Travels and Images
WEEK 30 2003
Last Week- Sun- Mon- Tue- Wed- Thur- Fri- Sat- Next Week
Picture of the Week
Lancaster
Weather
A Year Ago, This Week
Saturday 26 July 2003
Saturday - up at 4 a.m. and off to Ventura and Anacapa Island for some kayaking.
Friday 25 July
2003
Friday - a friend daughter had a part in "A Midsummer Night's
Dream", for a summer drama camp. It was a lot of fun - all young people who
did the entire play themselves, with just an adult supervisor or two. It
was a lot of fun, held in the smaller "black box" so that you were up and
personal with the players. Even my ten year old companion was laughing out
loud at the antics of Puck and the gang. Across centuries the playwright
can still speak to us. Thursday 24 July 2003
Thursday - work. Sysadmin meeting.
Wednesday 23 July 2003
Wednesday - smogged the truck in the morning.
I had changed the oil over the weekend, and today I added some special stuff
'guaranteed' to help sticky valves, filled it up with Chevron Super,
drove it fifty miles or so, filled it up again to dilute the special stuff,
and took it in. And it passed OK.
I had the Probe's tires rotated and aligned - they needed it badly as the
car was starting to shake badly at freeway speeds. It (the suspension) was
probably bashed out of alignment late last winter on the railroad tracks.
By 1 p.m. this was all done, but I was too worn out from the heat to go into
work, so it was a day off after that.
This guy is a bit too literal, he decided to build a "periodic table". ( via some blog I can't recall now...)
Tuesday 22 July 2003
Tuesday - the sails have arrived. I repeat: THE SAILS HAVE ARRIVED! THE SAILS HAVE ARRIVED! I'm pretty excited about the whole thing!
Ok, enough "bold".
That's better. They seem to be Rolly Tasker, which sounds a bit Australian
- I've never met a 'Rolly' who wasn't. But who cares, the sails actually
have texture and strength to them...
The jib actually says "Columbia 24", which may be correct - they were made
in the same factory with slightly different interiors I think. It has hanks
on it already. The main says "Coronado 25" which is correct, and it has slides
on it already, and also some stick thingy's - which I assume are the batten's
for the main.
Should I unroll them on the grass, just to see? I might get some stains on
them :-( On the other hand, it would let me check them out for problems...
Ok, I looked it up, Rolly Tasker is Australian, but he operates out of Thailand.
Monday 21 July 2003
Monday - feeling a bit tired, probably from the heat.
Well, the Mercedes is gone, the original owner took it back. I wish her the
best with it. Now I'm down to a car, a truck, and a SUV, and the place feels
a lot less crowded.
The other day I was driving around, with the windows open, and kept
hearing an odd sound, a susurration of some sort. I finally realized that
the sun-screens in the back were being blown about and rubbing against each
other. Which reminded me of the scene in On The Beach,
where after the nuclear war the crew of a surviving nuclear submarine tracks
down a series of morse code messages from the radioactive northern hemisphere
that turn out to be random, due to a broken branch through a window hitting
a morse key.
Sunday 20 July
2003
Sunday - 34 years ago today Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, followed by others. Someday we'll go back...
The sails from Sail Warehouse have been shipped. Wow, that was quick...
I was thinking that these probably wouldn't arrive until well after I had
the boat hauled out and fixed up, but it looks as though they will be here
to take up to SF before the boat is even out of the water. Which is cool, we can try the boat out right away! Okay, that's silly. But right after she's back into the water...
It's a puzzler. If you have a boat that is worth, say, $3000, how much money
should you put into it? New sails, a thousand dollars and change, a bottom
job, thru-hull replacements, rudder lubing (which involves removal and replacement),
removal of the illegal marine head and glassing over the old thru-hulls for
it - another thousand and change. Yet much of this is standard maintenance,
deferred for the last couple of years due to job demands and other stuff
going on.
Certainly the boat wouldn't sell without most of these fixes, and once they are done, why buy another?
One reason is that I would like to do some "blue water" sailing - across
an ocean or two, and this boat isn't suitable for that. So, we'll see what
happens.
It'll be fun when we get out onto the bay and suddenly we can do six knots, instead of the three we were creeping along at...
Picture of the Week
Photo Notes: Here is a shot across California's central valley, from Interstate 5 looking east towards the southern Sierra Nevada mountains.
Last Week- Sun- Mon- Tue- Wed- Thur- Fri- Sat- Next Week
