do this work.  This is a twenty-four thousand pound boat that takes serious equipment to move.  Well Jake is apparently one of those people who knows everything about everything.  If you don’t believe me just ask him.  He has the boat moving detail under control and knows what he is doing. 

The planned day arrives and the boat moving crew show up. John gets his cash before the guy can get out of the truck.  Jake assumes the director’s position in a lawn chair to direct and watch.  The boat has to be jacked up four feet for the trailer to get under it.  Seems like a lot but John hasn’t seen the trailer so what the heck.  Well you know, just saying, you can’t lift twenty-four thousand pounds with car jacks.  But some people are just smarter than you and don’t take advice well.  Can you picture, this isn’t going well the first day.  John and Friday pitch and go to work.  John has some hydraulic jacks; Jake buys a couple of more.   I stop by on my way somewhere else the next day (work still in progress) and Friday is telling how John and him are doing most of the work. 

If you have never tried to lift a boat is isn’t an easy process.  Well actually it is, you just rent a big ass crane and pick it up.  But their method is to jack a little and add cribbing under the jacked portion.  You have to jack at all locations or you can torque the boat and either cause damage to the boat or it will fall off the cribbing.  Under Jake’s expert direction they almost lose the boat a couple of times.  He is relieved of command! 

After several days of hard work under the direction General John and First Sergeant Friday the boat achieves its correct elevation.  A semi tractor trailer arrives to move the boat.  Well it is a flat bed trailer which is about four feet tall.  Well four feet plus twelve feet, you can do the math, won’t fit under any bridge on any highway.  The truck driver, who got this job based on bidding Jake’s specifications on eBay, informs Jake he is F*%k!@g crazy and he wants his G#% D!@m money.  This does put a kink in the plans.  Jake returns to the Midwest to regroup and John just wants the boat gone. 

 

Backhoe isn't enough

Several weeks later the crew returns with a new plan with a different truck and trailer arrangement.  Well this trailer isn’t four feet tall so you have to reverse the process of raising the boat and get it back down to about eighteen inches.  After a few days, they come down easier than they go up; the boat is on the trailer and ready to go.  Well almost, you know it has been raining a lot lately.  That truck ain’t moving anything.  John’s front end loader won’t do any good so a wrecker is summoned.  The wrecker frees the train from the shed.  As soon as the trailer hits hard ground tires start to pop.  Ok we are going to give the crew the benefit of the doubt; most boat trailers don’t have heavy duty tires.  New tires are purchase and put on the trailer.  At this point John and Friday have retired from their positions and Jake has assumed his rightful position of Director.   It is getting late so they move the train about two hundred yards to get it out of the way.  That must have been a very hard trip because one of the axel breaks.  Ok it is too late to deal with this today.  You just don’t go to Wal-Mart and buy an axle.  It takes a while to find the right parts.  All the time this is presenting a very monumental statue in my Mom’s yard.    My sister is now giving me daily updates with photos.  Being the pessimistic engineer I am telling her, “I can write you an equation and tell you that ain’t going to ever work”.

After a couple of days of expert direction and several oxygen containers.  My sister says it wouldn’t take as many cylinders if he would just quit talking for a second or two every hour.  They find a replacement axle and install it.  Hooked up and ready to roll everyone says good bye and thank God he is gone.  Well about twenty feet later, the new axle breaks.  My sister is saying “Oh my god will we ever get rid of Jake.  What if he abandons the boat in Mother’s yard?”

t

The Palm Tree

Multiple phone calls later a new trailer is located in Ft Lauderdale, Florida, so off the team goes.  They show back up on Sunday late with a new trailer.  Well a new trailer plus a twenty foot tall palm tree.  Exactly how long will a Florida Palm Tree live in the Midwest were it snows?  Yea you have to jack the boat back up get the trailer out and put the new one under it.  The Palm tree is under the boat with the fronds dragging on the ground.   That has to be good for the tree. 

On Monday goodbyes are share again everyone has a good cry about how they will never see each other again.  My sister’s tears are from pure joy.  They make it to the highway and turn north.  So far so good it is off the property.  Such a beautiful sight of tail lights going over the top of the hill at Ledbetters.  My sister is just praying “Please God, let them get out of Talladega County and Alabama”.  Well part of her pray was answered.

I teach a class at “The” University of Alabama on Mondays and Wednesdays.  Wednesday was Ash Wednesday and Carole was headed to church for dinner and the service.  I normally don’t get back from Tuscaloosa until about 7:00 so I had to fend for myself for dinner that night.  Golden Rule sounded like a good place and after a good hamburger steak, I headed home.  And what to my wondering eyes should appear but a big ass boat parked at the Shell Station just south of the interstate.  It looks just like John’s old boat!  It is John’s old boat!  (Note that at no time during this story have I referred to this boat as my sister’s boat.)  I couldn’t believe it.  I was past it before I had time to think I need a photo.  I can tell this thing isn’t going anywhere too fast so I figure I have time.  Well how long do you think it takes me to call my sister?  About another hundred yards and she is on the phone.  I barely make it home before I get a call from John.  I promise a clandestine operation the next morning to do photos.  My instructions are to under no circumstances is anyone supposed to know who I am and what I am doing. 

The clandestine operation reveals some very informative information.  The trailer supports has buckled from laterally unsupported compression flanges of the stringers.  That is the engineering description.  The Talladega County description is “the sun-of-a-bitch folded up”.   I find out from John the trailer was salvaged from a fifth wheel travel trailer that burned.  I can write that equation also about what heat does to the strength of steel.  Besides a travel trailer doesn’t come close to weighing as much as that boat and part of the design of trailers is the box forms a huge beam to support the weight so the beams don’t have to support the entire load.  That thing never had a chance to work. 

Of course this story has to get passed along to Dennis and John who have to take trips to the Shell Station to observe the lateral buckling of unsupported compression flanges.  You don’t get to see many engineering failures like this.  Yes, Andala had to take the kids by so they can observe a true marvel of engineering testing to ultimate load.  Hopefully we never see one on our projects.  You know I had to go back and get gas at the pump closest to the boat later in the day.  It was hard to get some photos but I snuck a couple in while I was pumping gas.  The only route out was around the boat and there was Jake on the opposite side in his director’s chair doing what he does best.

They are in the process of jacking it up again.  I bet they are getting good at it by now.  Maybe it will be gone by the weekend.  On Friday, Carole and I leave to spend the weekend on the boat with instruction for John to go check on the boat over the weekend.  The trailer gets removed and repaired by Goodgame.  Sorry Jason if I had known I would have warned you. 

John, while trying to document the repair to the compression failure of the laterally unsupported beams gets a couple of more photos over the weekend.  They have gone to the local big box, purchased some house paint and are painting the boat with a brush.  There are so many things wrong with doing that I wouldn’t know where to start.  It may be the only fiberglass boat in the world painted with house paint.  As you can see in the photo the guy painting has his fall protection on but it isn’t attached to anything. 

I get home on Sunday and Carole tells me I can’t go check it out to see if they have left yet but from what we have found out later they didn’t leave until Monday morning.  I do make a trip up that way on my way to work and see it is missing.  Well at least they are on I20 and out of the county by now.

Dennis comes in the office a few minutes after 8:00 and says “Hey that boat that was up at the Shell Station is broke down going up the hill at Karr Gap”. 

OK I have to back up to the previous week.  On Tuesday, I take my truck to Murray’s Garage in Leeds to get some work done on my Air Conditioner.  They have trouble getting parts and it is Thursday late before I can pick it back up.  I tell Kerry and Chip about the adventures of the boat.  We get a good laugh and I tell them they will probably get a call to drag him off I-20 in the next few days.  I also recommend that they might want to carefully consider if they want to get involved with Jake.

So you know I have to leave to go to Tuscaloosa as soon as I can to see what is going on.  Just as Dennis reported it is on the side of the road near Karr Gap.  The boat is on the trailer “Backwards”.  I have never seen a boat on a trailer stern first.  I can’t say you shouldn’t do it but I have never seen it.  As I get close there is Murray’s truck.  I have to call Kerry and ask why he got involved with Jake.  His first words were “Oh Shit, is that who that is”.  The local tire company has called them and asked them to go fix a flat for someone of the interstate.  Kerry reminds them they don’t do flats on the interstate it is just too dangerous.   The tire guys say it is for an “elderly gentlemen who has health problems and is on oxygen”.   Kerry’s weak spot kick in and he goes to help.  On my way back from Tuscaloosa the boat is gone so I think just maybe it was just a tire and it on its way up I-65. 

On Tuesday morning an article appears in the local paper about Jake.  (OK the paper gives his correct name, but I will continue with Jake.)    http://www.dailyhome.com/view/full_story/21750749/article-Ahoy-Mate--Missouri-man-gets-stranded-in-Pell-City-with-his-41-foot-yacht-and-palm-tree?instance=home_news_right This is the first I have heard of the desire to rent the boat as a “honeymoon” suite.  You need to read the article.

The flamingo is a nice touch

Dennis on his way to the office sees it again on Tuesday and gets some more photos.  It is on the side of the road at Brompton.   Note the photos shows the addition of a fender on the side of the boat and plastic flamingos around the boat. 

Wednesday is back to Tuscaloosa and I don’t see the boat on my way down.  Actually I didn’t know where to look and you probably couldn’t have seen it from the interstate anyway.  While killing time waiting on a meeting to start, I pull out the Ipad and check on my BFF on FaceBook.  There is an appeal on FaceBook from the local radio station to “elderly gentlemen who has health problems and is on oxygen”.  He is offering $10 per hour cash to help jack the boat up.  On my way back home, my low fuel light comes on and I stop at the Brompton exit to fuel up.  I thought the boat was at the service station and when I didn’t see it I thought it was gone.  As I am pulling back out on the highway and look to the left I see some lights on the side of the road and think Oh My God there it is. 

I was in meetings all day on Thursday in Montgomery.  On my way home Kerry from Murray’s give me a call to let me know he had got another call on Wednesday to go help the “elderly gentlemen who has health problems and is on oxygen”.  He informed the person that he had been fooled by that once and wasn’t going down that path again.  Apparently they had figured out there is a good reason that boats are put on trailers bow first and had turned the trailer around.  Thus the need for day labors.  Today when things were squared away they took off for points west.  But just as they pulled on to Highway 78 the trailer broke half in two and it was blocking the highway.  Well at least it wasn’t I-20.  Kerry said he heard there was a wrecker there trying to get it out of the highway.

On Monday (OK we are going on three weeks now) we here there is an interview on the local radio station.  I get to listen to a little of it while on my way back to Tuscaloosa again.  It is “interesting”.  Later that day I get an email from one of the guys in the office that there is going to be interview with him on the local television station.  http://www.abc3340.com/story/21345876/missouri-man-and-his-boat-making-trek-through-alabama  In the interview he mentions his FaceBook page.  We are now BFF’s on FaceBook.  You can friend him and see the photos of the boat and what may be a new girl friend who comes to visit him in (OK I will give her the benefit of the doubt) lounging pants.  From the interviews, he supposedly has hired someone else to move the boat. 

On Wednesday my mom calls and tells me to watch the news on Fox 6.  http://www.myfoxal.com/story/21420278/yacht-stranded-near-i-20-finally-sails-on-home   He is Jake has left Brompton.  There is an update on Facebook that he is in Tennessee.  You know that I will have to keep track of this adventure, so there will probably be another post later.  But for right now this has to get posted for the world to enjoy. 

There has to be a moral to this story.  I will have to edit this later when I narrow it down from my list of the top twenty I have now. 

PS  Like all great adventures this is a semi true story with the names changed to protect the innocent.  Actually to hell with the innocent, I don’t want my ass sued by Jake. 

Today is the day

Uncle Monk is probably my very favorite uncle.  Now I hate to show favorites because I have some great uncles.  I have some great relatives that have all taught me things about life and had an impact on who I am today.  I think our personalities are formed by our association with our family members, friends and those who we associate with on a daily basis.   We learn bits and pieces from each of them, they mold and change us.

Uncle Monk is retired Navy.  When I was a kid, he was off sailing around the world, sending picture post cards and "stuff" back from exotic places.  Several years at Christmas he gave me and cousin Jimmy a sailor hats.  There couldn't have been a bigger prize.  New bicycles, train sets, nothing could compare to that sailor hat just like Uncle Monk wore.  Sailor hats then were white and they didn't stay clean for long when you are 10 years old.  Granny would wash it regularly; with the red dirt of Talladega County and constant washing they became tattered pretty quick. 

Back to the story.  Uncle Monk retired as a Chief Petty Officer from the Navy after 20 or 25 years, bought a farm at Bernie Station and got a job as a postman in Childersburg.  He delivered mail around Childersburg for many years.  He worked enough years to be able to retire from the postal service.  I think you call that double dipping.  As he was approaching his 65^th birthday, his supervisor had asked him several times when he was going to retire.  Uncle Monk found out that he want to make sure one of his relatives got his job when it retired.  Apparently there must be something about advertising for the position and applying that has to be timed for a selected individual to get a selected job.  Sixty-fifth birthday came and went, Uncle Monk enjoyed his work and wasn't in much of a hurry to make up his mind about when to retire, although his boss keep asking.  One day Uncle Monk came in off his route and the supervisor called him into the office, shut the door and told him to sit down.  The guy in not very polite language said “Damn it Grady, I have to know when you are going to retire”.  It was just something about the tone of the voice that Uncle Monk didn’t like.  Uncle Monk looked at him and said “Today is the day”.   The guy apparently got even more un-polite and told him he couldn't retire that day.  Uncle Monk informed him that he could, told him he was going to be taking his sick leave for the next three weeks and would then start his 2 weeks of vacation.  He got in the car drove to Birmingham, filled out the paper work and never went back. 

Everyone at the office knows this story.  I have kidding them for years telling them that I don’t need to work anymore so don’t piss me off because I can always say “Today is the day”. 

Actually a very similar thing happened to Carole.  She had her twenty years in with the school system and wanted to spend more time with Paul and Michael while they were still at home.  She was secure in her job that she loved.  She was struggling with the thoughts of retirement.  What would she do?  Her job had defined her, what definition would she have if she didn't work.  She absolutely loved school.  She love working with the students.  The administrative side of her job wasn't “her joy” to put it mildly.  She had the retirement papers on her desk for weeks and was procrastinating signing them.  Was it the right thing to do?  Should I work for another year?  Then one morning one of the other teachers came into her office and just went off about something she had no control over.  She thought “Today is the Day”.  As the other teacher was taking she reached over, signed the paper and mailed it that afternoon.  She never had to worry about not having definition.  She has substantially added to her resume or obituary, which every way you want to look at it, since she retired. 

Apparently a lot of people have trouble with making the decision to retire.  I certainly have.  My main problem is I love to do what we do.  I think my work is about the most fun you can have.  I worked with two individuals who were outstanding professionals.  Both were at the top of their profession.  Both worked too long and didn't keep up with the profession.  At the end of their career people were laughing at them and their decision.  I never wanted to be that way.  I have always wanted to finish as a John Madden and not a Tom Landry.  John Madden quit with a winning record, Landry who literally changed the game of football, won more super bowls and division championships was fired after three losing seasons.  I have been waiting for someone to make me mad and so I could tell them “Today is the Day”.   Maybe it isn't going to happen; I may have to say “I have boats to build”.  As of the start of the year, I quit doing anything design related on new projects.  I still talk to clients but pass them off to one of the younger smarter engineers that work in our company. 

I bought a couple hundred board feet of number one boat lumber last weekend.  “It is time to start building boats.” 

The day they hung Martin Luther King.

February is Black History Month.  In light of that I thought it might be a good time to share a funny story that happened on one of my project. 

I was fortunate enough to do the design work on the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham.  http://www.bcri.org/index.html  It was an interesting job both technically and politically.  Since it has been about 20 years ago some of the details and names of the people aren’t very clear any longer.  (This is my way of saying the names have been changed to protect the innocent.)   But as best as I remember the original design was way over budget.  I have been on both sides of projects over budget; what normally happens is the original design team gives the owner exactly what they ask for and no one remembers the project has a budget.  The original designers were replaced and I got the job.  I worked with an architectural team out of Atlanta.  I don’t remember the company’s name but they were very talented and could control the budget.  The building had a several unusual features.  One of the most striking is the monumental stairs that leads up to the rotunda at the entrance.  It provided an interesting design challenge to make the building wheel chair accessible and not detract from the entrance.  Rotundas are always an interesting challenge.  (That is structural engineer language for a pain in the ass to design and build.)

The building has a basement.  Well that may not sound like a big deal but believe me, every time it rained in Birmingham every gallon of water that fell in the city wound up in that hole.  It would take a couple of days to get it pumped out and then it would rain again.  They liked to have never got the building out of the ground.  When they finally got it so it wouldn’t fill up when it rained, the contractor had a big party with tee shirts for all of the workers.  The “Coming Out of the Basement” tee shirts had a cartoon character of a “frog man” climbing over a basement wall. 

I won’t completely quote Joe Biden, but constructing the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham Alabama across from the 16^th Street Baptist Church was a “Big Deal”.  There were ground breaking events, dedication events, topping out events, grand openings, special exhibit openings, etc.  Never being one to shy away from a chance to eat, drink, be merry, shake hands, hand out business cards, I attended all of the events.  Of course you can rightly imagine at each of these events there were speeches, note the plural use of the word. 

As part of this project the contractor was required to renovate the Kelly Ingram Park which is across the street from the building.  In the park is a statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  The contractor was required to remove and relocate the statue as part of the project.  Now this is a bronze statue.  If not properly handle and dropped it would be an expensive mistake.  It is no telling what it would have cost to replace the statue and the new one probably wouldn’t have matched the old one.  It was just too big of a risk to assume, the contractor excluded the moving and relocating the statue from their construction contract.  (For those who are not in my world, it is not that unusual for items to be excluded from a bid.)  After some negotiation the City accepted the contract and agreed to move the statue with their crews.  You can probably guess where this is going.

The topping out party was one of the bigger events.  TV trucks, camera crews, live radio feeds, newspapers, and who knows what other media.  There were speeches by the board members and politicians.  I was standing by the construction superintendent in the back of the audience.  It was a standing room only crowd.  In the middle of Mayor Arrington speech we look across the street to the park.   The city had showed up to remove the statue.  They back a boom truck up to the statue.  A couple of guys pull out ladders and they boom over with a chain on the end of the boom.  The guys go up the ladders and wrap the chain around the statues neck and they proceed to lift the statue with boom.  For a few minutes the statue is hanging by the chain around the neck.  The superintendent is going crazy, he knows at any minute the camera will swing around and start filming the hanging of Dr. King.  His construction career is flashing in front of his face, he knows when the camera picks up the hanging his career is ended, even though he has nothing to do with it.  The city pulls in another truck with a flat bed trailer and they lower the statue on to the bed of the truck.  Dr King is safely resting on the trailer about the time the mayor finishes his speech.  I guess it must have been a long and interesting speech because I don’t know if anyone else saw what we saw.  Personally, I will never forget the day the city hung Martin Luther King. 

If you get a chance go to the museum it is an interesting place.  It depicts a time in history that we should all learn from and pledge to never return.  I don’t know if we can ever completely get rid of discrimination, I would like to think we can.  It is an issue that many struggle with and will be topic of another blog.  

On the side of a lake 2000 years ago

A hundred years from now, I assume things posted on FaceBook, LinkedIn, Blogs and software we don’t know about yet will still be floating in cyber space.  What would the world be like today if we knew Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and other notable figures thoughts.  Well we do to some extent because they wrote letters and many of them have been saved, recorded and archived for us to get a glimpse of their inner being.  You just have to ask yourself, what would Washington have Tweeted when he cut down the Cherry tree.  Did he really have an ethical dilemma or did he know someone had seen him and he better come clean to keep his ass from being worn out. 

While Jefferson, Napoleon and others wrote letters and recorded things, probably unintentionally, for future generations.  We do, however, have a serious gap in information.  With the invention of the telephone people started talking to each other and didn’t record what was happening.   While I have no basis for this statement I would guess that the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s have very little recorded information.  Well maybe the Nixon tapes are a worthwhile look at history. 

Carole was talking with our friend “K” this weekend about things her mother and father did.  We have realized how little we know about their early life.  Wouldn’t it have been fun to go back and look at Rufus Deal’s FaceBook pages when he was playing football with the Washington Redskins?  (At least he has a Wikipedia reference.)  Other than the little he told me while sitting around the stove, drinking whiskey at the camp house there is very little I know about his life during that time.  And I know more than his daughters know.  My father was the first truck driver for Floyd and Beasley.  Where did he go?  What was it like?  What was it like to be in a fox hole in the Battle of the Bulge?  What a loss of understanding of whom our parents were. 

How different today is, everything is recorded in digital cyber space.  Need a news article from July 23 of this year, just ask Google to find it for you.  Email and texting are the communication of choice.  How many times have you seen teenage girls sitting at a table across or side by side texting each other?  Have they forgotten how to talk?  All of this is being recorded on some server with multiple backups.  It is there forever!  You can search it 10 years from now, 100 years, 2000 years?  Think about Jesus tweeting.  Wow.

Ok why am I rambling on like this?  So far I have been doing blogs on travel, things Carole and I have done, Wooden Boat School and other minor stuff.  After listening to Carole this weekend I thought it might be a way to tell our stories for future generations.  Life is about the number of stories you can tell when you die.  Also you can blame this on my friend Lisa. (http://www.isoldmypearlstodoit.com) She has taught me to share stories that tell about your life.  (She is a much better writer.)  I started listing some of my best memories today and I now have a list of about 60 things to blog about.  So over the next few months? Years? Whatever? I am going to record some of these stories.  I hope I don’t embarrass anyone but myself.

I hope anyone 2000 years from now who reads this enjoys my southern humor.