The Peanut Butter Diet

Shedsteading

2012-02-11T18:41:00.000-06:00

When James left last week for an overnight rockclimbing trip to Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, I decided I would spend an afternoon overcoming my fear of the circular saw. Somehow the thought that James would not be there to see me accidentally cut off my toes made it easier. Also, earplugs greatly reduced the horrible, panic-inducing noise.

Rather than just practice cutting things apart, I decided to make a compost bin for the backyard. When we moved in, we started diverting our organic waste out of the trash stream and making a little pile in the back 40. Unfortunately, the compost pile is the first place all the chickens would gleefully run when let out of the coop in the morning. I think they are interested in the bugs in the compost more than the compost itself, but in the process of hunting, they would spread banana peels and avocado pits over the entire backyard. If we ever hoped to have a tidy backyard or get any useable compost, we needed containment.

irrefutable proof that I can make crude structures with a circular saw

So here is my free, finished compost bin. Scrap pallet pieces make up the frame and sides, leftover chickenwire covers the back, and it's held together with leftover nails from the shed, and staples tapped in with a hammer (for some reason this house has boxes of staples and no staple gun). The wood is untreated, and obviously won't last too many years but also won't be leaching arsenic or anything else nasty into compost for future veggies. The chickens still hop onto the pile to peck, but have so far been thwarted in their attempts to scatter everything across the yard. In the future, I may need to add a front panel if they get more determined to get to the bottom of the pile.

ridiculous mamma naked neck silkie and brood

Perhaps in the future, I'll attempt building a chicken coop. As a vegan, I'm not a fan of chicken farming, even backyard chicken farming, but I would like the chickens here to have a better home. One of the hens has hatched two eggs sired by our evil rooster while also fostering two chicks from the local feed shop. Soon-to-be nine full sized chickens are surely too much for the current setup.

it begins

If we want the shed to stay good-looking, we're likely going to need to do some more painting or varnishing. The support for the airconditioner and the trim around the door are both made of untreated pine. In just over a month, they are already starting to grow some mildew. Though Austin summers are dry, hot, and miserable, our winter has been very wet. The ReStore carries no varnish, so I'm likely to grudgingly make a trip to HomeDepot in the near future. We've also got a little mildew growing in one corner inside. I can't think of what to blame it on other than existing moisture in the wood. Some bleach or vinegar perhaps? Pass your tips our way.

Sadly, we have no travel or bold adventures planned until at least after the SXSW festival in March. Come April, finances willing, we will go to look at some BOATS.

Better Sheds and Gardens

2012-01-26T19:46:00.000-06:00

We've more or less finished up working on the shed in the last two weeks, so I thought I'd show you how it turned out.

While I went for a visit back home, James finished covering the walls in dismantled pallets and graffiti-coated scrap plywood from the backyard. The insulation is all hidden now except for the ceiling. I think we'll leave it unfinished, because, firstly, it's hard to think of a good way to cover it. Secondly, the foil finish helps disperse the lamp light around the shed.

We also cut two 4" polyiso insulation squares to cover the windows. I covered them in upholstery fabric from a roll James found while dumpstering. They serve the dual purpose of keeping the windows insulated at night and keeping our dwelling stealthy. We don't seem to live in a very nosy neighborhood, but it's probably better to maintain a low profile by stifling the warm, toasty light from our unconventional dwelling.

On the topic of insulation, it also appears that we've negated our need for electric temperature control. Our housemate found us a free space heater, but we haven't found much use for it. In the summer, however, we will be very likely to use the already installed air conditioner.

Inspired by our pretty red door, I decided to paint the plywood sections of the wall. The pink and sea foam green graffiti wasn't doing it for me. I found a quart of old oil-based paint on the back porch that did the job nicely. I left the pallets unfinished, and I like the mixed look quite a bit.

Though James did most of the carpentry work for the shed, I did manage to make us a shelf from a couple of long pallet pieces. I still fear the circular saw, so James did take pity on me and cut me a couple of small joining pieces I had measured and marked. However, after taking all the paint and varnish off a 35' boat, I am no stranger to using the sander. I smoothed the shelf over and mounted it on some metal supports I found under the sink in the House. Now we have a place for our tent, wet suits, and a big old stack of library books.

The wall across from the bed is our storage wall. I pounded in nails for our packs, our coats, and our many hats. James got us two milk crates for a shoe tower. In such a tiny space, it's important to take one's shoes off promptly.

We also saved and cleaned a nice green blanket and a dragon head ornament from a previous shed occupant. James got us three Free Box pillows to make the luxury complete.

For a garage, I reinstalled a piece of a metal bed frame that we've been using for a bike rack. It's directly next to our window and ensures that we will be awoken to give any bike thieves a good thrashing.

Add a few plants my friend, Annette gave us and the project is complete - suitable, perhaps, for Better Sheds and Gardens. At any rate, we have been warm, comfortable, and enjoying the piney smell. We've lowered our rent to $100 each for as long as we care to shed dwell. Hopefully, our next home will be a new boat.

Shed Dwelling

2012-01-09T15:58:00.003-06:00

dry, level, insulated shed

On New Year's Day we moved into our project shed. It was and is not exactly finished, as we spent the last weeks of December visiting with the greater Woodring Clan and our friend Paul, who had finally come south with the rest of the snowbirds. We have made a lot of progress and are finding our new home quite acceptable. James, as usual, has put in the lion's share of the work, while I am mostly qualified to pound nails and squirt caulk. I'm taking my turn visiting family in the Northeast while James enjoys the fruits of his labor.

fitting the new (used) door

With the rotten framing replaced, we were able to reattach the metal siding and roof. Each piece had a lot of old nail holes and some puncture wounds, but we filled these up with grey caulk designed for sealing metal gutters. We bought a replacement for a missing corner cap and recaulked the seams around both windows. The old (interior) door had all but dissolved, so we replaced it with another (unfortunately also interior) door we found on the curb. James reframed the door to be much sturdier. The door was covered with scribbles and cartoons (including, mysteriously, the phrase "peanut butter"). James told me he has since put a nice coat of red paint, a doorknob, and a hasp and padlock on it. With all this complete, the shed became a dry, habitable place to live. James has reported that he could find no leaks after last night's thunderstorm.

After banishing the rain, the next biggest improvement was leveling the shed. It had no foundation and was resting on a few bricks and cinder blocks. James took two car jacks, braved the spiderwebs, and propped up the sagging front of the shed with more bricks and blocks.

no more drafts

We considered leaving the shed uninsulated, but decided that we could chip in a little more dough. 2 cans of spray foam and plugged all the gaps along the roof and corners. We bought some pink fiberglass insulation but were able to return most of it when James found some reclaimed 4", foil-sided, polyiso insulation on craigslist. He was able to cover the ceiling and most of the walls before resorting to using new materials. So far, the heat from our bodies and our 60 watt lightbulb has been enough to keep us comfortable during the cold fronts.

recycled insulation

To cover the walls, we curbshopped two truck loads of pallets. The stapled pine pallets were easy to pull apart and use for wall covering. Fitting all of them was very tedious though, and when we used up the pine pallets we discovered that the nailed, oak pallets were much harder to disassemble without destroying. We resorted to using some backyard plywood. It's all far from perfect, but it's free and functional. James keeps saying that it won't make it into Better Sheds and Gardens, but it'll do. James also fitted us a pallet walkway from the house porch to keep us up out of the mud and our bed is also held up on a pallet frame.

scrap plywood and pallet walls

After James finishes the walls, we may do some more painting or modification, but we're confident now that the shed is very habitable. The only sore on our new existence is the beautiful, but incredibly obnoxious rooster. I was under the illusion that roosters only crowed in the morning, but I can assure you that roosters crow all damn day long and have no respect for those who work the night shift.

loud and cocky

The project took about $200 in materials and more hours (mostly James') than we'd like to count. Thankfully, our savings in rent this month will be at least $200, so the savings from subsequent months can go right in the boat fund.

cheapest bedroom ever

Our project supplies came from the following places:

New from Home Depot:
2x4s, 2x6s, nails, Great Stuff spray foam, 1 metal corner piece, 2-3 rolls of insulation
2nd Hand from ReStore or Craigslist:
safety goggles, gutter sealant, doorknob, lock, nails, 4-5 sheets polyiso insulation

Free:
reused siding and roofing, paint (leftovers at house), plywood (leftovers at house), door (curbshopped), pallets (curbshopped)

Other upcoming projects may include establishing a compost pile at the new house, starting a container garden for greens, making a rag rug for the floor, making curtains, and making convenient storage.

Shed Renovation

2011-12-19T21:53:00.000-06:00

The Before

James has returned from Maryland and our big current project is fixing up an old shed in our friends' backyard. It's approximately 8' x 10'. We'll be moving in on Jan. 1 and paying a small amount of rent in exchange for house privileges. We'll have access to the kitchen, bathroom, and common areas, and the shed will be more of less the house's third bedroom. Though probably not entirely legal, we aren't expecting much fuss from the neighbors. The house to the right has been unoccupied for some time and the house to the left burned down last year. Other than those on the backyard chickens, we're unlikely to have any prying eyes.

Premature housewarming gift from the chickens?

Rotten wood and blue sky

The shed has hosted a series of trampy types. Unfortunately, no one bothered to put much love into the shed. When we inspected it, the four cornerposts and the 2x4's topping the walls had rotted away to nothing. Nail holes in the sheet metal roof let rain leak in. Without the cornerposts, rain and weather were free to flow in through the corners. The previous shed-dwellers had dealt with this by putting up a series of tarps, which quickly flogged themselves into the stringy blue confetti that litters the backyard. Someone had installed an air-conditioner into this totally uninsulated and almost open air structure and ran up the electric bill all summer.

Demolition

James and I weren't interested in putting in the time and money to totally tear down the shed and gift the landlord a new one, but we are working on major improvements. We borrowed a truck and bought about $100 worth of supplies from Home Depot - fasteners, 2x4s, 2x6s, replacement flashing for the corners, and Great Stuff foam for plugging cracks. We also curb shopped a new door and a bunch of pallets for scrap wood. As Paul is yet to arrive with James' tools, James bought a pawn shop circular saw and we borrowed the rest and set to work.

Actual structure

So far we have torn off the siding and roof and replaced or sistered the rotten wood. It's unfortunate that we weren't able to use more salvaged wood, but full length 8' 2x4s are few and far between. Our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore didn't have any. We were able to reuse wood for some of the shorter pieces. We're also reusing all of the metal siding. We plan on filling the previous nailholes with roofing caulk. Hopefully, in the next two weeks, the shed will be weather-tight. We originally planned to insulate it as well, but we have been having problems finding cheap insulation. We will likely wait to see if we can get by with long underwear and sleeping bags once the drafts have been sealed up. This is Texas, after all. If anyone has any ideas for cheap insulation alternatives, we'd be interested. Styrofoam? Packing peanuts? Old blankets?

One piece of dumpstered insulation

On rainy days (and we're starting to have a lot), I've been practicing my fingerpicking, volunteering at the bike coop, and baking up a storm. We got a bike trailer's worth of food from the local food bank last week including two dozen apples (They have no income requirements and assured us that they have more food than takers.) We made a giant plate of applecrisp and a bunch of homemade applesauce to use as an egg substitute in my other vegan cooking projects. I've been baking all our bread from scratch again. I'd been using not having a loaf pan as an excuse, but I finally just started baking rolls instead. One more delicious problem solved. All experimenting contributes toward further resourcefulness and further pennies in the boat fund.

Getting my $60 worth out of the craigslist guitar

Giving Thanks Alone

2011-11-29T01:41:00.001-06:00

This year James and I spent our first Thanksgiving apart since the one the year we met. In both cases, I found myself here in Austin while James was away in St. Michaels, MD. In the first instance, I was working up the guts to quit grad school and James was languishing in his apprenticeship at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. These were the bleak times before we coordinated our joint escape.

No one juggles dumpster bread quite like James <3

This year we are apart for happier reasons. James flew up to Maryland to spend Thanksgiving with his grandparents and greatgrandmother and to retrieve two motorcycles from the garage of our friend, Paul. Paul is a busy man and after allocating time to care for his two houses, two trucks, and many old wooden boats, the motorcycles have not received enough attention. James and Paul will be hauling them back to Austin so that James can try to get them into running shape. They are thankfully both the same make and model, Honda Goldwings, so hopefully between the two of them, there exists the necessary parts for at least one functional machine. This should give James plenty to do this winter when he's too tired to go rockclimbing. The two should be back in Austin later this week and hopefully we'll be able to give Paul a good tour of the town.

I've been trying to keep busy in the quiet house. As usual, I keep busy with books and projects. I've been reading a lot of books on sailing and homesteading and watching a lot of tutorials on electronics, bicycle generators, and economics. One of the projects I have been meaning to try out is making my own vegetable broth. I've been keeping a big yogurt container in the freezer and dropping my vegetable scraps in. We don't have many scraps as we don't bother with peeling carrots or potatoes, usually. In fact, James will eat his apple cores (and my apple cores). But over the past month or so I'd collected a full container of onion ends, garlic bits, green bean stumps, and sweet potato skins. I'd also been dumping in the tiny bits of cooking water left over from steaming veggies. I dumped everything into a pot and boiled it on the stove, adding some salt, pepper, and some of the thyme growing out by our greywater irrigation system. I poured the broth off through a colander and passed the veggie mush on to the compost pile. I then made a vegan gravy for my Thanksgiving Field Roast by adding the broth to a roux. Other than the tablespoon of oil and flour for the roux and the spices, I had some pretty darn free vegetable broth. It tasted pretty good as well, although I suppose the taste probably changes based on what you have around. I put the extra back in the freezer. I may boil the next batch of veggies in the previous broth to see if I can eventually get a 2x or 3x concentrated product.

For those who are curious what a vegan Thanksgiving consists of, I had Field Roast (wheat meat substitute) with homemade gravy, green beans, sweet potatoes, and vanilla soy ice cream with hot berry mix on top. It was a pretty good meal even if I ate it alone.

I made the mistake of adding too many seeds to our sprouter (this is usually James' job), which soon was overflowing with little roots. I made a second sprouter out of a big yogurt container with lots of holes poked in the top. I just set it upside-down in our dish strainer. As far as I can tell, it's doing just as good of a job as the specially made sprouter. (Not that I care, because we got it and a giant bag of seeds for $2 at the thrift store).

Besides my home ec. projects and James' motorcycle projects, we're also planning on moving into a shed at the home of some friendly folks. This should provide us with some cheap rent and the fun of living in a tiny house-like dwelling. And to think I was considering paying for a Womens Woodworking Class to learn how to use powertools! I would have only got a damn cutting board for my efforts and dollars, whereas fixing up a shed-dwelling will give me a home. Currently, the structure is just an (unlevel) old piece of junk made of metal sheeting nailed directly to the frames. It will be fun to spend the next month scrounging for recycled materials and tearing it up. Stay tuned...

Who's excited about fixing up a leaky old shed??

I'd also like to say that I had my moment of Thanksgiving gratefulness coming out of Whole Foods with my arms full of fake meat and soy nog. It occurred to me that even though I had quit grad school and work as a professional tricycle rider that somehow I had all the material comforts I could desire (although I realize everything I desire is somehow a fraction of what everybody else "needs") and fabulously good company in James. I also have a pretty great family and the time and money to go visit them (hopefully soon). Even more than having the bare necessities, I have health insurance, savings, and the ability to go into Whole Foods blow $30 on five items with the rest of the downtown condo dwellers. Woo hoo. Go fake meat. I am thankful.

Travel Within Texas

2011-11-14T18:15:00.000-06:00

In the last two weeks, we have finally left Austin city limits.

Two weeks ago, we spent the week in Pearland, near Houston, visiting James' parents. We got a rideshare out to Hosuton with a man from the Netherlands who was gearing up for a road trip to South America and a rideshare back with a guy going to a NORML meet up and two kids going to a music festival. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about all the resources we use wandering in wide circles around the country every year. It's nice to ride leg to leg in a full car and know that everyone is getting the most out of the gasoline and their dollar. We made our round trip to Houston for $50 total rather than the $56 each it would have cost us on Greyhound. I'm hoping to find a rideshare back to the Northeast for Christmas as well.

We had a very laid back visit to Houston. I got to see James' parents' new house. We visited the stable where his mother is keeping her horse and James' dad's new boat, a Conyplex center cockpit ketch. The electrical panel has switches we've never dreamed of. "Air conditioner!" "Microwave!" Truly, he will be able to live aboard in luxury if ever he choses.

Speaking of boats, we also received some entertainment in the form of a package from our Chesapeake friend, Paul. He sent us a fat stack of sailing magazines from the 50's, 60's, and 70's. We had a good old time looking at ads for the fabulous "new" boats of now defunct building companies. We found several ads for the fabulous new Dickersons. (Our first boat, was a Dickerson ketch which was already much older than both of use when James bought it). I also had a good time reading some of the dated articles such as the cleverly titled "How to Train a Mate," from a 1948 issue of Cheasapeake Skipper. It is an instructional article on how to ensure that one's wife will support one's boating.

"Of course, the ideal way to boat-break a woman is to catch her young and invest the whole procedure with an aura of romance."

"A land lubber wife must be approached about boats at the proper time. She must be slowly, patiently led, never forced. And she must never be permitted to suspect that the boat is her rival. If she can be made to feel that the boat is her possession, a glamorous setting for her charms and an object of envy to her neighbors, she may even become a willing galley slave and a proud first mate."

Pretty great stuff. I can think of quite a few common sailing experiences that are hard to invest with an aura of romance. I was also struck by how much text used to be in magazines. There are some illustrated advertisements thrown in, but the bulk of the pages are actual articles meant for literate people to read and not just lists of "favorites" and picture collages of "must haves" both of which are just sneakier forms of advertising.

We continue our search online, but haven't found any boats worth traveling to see yet. We save and wait.

This past week, we took off again to go out to visit a friend near Wimberley, TX. She graciously scooped us up from urban Austin and took us out to her Hill Country property to help her replace the plastic on her greenhouse-like porch enclosure. As we've always been a big fan of our friend and her plants, so we were happy to come out. It was so nice to be able to do productive work using our hands instead of our legs and to do it during the day in the sunshine. I'm beginning to think that all work, pedicabbing included, becomes boring and destructive when done endlessly and that almost any work can be enjoyable when done to add variety. We definitely enjoyed eating all the good food and are happy to know that the verdant porch garden will last through the frosts.

Soon we will be doing some holiday travel, but nothing wild and crazy. James is flying to Maryland next week where he and Paul are hatching a plan to bring some old motorcycles back to Texas for subsequent resurrection. I am waiting patiently for a rideshare up to New York to visit my family. Everyone starts moving around the country this time of year, so I have high hopes for finding a good ride. In the meantime, I'm coming up with some goals for spending my time during the pedicabbing-off season. Foremost of these are playing my latest ($60 craigslist) guitar and volunteering at the local bike coop. It's going to be a good time to rest our legs.

Adventures in Home Economics

2011-10-26T18:29:00.001-05:00

It's been more than a month since we've posted and the reason is simple: we're busting our butts trying to earn money for the Next Trip and the Next Boat and frankly, working really hard is rarely very interesting.

Even on the days when I'm not pedicabbing, I find myself awake from about 3pm to 4am. There is not a lot to do outside in those hours, so mostly, I've been spending that time reading and researching and undertaking what projects can be undertaken in the middle of the night. The reading list centers around DIY projects, starting small businesses, investing, and general economics. Most of the projects center around new ways to save money or be more self sufficient.

Last month James and I started cutting each others hair, armed with nothing but a (found) comb, a pair of Walmart scissors, a pair of Walmart thinning shears, and some youtube videos. We're pretty slow at doing a good job, but nothing beats spending the afternoon on your own porch getting your hair cut rather than paying someone else at supercuts to do it. We find that cutting with the thinning shears is very forgiving and helps us blend in our amaturish mistakes. Nobody has told us we look too crazy yet, so I assume we're doing an ok job. It also allows me to have hair styles between the Lady Godiva look and the GI Jane look.

I've also been rebelling against paying the ridiculously high health food store prices for cruelty-free body products. Granted James and I are pretty low maintenance in that all we buy is toothpaste, dental floss, fluoride wash, and some kind of soap or shampoo. I started by switching to brushing my teeth with straight baking soda, which has been working fine. I just keep a little plastic protein powder scoop in the bathroom for mixing. I had some success this summer with rinsing and squeegeeing my dental floss each day and attaching it with a larks head to my toothbrush for reuse. I could get a couple days out of good dental floss, but the last box we bought barely lasts through single use. Lastly, I started to go "no poo" two weeks ago. The idea is that washing one's hair too often only causes it to produce excess oil whereas washing it infrequently or never, allows it to self-regulate. I found it funny that when I looked into selling my last batch of 3 foot hair, I learned that wig making companies prefer to buy hair from developing nations. Shampooed, blow dried, Western hair isn't good enough for high quality wigs. Makers want hair that has been conditioned with its natural oils. I've continued taking hot showers and rinsing my hair out, but stopped using any shampoo. Unfortunately, I am a rather greasy type, and after a week, the crown of my head was not so touchable. I learned online that you can also wash your hair with baking soda. I mixed up a dilute baking soda solution which i rubbed into my roots. It didn't foam, but it did change to a slick, soapy consistency. Then I rinsed with water followed by a dilute vinegar wash to neutralize the basic baking soda. I swear to you, this works every bit as well as a $7 bottle of health food store shampoo. James also claims he can't smell the vinegar after my hair has dried. I think my next project may be making homemade soap. Castille soap (Dr. Bronners, for example) is only made of lye and olive oil and is therefore perfectly vegan. I've just got to find myself a good scale and some safety goggles. All this combined with my satisfaction at using my homemade, three ingredient laundry detergent leads me to believe that the household and personal product industries are just selling a lot of noxious fragrance at a ridiculous mark up.

The cool weather is finally starting to trickle into Austin and our plants are showing a little life. We have some grass making a feebly showing in the backyard and the plants around the graywater tank at our house are looking positively lush. If we were the types who could stay still for a season, I'd say we should start a garden of some sort. Since we're not, we've started growing sprouts instead. We found a fancy pants sprouter complete with two big bags of sprouting mix in our friendly neighborhood anarchist thrift store. We paid $2 for all of it and have been rolling in sprouts ever since. All it takes is an 8 hour soak followed by a twice daily rinse and spin. The best method for getting the excess water out of the sprouting basket is to whip it around wildly and let centrifugal force fling the water out into the holding container. We've been eating the sprouts on salad, in bean tacos, on hummus-slathered toast, and anything else we can think of. Hopefully our Next Boat will have storage room for a container of seeds as well as a big container of baking soda.

James has been funneling all his free time into rock climbing. He got a rock gym membership for him and his climbing partner and has been working on getting ripped in the gym and out on the limestone in the Barton Creek Greenbelt. Last weekend, his sister, Megan, and cousin, Kim, accompanied him out for some dangling.

It looks like we may be staying in Austin for the winter, except for visits to family at the holidays. We have been looking for opportunities to go sailing, but most "crew wanted" ads posted seem to be thinly-veiled, license-less charter operations. We don't have any interest in paying $200+ /wk to help someone sail their 32' boat unless they are serving us lobster/vegan cheesecake every night. It's hard to stay focused building resources for so long, but we're making progress. Perhaps a little trip will be in order soon.

A 12V Lighting System for the Pedicab

2011-09-19T23:38:00.003-05:00

Just because we're not traveling at the moment doesn't mean that we're not doing new things or thinking about boats. I have been striving to become a handier javascript:void(0)handywoman and to learn more about boat repair and the various systems on sailboats. Unfortunately, we don't have a boat to tinker with here or any Power Squadron classes in downtown Austin. I considered taking Intro to Woodworking and DC Circuits at Austin Community College this fall, but the hassle and cost were considerable.

Before Alteration

Instead, I decided to spend some money installing a 12V lighting system in my new pedicab. I figured I would still do some hands on learning about DC systems as well as have a useful finished product.

My New Rear End

Mainstreet's Boardwalk pedicabs don't come with a lighting system installed. The manufacturer will add one upon request for $200-$400 depending on the features to be included. Without a 12V system, most pedicabs will use AA or AAA bicycle lights to satisfy their front and rear light requirements. Unfortunately, these pedicabs are never as highly visible. For those riders using disposable batteries, the temptation will always be to let the batteries die almost completely before discarding them. I'd rather not be riding in one of these cabs with a drunk driver behind me. In the past, I've used rechargeable batteries, but I still need to remember to charge them frequently and the lights are still never very bright and are easy to break and lose on a bouncing cab.

Headlights

I was right about needing to learn a thing or two. I spent about a month figured out what the hell I actually wanted and where to get it. I have asked James, the internet, and the folks at Radioshack every stupid question one could ask.

Step Lights

In the end, I chose two white, fork-mounted tube lights to light my way, two red taillights to keep the cars off my butt, and two amber accent lights to illuminate my side steps. All of the lights are LEDs, which means that my whole cab draws only about 0.4 amps and can be fed for a full shift by a 7 amp hour SLA battery without discharging it more than 50%. I also added a moped LED flasher module to make my rear lights blinky for increased visibility. I easily found small circuit boxes intended for boats, but the currents required to trip them made them inappropriate for my project. Instead, each pair of lights is wired in parallel and shares a 1 amp inline fuse. The three circuits are joined to the battery by a dual busbar also ordered from a marine supply store. I have one position open on the busbar in case I can someday find a horn that will blast "La Cucaracha."

The Guts

I encased the battery in a styrofoam holder I made out of scraps in the shop. It still bounces around a bit, so I'll need to come up with a way (industrial velcro?) to secure it to the cab itself. I plug it into a smart charger after each shift to keep it topped off.

Soldering for the Headlights

I also added a panel to the rear of my cab to mount my lights, slow moving vehicle triangle, and inspection/registration stickers. This frees up the back of my cab for advertising. I wish I could say this gave me a chance to use some power tools, but alas, we are power tool-less. I bought a piece of cabinet grade plywood then paid a neighbor $10 to cut it, bevel the edges, and drill some holes for my wires. (I supervised). I did, however, buy myself a soldering iron and did all the drilling, wire cutting/stripping/soldering, and masterminding of the rest of the project. I watched some youtube videos on soldering until I could get a nice, correct, shiny joint instead of the dull, cheating-type cold joints we were getting on the boat. All in all, it cost me $174, and if I had it to do again, I could probably have done it for quite a bit cheaper. However, the cab sure looks classy, and I'm happy to be so easy to see from way on down the road. As the neurotic human being that I am, I have of course, recorded my supply list which can be found at the very bottom of this page. I'm an electrical noob, so if anyone has any favorite websites for electronic supplies, feel free to shout them out.

Also, we had the good fortune to get a free mattress, box spring, bed frame, comforter, and sheets in the last week, so our room doesn't look so impoverished anymore. I found the bed on the classified section of Austin's vegan forums and the bedding was a gift from freecycle. The woman who responded to our freecycle request actually turned out to live in the house right across the street. Three cheers for the internet and its ability to connect those who need to get rid of their trash with those who will treasure it.

Pedicab Lighting Project Supply List

Battery and Charger (batteryspace)

$16.00 7 ah 12v SLA battery

$15.95 1 A smart charger

$12.77 Shipping

subtotal = $44.72

Lights (superbrightled)

$8.95 Universal Motorcycle/Scooter Flasher

$9.90 2x Amber mini LED accent lights

$19.90 2x Red LED marker Lamps (taillights)

$25.90 2x White 12 LED tube lights (fork headlights)

$3.24 Shipping

subtotal = $67.89

Wiring Components (Radio Shack)

$8.97 3x Inline automotive fuse holders

$2.19 4x 1 A fuses

$7.39 55' 18g wire

$2.79 10x quick disconnects (22-18g)

$2.99 16x ring terminals (22-18g)

$11 dual bus bar (amazon)

subtotal = $35.33

Mounting (HomeDepot)

$13.32 cabinet grade plywood

$10 routering and drilling of wire holes

$3.47 spraypaint

subtotal = $26.79

GRAND TOTAL = $174.73

Return to the Real (Hot) World

2011-09-09T20:06:00.000-05:00

James and I reunited in Austin a few weeks ago. A grueling 3 day bus ride completed my 6 month circumnavigation of the country. When I finally disembarked at the Austin greyhound station, my feet and ankles were so swollen with edema that James was afraid I would be struck down by a blood clot. A three hour nap with my feet up fixed me up nicely, but if anyone is wondering, any premium for flying or taking the train is definitely worth it! James refers to Greyhound as the "Grey Dog" which I think better conveys the misery and wretchedness that accompanies any bus ride over a day.

BUT, I made it, James made it, and we both met back up at the Radical Dixie Ranch, the East Austin house we stayed at during our time in Austin this spring. One housemate was heading out of town for two weeks and let us sublet her room while we searched for another place. Despite all the time we have spent living in tents, boats, and warehouses, the 100+ degree temperatures were a little more than we could handle this time. Coming directly from the cool, green northwest, we were overwhelmed and set about looking for a nice airconditioned room inside.

We found a room in a house with two other pedicabbers on a street very close to the pedicab shop. It has a bit of an echo as all of our things fit in the single, small closet and we have nothing but two sleeping pads to fill the rest. To make the room seem less cavernous, we've brought our bikes and trailer inside to live with us. On the upside, it's very cool and has nice dark curtains for sleeping away the days.

We haven't been blogging much as our lives have been rather hot and boring. I purchased my own pedicab and have been riding like a madwoman. I've also been riding all over town collecting the components I need to install a 12v lighting system in it. The blazing brightness of my 12v lights should help keep the drunk drivers at a distance. We've also been engaged in a lot of other random projects. In our disgust toward eating hot food in hot weather, we've gotten quite good at making (vegan) sushi. We've also bought some haircutting tools and James and I collaborated on my last haircut (I got the front while he got the back). We also picked up a sprouting kit at the thrift store, though we are yet to try it out. My posts will likely become less common and very pedicab-centric over the next months as feverish peddling consumes my days.

As for our trip, we were very impressed with the Northwest. We were only confirmed in our suspicion that it is a place that we would very much like to live. The cool summers and not-so-freezing winters, the mixture of mountains and water, the abundance of boats and weirdos all contribute to our desire to return. Unfortunately, we didn't find a boat on this last trip that we deemed worthy of our dollars and time. We are thinking more and more of the Next Boat as one that will be our long term home and have become quite stringent about our requirements. Our ideal, seaworthy boat at a fair price is a needle buried in a haystack of MacGregors and over-priced rotten old wooden beasts. We enjoyed our trip and it was a good reconnaissance mission, but buying the Next Boat will have to wait until next season. In the meantime, we're working on saving up more money. Maybe by the time Austin heats up to 100 degrees next year we can cycle the Oregon Coast and continue shopping.

Portland, Oregon

2011-08-14T02:46:00.000-05:00

I've spent exactly one week on the Northeast side of Portland, OR with my most excellent couchsurfing hosts, Halley and Adam.

Halley and Adam described themselves as bike folks, and they are probably some of the bikiest folks I've met. Their house and garage has several dozen bikes, most of the oddball variety thanks to Adam's basement brazing workshop. The bike pictured below is a back to back tandem recumbent. There was also a tandem with a regular bike in the back and a recumbent in the front, a DIY pennyfarthing-like bike, bamboo bikes, folding bikes, muchos trailers... It was a painful reminder of what sort of mischief one can engage in when settled enough to stockpile tools and spare parts.

Halley and Adam took me out to zoobomb, something of a must do in Portland bike tourism. Portland's zoo is in Washington Park, at the top of a very, very big hill. The top of the hill can be easily accessed with a $2 train ticket which is good for several hours. What do you do with a big hill and an easy way to get to the top? Fly down it as many times as you care to on whatever contraption you dare to. The original tradition involves flying down on a mini-bike (a little kids bike with 16 or 20 inch wheels and coaster brakes). For those without bikes, there are a whole crapload of loaners in the infamous "Pile" downtown, which the major has lately honored with a golden mini-bike-topped monument. I, of course, was on my boring old mountain bike. My hosts took their tandem recumbent. I saw plenty of folks in motorcycle helmets on little pink bikes or even skateboards. I think the skateboarders and their wild braking techniques were the best of all. We made three passes down the hill in the dark before the cold won out over the thrill.

I also got to meet up with our Austin friends, Dawn and James, who had driven their housevan up from Austin. When we last met them they had moved in after installing a solar panel, 12V system, and curtains. Since the last time I'd seen them, they'd further improved the van with hardwood floors, bamboo veneer for the walls, a 12V fridge, and a ceiling fan/vent. As they were new in town as well, we toured it together.

They humored me and took me to some of Portland's vegan delights. I had as many doughnuts as I could eat at Voodoo Doughnuts. (Nom!) Portland also has what is referred to as the vegan minimall. I went to Food Fight, which is to my knowledge the only entirely vegan grocery store. Food fight is nestled between a vegan tattoo shop and Herbivore, an all vegan clothing store, and Sweet Pea Bakery. I wish I were the type to spend more money on vacation as it would be nice to support all-vegan businesses. Nearby was also Microcosm, one of the largest sellers of zines, and Red and Black, an all vegan, worked-owned anarchist cafe. Not to mention that Portland also has Food Not Bombs 6 days a week - free all vegan meals in the park. I ate there 3 nights of my stay with vegan dessert included every time.

Not only does Southeast Portland have lots of vegans, it also has lots of goats. We stopped to get an explanation for this herd of goats occupying prime real estate in a vacant lot in the middle of Portland. A sign explained that the goats were available for hire to mow your grass (and look cute while doing it).

Dawn, James, and I also went to the huge, well-attended Saturday Market, a weekly gathering place for vendors and buskers at a riverside park. Something like the farmers markets of other towns times ten. We also went for a hike in Forest Park, a 5,000 acre park on the Northwest side. It was very impressive, but we obviously saw only a tiny chunk in our afternoon. I also made it to the International Rose Test Garden. There are rose gardens everywhere in Portland, but this one is especially spectacular. Put a croquet field in there and it could be James' grandmother's garden in Maryland.

I had no luck finding a rideshare back to Austin. It seems no one but me is foolish enough to be going back to the 105 degree weather, so tonight, I'm biting the bullet and riding two days on Greyhound. I sold my mountain bike easily, but still needed a bag of some sort to carry my dismantled bike trailer. My hosts offered me the use of their sewing machine and pointed me toward SCRAP, one of the other coolest things in Portland. SCRAP is a nonprofit that provides scrap materials for reuse. They have bins of everything you could imagine - fabric, baby food jars, hinges, handles, zippers, straps, jars of loose crayons, etc. I can imagine that anything donated could be completely dismantled for future use. Lots of the goods are sold by the handful, bagful or for very cheap. I got a table cloth-sized piece of upholstery fabric, a three foot heavy duty zipper, and an assortment of straps for $4. With it I was able to sew a pretty great bag to fit my unscrewed bike trailer. Hooray for sharing and recycling. I'm told Portland also has a tool lending library, bike coops, and a community wood shop/metal shop. So many resources for poor, creative people!

Unfortunately, though it's is possible to bring a boat to Portland from the ocean, it's an awfully long way upriver and most of the marinas are on the Columbia, north of town rather than centrally located on the Wilamette. Even so, Portland seems like an ideal place to work on a project boat.

I've enjoyed my time here greatly, but am eager to get back (if not to Austin and the heat, then at least to James and my new pedicab). Wish me luck and good conversation on my long long bus ride.

Too Good to Be True: Montesano, WA to Portland , OR

2011-08-06T22:36:00.001-05:00

As usual, things have changed somewhat dramatically in the last few weeks. With so little time left until the departure of our rideshare, we decided to ride to set Olympia as our rendezvous point. That left us a week to ride about 50 miles.

thimbleberries and salmonberries for biker oatmeal
Out of Montesanto, we next rolled up to the town of Elma, nestled snugly beneath two nuclear cooling towers. It had a quirky charm that I enjoyed. Somehow, Elma is yet to be touched by franchisees. Instead of a single monolithic Walmart, all the crap of the town is spread out over a main street's worth of variety stores, used book marts, and junktique emporiums. Our favorite was Hometown Liquidators, selling nothing but expired food at bargain prices. 5 Clif bars for $1? Don't mind if I do. We spent the night in a fabulous little squat spot under a big fir in the field behind the RV park and attended the classic car show the following morning before moving on toward Olympia.

One of the lessons I've learned on this trip is that it's not enough to carry just a patch kit; one needs a new tube for every tire. I already blew a 26" tube while refilling it (luckily, I was already in front of a bike shop). Between Elma and Olympia, a thorn punctured my 16" trailer tire. I never noticed it was flat, thinking I was just really tired that day, and pulled it for 5 miles to McCleary. In the meantime, the thorn had punched a million little holes all over a large section of the tube as it flopped around on the rim. The tube was toast and we had missed the last bus into Olympia. We sat with our thumbs out for an hour before giving up and going to Rounders, McCleary's only drinking establishment. We had a drink and met the exceedingly friendly locals. Within an hour, a father and son who lived just up the road offer us a camping spot in their big backyard. Leonard and Bill hosted us for the next two nights so I could take the bus into Olympia and buy two tubes the following day. James got to work on his horseshoe game and we both got to see such oddities and the .45 Leonard had created from scratch during his days as a machinist.

beautiful farms, chauvinist barns
With the trailer tire reinflated, we finally made it into Olympia. Our first stop was a fruit stand selling local cherries for $1.79/lb. How many cherries can you eat at $1.79 a pound? My pound sure didn't last long. We stayed with couchsurfer Michael who took us out hiking in a local park and gave us a walking tour of downtown. Olympia seemed like a small town for a capital, but it had a lot of trees, murals, little shops, and an artesian well spurting out of the center of downtown where everyone comes to fill bottles of spring water.

Unfortunately, we got an e-mail from our rideshare informing us that he was flaking out at the last minute. We should have known a rideshare right to Austin with our bikes was to good to be true. We would have to find another way home. James decided he wouldn't head back to Austin straightaway. His dad is sailboat shopping and James wanted to lend his expertise to the inspection and possible delivery of a candidate boat in Florida. He bought a ticket to Florida out of Seattle and is back in the southeast by now. Coincidentally, I found out that our best friends in Austin, Dawn and James, had driven their house van up to Portland, OR without knowing that we were so close by. Since my departure deadline had suddenly been removed, I decided to ride to Portland while I waited for more ride offers to Austin.

artyard on the way to Portland
I ground out the 130 or so miles to Portland by myself in two and a half days, meeting a few other cyclists along the way and staying at state and city parks in Washington and Oregon. Entering Oregon over the Lewis and Clark Bridge at Longview, has to be one of the more memorable experiences of the trip. I had been told that you could walk over the bridge, so I arrived expecting a sidewalk or separate walkway over the huge arched bridge. From the last traffic light before total commitment, all I could see was a shoulder disappearing off into the distance. A log truck rumbled by and I chickened out. I asked a local on the corner if pedestrians could cross the bridge. He said, "Oh yeah, you can walk right over." "So there's a sidewalk up there I can't see from here?" "No, no, there's a white line on the road. What more do you need?" Indeed. We all know that white lines are barriers impassable to log trucks. I stuck my thumb out at all the pick up trucks hoping someone would take pity and ferry me across. No trucks stopped, but within 5 minutes another heavily laden touring cyclist rolled up and offered to ride behind me. We climbed up and over together (and were passed narrowly by a "wide load"). The view from the zenith showed the sparkling expanse of the Columbia River, still carrying container ships well inland, and mountains and mountains worth of logs neatly stacked on the banks. The other cyclist and I parted ways on the other side but he helped me over the hump.

I'm currently in the find town of Portland, staying with couchsurfers, catching up with old friends, and hoping for a new rideshare to appear before I have to grudingly buy a ticket on Greyhound.

Forks to Montesano

2011-07-29T14:04:00.000-05:00

Our trip is finally winding down as we reemerge from the boonies of the Western Olympic Peninsula and near the southern tip of Puget Sound again.

When James realized he left his phone back at Crescent Lake, we were forced to spend a night in Forks, famous for being the setting of a series of teen vampire novels. There was no camping nearby and we quickly tired of the unintelligible mumblings of the drunks in the park. We weren't eager to hear them all night. Therefore, we went to a local's recommendation for the cheapest motel and grudgingly inquired about the price. The place was full of dolls, artificial flowers, and a strong artificial perfume and charged a non-negotiable $60 a night. The older woman working the desk, however, said we could stay on the floor of her apartment for a much more reasonable $20 after it became obvious there was no way we'd paid for a motel room. So we spent the night and I spent most of the next morning while James rode the bus all the way back to Crescent Lake and up to Forks again.

After our late start, we only made it about 10 miles to the Hoh Oxbow campground, which was not only free but our campsite was right on the same icy river we had visited farther up in the park with our couchsurfing friends. We played cards until the mosquitos drove us back into our tent and slept well. In the morning, I picked enough salmonberries for our oatmeal and we rode on until we met with the Pacific Coast again.

We rode another short day as we stopped for a good while at Ruby Beach, which had a variety of seastacks near enough for climbing and closer inspection. We rode along the coast for another hour (in an area also owned by the National Park) and got glimpses of the sunny Pacific wherever the trees broke.

We camped at the last beach, South Beach, at what initially looked like a pretty sweet spot right on the ocean. I took a long afternoon nap listening to the waves beat on the beach. Unfortunately, there were the occupants of the other 49 campsites to consider. Almost everyone there was in an RV or had a superdelux complex of tents housing everything but the kitchen sink along with every screaming, half-sized member of the family they could fit in their SUV. The kids shut up relatively early, though we did have to move our tent several times to get out of the campfire smoke of one of our neighbors. The next morning, I woke to the cappuchino machine of the neighbor on the other side. An incredibly foul chemical smell was coming from our upwind neighbors. I wasn't sure if it was coming from the fire or the fact that they had been running their SUV for the last hour to recharge their iPhone. Either way, I was sending concentrated hate in their direction. When the SUV was finally turned back off, it was obvious the source was the campfire. James walked over to discover the family sitting around a tidy fire of pressure-treated lumber (easily recognizable here by the strange color and perforations). He opened their water canister and dumped it on their fire without any preliminary conversation. If they want to build an arsenic fire, they would have to build it somewhere else. We decided to leave quickly after that. We rode through the Quinault Indian Reservation and camped at another fabulous, free campsite. The key seems to be that the worst campsites are the ones that charge money.

The next morning we blew through the little town of Humptulips. I would have liked postcards to prove there is a town with such an easily laughed at name, but unfortunately, the town was to tiny even to capitalize on their unlikey moniker. We took a little detour from our mapset and visited the bay town of Aberdeen. She was the hometown of Kurt Cobain as well as Nirvana bass player Krist Novoselic. As far as we could tell, she seemed like a town that could easily inspire a depressing genre of music. We rode up to the bridge that Kurt Cobain lived under briefly which inspired the Nirvana song, "Something in the Way." There is a small memorial in a tiny park nearby, but it was all very easily overlooked. As no one would answer the door at the exceptionally sketchy hostel, we rode on to Montesano, WA and camped at their state park with two other touring cyclists we met on the road.

As of today, we have one week left before meeting our rideshare and returning to Austin. We don't have enough time to ride to and see some of the other major destinations we might have liked to visit (Portland, OR, Mt. Ranier NP), so we may just ride to Olympia and take it easy for awhile while we await our rendezvous.

Port Angeles to Forks

2011-07-24T18:50:00.002-05:00

**Due to lack of internet, I've put up two blogs today, so check for the other as well.

After two nights tenting at the RV park in Port Angeles, we rode 30 miles west to the home of the last couchsurfer on 101, the only road circumscribing the Olympic Peninsula and Olympic National Park. Technically, we didn't meet our actual couchsurfing host, but met all of his housemates instead. The three of them work for a local nature education program and live in a program-owned, homey, circular house with a big porch overlooking Lake Crescent. Lake Crescent, whose length we rode beside, is a glacier-carved lake and rivals some of the tropical waters we saw this winter in terms of blueness and clarity. Behind the lake, we had an unobstructed view of mountains not marred by a single house. For all of the afternoon of our arrival, we sat on the couch facing the porch and watched big white amoeba of cold clouds ooze between the notches in the mountain ridges and spread over the near faces. One of our hosts was also gracious enough to swap me an older, slightly heavier but unpunctured sleeping pad for my new, lighter, holey, but patchable sleeping pad. My happiness in the tent has increased greatly.

The following day, James lounged about the household and worked on his bike, while I left to explore the area around the house. I rode to the end of a paved, multiuse trail through the forest and then locked my bike up and hiked 3.5 miles up to an abandoned wildfire watchtower on the peak of Pyramid Mountain. As James wasn't with me, and the forest was of the lions, tigers, and bears type, I spent a good deal of the way up looking over my shoulder for cougars and clapping my hands loudly to annouce my prescence to the blood thirsty bears that might be behind the next blind turn. The only beast of the forest I saw was a large newt that looked just like one we had kept in a freshwater tank for many years as a kid - rough brown top, bright orange bottom.

Another couchsurfer who was staying at the house with us coordinated a rideshare, so that the next day James and I, our couchsurfer friend, her couchsurfer friend (met in the Port Angeles Hostel) and her friends current host all could ride together in the host's car to get to the best rainforest access point. Had James and I rode there, we would have had to ride 20 miles in from our route on 101 and 20 miles back to have access to the trailhead. Of course, while hiking, we would also have to worry about the security of our trailer contents in such a heavily trafficked place. As it was, for some gas money, we got a ride all the way to the Hoh Rainforest Center and to a beach on the Pacific with some towering sea stacks. We left a pinecone segment our friend Paul had entrusted us with at the beach at La Push.

At the Hoh Rainforest, we split a backcountry permit and all five of us hiked in for the night. James and I were drooling at the prospect of hiking 17 miles up the river to the base camp for snowy Mount Olympus, but our generous driver had to be back the next day. We made our obligatory rounds in the Hall of Mosses and then hiked 3 miles in to a campsite by the Hoh river. Everyone took a screaming dunk in the snow melt river before focusing on more cozy matters like campfires and dinner.

My memory of the Costa Rican rainforest is probably blunted, but I would wager that anyone who came to Olympic National Park would be just as impressed in the catergories of tree-size, moss, and ferns. It was all very Jurassic. Huge trees would fall and nurse equally huge trees out of their corpses. We also saw a herd of elk, which are apparently very numerous, despite seeming out of place in a "jungle."

Really, pictures say it better. We've probably spent all the time we'll spend in the National Forest proper, but our ride south is still surrounded by mountains, flowers, and forest and we'll meet up with the Pacific Coast again soon.

Vancouver and Victoria

2011-07-24T18:20:00.000-05:00

In Vancouver, the rain finally caught up with us. It was grey, cold, and rainy for most of the four days we spent there. James shared his cold with me and the two of us spent most of our time in bed at our couchsurfing hosts' apartment happily watching movies, drinking juice, and watching other people get wet outside. We ventured out to go out to eat twice. At a vegan-friendly burrito joint, I nursed my cold with a big plate of vegan french toast with pineapple and a horchata. James, in need of stronger medicine, helped himself to a horchata white russian. We also ate out a vegan Indian food restaurant to clear the old sinuses.

We did make it out to walk around down town one afternoon and to ride bikes around Vancouver's fabulous Stanley Park. The park entirely covers a peninsula jutting out of the north side of downtown. There is a bikeable seawall that wraps around the entire edge with a couple of lighthouses and three beaches. I can't believe anyone would really go swimming here even in "summer," but then again, I also saw a lot of folks in Vancouver wearing sunglasses on the darkest, rainy days. The interior is an old growth forest criss-crossed with bike and walking trails. I rode past trees that rival the giants I saw in the Costa Rican rainforest.

When the rain finally let up, we rode a full day south down to the Tsawwassen Ferry Landing. We were very perplexed to find piles and piles of bunnies everywhere on this one particular day. One bike trail was just covered with them. They weren't your garden variety brown rabbits, either. We saw every sort of pet shop coloration that should never be able to survive in the wild. We saw hordes of fancy rabbits across a wide spread of Vancouver's suburbs. We have no explanation. We the ferry across to Sidney on Vancouver Island where we were hosted by couchsurfer Joan and her fox terrier, Emma. Joan looked doubtful when we told her of the bunny infestation, but we have pictures. She was also hosting a couple from Switzerland, so we had a little time to have some triple nationality conversation before James and I stuffed our faces with veggie burgers and went to bed tired.

The next morning, we rode 18 miles down the Lochside Trail connecting Sidney to Victoria, BC's capital. It was a nice ride through lots of woods and farm land and spectacular views of the Strait. Victoria was a beautiful, old fashioned-looking city and an obvious tourist trap. We saw all those things we recognize from Austin's 6th St.: pedicabs (even a pedicab pulling another pedicab), sidewalk chalk artists, and buskers galore. In fact, we happened to arrive during the Internation Busker's Festival, so we got to watch a lot of performers play music, juggle fire, and hula hoop their little hearts out. We sat around for the afternoon watching the buskers until we could board our ferry going back to the US at Port Angeles. I think the ferry rides have been some of the most spectacular portions of our trips and provided the most epic views of mountains and dark water juxtaposed. I'm sad to say that was probably the last one of this trip.

So today we are back in our home country, catching up on our laundry and errands, and camping by a little creek at an RV park downtown. Reflecting on our trip to Canada, I have to say they are beating the US in bike-friendliness. Everywhere we went in Vancouver had beautiful bike trails. There were bike lanes on all the highways, bridges, and overpasses. There were painted green bike boxes for easy left hand turns. When we reached the George Massey tunnel between Vancouver and Richmond, it was obvious, no cyclist in their right mind would try to ride down it. Not a problem, Richmond has a bike shuttle. There is a man whose job is to sit in a van and wait for cyclists. He tows a trailer with room for six bikes. We put our bikes on the trailer and hopped in the van and were deposited on the far side for no charge.

Tomorrow, we'll head west/south around the far side of the Olympic Peninsula. We plan to visit the temperate rainforest in Olympic National Park and the coastal beaches before meeting up with our rideshare back to Austin on August 5th. We are going to get very wet, I'm sure.

Bellingham, WA

2011-07-14T00:07:00.000-05:00

At the Seattle Library, we caught another lucky break and were offered a place to stay by couchsurfer, Lauren, a self-described geezer who shares his house with 3 college-aid borders and tramps like ourselves. He drove us around to see all the best views of Seattle, which of course, we had no camera to capture. The best site we saw was the Freemont Troll. That's the kind of public art I can get behind.

We must be getting more impatient or lazy, because the next morning we gave up on hitch hiking and rode back to Bellingham in the comfy plush seats of a Greyhound bus. In Bellingham, we were reunited with our bikes at Susann and Ken's house and were allowed to tent for the night in their backyard. We were also able to meet a lot of wild family who came into town for a wedding. James cooked a big batch of spaghetti and we were entertained by a night's worth of shenanigans. I also bought us a new camera from craigslist.

The following day, we were able to explore Bellingham. It has a lot of counter culture-looking folks, a nice community bike shop where we topped off our tires, a great food coop, a pretty tree-lined downtown, and a waterfront full of boats. We looked at every single one, but found nothing we wanted to pursue. We spent the night stealth camping off a hike and bike trail in what was the single most mosquito-infested area I've ever had the misfortune of entering. The next day, we knew we needed other accomodations.

The Sushi Tribe, an intentional community of about 20 people living in a big house on Forest St., let us camp in their backyard for a small fee. Being back in a backyard tent with a bunch of chickens reminded us of our last Austin home at the Radical Dixie Ranch. We kept to ourselves mostly as James had a fever and wasn't feeling so hot, but we did get to spend some time in their large, well-stocked alternative library reading all the strange books you wouldn't find elsewhere.

After two days in SushiLand, we started riding again for the first time in almost two weeks. Fueled by vegan doughnuts, we rode 27 miles from Bellingham up to Blaine, where Susann and Ken had given us permission to stay at another house of theirs. There was nothing that could have made us happier than sprawling out on the living room floor and watching movies for the night.

This morning we rode 45 hard miserable miles from Blaine, WA to Vancouver, BC with the sun in our eyes and a strong, gusty headwind. Thankfully, this is the farthest north we plan to ride, so the prevailing winds should be at our backs from now on. We had no problems at the border. No one took any interest in our bikes. We just walked into the customs office, showed our passports, vowed that we had no guns or fireworks, and walked back out. We have a couch to surf for several days here while we investigate Vancouver. We may also take a ferry over to Victoria, then back to Port Angeles, WA which will allow us to ride down the Pacific Coast and see the rainforests without having to backtrack from Vancouver all the way to Port Townsend.

Washington Rainbow Gathering 2011

2011-07-07T14:38:00.000-05:00

After our momentary employment in Friday Harbor, James and I rode 40-some miles north to Bellingham, WA where we had arranged a rideshare to the Rainbow Gathering. We both agree that this day of riding was perhaps the most beautiful we have had on the trip. The first half of the day, we hugged the coast and rode along the strip of perfectly flat green land that existed between the shining water on our left and the steeply rising mountains to our right. The second half of the day we climbed up into the higher elevations and rode through the deep green forests near Larabee State Park.

I had put out a call on the Bellingham couchsurfing forum for a kind soul with some extra space to store our bikes while we rode down to the Gathering. Susann answered our call and let us shower and spend the night at her house in addition to cleaning out her shed so that we could safely store our bikes and trailers. We had found Rolando and his van on craiglists rideshare. On Saturday he arrived to take us and three Western University students down to Gifford-Pinchot National Forest.

Rainbow Gatherings are large, temporary intentional communities that assemble annually in National Forests. The first was held in 1972 in Colorado. The National Gathering is held around the 4th of July every year in a different location. The location is disseminated a few weeks before the 4th. People gather from the time they find out the location until whenever it is that they feel like leaving. On the 4th, many people take a vow of silence until noon and spend the day collectively praying for peace. The Gathering is strongly anti-commerical. There is no entrance fee, free kitchens, free treated water, and a large bartering circle. Alcohol is confined to "A Camp" at the event's entrance. There are no leaders and no permits other than the First Amendment's Right of Assembly. James attended a Gathering in Colorado a number of years ago. It was still on my Bucket List. As it was being held right in Washington this year, we decided to go.

Unfortunately, despite smudging all passengers and his vehicle before departure, Rolando's van began leaking oil about an hour down I-5. Worried about taking it far out into the boonies of the National Forest with an unknown problem, Rolando decided to turn back to Bellingham. We five passengers decided to hitch hike the rest of the way south. Amazingly, two Mexican trucker offered us a ride after a casual inquiry. When we asked how many they were willing to take, they replied "Todos, todos! Vamanos!" The two drivers sat in the seats, James and I squeezed onto the top bunk in the cab and the three students wiggled into the bottom bunk. We rode together from Everett all the way to our exit near the Oregon border listening to Spanish music and watching Mt. Rainier get bigger then smaller.

We were dropped off at Woodland late at night, with 60 more rural miles to go to the National Forest. The first person we met was a stumbling, toothless drunk wandered down to town from A Camp. He was the first member of the Rainbow Family to officially welcome us Home. ("Home" being the Gathering, "Babylon" being everywhere else.) Uninterested in spending the night on the street with the dregs of A Camp, we split a $50 motel room 5 ways and piled in. In the morning, we split up and James and I were treated to a fabulous 60 mile ride in the back of a pick up truck past Cougar, WA, Mount St. Helens, and finally to the end of the line.

From the last parking lot to the Gathering's entrance was another 7 miles. Generous folks with vehicles were shuttling people and their gear back and forth. We rode in another pickup truck with no less that 16 adults, 1 baby, and 2 dogs past A Camp, Bus Village, and up to the Rainbow-Babylonian border.

The Gathering was a tent and tipi city of tens of thousands with a snowmelt creek through the center. Lots of naked babies, skinny dippers, yoga, hula hoops, and dogs. Lots and lots of dogs. After spending so much time traveling as just our twosome, the whole thing was pretty overwhelming. In truth, we pitched our tent as far toward the edge as possible (in the trees where there was still unmelted snow) and spent the majority of every day reading books. Though there was snow in the forest, the open areas were hot wastelands while the sun was up. Most space that wasn't directly occupied by a tent was a mix of mud, trampled vegetation, and dog poop. The trees that provided shade during the day, also made convenient places to pee as soon as the sun went down. Though volunteers dug trench latrines, plenty of people seemed to just find the nearest tentless place with some cover, so that the treeline was marked by crumples of used toilet paper.

The trading circle was good entertainment (I got a few books when I ran out), but not really so good for getting things. As people without drugs, crystals, shiny rocks, or Bob Marley t-shirts, we found ourselves poor in the new economy. I had a stack of books I'd finished, but books are close to worthless. Either no one wants to read or no one wants to carry something that heavy or both. I traded chocolate and opinions to a graduate student doing her thesis on barter for two new books, but gave away my books for free. Also, with so many vagabonds at the trading circle, everything was suddenly too precious to be given away for free. People sat all day in front of blankets with individual tea bags, seashells, and bite size candy bars. I had broken the eye of my last sewing needle but neither of the two people I asked with open packs of sewing needles would trade me just one for something simple like a chunk of chocolate. It seemed like things that might otherwise be shared freely were all assigned a price.

So as not to be totally negative, we enjoy the spectacle as loud, poopy, and chaotic as it was. There are obviously lots of people who really do put a lot in to keep everybody okay. There was always clean water piped in from some spring and prefiltered. There were medical tents to help the injured and freaking out. There were kitchens cooking free pancake after free pancake in the morning. And some poor souls were digging and refilling a lot of latrines. The individual people we met coming to and from the Gathering were gracious and generous. The effects of all that humanity crammed together out there, though, was a little more than we could handle for very long.

We caught a ride back to Olympia yesterday with another Family member and stayed with a couchsurfer there. We are halfway back to our bikes, spending this rainy afternoon in the spectacular, enormous Seattle library, while plotting the best course back to Bellingham. We'll spend a few more days there looking at boats and the town before heading north to Vancouver.

There Goes the Camera

2011-06-30T12:37:00.000-05:00

It appears, our travel log will have to be temporarily pictureless. This morning we spotted two especially spectacular starfish: a purple one with bright pink spots and at least a dozen legs and a fluorescent orange one. I coaxed James to climb down the bulkhead to take me a picture. When he was down at the muddy intertidal zone, I dropped the camera down to him... Well, you can't catch everything all the time. I bought it to be the camera I would take out into dangerous conditions (as opposed to my old SLR which I rarely took out of the house). It took 5 years to finally smash it, but we did. If anyone has an old digital camera that collecting dust since it was replaced by a fancier version, let us know. Otherwise, as always, craigslist will provide.

Extended Stay on San Juan

2011-06-28T20:36:00.000-05:00

When our trickle of blog posts temporarily dry up, it's usually because our lives have started taking twists and turns again and we're sure enough of our status to make any report on it. The last couple weeks has been no different.

On our way to the Friday Harbor ferry landing, we rode by Art Lohery, the owner of San Juan Classic Day Sailing, and jingled our bells. We had met with him earlier in the week to look at a couple of classic, wooden boats he had for sale. During the encounter, James had mentioned that I had worked at the Tilghman Island Marina for a summer and that we had experience sailing and working on boats. Art offered us both jobs for the summer season, with James doing boatwork, me working in the office, and both of us acting as crew. As our ferry loaded, we had to make a speed decision about whether to promptly end our bike trip.

As I had only three weeks worth of living expenses left before I would have to seek temporary or permanent employment and the job involved crewing on classic wooden sailboats, including a 1939 72' gaff-rigged schooner, we decided to accept the offer and started the next day. James has spent the last week sanding and painting and I have spent my days in the office learning the books and making reservations. We made it out for one evening sail on the schooner.

As we had no living arrangements when hired, our couchsurfing hosts offered to let us continue living in their spare room in exchange for worktrade. After work, we have been coming home to rake hay, dig thistles out of the garden, and (for James) milk the goats and feed the animals. I've also been able to forage for nettles and the newly ripe salmonberries on the outskirts of the property. While we have enjoyed eating vegan pizzas, playing music, and talking with Ken and Deb, working at the charter business and working on the farm hasn't left us with much time for fun or exploring.

After a week of working, James decided that $10/hr was not enough for him to give up our bike tour and our boat search. As we don't have a car, the radius in which we could look for boats on our day or two off was very small. He quit and as we're fairly well glued together, I'll be following him. I only wish we hadn't bought about 75lbs of bulk foods from Costco. to feed us for the rest of our settled summer!

The location of the Rainbow Gathering has finally been announced, so our next goal is to make our way down to the Gifford-Pinchot National Forest near the Oregon border. As we'd still like to explore more of northern Washington, we will likely leave our bikes and trailers up here and hitchhike to Rainbow and back with just our packs. We'll come bearing a lot of food for the free kitchens there.

Cycling the San Juans

2011-06-15T18:11:00.000-05:00

We've spent the last week of our tour visiting three of the four San Juan Islands accessible by ferry.

We started on Orcas Island, where James was dying to look at the Nordin, a beast of an old fishing schooner, on sale for a very low price. She was miraculously afloat and had her rig up and was a marvel to look at. Unfortunately, she needs lots of TLC from an owner with deep, deep pockets. I think James would love to scheme a way to have the money to buy her and pay her moorage and fix her up, but we are so far without a plan as to how to bring that goal within our means.

We visited the little town of Eastsound. We drank coffee and conducting our internet business in their little internet cafe and I succeeded in purchasing and eating two packages of tofu jerky and a whole bag of vegan chocolate chip cookies at the health food store.

We spent our first night on the island stealth camping in a land trust. After sneaking offtrail for a pee, I saw a giant yellow slug three times the size of the ubiquitous black ones we've been squishing all over the road despite attempts to dodge. For a moment, I thought I was looking at some unidentifiable organ I had lost whilst tinkling. We were also rudely awoken in the morning by a squadron of humming birds buzzing back and forth over our tent top.

Our second night, we moved on to the hiker/biker camp at Moran State Park. We had the place to ourselves. Truly hard core cyclists would have ridden to the top of Mount Constitution, the central attraction at the park, featuring a castle-like structure at the peak and views of the surrounding islands, Canada and mainland Washington. Considering that every car on the road was headed for the summit and that I'd climbed enough hills just to get to the park, I stuck out my thumb and hitched a ride to the Big View then hiked four miles back down to the campsite. It was nice to actually penetrate the forests as we've been spending a lot of time at their edges alone. The San Juan Islands also have no bears, no cougars, and no poisonous snakes, so its easy for a wuss like me to hike happily solo and sleep soundly at night.

The next morning we rode 15 miles back to the ferry landing, took a short ride to Lopez Island, and rode another 13 miles to the house of our next couchsurfing hosts, John and Molly. Lopez is my personal favorite of the three islands. They have a free public shower for bicyclists. They have an excellent free store at their dump (free book! Free hat! Free fleece!) The island is also blissfully flat compared to the other two. Also, our hosts were really our kind of people. They have a little sailboat themselves and had lived aboard for many years. For the past seven years, they've been renting a farm house and living there with four rescue sheep. The house had sat unoccupied for 50 years before they came to love it, but it stays simple and uncomplicated. Water still needs to be pumped and hauled. There's an outhouse/composting bucket on the back porch. Most of the furnishings came from the free store. There's a loom and spinning equipment in the living room and John and Molly have the metal working equipment to make custom knitting needles. Obviously, James and I love Free, Cheap, and DIY like nobody's business. We stayed for three nights and had some time to absorb a little of their knowledge of edible wild plants. This is a source of free living we haven't tapped into, having spent most of the last 3 years in cities. Everywhere we go we're now on the lookout for nettles. John, Molly, James, and I celebrated another traveler, Linda's, 50th birthday by eating a feast including homemade bull kelp pickles, home-canned wild cherry chutney, steamed nettles, and chocolate cake. We stayed up late around a bonfire on the pebble beach playing the (free store) guitar. A popping coal burned a big hole in my brand new used sleeping pad, but it was a small price to pay.

We're currently on San Juan Island, the last we plan to visit and the most populous and tourist oriented. We're staying with Ken and Debbie, another pair of couchsurfers. Ken made us sourdough pancakes with honey and blueberries the very first day. To sweeten the deal, he gave us a shot of whiskey to go with it. Not a bad was to make friends. Not only do Ken and Deb have sheep, they have goats, chickens, turkeys, strawberries, and an orchard worth of fruit. Thankfully, the smell of goat cheese has helped to cover up the our dirty cyclist smells. We've been having a good time playing in the hay. We looked at two more boats, a old wooden yawl, that needed too much work for even James and a 29' fiberglass boat. In another day or so, we'll head back to the mainland at Anacortes and ride on to Bellingham, the largest city we'll have visited since Seattle.

Cycling from Port Townsend to Anacortes

2011-06-07T00:11:00.000-05:00

We stayed for three nights with our Port Townsend couchsurfing host, Peatt. We spent a lot of it laying in her wonderfully comfy bed reading magazines, browsing the web, and eating free health food store samples. As Port Townsend is a city housing only 8,000 people, it only took us one day to see most all there is to see of downtown. We would have liked more time, however, to meet the guy who ran this garage-based bike shop with strange wooden sculptures.

Like every other town in the Northwest, there was at least one espresso bar per block. We also passed a gas station with not one but two espresso booths in the parking lot. It also had a lot of boats in its boat haven and even more traditional wooden boats there for the Classic Mariners' Regatta. We were told that we could probably find ourselves positions as crew, but we decided we weren't so interested in risking getting barked at by a possibly rich and image-minded skipper in a "serious" race. Instead, we just looked at the boats at the dock the day before the race. We also made a visit to the Port Townsend Ecovillage where we were given a tour. If only we could find an ecovillage with some waterfront, we'd love to spend some time digging in the dirt while living on a boat. We also saw a lot of interesting-looking eccentrics at the local Food Coop, which had a great selection of vegan goodies as well as cheap coffee and a scratch and dent discount veggie bin.

On Sunday, we took a ferry from Port Townsend to Coupeville on Whidbey Island, a 35 mile long island in Puget Sound. We got some really spectacular views of the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges as well as of the regatta from the departing ferry. In our longest day yet, we rode about 50 miles from Port Townsend to Anacortes. We stopped for lunch at some nameless beach with black sand, piles of driftwood, and snowy mountains high above. Watching kids wakeboard on the beach with snow-covered mountains in the background was truly surreal.

We pushed on to Deception Pass, where we crossed a thin little wrought iron bridge over the chasm separating Whidbey from the Western Shore of the Sound. After riding our bikes across as fast as we possibly could (there was no shoulder) we were able to pull off, walk back out the pedestrian portion of the bridge and peer over. The current of through the tiny little gap was obvious in the swirling and eddying of the black water and the whipping of the kelp at the rocks' edges. The maximum speed of the current through the gap is 9 kts. By comparison, Further's hull speed (the physical limit of her speed through water) was only about 6 kts. Obviously, tide tables are a must in Washington.

In Anacortes, we are staying two nights with Laura, her kids, friends, dog, and cat. She is a life coach and starting a "Center for Happiness," which we were helping to paint today. The Center plans to host yoga, dance, crafts, movie nights and anything else that makes folks happy. We will have to stop back and see them when they're open. We looked at a few boats here in Anacortes, but mostly we are here because it is the jumping off point for the San Juans.

Tomorrow, we plan to take the ferry to Orcas Island to look at a great beast of a boat and camp on Mt. Constitution. From there we plan to do more boat hunting, couchsurfing, and hopefully whale spotting, on the other two ferry accessible islands.

Seattle to Port Townsend

2011-06-02T14:56:00.000-05:00

On Monday, we got my $10 helmet from the Cascades Cycling Club, and James and I moved on to stay with our last Seattle couchsurfing host, Martin, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. As it was Memorial Day, Martin had the day off to spend some time showing us around. We did some slacklining in the park next door, visited Bruce Lee's grave, climbed a big tower, and went out for Thai food. We also sat and talked a lot about the economic and environmental pickle the country is in and how sailboats and permaculture farms might fit into things to come.

Tuesday morning, we rode downtown and caught the ferry across the Sound to Bremerton to pick up our Adventure Cycling Association route. While the east coast of Puget Sound is heavily developed, the west coast is quite countrified. Obviously, the traffic situation of the latter is more bicycle-friendly. Fresh off the ferry, there was already a marina for us to walk the docks at.

It was already the afternoon when we started riding North toward Port Townsend. It was too far of a distance to cover in a single day, so we rode 23 miles to Kitsap Memorial Park and got a hiker/biker site for the night ($6 each). Our campsite was located in a forest that could be described as "deep forest" from 3 feet in. The trees were all perfectly straight, towering pillars. Moss and ferns grew on everything. It was dark and wet. We had one neighbor in the hiker/biker sites, but we never saw more than the top of his tent. At night, he sat by his fire and serenaded us on the guitar. The understory was so thick, we couldn't even see the flames of the fire 20 feet away. We could only hear the popping of the logs and his singing. Maybe there were several people; we'll never know.

Wednesday, we woke to rain. Thankfully, the rain here has so far been of the light, fine type. We sucked it up, broke down our nice dry tent, and rode out into it. Riding down the shoulder of the highway in the rain, I was happy to have a bright yellow trailer, bright orange reflective vest, and a bright orange flag. At least if we got hit, no one could say we didn't do our best to be seen. Actually, though, I feel more comfortable riding with cars on long stretches of road than I do with cars in the city. I feel like drivers who have no intersections, signs, pedestrians, or other distractions to pay attention to are very likely to be staring out at the road ahead of them, with an eye ready to be caught by a bright orange stimulus. I feel more likely to be hit by someone making a hurried turn in the city where I'm lost in the visual noise. The rain also hasn't proved to be much of a problem yet. We ride in synthetic, quick drying bottoms and a rain jacket. We generate so much body heat while riding that it's not uncomfortable to be wet in 50-60 degree weather. Of course, we keep our extra clothes, tent, and bedding dry for when we stop. My Nomad has proved quite weather proof. I put down a sheet of plastic on the bottom to cover up a few little gaps at the corners, but the top cover doesn't admit any water. Just in case, I keep my clothes and sleeping bag in a garbage bag. James' trailer has some non-waterproof parts, but he keeps his must-stay-drys in a dry bag we took off the last boat. We plan to do much more riding in the rain and do not fear it.

The fabled temperate rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula is actually on the western side of the Olympic Mountains. We were surprised to learn this as the forest here on the eastern side seems as likely to be hiding Sasquatch and velociraptors as any we've seen. Many of the roads we're riding cut through thick, primordial forest that ought to be described as jungle. Even the shoulders of the road are covered in moss. If cars were to stop driving them for a few months, you'd never be able to find them again. The road is covered with big black slugs. Where there isn't coniferous jungle, there are austere rocky beaches with gray sand and black water. Crossing the bridge over the Hood Canal yesterday, what we thought was a log turned out to be a harbor seal, gray and black like everything else on the waterfront. It was the first seal I've seen up close in the wild. One of nature's most unbearably cute beings for sure. We're rooting hard for a whale, but haven't seen one yet.

We stopped to look at more boats in Port Hadlock and visited the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building. They showed us around their workshops, but didn't have any boats of liveaboard size for sale. They also showed us Felicity Ann, the 23 foot boat in which Ann Davison became the first woman to cross an ocean (the Atlantic) single-handed in 1952. I'm on the lookout for a copy of her book, My Ship is So Small.

Between Port Hadlock and Port Townsend, we found the house of our Port Townsend couchsurfing host, Peatt, who lives in an old church converted to a house. Along with Cynta's desert house in the Terlingua ghost town near Big Bend, it is one of our favorite houses we've couchsurfed in. Last night, we visited the local brewery, conveniently located adjacent to the boat yards. We only had time to walk about half of the docks in the marina before heading home. Port Townsend has a lot of boats and a lot of wooden boats specifically. We plan to stay here through the weekend to see an all wooden boat regatta. Then we'll move onto Anacortes where a ferry can be taken to the San Juan islands.

How to Gear Up for a Low Budget Cycling Tour

2011-05-30T00:55:00.000-05:00

James and I sold our bikes back in Austin so as not to lug them up and across the country. We rode across the country with just the clothes, tools, and backpacking gear we could carry in our packs. I also carried, my admittedly not very low budget Burley Nomad trailer, disassembled and jammed in my pack. That said, when we arrived in Seattle, we were obligated to come up with two touring rigs in the most economical way possible. Aside from SXSW, we haven't been doing much money-generating work this year and our house-van fiasco certainly isn't helping us meet our goals for retirement savings this year.

We turned to craigslist, the abundant source of all good things (and also the place we found each other, one gear-buying day long ago.) We had no intention of spending $1000+ dollars on actual “touring bikes.” Besides, many of the special features of touring bikes are designed for people using panneirs rather than trailers (ex~ longer chainstays, frames built for heavy loads). Our goal was to find two mountain bikes, preferably without power-robbing suspensions, and outfit them with slick street tires, fenders, and lights. I found a Trek mountain bike the first night, minted, judging from the neon graphics, in the late 80's or early 90's. But, it was well maintained, had new street tires, brake pads, chain, and no mechanical problems. I bought it for $120 with free delivery. The next morning I also bought a nice new Thermarest sleeping pad for $40 (rather than $70+ at REI). James didn't care much for the first bike he purchased. It was a hybrid and lacked what we would call a real “tractor” gear for pulling weight. In a feat of amazing James wheeling and dealing, he sold it for $100 more than he paid for it, sold it's pedals for an additional $50 and bought a $150 Raleigh. Net cost = $0. He also purchased an In-Step trailer designed for hauling kiddies for $50. I have a feeling it will probably prove to be just as functional as my $300 Nomad.

We took both bikes to The Bikery, a great bike coop on the East Side. They are similar to Austin's Yellow Bike in that they sell refurbished bikes, teach folks how to do repairs, and sell used parts. They also allow work trade. I got two fenders, a kickstand, a set of flat preventers, and a pair of moustache handlebars and the stand time to tune up my bike in exchange for finishing up one of the donated bikes. I can add dismantling and repacking hubs, changing pedals, and truing wheels to my list of mad bike skillz. James also did work trade for new pedals, fenders, and a pair of horns for his handlebars. Super score. We <3 The Bikery big time.

We did have to go to REI for a pair of front lights and a reflective vest for me. However, the vest was 20% off and the lights were 25% off and I had a $28 dividend. The last item on my list is a helmet, which is required for cyclist in Seattle and Kings County ($80 fine). Tomorrow there is supposedly a low-cost helmet sale with fittings at the Japanese Gardens, so that's where we'll head.

Come Tuesday or Wednesday we should be on our way. I'm shooting for a budget of $60 a week, the rate that will give me at least 8 weeks of travel. I was easily within it this week, not counting gear. I've also been keeping my eye out for odd jobs to stretch out our time on the road. I spent 3 hours a day for the last three days hawking baseball programs outside of the stadium. I wore a big apron and yelled, “Get cher programs, 3 bucks, 2 for 5, with a scorecard, Get cher gameday programs” a couple thousand times. I averaged $5, $6, and finally $7 an hour. The funny thing is that any job is fun as long as it's novel and you go back to your adventure whenever you want. Anyway, I made $45, which has almost bought me another week.

Live from Pioneer Square

2011-05-30T00:48:00.000-05:00

I'm writing live from Pioneer Square after 1 week in Seattle.

For the first part of last week, our base of operations was our first couchsurfing hosts' apartment in Ballard, a neighborhood just north of the canal. One of our hosts was a young accountant, the other just out of the armed forces and enjoying a little down time before starting school.

From Ballard, we were in a good position to investigate the waterfront scene. We visited Ballard Locks and its attendant gardens and walked the shoreline up to Shilshole Marina where we dock-walked as best we could with the finger piers locked up. We've seen sailboats everywhere and it seems there's a yacht broker and a chandlery on every block. James had a look at one old wooden schooner posted on craigslist, but decided he wasn't up for the punishment. We've got some looks from afar at the many houseboat neighborhoods, but all have large “No Trespassing, No Sightseeing, No Pictures” signs. It's too bad. Walking neighborhoods is one of our primary forms of cheap entertainment. We are free to walk the landlocked neighborhoods which are full of trees and commonly include fabulous terraced gardens to give form to the steep slopes. We also took a trip to Fishermans Wharf to look at a 41' center cockpit sloop. The sloop itself wasn't quite as interesting as the other vessels we saw there. We noted a few characteristic design features of Northwest boats that we liked, especially the woodwork on the bow of the work boats.

We had the chance to meet with the folks running the Salish Sea Trading Cooperative early one morning at a local coffee shop. They are a group of people interested in the Transition Town movement who are shuttling produce in a carbon-free fashion between farms on the Sound and CSA supporters in Seattle. Currently, the sailors involved are mostly liveaboards who are making their rounds for veggies, t-shirts, and good vibes, but we like the idea of resurrecting shipping via ship and wish them the best of luck and profits.

We also had the chance to visit a few places of nautical note on Lake Union, between Ballard and Downtown Seattle. We visited the Center for Wooden Boats, which has everything from tiny steam boats to native dugout canoes to wooden sailboats that actually have all their varnish. They offer classes, sailing lessons, and free sailing on classic boats every Sunday, though we've been too busy to attend. We happened upon FarmBoat, a floating farmers market on the steamboat, Virginia V. In our opinion, the best view of downtown, the Space Needle, and Lake Union can be had from her deck. We stood for a good while watching seaplanes take off and land from the lake's surface.

Besides running all around town looking at boats, we've been running around town on bike business. Both James and I have found bikes and are almost ready to roll. We are down one helmet which we hope to secure in the next day. The process of outfitting for our trip will be posted separately. We plan to leave within the next couple days. If we stay any longer, I'd say we're in serious danger of just moving to Seattle and never seeing any more of the Pacific Northwest.

To save money, we've also decided not to begin in Vancouver (which would require us to dismantle and package some of our gear and pay $80 worth of train fare). Instead, we plan to take the ferry across the sound to Bremerton, which is on our Adventure Cycling Association map route and ride North to Port Townsend, Anacortes, the San Juans, Bellingham, and then perhaps to Vancouver. At that point, we'll turn south again and ride back by a different route, perhaps down the Pacific side of the Olympic Peninsula. Wish us luck and enough time to relax soon.

Binghamton, NY to Seattle, WA

2011-05-23T19:39:00.000-05:00

James and I have been on trains for the past three days...and we smell like it.

Our time in Binghamton finally ran out, and I left my parents to resume their normal lives. Thanks to Dad for making some time quiet enough for conversation, to Shannon for spending a whole weekend with our dorky selves, and to Mom for all the vegan nachos and letting me sleep in her bed at 27. My friend, Nate, drove us to the train station and bestowed upon us the greatest gifts one could give two people awaiting a three day confinement: some movies for my computer and a copy of the game, Bananagrams.

live, impromptu entertainment in the sightseer car
The Syracuse train station was where Mom picked me up 5 years ago after my first trip across the country and back. I had spent a month after college graduation working my way over to San Francisco and back. This time, I had a traveling partner and Syracuse was our starting point. We boarded the Lakeshore Limited and rode overnight to Chicago.

Big Sky country
We focused our mental energies on trying to make the train as late as possible so that we would miss our connection and be given free dinner and a hotel room in the Windy City. Sadly, we arrived only an hour late. We had time to walk to the lake shore and to Millenium Park to visitthe big silver bean. In another couple hours, we were boarding the famous Empire Builder, bound for Seattle.

It's true that $197 tickets across the country sounded reasonable. It's also true that I'm a neurotic on a mission to ride all the passenger rail routes in the country. Mostly, though, we were excited to ride the train to Seattle because the Empire Builder is the subject of one of our favorite folk songs by Mason Jennings. We have sung it at the piano and over the guitar in a great many places in this country. Doing something because it's in a song you've whistled for many years is a good reason for doing anything.

The Empire Builder did have some spectacular moments. We were particularly caught off guard by the fabulous sight of the Mississippi running between small mountains near Winona, Wisconsin. It made me think maybe we would have been better off building another kayak and spending the summer going down the Big River.

The vast, wet emptiness of North Dakota and Eastern Montana was also strangely pleasing. The land was flat and there wasn't a tree or crop in sight. The world was dead and yellow with a big grey sky. But we saw ducks upon ducks and red wing black birds upon red wing black birds at every cold collection of water. I saw two male pheasants, coyotes, and white-butted prong horn antelope.

un-freaking believable
As the sun began to set, the Rockies rose abruptly out of the flatland. We climbed into them as a storm hit and were impressed by the cold, creepy, darkness of the wet, mountains, trees and snow. We saw a wet elk by the tracks' edge postholing through one of the remaining drifts. It was an evil-looking but impressive place in that weather. I'd like to get off at the stop in Glacier National Park someday.

Montana Rockies
We woke up in Apple Country the next morning. Eastern Washington was full of sun, orchards, and green and white rivers. By mid-morning, though, we were back in wet, snowy mountains, this time the Cascades. Our last hour was spent tracing the curve of Puget Sound. The shores were pebbly and covered in driftwood and dog walkers. It took us less than 10 minutes to see a seal and a wooden sailboat underway. We are excited.

dark fairy tale forest slips by in the Cascades
Couchsurfing hosts have extended us hospitality here through the week. We'll stay long enough to see the sights, walk some docks, and find the bicycles and other gear we'll need for our trip. Blog updates, will hopefully be frequent.

Photos of a wooden kayak (90% complete)

2011-05-16T10:51:00.008-05:00

I started building this sea kayak in my father's workshop over the winter of 2006. After helping work on his boat a few times, he offered me the leftovers from his completed project and so I started on my own.

For years, I worked on it intermittently, often stopping and putting the boat in storage for long periods of time until the next opportunity came to work on it. I brought it with me when I moved to Maryland, but larger boat projects kept me too busy to do much with it. After selling my sailboat in Florida, I wanted to continue to tie up my loose ends, so I took up my friend Paul's invitation to stay with him in Maryland and resolved to spend a week working to complete it.

This kind of boat construction is called "strip-planking." It involves fitting many small strips of wood over a form to create the hull shape. The strips are edge glued to each other and staples secure them to the form until the glue dries. After removing the staples, the hull and deck can be sanded and faired to a fine, smooth shape.

In this design, the hull and deck of the boat are fabricated separately, utilizing fiber-glass cloth and epoxy for strength.

Once fiber-glassed, the forms can be removed and the two halves are joined together along the seam at the sheer line.

Thanks to Paul's help, I was able to get it all together, though there are many details still left undone. The last jobs will involve installing storage hatches, watertight bulkheads, a seat, cockpit coaming, and deck hardware. For now, she will just have to wait a little longer...

Back on the Land: Marathon to Upstate NY

2011-05-16T10:38:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long intermission. We have a bit to report.

Marathon Vikings wet their whistles at the Dockside Bar
I left James in Marathon to complete the sale of Further. The buyers, unsure of their ability to handle the boat straightaway, arranged to have James help deliver her to Fort Meyers, where they had family and cheap slip waiting for her. While James waited for their arrival and made the delivery, I took a craiglist rideshare from Miami straight to my Grandma's door in Wilmington, DE. We spent a week eating vegan ice cream, doing a few odd jobs in the yard, and getting riled up while watching lots of late night news. I got a chance to see just about all of the Wilmington crowd before taking the bus to Binghamton, NY to see my parents.

Paul briefs us on the pinecones we'll see in the Northwest
During the week I was at my Grandma's, James left Further and rode Greyhound up to St. Michaels, MD to see his grandparents, our old homeport, and our friend, Paul. When I first met James, he had a home-built strip-planked kayak ready for fiberglass his garage. It rode to St. Michaels on top of the car when James left to work at the Maritime Museum. It spent the next 2-3 years in his grandparents' boathouse with a roll of glass and two squirt cans of West System patiently waiting for some alone time with James. After a long wait, it finally got some love. James and Paul carted it over to Paul's house where James was able to glass her. I'll leave him to brag about his boat in another post, but suffice it to say he spent a week and a half with Paul, drinking beer, eating chicken, talking wooden boats, and probably other things his teetotaling vegan girlfriend can't appreciate properly.

a forest floor carpeted in swamp marigolds
Meanwhile in Binghamton, I visited with my Mom, Dad and those few friends of mine who haven't yet left one of the five most depressing cities in the nation. With Marathon beaches hot in my mind, I was painfully reminded that upstate New York doesn't even have leaves on the trees in early May. Also it rains. Every day. Despite 22 years of living in the Northeast, 5 years in Texas somehow wiped clean all my painful, climate-related memories. Bare branches in May? Snow in October? Nothing but bad dreams. However, the leaves have come in the last week, along with a lot of flowers.

vegan carrot cake
I celebrated my 27th birthday and plan to spend my year outliving some of my favorite rock stars. Mom and I took a day trip to Cortland to hike up to some falls. My friend Nate and I played some serious Scrabble. I also spent some time working on my Mom's and her partner's old property to fix it up for prospective buyers.

falls near Cortland, NY

Mom's shitake mushroom log bears fruit
All together James and I spent almost three weeks apart while he delivered the boat and visited in St. Michaels and I visited in Wilmington and Binghamton. This is possibly the longest we have ever been apart in the last 3 years. We were reunited last week when I rented a car a drove down to Maryland to scoop him up and save him a long layover in the NYC bus station in the wee hours of the morning.

American gothic or Texas Chainsaw Massacre?
We spent the last week in Binghamton painting and gardening at Mom's old house. It's a shame to see her big rock gardens go. She's spent along time ordering alpine plants and carefully stealing little bits of moss and cuttings from established gardens.

Lower Falls, Letchworth State Park

This weekend we rented another car and went out to Letchworth State Park near Rochester. My little sister, Shannon, is graduating this year. Since we're going to miss the festivities, we decided to take a trip together instead. I had originally thought of going to climb Mt. Marcy, New York's highest peak. When the woman I spoke to at the Adirondacks information center encouraged us to "bring our snowshoes" because there was still 3 feet of snow about 3000 ft of elevation, I decided we'd have to pick a more southerly attraction.

Middle Falls, Letchworth State Park

I rented us a cabin to save us from the misery of the cold, wet weather. It was the most luxurious camping James and I will ever probably experience. We had one rain free day to explore the really really spectacular gorge and waterfalls. The rain everyone had been cursing was spurting out of every pore in the mountains and rushing down to become part of the uberawesome, high-volume, roaring chocolate milk river flinging itself everywhere in down in the gorge. The pictures will explain better than I can.

playing cards

We spent our two nights watching cartoons on the laptop and getting James to teach us every card game in his repertoire. As the state park regulations clearly prohibited gambling (and fortune telling), we played for crackers, raisins, and almonds. After a long night of Texas Hold'em and 5 card draw, Shannon finally cleaned us out. Luckily, James and I only had to go to the cupboard to refill our coffers. Overall, we were impressed by this little-known park. In my opinion, it's a much better destination than Niagra Falls. If only they could do something about those spiders...

We have 4 more days in New York. This Friday, we'll ride to Syracuse, get on the train, and be in Chicago by morning. Saturday afternoon, we'll board the Empire Builder and start the two day trip to Seattle that will take us through the Northern Rockies and Glacier National Park. In the Northwest, we'll look to craigslist for a couple of bicycles, head up to Vancouver, and start riding the route on our cycling maps south. We'll be stopping for National Parks, the Rainbow Gathering perhaps, cities with lots of boats and anywhere else that strikes our fancy. The NW is the one section of the country neither James nor I has been to so it's bound to be exciting wherever we go. If you are or know salty folks in the Northwest, we'd love to hear about the boating scene. Our next post will likely be from 2,800 miles away. That's how we roll.

Bonus Post

2011-04-12T16:32:00.000-05:00

We've spent the last couple days selling off superfluous items on the the boat and trying to figure out just how light we can make our loads. So far James and his tools refuse to be parted, so we'll have to figure out a non-van arrangement that can still allow us to bring a 70lb bag of metal. Mostly, this post is to show that we have had one quintessential Keys experience even if we sell our boat. While I was filling up our water jugs today, I saw this chubby behemoth on its back under the dock slurping up the fresh water as it dripped through the slats.

I yelled for James to come quick, which was pretty unnecessary. This was the fattest, slowest animal either of us had ever seen. It floated around next to our boat for the next 20 minutes rolling around like a slow, happy log.

The manatee also left us some amazingly human-like turds, leaving us paranoid that we would be slapped with a ticket for illegal discharge of waste. How many times do you think the Coast Guard has heard the "manatee defense?"

I also thought I'd add this sharpie drawing that I found in the back of the Marathon library. In the spirit of our travels, I think.

RIP Vanagon: A Tale of Woe

2011-04-10T14:28:00.000-05:00

We are back in the Keys. Finally. This week the gods have not so subtly suggested that we stick to wind and human-powered machines. Behold, a move worse than all the rest:

We stayed in Austin for 2 weeks after SXSW getting the vanagon into traveling shape. We learned a lot about working on cars. This is the only positive thing I have to say about the last two weeks. We changed the oil, had all new tires put on, replaced the clutch slave and master cylinders, replaced the tie rods and tie rod ends, aligned the wheels, cleaned the interior, and made velcro-mounted reflective window covers. All in the dirt driveway of the Dixie Ranch with borrowed tools (thanks Chad), a VW service manual, and the internet. My standard driving skills progressed to the point that I drove us around some parking lots and across Edna. We found two laid back kids our age, Ben and Ben, who agreed to split gas for a ride to Florida.

looks like it could work, no?
By this time we had learned that the van:

a. leaked brake fluid from the shared clutch/brake hydraulic system. Between us and the previous owner, all of the brake and clutch cylinders were replaced to no avail. Wiggling all over under the dash and the chassis with a mirror and a flashlight, I couldn't find any leaks. Thankfully, the leak was slow and the van would shift and brake fine as long as we kept the reservoir topped off.

b. leaked oil from the rear main seal. This would only happen after the van was driven on the highway for some time and so James' never noticed it during his test drive. Replacing the $16 seal would require pulling the engine or transmission, something we were not equipped to do. Strangely, despite the size of the puddles we were leaving, the dipstick never showed a drop in oil level. Gearbox oil perhaps? We will never know.

c. spewed gasoline everywhere if the tank was topped off. This was the most exciting discovery. In preparation for our long trip, we got our first full tank of gas and produced a hydrocarbon waterfall that sent me running for cover. I later learned that some part of the vapor relief system was probably long gone.
So we started our trip with some trepidation. When our rideshares arrived, we asked them if they were sure they were ready for adventure as there was still time to take reliable old Greyhound. They said they were, though this disclaimer really didn't make me feel any better when we stranded them in east Texas.

Away we went to Edna, TX where we loaded the van with all of the things James wanted to move to the boat (a wind vane, port-o-potty, tools, an outboard, etc.) No drama getting down except for keeping an eye on the fluids.

Our first trouble began late that night when we ran into traffic on I-10 by Beaumont, TX. As soon as traffic halted, the temperature gauge slowly started to rise. We kept our eye on it, but before it every reached the critical level or illuminated the indicator light, we were spraying hot antifreeze all over the place. We turned off the engine. Unfortunately, for us, overheated in the far left lane, traffic started to pick up the second we were disabled. We spent some highly stressful minutes with tractor trailers up our ass while we waited to be able to start the van again. We drove her slowly to a parking lot to let her cool completely and verified that there was still plenty of coolant and oil. She started and ran without complaint, but had started producing occasional large clouds of white smoke.

We called upon the iphone-bearing members of our group to plot us a course across the Sabine that didn't involve I-10. The only other bride was quite a ways south, but we had no choice. We headed down to Port Arthur and split a hotel room for the night.

Everyone felt much more able to deal with the possibilities of further engine trouble after a full night's sleep. The van started up fine and we headed toward Bridge City. But before I could finish my terrible coffee and about the time we were remarking on how much smoke the van was now putting out, we heard a very unsettling noise from the front end. We pulled over immediately, and I did a walk around. The hub on the driver's side wheel was clearly smoking. I had a good idea what that meant. We popped off the hub cover with a screwdriver and lots of little bits of melty, ground up wheel bearings feel out onto the road. We had read up on wheel bearings before leaving as we had considered that they might have been bad and we were already working on the tie rods. While we had the front end jacked up, we checked the wheels for any wobbles and wiggles or funny noises while turning. Everything seemed peachy.

wheelbearings = toast
As our wheel was being held on by the brake pads alone, we rolled down the shoulder at a speed we felt comfortable crashing at. Thankfully, there was a tire joint just up the road. The friendly folks there confirmed that not only were our bearings a series of tiny, jagged, melted bits, but that some of said bits had welded themselves to the spindle and chewed all the threads off the end. Repair would necessitate finding the wheel bearings and spindle from a 1984 vanagon and having them shipped to Bridge City. At this point, we bid our rideshares adieu. The took it very well and set off hitching together. I'm certain they beat us to Florida.

McDonalds: where no one makes enough money to throw you out for being on the Internet all day
James and I spent the next 3 days living in the parking lot of the Bridge City Walmart weighing our options. We could wait several days, spend $400 on having the parts shipped and the work done, and pray that none of our other looming mechanical problems did us in. The white smoke was the most disturbing as it suggested that the engine was burning coolant due to a cracked head or blown head gasket. Both repairs we were not qualified to make. Our other option was to cut our losses and sell or scrap the van. This was complicated by the fact that we hadn't even received the title in the mail yet, and even a salvage yard won't take an untitled vehicle unless you cut it into a couple pieces first.

sold for the price of her tires
Thankfully, we had a nice bed and privacy and all of the entertainment afforded by two laptops and McDonalds internet. Actually, I'm "home" now, and I'm still just at McDonald's on the internet. We had some other VW enthusiasts show up in a 1967 beetle and try to help us or cheer us up. Eventually, we found a fellow with a truck, trailer, and winch who was willing to give us $400 for the van with a promise of a title-to-come. Though we lost a fabulous amount of money on the van (fabulous by our standards), it did make me feel better to see it hauled off by someone who had plenty of time and tools to fix it rather than to see it crushed.

Patrick gets a vanagon, Rachel and James kick themselves
We took that money and picked up the rental car we probably should have gotten all along. She was quiet, she was clean, she had 28,000 miles on her, and it was a huge relief. We even got an e-mail from a kid in Houston who wanted to pay us $100 to split the ride. He had been on a bicycle tour and was headed home. As he sounded like quite hippyish on the phone, I joked to James that he better not be planning on paying us in crystals. We both laughed our asses off when we pulled in to pick him up. He was sitting at the Port Arthur HEB admiring a whole row of crystals and stones laid out in front of him. The whole thing fell through anyway when I asked him to confirm that his bags weren't full of crystal meth or anything. He replied, "Oh no, nothing like that. I've just got 10 grams of vacuum-sealed kind bud to bless the homies back in New York." I unloaded all of his stuff and left him there. Our luck had been too bad that week risk getting pulled over in some deep South state with a crystal-covered, bandanna-wearing, drug-carrying hippy kid. No sir, we are suspicious enough already. We gave rides to a couple of polite, well-behaved hitch hikers later in the trip, but mostly we drove non-stop, just the two of us.

working on our karma giving this fellow a lift
So here we are, back where we started. The boat is just as we've left her. We're working on selling all our excess possessions and then Further, herself. It pains us to do so. It's very tempting just to hop right back on and go sailing, but we need to set ourselves up in a place where we can live, work, and have a boat simultaneously. On Rocinante and Further, we have been over most of the Gulf and East Coast and are yet to find any coastal cities we'd like to call our home base. The few we are fond of (New Orleans for example), also hold of threat of being clobbered by a hurricane every summer and fall. So as it stands, we are planning to do a tour of the Pacific Northwest this summer to check out the sailing community, the towns, the boats, etc. It's the one part of the country neither James or I has ever been, but we've heard great things. If anyone has any suggestions on boat-friendly communities in Oregon or Washington, we'd love to hear them. We will keep in touch.

SXSW and a New Mode of Travel

2011-03-28T09:46:00.012-05:00

hard at work
SXSW has ended and we're planning our return to Further in the Florida Keys. I sold my beloved bicycle of 4 years. Our Austin possessions are quite liquidated, and we're headed home.

temporary halfpipe set up at Red's Scoot Inn
It was a good year for SXSW and the pedicabbers working it. I was partial to the first portion of the festival which is dedicated to technology and networking. My fares during this portion were mostly well-heeled, well-behaved business men who were relatively sober and eager to show their new contacts how well their business was doing by tipping well. The music portion was attended by a lot more wasted people my age who were angry enough at having bought a $250 wrist band and certainly didn't want to pay $10 a person for rides after that. I steered clear of these folks as much as possible. Thankfully, SXSW conveniently marks all those with no real sense of the value of money by providing big dangling special access neck badges for oh, $750 to $1000+ (platinum). Some of these people were still 20, drunk, and/or obnoxious, but they usually tipped something appropriate to my 12-15 hour workday. Ah, SXSW, too bad it only comes but once a year.

hiding from the midday sun with James

the housebus
We also crossed paths with Shawn and Nick, a couple we first met when we hitched to Burlington, VT while hiking the Long Trail. They were previously associated with the Floating Neutrinos and lived in a floating pink castle raft. By the time we met them, they had made the switch to a DIY housebus. We ate dinner onboard by Lake Champlain and had good talk of boats, dumpsters, and travels. We were pleased to see the bus appear here in Austin and hope to run into them again along the road.

waiting in a queue
We also bought a 1984 VW vanagon to get us (and a couple hundred pounds of boat equipment) back to Florida. She cost us all of $500, and we are accepting bets on whether she'll make it. However, being born in the same year, I have extra faith in her. She has no horn, trashed interior, and no keys to the door locks, but she does have a pretty great two-tone paint job and came with a futon in the back. I cleaned the interior and changed the oil today, and James replaced the slave cylinder. With some new tires and tie rod ends, we'll have a real running, shifting, steerable van. Hopefully, somewhere between here and FL, I will learn to drive stick.

our beast
It's hard to say exactly what we'll do after returning to FL (shocking, no?). We're thinking of selling the at some point this summer and moving to the Pacific Northwest. We haven't decided whether we will take her over to the Bahamas before putting her on the market nor do we know how fast she'll sell. But we'll keep you all updated.

Volunteering on the Peacemaker and Our Austin Homecoming

2011-02-24T16:41:00.012-06:00

We spent 3 nights camping with the 12 Tribes at Historic Blakely State Park just outside Mobile. We were again treated to great food, drank our fill of yerba mate, and got to see what has to be one of the largest Travelifts around.

Most of the hard work the first day was done by the Peacemaker's crew (who got their 150' vessel into the slip on the second try), and by the yard crew. We spent the afternoon back at the park waiting for the boat to be properly blocked. It never hurts to give the yardworkers their space to do a good job when you plan on walking around under a 44 ton ship.

The second day we were able to don hardhats and be of some assistance scraping barnacles, grinding barnacles off the twin props, and cleaning the bronzework with acid to remove the verdigris and restore its warm color. More skilled workers set to the welding work and plans for a new door for the hinged transom.

The Peacemaker had suffered a lot of galvanic corosion below the waterline as her sacrificial zincs were long gone.

I'm not sure how much we we're really able to repay the hospitality we experienced in Pensacola as we were shown just as much or more this time, but we enjoyed seeing everyone again and seeing such a huge ship get hauled out.

We made record time getting back to Austin, though we cheated a bit on the hitchhiking. We got one short ride to a truck stop from a preacher who gave us $5 though we tried to explain to him that we're not broke, just traveling. After coffee and french fries at the truck stop restaurant, James spotted an empty bus (a Mexican line) with its headquarters listed as "Laredo, TX." He sweet talked us two seats and we rode in style as the only passengers all the way back to Houston. The two drivers even played us the cheesy B-movies.

In Houston, we had the good luck to rendevous with James' dad who was flying back from some rugby tournaments. We rode with him all the way back to Edna where we were reunited with our bicycles. We spent the week in Edna before riding back to Austin.

Since we only plan to be here for a month or two, we followed a lead on an East Austin house that would let us camp in the backyard. We share the backyard with a shed-dweller, a VW bus-dweller, and two chickens.

Key West to Marathon

2011-02-04T18:26:00.013-06:00

typical Conch lawn
We haven't been posting much in the past weeks for two reasons. The first is that we finally arrived in tropical paradise and have been moving very slowly. The second is that James (and his camera full of pictures) went into the water a few weeks ago while wrestling the dinghy. We apologize in advance for the lack of pictures. We've got our second camera up and running, so the problem won't plague us permanently.

We spent a full week anchored out off Key West. The town was full of colorful houses with great gardens and jungley backyards. We spent a lot of our time just walking the streets. The streets were populated mostly by tourists (in various states of drunkeness, feral chickens, strange bicycles, and little dogs being conveyed by strange bicycles.

Oh that loveable Hemmingway!
We made some tourist stops. We walked to the buoy marking the Southernmost point of the US and down to Hemmingway's house. We swam and did yoga at the public beach. We drank BOGO margaritas at a bar with an Elvis impersonator.

A gem from the Key West dinghy dock
We enjoyed the boat culture. We walked the docks to check out the cruise ship and fabulously expensive racing yachts. James entered a "Knot and Shot" contest being held in honor of race week. Contestants competed for the best time required to drink a shot, tie a bowline, lasso a piling, and drink a beer. He caught the piling on the first shot but gracefully bowed out of furher rounds. He was rewarded with a free T-shirt and the ability to walk back to the dinghy in a straight line. As the trip between the boat to the only dinghy dock in town was long and full of traffic, we broke down and put the motor on the dink. Despite fears of being caught without a properly registered dinghy (required only on a motorized dinghy), we have discovered the joys of blowing across the water and flying over wakes at speeds that Further could never dream of.

zoom zoom
The only downsides were the prices in Old Town, the cost of tying up the dinghy, and the overtaxed, grumpy librarians.

pedicab?
We also tapped into the local couchsurfing culture. A local couchsurfer led us to Key West's delicious veg restaurant, The Cafe. A few days later, she and her 3 surfers joined us for an afternoon sail. It was shortlived as the enormous cruise ship was shadowing us from what little wind was blowing. After a half and hour of slowly crawling down the western edge of the island, we heard a rumble of distant thunder and decided to play it safe by dropping the anchor. As soon as we had, we were driven down below by rain. While snacking and talking at our tiny table, the boat suddenly lurched over on her side. James and I scrambled through the companionway. James reached it just in time to see the waterspout that had just run us down. Terrified jet skiers followed. James had the glasses blown off his face (and into the drink), but there were no other casualties. We were definitely happy to have had the sails down.

After a week of dinghying into Key West, we moved up to Marathon, at approximately the middle of the Keys. We had one day of slow sailing and motoring with great views of the yacht races, one night of being eaten by tiny bugs at some godforasaken gunkhole, and a second day of good sailing, reefed in an arriving front.

Bootkey Harbor
Marathon has one of the best harbors in the Keys, totally enclosed except for a few skinny channels leading in and out. As a consequence, it is totally full of sailboats. Most of the real estate is taken up by the cities mooring field, with some room to anchor at the edges. With our shoal draft, we were able to sneak up to the front, although we spent the lowest tides aground. For the painful price of $13/day one can tie up a dinghy at the admittedly nice City Marina, take a shower, use the wifi, and participate in the social activities (yoga, wine and cheese parties, etc.) There's even something of an interactive morning show hosted on the VHF radio every morning at 9. Unfortunately for small boat sailors, boats without holding tanks are subject to fines, hassling, and must promise to leave after 7 days. Port-o-potties, backpacker bags, and going on shore are not acceptable. Despite this, we scouted out our own dinghy dockage and kept under the radar for our 2 weeks there.

sailboats everywhere
We met some other folks on boats less than 30'. We had dinner two nights with Maikel, once on Further and once on his '63 Pearson Ariel. He had traveled down from Brooklyn, sharpening and making knives along the way. We had some great conversation and learned a bit about sprouting and making kimchi on a boat. We'd be happy to run into him again. We also met two kids our age from Portland, OR. They had just purchased Ginger, a steel hulled junk sold in a hurry by her deported owner. They plan to sail to the Bahamas as well. Rafted up to them was Nate, who come down from Arkansas on the river system with his little dog.

tiniest liveaboard?
Other than the harbor, Marathon is mostly strip mall with a few exceptions. They have an excellent health food store/book store/internet cafe/vegan cafe. We spent untold amount of money these past weeks on sipping smoothies, and eating fake meatball sandwiches. They also have a nice public beach. We spent our last day in Marathon flinging ourselves wildly around the tops of some giant mountains of recently delivered sand. I have been scratching sand out of the roots of my hair ever since. I also spent hours in deep concentration making a sand sea monster which I broke the face off of at the last minute. Oh well. Good times.

stay safe, Further
James found a cheap place to keep the boat at a private dock in one of the canals while we go back to Austin to work the music festival, SXSW.

The trip here has provided two momentous bits of hitch hiking fun. We were finally picked up by someone in a RV. They pass us constantly, full of room, and with wistful model names like "hitchhiker," but as of yet, we had never been picked up. Buzz finally made the RVer-hitch hiker connection by giving us a ride from some unknown biker pit stop to Stuart. I also got to ride in my first tractor trailer. Don gave us a ride from Stuart all the way to Jacksonville and bought us both lunch despite our protests. We almost lost our voices trying to yell over the engine, but it was fun bouncing down the highway in a big truck anyways.

beasts of burden again
Here is currently Mobile, AL, where we plan on offering our volunteer hours to the 12 Tribes' ship which is hauling out tomorrow. There are no vegan restaurants and the drop in temperature has been considerable, but we're making the best. We'll be heading back to Austin soon if we can resist the lure of Mardi Gras.

From St. Petersburg to Key West

2011-01-14T14:10:00.021-06:00

From the sunny Florida Keys, we greet you!
As Rachel has exclaimed several times, " We're Alive!"

After leaving leaving Tarpon Springs, we made a brief stopover near St. Petersburg. We were able to rendezvous with some old family friends and Caribbean veterans, Bill and Sheila Nagley, who graciously received us and sent us on our way more informed, smelling fresher, and feeling better.

From there, we headed down across the mouth of Tampa Bay to the small beach town of Bradenton, where we stopped on a tip from our friends Charlie and Laura from Magnolia Beach, Tx, who just spent the better part of a year making a similar cruise to ours. Bradenton Beach turned out to be everything we had hoped, and more. Free facilities for travelers to use, free transportation to and from grocery stores, and a nice, well protected anchorage were all much appreciated by Rachel and I. We took the opportunity to reprovision the boat and plan our next jump. We also decided to try something new.

Bradenton Beach anchorage.

After a great deal of thought, we put out the call for crew on the website for travelers, CouchSurfing. Although we didn't really know what to expect, we we're amazed and delighted when the very next day, we recieved a reply from a girl who we had met back in New Orleans. She was less than 100 miles away, visiting family, but also looking for someone to go on a sailing adventure with. A few phone calls later, Jen had decided to join us on our next leg, and we two became three. Even though the boat was only designed with two people in mind, I made myself a cozy berth out of the floor and we all spent the first night together as a large front blew through.

Room enough for three.

The very next morning, as soon as the rain had stopped, we motored out of the nearest inlet and pointed our bow due south toward our distant goal, the Dry Tortugas, 175 miles south. It was to be our longest passage yet and took us farther offshore than we had been before. Everything went as well as we could hope, and the north wind carried us far those two days. Having a third person to help stand watch through the night made things considerably easier on Rachel and I and we especially enjoyed having someone else aboard to share the experience with.

We took turns steering, telling stories, and I even caught my first fish of the year. (Anyone know what kind of fish this is?)

Kingfish?

The sun and wind left us just as we were arriving at Garden Key and we made a scary entrance run through reefs and shoals with the aid of our GPS. We threw out our anchor and were greeted by many new sights the next morning.

One was of the gigantic Ft. Jefferson, a 19th century, brick and mortar, hexagonal fort that dominated Garden Key. Originally a strategic defensive point for shipping, it became among other things, a civil war prison, national monument, and now a tourist destination and landing point for Cuban refugees.

A well-made Cuban "Chug". The less well made one sank and its passengers were forced to swim for it. Luckily, they were picked up by a nearby vessel and were all saved.

On display in the park were several homemade "Chugs", homemade craft used to make the crossing from Cuba. Although the materials used weren't exactly standard (one was a mixture of sheet metal, fiberglass, wood, and masonry cement to fill the gaps), they were ingeniously made.

Every day, a ferry from the mainland would arrive and tourists would spill out into the park for a few hours, snapping photos, picnicking and snorkeling before returning in the afternoon.

We spent our hours swimming, wandering around the massive fort, and even managed a day sail to nearby Loggerhead key to examine the sea-turtle research station and lighthouse.

I felt like I could have stayed in this strange, remote place for another month, but alas, our food and water would not last forever and so we took the opportunity of calm weather to head east and make for Key West.

After a solid day of motoring in calm seas and another day spent hunkered down on the boat listening to the wind howl, we were finally close enough to Key West to blow up the dingy and go ashore. Our first night back in civilization, we celebrated by going out to a Cuban restaurant with a traveling friend of Jen's. Rather than leave the girls at the mercy of resort hotel prices, we invited them back to the boat to spend the night with us. It took some creativity, but we managed to completely fill up the boat and fit a fourth person in by adding a hammock to the sleeping arrangements. So far, the record for the most women crammed into a sailboat with me at one time is three.

This morning, we said goodbye to Jen and her friend, and now we are two again. We'll miss you Jen. You were great crew!

It's "Race Week" here, and Key West is all a-bustle with competitive sailing aficionados and sleek, fancy racing boats. We'll be staying away from Duval St. and just trying to relax as we can. Away from the crowds, though, it's still just Key West, feral chickens and all.

Wish you were here....

Rachel Notes:We saw a big old sea turtle out in the middle of nowhere ocean on the way to the Dry Tortugas. At 65 miles offshore, you can't even get radio stations. We went snorkeling, saw a barracuda and goliath grouper bigger than me. Dr. Samuel Mudd was kept prisoner in the Dry Tortugas until he was finally pardoned (too dark for a picture, Gramma).

2011-01-01T18:18:00.003-06:00

Happy New Year!

Sponge-O-Rama: Apalachicola to Tarpon Springs

2010-12-31T17:07:00.013-06:00

James and I were given quite a warm welcome from the town of Apalachicola. We had quite a few visitors come to look at our boat and chat us up. We also meet a couple of buddy boaters (one of which gave us a whole chicken in a can for X-mas) and a local fisherman who had also owned a little twin-keeled sailboat. We spent the day before Christmas sitting in the nice little library updating the blog and keeping warm. When the library closed up that afternoon, Diana, one of the librarians, offered us to give us a lift back to the boat.

The lift back to the boat turned into a lift to the Family Dollar which turned into an invitation to spend Christmas Eve at her house. We packed up our things and eagerly accepted. We got a chance to take showers, do laundry, and have company for Christmas. Diana, boat-tramp saint that she is, was also hosting Kevin, another cold boater who had been canoeing from Alabama down the west coast of Florida. The four of us stayed up late eating junk food, drinking hot chocolate and wine and generally making merry.

Christmas morning, we made a tofu scramble breakfast and returned to the boat. Poor James spent most of Christmas motoring us in the rain up to East Pass near Carabel, FL so that we could be in a good position to hop outside to Cedar Key when the next front passed. We anchored out that night and all of the next day. We woke up early with the intent of heading south, but as soon as we heard "gusts of 30-40 kts" and "10-12 ft waves" we laid back down and broke out our books.

By the following morning, the North wind had moderated enough that we were able to head out into the cold cold. This passage was shorter than the last (about 90 nm), but would take us farther offshore (about 30nm). It would take us farther from land than the trip from Florida to the Bahamas would. Again, the wind was fresh, but we were able to run or reach with the waves behind us.

30 miles offshore, no light from the shore reached us. I saw more stars than I have ever seen in my life, except perhaps camping in the prairie in South Dakota which was also something of an ocean. The sky was so cluttered with them, the constellations were all but obscured.

At around one am, I was steering as James tried to sleep below. As I was scanning the black horizon for signs of anything, I suddenly saw a red light to the east. I first interpreted it as the port light of a ship. The it grew and spread out incredibly rapidly. It looked like an orange spotlight on some object that was approaching us with incredible speed. I started yelling down to James who came up fumbling for his glasses. Both of us got a superhuman dose of adrenalin before we realized it was the half moon rising. On the water, the rising and setting of the sun and moon are incredibly swift. It is the most scared of the moon I'm sure I will ever been in my life.

We arrived safely in Cedar Key after around 24 hours of sailing. As soon as we stepped ashore, some friendly boater picked us up and gave us a ride to the police department where he helped us talk the police chief into letting us tie up for free for 24 hours. He then took us to his place which consisted of a long dock with a workshop and a houseboat tied up alongside. We were pretty impressed by his homestead.

James Gramps picked us up that afternoon and drove us back to his house in Reddick, FL, where we were once again given access to the luxuries of heat, laundry, and showers. We were treated to a great dinner in Gainesville that night and an excellent lunch the next day. We spent the night listening to some favorite old radio shows. Alas, we could only stay one day.

The next evening, we cast off our lines and motored south to anchor out. For the last 2 or three days, we've had warm (finally!) weather and light winds out of the southeast. We've been slowly sailing or motoring down the coast across a glassy, shallow ocean. It's been quite the opposite of our experience between Pensacola and Cedar Key.

We arrived in Tarpon Springs this afternoon, the Sponge Capital of Florida. It's been in the 70's today and we've finally been able to peel off our hats and coats. The weather promises to stay warm for the next 3 or 4 days with winds from better directions. We'll likely keep sailing south as fast as possible. We've got the Keys on our minds. Happy New Year to All! Happy Birthday to the Moms!

Pensacola to Apalachicola

2010-12-23T15:59:00.013-06:00

Further and the Peacemaker with halyard still attached
We finally left Pensacola yesterday after finishing our repairs. We had much, much help from the crew of the Peacemaker. It's hard to imagine how we could have got by without them. They lent James a grinder (and the electricity to use it) so he could grind down the last coat of fiberglass on the bow repair. We tied up alongside and were treated to two wonderful dinners, company, and even laundry! Oh, it was nice to have neighbors.

The damaged shroud

They also helped us drop our mast. Since Further and her mast are barely as high as the topsides of the Peacemaker, we were able to use the running rigging on the tall ship to lower James down to inspect the attachment point of the damaged shroud and then to lower the mast itself.

James headed up the ratlines

Thankfully, our mast is deck-stepped and pivots in a tabernacle. This means that once the standing rigging is loosened and a bolt removed from the base of the tabernacle, the mast can be folded down onto the deck. This was much easier to deal with than a huge piece of aluminum and wood with both ends free to move in all directions.

Hanging from the yard-arm

As it was, we were able to attach one of Peacemaker's halyards to the top of the mast and attach a line with block to Further's staysail halyard and ease her down without too much chaos. Well, there was some chaos. The deck looked like a exploded spaghetti factory and the mast protruded some feet off the stern of the boat.

Zachar and Osef are talented riggers

The insertion of the new shroud into the mast had to be done by dinghy. But, the mast went down and back up all in one day. The next morning James got to dangle from the Peacemaker's yard again to attach the new shroud to the spreader tips.

After that, it was just a matter of tightening up the deadeyes and turnbuckles, putting the boom and mainsail back on, and sorting out all the sheets and halyards. We replaced a batten we found missing in the main and I got to play electrician by being in charge of repairing all the wires we had to cut to let the mast base swing. James had me add connectors that can be disengaged and rejoined so that wire cutters won't be necessary should the mast ever need to come down again.

At the end of the two days, we were a sailboat again! With our ability to sail restored, we planned to skip the last bits of the ICW (which ends in Carabel, FL) and go outside from Pensacola to Panama City or Port St. Joe if all went well. We weren't going to cut off that much distance from the ICW route, but we wouldn't have to do any motoring, and we thought it would be good practice since the wind forecasted would allow us to do nothing but reach and run.

Running downwind

On Wednesday, our temporary mothership sent us off with two cups of hot yerba mate. We tootled our horn and motored out to the inlet at Pensacola Bay. Once clear, we cut the motor, put up our big twin jibs and set off downwind with no fear of a jibe. The distance from Pensacola to Panama City was about 80 nautical miles, so we knew we would be out all night. The wind was maybe 10 knots during the day and we had a comfortable, pleasant time. We munched on crystallized ginger to keep our stomachs settled. No one got sea sick. No one got wet. Whoever wasn't on watch could read or cook.

At one point the dolphins were so thick on our bow, James could lay down and touch them. The water is clear enough now that we can see their whole spotted bodies under the water.

At night the wind picked up to 15-20 knots as a cold front came through. We were ready with a reefed main, staysail, and working jib. We were able to sail a beam reach once the wind clocked from West to North, but the waves were still coming up behind us and letting us surf. We were making 5-6 kts and exceeding our hull speed as we slid down the waves. The boat didn't heel excessively and stayed nicely on course without too much trouble. The helmsman got the occasional bucket of water in the lap, but we like to think that helped keep us awake. We kept 4 hour watches all through the night. We were closing in on Panama City so fast, we fell off and kept on sailing to the inlet at St. Joe point.

Until the first bucket of water in my lap, I was able to listen to a blues broadcast on NPR on our little crank radio. The experience of steering a flying boat under a full moon while listening to the blues was a truly surreal one.

Neither of us actually managed to sleep, but we were able to lay down and get warm and comfortable. Without lee cloths to keep us in our berths, we laid our sleeping pads on the cabin sole. It was a perfect fit for a tired, balled up Rachel and more comfortable than I expected.

I had the 5am-9am watch and got to see the sun come up as we sailed into St. Joe Bay. We sailed 6 nm back behind a pennisula and threw out the anchor. I promptly fell asleep until 3pm. James, feeling refreshed after a little sleep, fired up the motor, and motored us up a canal to the ICW and Apalachicola. The trip from Pensacola was 117 nautical miles plus another 25 or so of motoring. We're here in this tiny town for the night. We'll spend Christmas here or up the way in Carabel waiting for another North wind which will blow us down to Cedar Key or Clearwater to meet up with James' Gramps.

Merry Christmas to All!

New Orleans to Pensacola

2010-12-19T16:12:00.017-06:00

Friday before last we loaded ourselves, our couchsurfing hosts, and 4 bicycles onto Further and crossed the Mississippi. We transited a sandwich of two locks with 5 or so miles of creamy river filling. We were headed with the current in the river, so its speed wasn't an obstacle. At New Orleans, the Mississippi is 300 ft at some points, so strangely enough, within view of skyscrapers and Cafe du Monde, we were in the deepest water we'd traversed so far. We saw a few logs and a few big ships and got a scolding from the Industrial lockmaster, but all in all the crossing was pleasant and uneventful.

Our daytrip ended at Seabrook Marine, in the Industrial canal, where we rented a slip for the night so James could have electricity to work on the banged up bow. Thank you, thank you to our couchsurfing hosts for driving us to the fiberglass shop, the hardware store, and for loaning us tools and a bike. Our task would have been infinitely more miserable without your help. James managed to get enough fiberglass on to seal her up and keep the water out, though for lack of time, he was unable to grind down the last coat. It's ugly but functional. As it is, nothing says "Stay the Hell out of our way" like a big old patch on the bow trailing bits of glass roving.

Another cold front blew through the day after the repair and we were forced to stay in New Orleans another night. The next day, while the wind was still blowing hard out of the North, we decided to put a couple of reefs in the main and make our overdue exit. The channel to the Rigolets was closed, so we were eager to take advantage of the opportunity to sail in the ICW. It was too cold to do anymore sight seeing anyway. Despite grave warnings from our slip neighbors, we had a relatively pleasant sail once the main was depowered. A pleasant sail for about an hour until I looked up and noticed that one of our starboard shrouds (cable holding up the mast from the side) was partially broken and frayed out. We were on the port tack and the starboard shrouds were relatively slack, so we concluded that that shroud must have been damaged by contacting the powerlines and had begun to part sometime while we'd been in New Orleans. We tightened our running backstay on the starboard side and attached one of our jib halyards to the deadeye of the damaged shroud to support it, then dropped the sails and angrily motored back to the marina. The wind was too nasty for an uninsured little boat such as ours to go among the fabulous, sparkling-white giants of the marina, so we tied up and the fuel dock and sulked for the night.

In the morning, James ordered a new shroud to be shipped ahead to Pensacola and we headed east. We got some sailing in on the port tack, but mostly we motored through what would have been some great sailing opportunities in Mississippi Sound.

To make things worse, the temperature just kept dropping. Monday and Tuesday night, we shivered through 20 degree weather in Mississippi and Alabama. Any warmth in the cabin only encouraged condensation which soaked whatever was soakable. I caught a vicious sore throat and spent the next 2 days under both sleeping bags while James motored us along. On the third day, I was well enough to come out and sit next to him in my foul weather gear in a NyQuil daze. We had heard from several people that we could invert a ceramic flower pot over our stove to heat up the cabin. We tried it with limited success, but fear of carbon monoxide and the moisture produced from combustion has kept us from actually using it for very long. So far, it seems like socks and south are the only things that will help.

On Thursday, the man on duty at a (very nice marina's) fuel dock took one look at us and let us take free showers and do our laundry when we asked if we could tie up for the afternoon. It was a much needed turn around. We anchored out that night and made it into Pensacola on Friday.

We've been here all weekend waiting for the post office to open on Monday so we can pick up our rigging. We couchsurfed one night so far with an ex-Navy iron man triathlete who has once again lent James a bike (hooray!). Pensacola has some nice white sand beaches juxtaposed against pine trees. The combination is new to me. The locals have told us that it is illegal to dig in the sand (ie~ make sandcastles) because in truth, BP just paid to have a lot of white sand dumped on top of the oily sand. Since it's too cold for beach-going, we haven't investigated. That it looks nice is all we can report. We can also confirm, that somehow Pensacola has not one but TWO 100% vegan restaurants and a big health food store. The giant fake philly cheese steak sandwich I got at Sluggo's yesterday was without a doubt the best sandwich of my veganhood. If it weren't so cold, I would refuse to move on.

Stranger yet, we are sneakily tied up behind a giant tall ship, the Peacemaker, owned by the Twelve Tribes of Israel. We seem to run into the 12 Tribes everywhere we go. They are a tight knit family of Christian communities that run coffee houses, yerba mate farms, and, evidently, sail a big ship around. Official info for the Twelve Tribes and the Peacemaker can be found here.

I first encountered the group at Uncommon Grounds in Ithaca, NY, home of soy chai and delicious tofu wraps. Being the socially slow person that I am, it took me a good while to figure out that it wasn't just my fabulous good fortune that the place seemed to exclusively employ long haired guys in their 20's. James and I ran into them again on the Long Trail when we stayed at the 12 Tribes hiker hostel for three days in Rutland, VT. They allow work-for-stay, so we had a chance to make (and eat) tofu wraps and vegan cookies in exchange for our beds.

At both of these meetings, we were told that the 12 Tribes had a tall ship and were given a flyer. Well, we've finally crossed paths with that ship, which is giving free tours right next to us. We took one ourselves and met more long haired gentlemen and ladies. We're told we might be able to borrow a tool that will help us replace our shroud. The universe is full of strange coincidences.

tiny little Further in upper right
Hopefully, hopefully, the cable will arrive tomorrow and the mast dropping and restepping will go without a hitch and we will be on our way SAILING by Tuesday. We're racing down the Western coast of Florida trying to find the warm weather and rendezvous with James' Gramps for Christmas. If we don't get to post again this week: Merry Christmas, All! (Happy Birthday, Dad!) and Stay Warm.

Crystal Beach to NOLA

2010-12-09T12:17:00.013-06:00

Our miles from Crystal Beach, TX to New Orleans have been entirely gasoline-powered. When we reached Louisiana, the ICW traveled far inland, where the cypress trees and Spanish moss ensured we'd rarely feel a good puff of wind. Over the last two weeks and 500 miles, we've been averaging about 20 mpg (not counting our fruitless trip halfway to Sabine Pass and back). Gas at the fuel docks is marked up 50 or 60 cents, so we've been trying to lug our canisters to the convenience stores whenever we could. The other key word besides “motoring” has been “cold.” It has been very, very cold and the apparent wind seems always at our faces. But we layer up and keep going.

In Louisiana, the number of side cuts increased. Little powerboats and air boats zipped across our path on the way to crab pots or some other bayou business. We motored past a lot of great backwoods homesteads: shacks with a solar panel on the roof, a skiff out front, and possibly a Confederate flag flapping from the porch. We saw a (huge) black wild hog snuffling in the bank one day and what can only be described as the "tank of 4-wheelers." The exchanges of tow captains became even more incomprehensible than usual. We've also been wondering what alligators do for the winter. Anyone know?

We made fuel stops in Intracoastal City and Lafitte and spent stealthy nights at the public docks at Morgan City and Houma. We reached the latter two on the weekend and found the clean, neat little dowtowns almost entirely deserted. James managed to exchange a recitation of a Hafiz poem for some donuts at a tiny, retro 24/7 stand in Morgan City, but we spent most of our time taking long walks to work out our knots or sitting in McDonald's using the only wifi around.

We've had two erm, incidents since we last posted.

Late one night we were looking for a good place to throw out the hook in a region of the ICW with no guidebook-suggested anchorages. We knew that soon a canal would open to our left and figured we might be able to tuck away there. We got on the VHF to ask the many tow captains if they knew if it was heavily trafficked. The consensus was no, so we were unlikely to be run down in the middle of the night. The tow boat directly in front of us even suggested it as a good spot and offered to flash his spot on it as he passed to make it easier to see in the dark. We throttled back to exploratory speed and entered the cut, shining our spot light across the water, looking for obstructions and trying to guess at the depth. For reasons unknown, I happened to glance up just in time to see two black lines in the eerie green glow of our masthead tricolor. In the time it takes to say "powerlines" the mast contacted the lower line with a snap and a short burst of sparks. The lights on shore went out and we sprung into action, trying to throw the engine into reverse without touching our metal standing rigging. The lines ran at a sharp diagonal angle to the canal and it took us more than a few seconds to figure out which direction of flight would actually free us. Since I'm writing this entry, obviously we were not electrocuted. We couldn't find any damage to the boat or ourselves, or any indications of the powerlines on the chart. We tied up to some pilings at the very mouth of the canal and vowed to remember to shine the spotlight up as well as down.

The second incident happened on our last travel day. Early in the morning, James tried to rearrange the gas tank and fuel line while at the helm, looked away from where he was headed for a bit too long, and bashed the bow of the boat into a barge tied up along the side of the canal. Thankfully, the barges are indestructible, so we didn't have any beef with the barge captain, but the fiberglass and toerail are beaten in. The damage is mostly cosmetic, but James will need to repair it to the point that it's watertight before we venture out of the ICW again.

We reached New Orleans the day before last and have the boat tied up for free at the bulkhead just next to Boomtown Casino, three miles west of the Mississippi crossing. While we haven't blown any money at the casino, we do appreciate their clean restrooms and an entranceway display featuring Santa's sleigh being pulled by 3 or 4 enormous alligators. (Maybe that's where the alligators go in the winter: to the North Pole.) They seem to welcome even scrubbier types than us as the dress code, rather than prohibiting jeans and requiring collared shirts, prohibits wearing pajamas, bedroom slippers, hair nets, or masks.

Steering with your feet keeps your hands warm
As much as we appreciate Boomtown, we've spent the last couple days with some New Orleans couchsurfers instead. We've been staying at a pink, blue, and orange house won in a tax sale. It has a little catamaran on a trailer in front, a Cal 20 project boat (casualty of Katrina) in one side yard, and an enormous earthen oven in the other. The house is owned by a clown/bagpiper/harp player/handyman from South Dakota who brought it back from ruin. Our other host is a eternal student, earthen oven pizza artist, epic motorcycle tourer, who also has a 45 ft motorsailer project.

It looks like we'll be here for a number of days while we enjoy New Orleans, buy groceries, make repairs, etc. Our tentative future plan is to cross the Mississippi and take a canal to Lake Ponchartrain so we can get some distance covered sailing. By the time we rejoin the ICW, it will be opening up so that hopefully we can sail off Mississippi. Wish us warm weather so our toes will unfreeze and the new fiberglass will cure.

Port Lavaca to Galveston

2010-11-27T10:38:00.009-06:00

Monday morning we left our slip at Nautical Landings and motored out into Matagorda Bay. James' grandfather; his friend, Buddy; our couch(parking lot)surfer, Chris; and a couple of our marina neighbors were there to send us off. Our gas cans were topped off and our stores plentiful thanks to James' dad, who ran us around town and treated us to those first tankfuls. Thanks also to the Southeast Asian restaurant on Virginia St, the only place in Port Lavaca where you can have chicken fried steak and tofu curry brought to the same table. We've been lucky enough to have been taken there three times last week with no regrets.

We made our first day and long one, sailing across Matagorda Bay and then motoring up the ICW past Matagorda and tying up at a public wharf near the town of Sargent. James was at the tiller until 10pm under a big, near full moon.

After a walk down the beach at dawn, we got back aboard and sailed up the ICW to Freeport. Just after clearing the floodgates and passing under the bridge, we had the pleasure of being boarded by Christopher R. Valentine and Co. of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. After following behind us for a bit in a ridiculously overpowered boat (not one, not two, but three 275 hp motors), they came alongside us and asked us who, what drugs, and what weapons we might have onboard. We then had a cozy 15 minutes or so of sharing our boat with Mr. Valentine and an associate. I had the fun of tearing the boat apart looking for the boat's title, which was the last thing that I expected to have to produce on our second day out. Thankfully, I found it and after providing the title, James' drivers license, my drivers license, the cities we were born in, and a short personal history, the boat was searched for drugs or weapons or people or something. The agents who boarded us were polite and pleasant and I have no complaints. It was also pretty amusing to watch someone much larger than James or myself try to squeeze down below with me while I opened various compartments. After spending a few minutes stooped over with his gun or other utility belt ornaments getting tangled in our fruit and bedding hammocks, I think he had had enough. I opened maybe 4 of the 20 or so lockers and hidey holes in the boat before we were proclaimed drug and illegal immigrant-free. Hooray!
We were free to sail on to our anchorage near the Western edge of the West Bay.

We spent our evening cooking dinner, listening to Hindi music on our short wave radio and dancing in the cockpit until the mosquitos drove us down below. On the following day we made it the rest of the way to Galveston where we're anchored in Offat's Bayou waiting on a Norther coming in tonight and a packing coming in on Saturday. Hopefully on Sunday we'll be able to make on outside hop from the Galveston to Sabine inlet.

So here we are relaxing. We spent yesterday being shown the sights by James' cousin, Jessie.

We spent our Thanksgiving walking down to the Seawall where we swam in the ocean for a hour before coming back to the boat and gorging ourselves on fake and real chicken, stuffing, cranberry sauce, green beans, and pudding. Two shots of Jack Daniels from a tiny bottle gifted to the boat complete our night. We're warm and snug on our hook, waiting for the front to pass. Reading books. Playing guitar. Doing fancy knotwork. Wishing for boardgames, but otherwise doing well.

***Saturday update: Thanks also to the Pampas for generous use of their showers, leftovers, and man-eating couch.

Anticipation

2010-11-21T07:56:00.012-06:00

Leaving my job, my friends, and my life in Austin behind has been harder that I expected. I thought that giving up attachment would become easier with age. In sort of the same way that time seems to pass more quickly the longer you have been around, it would seem that an increasing number of relationships and situations would dull the luster of life somewhat. Not so, I'm finding out. For whatever reason, it seems be harder to let go and move on than it used to be.

The transition has been made easier by focusing on this:

Still, it's a long way to the Bahamas (more than a thousand nautical miles) and even Further (that's the name of my boat, don't you know?) to reach the state of mind that I'm seeking.

I'm looking for a place of perspective. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

It's a place that you come to and bring what you need with you; a place where all you need shines down on you effortlessly - you soak it up.

I'm not there yet. I still need help. I stand on the shoulders of giants, or at least a large stack of regular-sized people - would-be Atlases.

Also, I get by with a little help from my friends. Sharing sailing with others is a pleasure, one that I experienced a lot of this past month.

Old friends and new came out to the water to relax. Some came from as far away as Vermont.

Having someone to share all the hard work with is even more of a pleasure. Thanks Rachel.

After two weeks of boat chores, constant reorganization, endless errands, and incessant list writing and crossing-off, we're at the point when we can stop looking forward and start looking around. Here we go.

Moving By Bicycle

2010-11-08T21:19:00.012-06:00

James and I have officially entered the travelling part of our year. The pedicabs are stored, our money is made, we've quit working, and moved back onto the boat. After a few feverish weeks of boat work, we'll hopefully be headed eastward toward the Bahamas.

(Jon's photo)
After a year of extreme frugality, I broke my money fast by buying a fantabulous cargo trailer for my bicycle. It's a Burley Nomad. It's my new favorite possession. Besides being useful for getting groceries and transporting things too bulky or heavy for my back pack, I've taken two epic bicycle journeys in the past two weeks.

(Jon's photo)
The first was a 100 mile, three day tour in which I was accompanied by my ex-housemate and fellow pedicabber, Jon. We rode east out of Austin to Bastrop State Park and camped. The next took the 12 mile long park road connecting Bastrop SP to Buescher SP and camped again before making a long 50 mile ride back to Austin. The trailer easily toted a tent, sleeping pads, sleeping bags, bike tools, food, and water. The highlight of the trip had nothing to do with the destination. We spent a good 10 minutes laughing hysterically at a random goat that ran to the road to meet us. There is no noise like goat noise. Despite have been raised among goats, I had forgotten what truly ridiculous animals they are.

(Jon's photo)
The more ambitious trip, which I've just completed, took me from Austin all the way to the boat in Port Lavaca - 184 miles in total. To up the ante further, I decided that I would move all my belongings to the boat via bike trailer. If I can't transport it all by human power, I have too many things. In all honesty, I did leave my pressure cooker, some food, and a wet sweater to be picked up by James when he came to Austin to move his pedicab. But to be fair, I also towed 3 days worth of food, a gallon of water, and a crappy 10 lb Walmart tent as our nice backpacking tent was already down on the boat.

Jon rode with my the first day - 45 miles to Lockhart State Park in Lockhart, TX. Much of the riding was over gravel roads and was far more exhausting than our previous trip. We also missed turns, went a few miles out of our way, and had to drag our bicycles over the vast wasteland of dirt piles that is the 183 construction zone. I got my first of 4 flat tires. In other words, it was rather adventure-like.

After camping for the night, Jon faced a fierce headwind as he turned back toward Austin and I pulled my longest day of the trip, travelling 70 miles from Lockhart to Yoakum, TX. Highlights included more gravel roads, a dead bobcat, more flat tires, lots of cows, searching for a decent patch kit in Walmart, and finally a frosted cherry snack pie at the gas station in Yoakum. I'd heard that the town park in Yoakum hosted RVers, so I drug my sorry self over to see if they would let me pitch my tent. I never ran into any authority figures whatsoever, so after showering in their wonderful showers and cooking beans on their picnic tables, I rolled out my pad and bag on the ground without even bothering to pitch my tent and slept fitfully in the shadow of my trailer. No one ever came to hassle me for money, and I snuck away stealthily at dawn.

I started the third day with a little oatmeal and stretching my miserable muscles in the frosty town park. When the sun and movement had warmed my joints enough to allow riding, I pressed on to the next gas station where I supplemented my breakfast with another snack pie, coffee, and ibuprofen. A couple of old men hanging out in front of the store inquired about my journey and told me about another epic trip one of them was inspired to make by lawnmower. I rode the most boring 45 miles into the wind to Edna, TX where James was waiting for me. I made a pit stop at the Edna Walmart and stopped to cook some instant beans. As I was leaning up against a tree at the side of the parking lot, manning my little camp stove, a leathery looking woman happily asked me, "Oh, You homeless too?!" I wasn't entirely sure how to answer. Houseless at least. I gave it my best with, "Erm, I'm not homeless, just, travelling I guess."

James and I took a lovely, lovely, much needed rest day at his parents house in Edna. I focused on consuming as many calories as possible and moving my legs as little as possible. One Monday, we rode the last 25 miles to the coast together. James, generously, pulling my trailer. We were prevented from actually reaching Port Lavaca as the arching, miles long bridge over the Lavaca Bay has no shoulder. We stood at the bridges edge with our thumbs out and a sign that read "OTHER SIDE" until some good samaritans with pickup trucks ferried us to the other side.

So here we are, boat tramps once again. Hopefully, we'll be pushing off before Christmas and will try to blog along as we go. We'll keep you posted.

Who In the World Picks up Hitchhikers?

2010-08-31T21:44:00.003-05:00

Since hitchhiking seems to be a dying form of transportation (despite being awfully green and awfully interesting), I undertook a little exercise on our last trip and wrote down a short something about where our rides came from. In our experience, far from being picked up by the worst people (serial killers, psychopaths, lusty truckers) we seem to get picked up by the very best. So here are our 25 rides that took us from Austin to Colorado and back again.

Ride 1: Eleanor and Leroy. A couple in their twenties. Vegetarians, one works for Apple, one works at an Austin pizza joint. Headed to Denver to camp and visit friends.

Ride 2: Steve and Cody (the dog). From Denver out towards Leadville. Baby boomer who hitch hiked long ago. Heading out of Denver on a fishing trip with his dog.

Ride 3: Perry and his boat trailer. Another fisherman headed west. Dropped us off in Buena Vista. Said he knew it was possible we might beat him up and take his truck (lol), but he still figured most people are generally good and trucks are replaceable.

Ride 4: Chris. Borrowed his wife's car to drive to Vail to here a lecture from his Buddhist teacher. Has a bouquet of white roses for him in the backseat. Says it wouldn't be right not to pick us up on the way to hear a spiritual lecture. Collects bicycles. Longtime ethical vegetarian. Drops us in Leadville.

Ride 5, 6: Short rides up and down the road to the mining ruins behind Leadville. One was a back of the truck ride with no conversation. Other was a ride with an artist and his wife on the search for interesting roots and driftwood to make into lamps.

Ride 7: Short ride halfway out of Leadville from two Outward Bound wilderness guides trying to convince us just to hike over some giant peaks to get to Aspen.

Ride 8: Fellow headed back to Dolores after attending a wedding in Leadville.

Ride 9: Ride in the back of a pickup truck up to Independence Pass from a guy and his girlfriend going hiking.

Ride 10: Ride from Independence Pass to Aspen with a beardy gentleman and his father who are headed to Maroon Bells to climb some 14ers.

Ride 11, 12: Rides to and from the Conundrum Hot Springs Trailheads from other hikers. One couple, One woman.

Ride 13: Ride from the Aspen to Glenwood Springs from Heidi. Heidi was bored enough to drive us all the way there just for fun as her husband wasn't off work yet.

Ride 14: Ride from Glenwood Springs to Carbondale from an older man who told us about sailing on lakes in Canada and hitch hiking to Alaska.

Ride 15: Ride in a Church van with a man and a woman who are headed to Crested Butte to pick up the rest of their church members who are hiking from Aspen. Drop us in the middle of nowhere.

Ride 16: Ride from an elderly couple who pull over, alarmed, and ask us, "Why are you walking? What happened?!" They are headed to the farmer's market and take us along ever after they realize we're hitch hikers.

Ride 17: Cecil. Garbage man and dumpster welder in a funny little 1986 Jeep truck. Gives us a ride to the grocery store in Hancock.

Ride 18: Paddy O'. Electrician from the Bronx. Nothing better to do than drive us to the National Park and drive us around to all the overlooks so we can take pictures.

Ride 19: Daniel and Katie. Couple our age who are working on organic farms. Take us home to the cabin they've rented for the night, make us dinner, and let us sleep in the bed in the loft and shower. Make us coffee in the morning and bring us to Delta.

Ride 20: Rick. Retired man who owns an RV park in Montrose. Takes us back to Montrose and gives us a tour of the RV park, mini-golf course, and rental campers. Lets us fill up on water and cook lunch next to the putt putt green.

Ride 21: Charlotte. Ride from Montrose to Gunnison. 31-year-old woman from Alaska who is going back to school in Gunnison. Tells us all about Alaska and a recent cruise down the Nile.

Ride 22: Orlando and family in the school buses. Making a round trip from Costa Rica to Moab, UT and back again. Give us a ride back to Amarillo, TX, a place to sleep on the bus, and snacks.

Ride 23: Trucker just off work gives us a ride out of his way to the next town outside Amarillo. Says he's giving us a ride because he once spent the weekend in jail as a youngin and had someone pick him up and give him a ride home when he got out.

Ride 24: A preacher's wife, her 8-year-old son, and baby daughter. One their way to gramma's house.

Ride 25: Fellow who let us ride in the back of his pickup truck all the way to Dallas with stops for snacks.

Hitching Colorado

2010-08-31T20:40:00.018-05:00

From Denver we hitched west into the mountains, up, up, to Leadville, CO at 10,000+ feet. Leadville is an old mining town that once rivaled Denver in size. I'm not really sure how we decided to go there, but it proved pretty interested. Public lands start at the town's edge, so we had free camping nearby (though you have to like the sound of dirt bikes).

When we arrived, we realized that we had coincidentally shown up on the weekend that about 700 maniacs would be running a 100 mile trail race. That's right, 100 miles nonstop at an elevation of more than 10,000 ft. As pitiful little marathon-finishers, James and I were humbled. We woke up at 3am and followed the big moon down into town that night to watch the race start at 4. It was about 40 degrees and we watched the headlamp-sporting competitors limber up while cocooned in our sleeping bags. We would stay in town to watch the winner finish the next night, after more than 18 hours of running. The official cutoff for finisher status was 30 hours. I don't think that either of us will be running a 100 miler any time soon, but it's fun to dream.

In the mean time, we walked the town, visited the library and the train station, and hiked out to some mining ruins in the mountains east of town. We could easily have spent our whole trip trying to get ourselves killed exploring all the dilapidated old mine shafts and cabins. The whole town had a sort of end of the world quality, though it's not actally a very far drive from Denver or Aspen. It also appears to be a sort of elephant graveyard for Volkswagon vanagons. Were I a handier gal, I would have had my pick of projects.

From Leadville, we hitched on. We crossed the continental divide at Independence pass in the back of a pickup truck. All the better to see over the precipice where the shoulder of the road should be! At least there was a cap.

Our next stop was Aspen. We saw a lotof very done up middle aged women, a Cadillac brand golf cart, and a man in the tiny general store inquiring as to which aisle the caviar could be found. I would be tempted here to pick on yuppies, except that I'm sure they're the reason I was able to find soy yogurt, sliced Tofurky, and other exotic vegan delights in such a small town. We met the owner of a newly started pedicab operation, so maybe we too can hop on the Aspen tourist gravy train someday.

We went to Aspen not for the town itself, but to access a trailhead leading into the Maroon Bells/Snowmass Wilderness. After a night of guerrilla camping in an Aspen greenbelt, we started our hike to Conundrum Hot Springs, 8 miles up into the Wilderness Area. This must truly be one of the best free camping spots in the country. We pitched our tent, soaked, ate, slept, soaked, and sadly left. As an added bonus, we got free poop bags at the trailhead (we saved them for the boat) and a chance to see pika, which are some ridiculously cute, anime-character-lookin, fat little rodents. We were pretty disappointed to learn that the name is pronounced pike-ah as it doesn't rhyme nearly as well with squeaka, which we think it should.

From Aspen we caught a single ride straight to Glenwood Springs, were we splurged and got a hostel room. We splurged further and got Thai food, though it was 50% off, the "recession special." We had both been to Glenwood Springs before, so we sat on our asses, slept in, and were generally sloth like until hitching out again.

The next two or three days were marked by slow, inefficient hitch hiking as we tried to slowly circle around to the south and back east toward Texas. We were given a tour of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP by one of our rides with nothing much else to do. We were quite impressed by what appears to be a very infrequently visited National Park.

The sun went down on our Black Canyon day and we were still stuck at the godforsaken "Desperado" filling station in Crawford, CO. All our attempts at getting a ride on to Gunnison had failed and we were getting ready to find a sneaky place to camp when we were approached by another couple about our age. They were from Georgia and had rented a cabin for the weekend with 5 or 6 extra beds. They were WWOOFers (Worldwide Workers On Organic Farms) and cooked us up a great rice and organic veggie dinner after taking us in. We slept happily in the ridiculously kitschy cabin, showered, and accepted a ride on to Delta in the morning after exchange contact info.

The following day we hitched and hitched. I bought a Little Debbie cherry victory pie when we finally made Gunnison, but we could get a ride no further than the eastern edge of town. By this time we were getting pretty sick of hitch hiking as we were back in the hot, dry part of the state. As we were beginning to get truly discouraged. Not one, but two, school buses pulled over to the side of the road.

The lead bus was driven by Orlando from El Salvador. His two sons manned the bus to the rear. Their job was to pick up used buses bought in the US (in Moab, in this case) and drive them back to Central America (Costa Rica in this case) to be used in public transportation. We were offered a ride back home to Texas (or to Costa Rica if we were interested). We happily rode with Orlando for the next day and a half and slept in the bus at night.

Orlando had spent two years living in his car with his girlfriend and traveling the US, so he must have identified with us a bit. He slept 4 hours a day but eschewed any stimulants, including coffee. Instead, he was equipped with many cans of V8 juice, which he swore was what was really needed for cross-continent school bus stamina. He also had the ability to read a map, answer his 5 cell phones (one for each country), and change his socks without stopping the bus or sending us off the switchbacks. He let us practice our terrible spanish and fed us fruit cups and orange juice. In short, we were very impressed with Orlando and family. Had we had our passports in hand, maybe we would be in Costa Rica by now.

However, one of James' major goals to our trip was to visit Clayton (of Rocinante's first voyage) in Dallas. We had Orlando let us out in back Amarillo where I saw my first prairie dogs and we eventually caught a 5 hour ride in the back of a pickup truck to Fort Worth. We rode laying down in the bed in our sleeping bags and watching the clouds and then the stars. Quite a pleasant way to travel. Unfortunately, once dumped in Fort Worth it was virtually impossible to hitch across town to Clayton's. We waited til morning and admitted defeat. Clayton picked us up and we spent the rest of the weekend goofing off royally: binging on Central Market treats, going to a waterpark, and the $1.50 movies. After such spoiling, we had no motivation to hitch back to Austin. We took the last of our vacation money and bought two Amtrak tickets back home. Now we're home with Austin, with about 6 weeks to finish earning the last of our Bahamas money and preparing the boat. More entries to come soon.

From Austin to Denver or Too Damn Hot

2010-08-31T20:08:00.011-05:00

As August in Texas is hotter than Hell, James and I chose to take a little vacation for the last two weeks of the misery month. We found a craigslist rideshare up to Denver with another couple our age then hitched about to our heart's content.

Eleanor and Leroy were our pilots on the trip up to Denver. They were about our age and vegetarians, who shared with us their most excellent food (seitan, stuffing, and green beans wrapped into little aluminum foil campfire nuggets). We spent on first night on the road camped at Palo Duro State Park near Amarillo. The park is home to the "Grand Canyon" of Texas as well as an outdoor musical. Having arrived late in the day, we visited the required overlooks, then dug in at our campsite for dinner and sleep. For after dinner entertainment, James made a smudge stick from local sage and an old friendship bracelet tied to my found Nalgene bottle.

There's not much to say about our time in the panhandle and the flat, eastern part of Colorado. There were windmills. There were naps. We did make a stop in Floydada, TX for a tinkle and a visit to the historical museum. The ladies in the museum seemed awfully bored and gave us the superdeluxe skinny on all that is Floydada. Mostly, we enjoyed the name and the old pipe organ they let James play. We also stopped in Colorado Springs, but left promptly after being told at the visitors' center that there was not a single Tesla museum in town.

We spent a few days in Denver getting our bearings before moving onto the rest of the state. I got lost (repeatedly) in the enormous flagship REI where we stocked up on maps and info. James played the many whimsically painted public pianos that dot the main tourist drag. We took a free tour of the capital. I napped in the expertly groomed public park with the rest of the homebums. We also went out to lunch at a strange little establishment called the SAME (So All May Eat) cafe. They served local, mostly vegetarian food in a restaurant atmosphere, but the cost is donation only. We found that commendable.

Our couchsurfing host was a travel writer who wrote for Frommer's as well as independently. He had a great little map-plastered loft that we were welcomed into. We had and good time eating dinner on his back porch and hearing the inside scoop on Colorado. For instance, neither of us had realized that medical marijuana is legal and widely distributed. We passed dispensary upon dispensary, not just in Denver but in every small town. Our host, had a prescription for his migraines and our meal was shaded by a large plant of at least my height. We were pretty amused that there are such currently such differences in the law between states. Our host was good enough to drive us to the outskirts of town for an easy hitch west into the mountains.

Summer Sailing

2010-07-22T23:55:00.005-05:00

Lucky us, we spent three whole days this week just sailing Further around the bays near Port Lavaca. The first day we sailed her over to Palacios, TX to check out a competing marina. The Nautical Landings Marina in Port Lavaca has been generally good to us but the docks there barely lasted through the winds that came with the hurricane a few weeks ago. James and I stayed on the boat while Alex passed south of us and we got to see a lot of boats in our marina bashed up by floating docks turned turtle. We weren't sold on the more expensive marina, but we did get to watch a good sunset, read books in the public library, and eat breakfast at the local Mexican joint.

After our coffee and beans, we pulled up the anchor and sailed all day down to Matagorda Island State Park. We anchored on the leeward side of the island and went ashore the next afternoon. We aborted our last attempt at a visit this island after running aground and shearing our rudder pin. With the wind out of a better direction and the bay calmer, we didn't have any trouble getting in this time. We tied up in one of the free slips and explored the empty goverment buildings and campsites. There was a large trail map posted that showed trails leading to a lighthouse, the ocean, and abandoned airstrips, though we didn't have enough time for hiking on this trip. Also, with thunderstorms on the horizon, we weren't too keen on being the tallest things walking down a perfectly flat barrier island. We'll be back next time with some friends and dry socks.

Back on the boat, we made the long sail back to Port Lavaca with a stop in Port O'Connor for Oreos and salami. We spent last night at the marina and busied ourselves with cleaning and organizing the boat today. We're getting excited about the prospect of pulling up our roots again and heading out this fall. Long trips have also been made easier now that James has figured out how to rig up the boat to self-steer.

You can also see our repaired tiller in the picture below. Galvanic action on the bolt linking the tiller to the rudder had ruined the bolt and the two pieces of wood sandwiching the rudder itself. Over a couple of visits down to Edna, we disassembled, scraped, and sanded it and James fabricated two new pieces. Good as new.

After some hot and buggy nights, we also mastered setting up our wind scoop to funnel air down the front hatch and a giant "skeeter screen" we found under our many sailbags. The nights to follow were much improved, though of course there's nothing really cool about a July night in Texas. Much better to try to take naps on the shady side deck.

Belgian Dot Torture

2010-05-15T13:07:00.010-05:00

May is my birthday month, and James and I are living it up. (James' most excellent chocolate pig cake pictured above. The shape didn't stop us from eating it all in 24 hours) We've been riding James' motorcycle down to the boat about every other week to work on our tiller and gorge ourselves on blackberries picked out of the cow pastures. To cope with pedicabbing in the hot and brown months ahead, I've decided to adopt James' haircut. Since shaving my head again, I've been meeting lots of women young and old who stop me to talk about the wonders of ultrashort haircuts. Maybe I'll be sorry in the winter, but for now, I'm really enjoying it.

I'm writing this blog entry from aboard a Greyhound Bus, because James and I are back on the road for a couple of weeks. Last Wednesday we flew up to New York so I could get tattooed at the 13th Annual NYC Tattoo Convention in Times Square. We arrived in Newark and spent a night in Verona, NJ with James' Aunt Sue and Uncle Phil and then headed into the City for two more nights with some of my fellow Skidmore alumni. Much thanks to all who let us munch their snacks, use their showers, and sleep on their couches. Today we're headed west to Binghamton, NY to visit with my family for a week before riding Amtrak back to Austin. Hooray for trips!

I paid a fabulous (for me) amount of pedicabbing money to get tattooed by Daniel DiMattia, a truly world class artist from Liege, Belgium. I have been following the work coming out of his shop since I was in high school, but it's not often that one is passing through Belgium. Since James and I are mostly in the business of dreaming up wild dreams and then following through with them, I e-mailed Dan in Belgium last winter to find out whether he would be traveling to the US anytime in the next year. Lucky for me, he flies over for the NYC convention though it's difficult to get an appointment with him unless it's planned well in advance. I reserved his first night at the convention to have both my feet tattooed.

Dan Dimattia specializes almost exclusively in black only, ethnic-inspired designs. He does particularly amazing hands and feet. I sent him pictures and measurements of my feet, but basically said that I didn't need to see a design beforehand and that he could tattoo whatever he wanted within a particular genre. I wasn't at all disappointed by my surprise. He brought several sketches with him and applied some portions of them by the normal purple pencilly thing method, but all of the design on the ankles and nonflat portions of the feet, he drew on free hand with markers. I was very impressed. In about 7 hours he had hand drawn and tattooed both feet. I could watch him draw and rework each little section to go with the foot rather than just slap it on like a temporary tattoo made permanent.

Let me also answer the inevitable body modification and say, "Oh yes, it hurt. I have tattoos on my arms and stomach and these were worse worse by many orders of magnitude. There's something about getting needles poked down in between one's toes that is unignorable. Especially since all the shading was done as stippling. James and I joked that this was the "Beglian dot torture" and produced wonderful faces like the one above. But here they are, I'm very happy with them, even though my feet are wrapped in saran wrap so that I can wear some shoes on the bus.

Perfect Sunday?

2010-04-26T00:03:00.005-05:00

After two fruitful nights of pedicabbing, we started our Sunday morning (afternoon) off right with a pancake extravaganza. A few of our friends joined us for mango banana and blueberry flax seed pancakes plus our latest drinky concoction - soymilk and orange juice. Having been gifted an armload of each out of the dumpsters, we are drinking creamsicle with any meal of the day.

After stuffing our bellies, I stuffed a few more pancakes in my purse and we rode over to help another pedicabber launch his hot air balloon. He had posted a request for a chase truck driver on the Couchsurfing website some months back and we filled in for his regular help. His name is Kevin. He sewed his balloon himself. He carries his entire setup in the back of a veggie oil-powered pickup truck. He is my hero for today.

We rode south of Austin to Buda until he found a good launch spot in a church parking lot. Tall trees to break the wind during the launch were key. The gondola and balloon started out on their side in the parking lot. James and company held open the mouth of the balloon while a gas-powered fan inflated it. Kevin blasted the propane flame to heat up the air and then we all held onto the gondola for dear life to weight it down long enough for the passengers to climb in.

Then four of us followed in the truck, keeping an eye on the balloon, and communicating over the radio. We intercepted the descending balloon on a back road and helped to tackle it out of the sky as it skimmed the surface of a corn field. A most unusual task.

Overall, we were really impressed with the balloon, the setup, and the fact that Kevin can take the whole shabang barnstorming around the country on french fry power. How many hours do you think James would have to busk with his accordion before we could afford a ride?

San Antonio

2010-04-12T19:36:00.006-05:00

Since we only pedicab Thursday-Saturday, we've been trying to make the most of our weekly four day "weekend." This week, James generously bought us both train tickets down to San Antonio where we couchsurfed for 2 nights with an artist couple living in an old grocery store turned apartment/studio. As I'm on a mission to ride all the the passenger rail routes in the country, I got much neurotic pleasure from completing my last little missing leg of the Texas Eagle's route. I've now rode it from it from South to North and North to South, Chicago to San Antonio and back again. I've also finished the California Zephyr (San Francisco to Chicago) the Lakeshore Limited (Chicago to NYC) and most of the Cardinal (DC to Chicago). I also plan to cross the Crescent off my list (NYC to New Orleans) on our way back from the New York City tattoo convention this May.

We spent most of our time in San Antonio just walking the Riverwalk. The city has developed the banks of the river for many miles so we had a cool place to stroll while taking in the murals, art installations, and other tourists spending lots of money at all the waterfront shops and restaurants.

Being the thrifty travelers that we are, we opted for a free trip to the art museum, where we saw a crazy display of psychedelic art, and a free tour of the enormous Free Masons' building. Actually, we had no idea what the "Scottish Rite" was, but we got a free tour once we were inside anyways. The masons had large collections of very strange things and funny hats in abundance.

They had a collection of teacups from various large ships that had crossed through the Panama Canal. An enormous clown collection. Lightbulbs with the masons' square and compass logo, and lots of other wacky stuff we didn't photograph.

We also went to a badass vegetarian/vegan restaurant called Green. I had vegan "neatloaf," mashed potatoes and vegan gravy, collard greens, vegan rolls with vegan butter and an oreo cupcake for desert. Frankly, my $8 meal would have made the whole trip worthwhile. If I ever make it back, the wheat-meat philly cheesesteak is next on my list.

Tomorrow James is temporarily leaving me for Florida once again, this time to pick up a motorcycle and drive it back. With motor-driven transportation, we will undoubtedly be making more trips to the boat as well as other "weekend" getaways. Stay tuned.

Cathedral of Junk

2010-04-12T19:20:00.006-05:00

When James' family came up the weekend before last, we made a trip out to James' and my favorite Austin icon, the Cathedral of Junk.

It occupies just about all the room in an Austinite named Vince's backyard. He's been working on it for 22 years and it's really become pretty spectacular. The pictures we snapped hardly do it justice, but it currently includes at least three rooms, 2 floors, a chicken coop, a pond, a wheel chair access ramp, etc. The man has "JUNK KING" tattooed across his knuckles for good reason.

Vince lets folks come visit and explore his creation on the weekends. Unfortunately, some humorless whiners have complained to the city about various building code violations, so the future of the cathedral is somewhat uncertain. Article at: http://www.kvue.com/news/Cathedral-of-Junk-gets-extension-89640952.html

SXSW Recovery

2010-03-29T21:49:00.005-05:00

We survived SXSW, though we both skipped out on the very last day. The weather turned sour on us and after barely succeeding in pulling a 120 lb girl over a flat surface into the vicious wind (in my granny gear), I decided that staying out was not worth any money I might earn. I paid my $100 lease out of my previous earnings, went home, and happily watched cartoons in my underwear for the rest of the night.

To reward ourselves, we spent most of last week down in on the coast visiting James' family and the new boat. We spent two days just puttering around cleaning her, airing her out, taking naps in her, and meeting the other colorful marina tenants. The marina the boat is currently slipped at has some busted floating docks and some sad looking boats, but it also has a lot of liveaboards, a tv/library room (with a lazy boy), a nice kitchen, shower room, and laundry room. If there were a pedicab business in Port Lavaca, we would be back living on the boat in a flash.

We also spent two days taking the boat out on a trip to Matagorda Island. From what we've heard, the island is a state park but it's maintained. It's home to an abandoned light house and military air strip, though we didn't get to go to shore to investigate on this trip. We had good sailing, with the wind miraculously at our backs both days. We got plenty of use out of our twin running sails. I thought that the boat handled quite nicely. I was worried that the littler boat would be cramped, tender, and more prone to making us motion sick. We were pretty comfortable, even the first day when the waves on the bay got quite large. On the return trip, the sailing was so smooth that I was laying across the cockpit reading my book while we were still doing 6 knots.

The bay and ICW near Port Lavaca also have a severe dolphin infestation. We had more dolphins running with the boat than I ever thought possible. I could lay down on the foredeck and watch them bursting out of the water at the bow, within arms reach. We experimented with using our big metal signaling horn as a "dolphin call" by hanging over and tooting it under the water. Results are inconclusive as to whether the dolphins are entertained by this or hate our guts. More research necessary...

We did run briefly aground approaching the island, though we were well within the channel. We heard later that the approach to the island is rarely if ever dredged anymore. Perhaps we'll be able to sneak in next time when the wind and the tide are more favorable. Since our boat lacks a centered keel to protect the rudder, our rudder is designed so that a soft wood pin will be sheared during a grounding, allowing the rudder to kick back behind the boat and avoid damage. It did just that in this case. It's a smart design, although it did require James to strip and get half into the water to pop the rudder back into position.

Overall, we're very pleased with the new boat and find it to be plenty big for the both of us. We'd like to get back down to Port Lavaca as soon as possible to take her out again. And, of course, big dreams are in the works for next winter...

Oh, and whoever owns the rig pictured above is our new hero. Although, we'd put a bedroom in the back of that truck.

Pedicab! Pedicab!

2010-03-14T22:02:00.004-05:00

Time for a short update on our ever-changing activities and plans. We've been spending the past couple months renting a cheap room in a house in East Austin and saving money for new adventures. Our room has been attractively furnished with a futon mattress from Treasure City Thrift as well as a curb-shopped night stand and desk. My friend Annette donated a sheet and some material for curtains, so we've got a great little nest here for a total of $4.

To earn money both James and I have been pedicabbing (driving bicycle taxis) for two Austin pedicab companies. So far, it's been pretty lucrative and leaves us Sunday-Wednesday to do as we like. It's also a very flexible job that should allow us to take out time to travel whenever we like. This week Austin is hosting, SXSW, a huge film, music, and technology event. A large portion of the pedicab bacon is brought home during this event, so James and I have been riding just about every day from last Thursday to this Saturday. It should leave us with plenty of money to put away in the bank even if it also leaves us with sore butts (and hands and feet and shoulders). Thankfully, I've also been bartering housecleaning for massage :)

Done!

2010-02-11T07:57:00.005-06:00

It took us 9 1/2 days for Dad and I to get from Pensacola, FL to Pt. Lavaca, TX, an estimated 700 mile trip. We arrived safely, late Tuesday evening after a long, wet, fun day's sail. It was after dark before we turned up the last 15 mile stretch of the Pt. Lavaca ship channel, but it was lit up like a runway and we beat an easy path to windward all the way into the harbor. Dad and I both enjoyed the trip, though we pushed ourselves very hard and are happy to be done. We learned quite a bit about the new boat, it's cutter rig, and even began to experiment with some self-steering configurations. I had my first (and probably not last) encounter with motion-sickness and we tested the limits of two stinky people living in close proximity. I can't wait to do it again in warmer, more relaxed circumstances. For now, the boat rests at the decidedly shabby, but cheap and adequate Pt. Lavaca city marina, waiting to take us somewhere exotic. I'm headed back up to Austin to kiss my girlfriend and start saving money for the next cruise, or whatever wacky business we can get involved in. Many thanks to my father, who made this trip possible.

Here are a few good pictures from the trip:

Woodring's Sailboat Delivery Service

2010-02-04T07:58:00.006-06:00

It's been a while since I had anything of interest to report. Rachel and I had been settling in to our new home in Austin and the priority of the sailboat took a back seat for a while. Living in Austin, the shortest distance route to the Gulf coast happens to run right by my old home town, and my parent's house, near Pt. Lavaca. After talking with my Dad, he agreed to take two weeks off of work and help me sail the boat back. I made arrangements to slip the boat in Pt. Lavaca and when things finally got settled enough in Austin, I took off for Pensacola, FL to go get my new boat.

On the way out to Florida, I stopped in Abbeville, La to visit my friend Paul Rybon. Boudin, old house demolition, and discussions about wooden shrimp boat restorations ensued. I've passed through Acadian country a few times now and I must say that this place is really special. There's a history here that's authentic in a way that's is becoming harder to find in our modern, "Photoshopped" world. It's a place where people do things in their own way and make no apologies. Mostly, I just love that Cajun music has it's own radio station here.

I said goodbye to Paul and hopped on a bus from Slidell to Pensacola, arriving in the middle of a storm front. Ray, the seller of the boat, picked me up and invited me to spend the night. After a long few days on the road, the pizza and beer we shared was good. The next day, Dad flew in to the airport from Texas and met me at the yacht club, where I was busy preparing the boat to leave. The boat was in pristine condition and already well outfitted, but it was still a challenge to stow our gear and get set up for the trip.

The yacht club wouldn't allow us to spend the night on the boat, so we walked downtown and found a hotel and got a bite to eat. The next day, we were back at the boat, finishing our list of preparations. We took on water, fuel, and set up our navigation system. Then, we ate a quick lunch, looked at the charts, slipped our lines, and were off.

Because a front had just passed through, the winds and weather forecast were favorable for an offshore hop. Rather than taking the ICW, we sailed straight out into the Gulf of Mexico from Pensacola and began the first leg of our journey. A full moon helped us navigate through the numerous offshore platforms at night. The wind picked up overnight and we found ourselves on a beam reach, making a constant 6-7 knots until the morning. The next day, we were getting close to Gulfport, Mi when we decided to turn south and skirt the Mississippi River delta down to Venice, La. The confused seas in this corner pocket of the Gulf made for some sickening swells, and it was late at night before either of us could eat again. We were both exhausted from taking turns, one of us at the helm, another leaning over the side.

Late that night, we stumbled into port and tied up at a random commercial dock to get some sleep. Since leaving at noon on Sunday, we had gone about 36 hours without stopping, and had sailed more than 150 miles. Not too shabby for our first offshore voyage. Our boat was quite seaworthy, but we had been found wanting, so we decided that maybe motoring down the ICW wasn't such a bad choice after all. Then next day, we made another, calmer, offshore hop to Grand Ilse, La. There we took on fuel and proceeded up the Barataria waterway toward the ICW. The channel was well marked, and our friend the moon back to guide us, so we continued on through the evening and into the night. A school of dolphins swam with us for hours, helping to keep us awake. We made the 35 mile trip to Lafitte, La by midnight, and once again stopped at a random commercial fuel dock to sleep.

Back on the ICW, we continued west, weaving through commercial traffic and enjoying the calm, placid waters of the inside passage. Boring, yes, but there's something to be said for being able to cook, eat, sleep, and steer without the boat trying to toss you off. The weather forecast predicted 100% chance of rain, so when we arrived in Houma, La, we stopped at the public marina and decided to wait it out.

So, here I sit, back in Cajun country, listening to the downpour outside. Today, we're cooking food, reading books, and listening to the Zydeco raido station. Tomorrow, the rain should abate and we'll be on our way westward again. We've come ~250 miles in 3.5 days, and have another 400+ miles to go.
Wish us luck, and see you back in Texas.

If you're having a bad day...

2010-01-12T13:23:00.004-06:00

Cheer up, it could be worse!

And now for something completely different...

2010-01-09T14:13:00.004-06:00

Well folks, it's been awhile since we've updated the blog and the principal reason is this: that our lives have been boring and frustrating and not particularly worth writing about. Hopefully, that won't be the case for long, but I'll give an account of our recent goings on for those who are curious.

As you know, we had originally planned to move the boat south for the winter, to Charleston or beyond, so that we could continue living and working on it. By a great stroke of luck, we found a condo developer in Wilmington, NC who offered us free slip rent until May as part of a promotion for the brand new docks at one of his properties. We moved the boat to our new slip right in downtown Wilmington. We found the vegan burrito joint. We celebrated. We met some great folks through Couch-Surfing. It was exciting. For about 48 hours.

Then James decided he was 100%, non-negotiably done with Rocinante. As you know, the boat gave us engine trouble the whole way down the coast, and the cause of the problem was never decisively determined. The fact that the boat was old, wooden, and uninsured made it hard for us to find marinas at which to slip it. The boat still needed some work and appeared to be steadily accumulated new things that needed work. Tow-BoatUS ripped off one of our chocks and a cowl vent while ungrounding us. We put plenty of new scrapes and dings in the brand new paint job. During a particularly windy night while we were off the boat, a line came unfastened, and the boat was allowed to scrape on the dock's rubrail until the name and a good deal of paint had been abraded off the transom. Most importantly, we had realized that Rocinante was, by design, not the best ocean-going boat and likely never would be. With these things in mind, James became resolute that he would sell her as fast as possible before investing any more money in her.

So he set to work selling the boat while I went home for Christmas for a few weeks. By the day I returned home, the boat had already been sold. It was sold for a price that was significantly greater than what James bought it for, though, of course, that isn't counting sweat invested. Furthermore, it was enough money to allow him to buy another boat that he had recently fallen in love with. More on the new love, later.

With the boat sold, we were both squarely out of a home, out of jobs, and in a strange city midwinter. Despite the vegan burritos, Wilmington was not a place either of us wanted to live for the price of regular rent. Being that the rest of the country was even colder, we decided to head south. And since the south, in my humble opinion, is not a very nice place to live with one known exception, we decided to move back to Austin until the rest of the country thaws. We rented a car, loaded it with our meager possessions, and drove it back to Austin, where we transferred our things to a friend's shed and have been couchsurfing while looking for a living space and then for jobs. This transition period is stressful, obnoxious, and boring and isn't helped by the blast of arctic air that Texas has been receiving since our arrival. Since we're alternately very busy and very bored, we've decided to suspend the blog until we've regained any sort of momentum and there's something interesting going on again. However, I will talk a little bit about our current thoughts on the future and the new year.

Firstly, James has already sent a check out for the New Boat. It is currently in Pensacola, FL and James decided to purchase it after we examined it on our way down from NC to TX. The boat is a very strange and quirky design. The model is an Aleutka and the name of this particular boat is Furthur. The biggest, easiest to understand difference, is that, at 26 feet, this boat is a full 9 feet shorter than Rocinante. It has no standing headroom, only two single berths, and no compartmentalization. Just one space with cooking at one end, pooping at the other, and sleeping in between. The benefit of course, is that if you're the type who can tolerate the spartan conditions, you can buy a much better, smaller boat for the selling price of a larger fixer-upper. The Aleutka has much heavier duty standing rigging, much more support for its smaller mast. The top portion of the mast itself is wooden and designed to, hopefully, break off in truly terrible weather and relieve pressure on the remaining mast. It has a bridgedeck and a tiny, tiny cockpit, which help keep water from flooding the cabin. Had a large wave broken over Rocinante's stern, the cockpit would have quickly become a decent-sized swimming pool, which could have, unfortunately, quickly drained into our living space. She has a tiller rather than a wheel for steering. It's a simpler system, with less parts to fail and easier to improvise with after a failure. It also came with fancy pants equipment like a wind vane, a metal sextant, an inflatable dinghy, 2 GPS units, and a depth finder. She's cutter-rigged (that's one mast, three sails, on behind the mast, two in front for the non-sailorly) and came with a 6 or 7 sails in good condition. She also has a propane stove and oven. Not only is propane hopefully better than our cantankerous damn alcohol stove, it's also gimbaled, which allows it to stay level as the boat heels. Ah yes, two other strange characteristics. The boat was never designed to have an engine, although this one has an outboard mounted on the back. The electrical system is entirely solar powered. Also, the Aleutka has two twin keels, rather than a single, centrally located keel. This allows the boat to be hauled out and set down on its own feet in a marina or on a trailer. It also allows the boat to be safely run and left aground under some conditions. At any rate, a strange boat for a strange James.

For now, the new boat will likely stay in Florida, although James may move it to the Texas coast to register it in Texas. However, we still need to spend some time working and saving, and since Austin, unfortunately, has no ocean, the new boat will have to wait to be taken anywhere. Currently, we'd like to plan to stay in Austin at least until May, working and saving before we leave on any more long term adventures.

I am also considering purchasing a Volkswagon vanagon, eurovan, or a regular old van to be converted into a DIY housevan. Though we like the low rent and crazy characters associated with boat living, boats are still confined to the water and don't do you a whole lot of good if the place you want to go happens to be away from the coast. Also, one of the major problems of living as a couple in one vehicle that is also your shared house, is that both people have to agree to be in exactly the same places at the same time. If the vehicle breaks or is sold, you are homeless. If one partner wants to go on a trip and the other needs to work, someone will have to be homeless until they return. Our experiences in the last month have highlighted these problems and left us wishing for a setup in which one of us is not totally dependent on living in the other's vehicle. Normal people, would probably just get a house or an apartment and one or two vehicles. Since we're a little less than normal, we'd like to have a houseboat and a housevan. When staying on the boat, the housevan can stay in a marina parking lot or parked elsewhere for a fee while cruising. When housevanning, the new boat is small enough that it can be kept at a marina for a much more reasonable rate until we return. Hopefully it will allow us to have access to wet and dry adventures while giving us both a place to retreat too.

So that's the plan - work in Austin for 6 months while assembling the necessary ingredients for an unstoppable housevan, houseboat combo. Then proceed to adventuring once the rest of the country warms up. When we've got our basic living situation figured out here, we'll try to resume posting our progress toward more adventures. Until then, wish us luck, cheap slip rent, low mileage vans, and decently paying jobs.

A slight change in plans...

2009-12-02T11:53:00.005-06:00

The strech of ICW from Beaufort to Cape Fear was a relatively uneventful one. We slogged hard against the wind for a few days and against the current too, at times. Still, we managed to have some fun feeding seagulls and taking pictures of garish houses along the North Carolina shore.

Monday found us making a long journey up the Cape Fear river toward Wilmington. Our (decidedly outdated) guidebook was full of promising advertisements for 48 hours of free dockage, right on the downtown Wilmington waterfront. Although it was a long day getting to Cape Fear and another 15 miles up the river, we figured the extra distance would be worth the convenience of quick access to a major city. We also wanted to evaluate Wilmington as a potential home port for the winter. Tired and hungry, we sailed into Wilmington after dark, only to find that the dockage was by "reservation only" and had long since been free.
Slightly bummed, we tied up to the empty dock anyway and prepared ourselves to leave at first light, before the dockmaster might berate us.

At first light, just when we were getting underway, another boat pulled up alongside. The captain was happy to provide us with information about local boat slips that were available. After dialing the number he gave us, our lucky day began.

Later that day, we met with a local condo builder, who was in the process of constructing some new "dockominiums" on the Cape Fear river. Although the few floating docks were already completed, they were sitting empty while the rest of the complex underwent construction. His offer was to give us free slip rent until the spring in exchange for the "life" that we would bring to an otherwise empty space. Not a bad deal ,eh?

So now, Rachel and I are contemplating "life" for the winter here in Wilmington. The docks are very close to downtown and there is a free bus that runs right past our driveway. Although our plans for the future are unsure, we couldn't be in a better spot to make them.

Oh, and by the way: My Uncle Dan is one badass fisherman.

Norfolk,VA to Beaufort, NC

2009-11-25T16:01:00.007-06:00

We've been slow to update as we've been traveling, traveling, traveling through backwoods North Carolina. We wound up spending two days at Ocean Marine in Norfolk while they pumped the diesel out of our tank and refilled it with gasoline. They set us up with a free slip, free electricity, free showers, and use of a courtesy car. Oh yes, we were living large and were most grateful. But, we had spent a week in Norfolk/Portsmouth and were very ready to leave when we did.

In our first few miles south of Norfolk, we dealt with our first bridges, powerlines, and locks. One thing we've noticed about the boat, is that tricks of perspective make it look like any obstacle, no matter how high above you, is going to rip your masts off. A sailboat in front of us at the first bridge pulled a wild U-turn at the last minute (the bridge was raised) and could be heard freaking out on the radio that he was certain there couldn't be 60 feet of clearance. Of course, there was, and after another U-turn, he made it under with plenty of room.

Past a few bridges, we hung a right and started down the Dismal Swamp Canal. There are two possible routes from Norfolk to the North Carolina sounds, and we chose the shallower, more scenic route, without any commercial traffic. It begins and ends with two locks, which were easy to get through, despite the 12 ft. change in the water level. The yard of the first lock tender's shack was littered with conch shells, brought by cruisers returning from tropical islands. In the pamphlet the lock tender tossed into our boat, we read that the canal was dug manually by local slaves and that that the swamp itself later became home to large colonies of runaway slaves who had familiarized themselves with the area during their forced labor.

Between the locks, there was little but herons, water dyed black with tannins, and the last of the fall colors. We hardly saw another boat. We did, however, notice that crew members would scrawl the names of their boats, the date, and direction on locks, bulkheads, etc. It reminded us of long distance trail hikers keeping track of each other. It was quite a departure from the industrial waterfront of Norfolk. We motored happily, until the engine overheated and left us anchored midchannel. It turned out that a piece of ancient, disintegrated impeller had lodged itself in the cooling system. A solo traveler, Tim, in a 50-odd ft sailboat gave us a tow while James removed the blockage. He was another liveaboard en route to Mexico. We spent the night, strangely enough, at a highway rest stop. The highway and the canal both ran past the North Carolina visitors center, so they had built a parking lot on the highway side and a little wharf on the canal side. We tied up for free with Tim and a tiny, tiny little pocket sailboat that housed a middle aged couple and their young daughter. James and I brought a bottle of dumpstered wine over to Tim's boat (which was larger than some mobile homes) and made an evening of it. In the morning, we went for a little swamp walk in the adjacent state park before shoving off.

The next day we motored out through the second lock and down to Elizabeth City, renown for its hospitality. We stayed overnight at a free slip and moseyed around town. On nights when more then five new cruisers arrive, the Rose Buddies, host a wine and cheese party and give roses to all the first mates. Not enough people were there the night we stayed, but we had both wine and flowers from a dumpstering outing anyway. (and of course, I didn't shed any tears over the cheese).

Fearing the onset of some bad weather, we left Elizabeth City early in the morning to cross Abermarle sound. We sailed most of the day and motor sailed the rest. The wind did pick up in the afternoon and our hatch boards, which had been happily resting on the top of the companionway, happily plunked themselves overboard during an especially rowdy rock of the boat. We had already lost a berth cushion overboard somewhere in the Dismal Swamp and James was not about to let these hatch boards go. When it became obvious how hard it was to reach way over the side and grab two flat boards out of the waves (the free board is such that it's hard even to touch your fingers to the water), he was taking of shoes and socks and getting ready to dive in. Only wild pleading and threats of immediate breakup kept him in the boat. Miraculously, James did grab a hold of both of them eventually, but a tight little knot of blue lines on the chart plotter showed just how many passes it took us to recover them both. We spent the night anchored in the middle of nowhere on the Alligator River (looked for alligators, didn't see any).

We took the Alligator-Pungo Canal on down to the Pungo River and spent the next night anchored in the harbor at Bellhaven. We walked in the rain to the Food Lion and resupplied. I saw the first cotton field of my life behind the grocery store plaza, although a soggy, winter cotton field is probably not as good as a fluffy summer cotton field. We crossed the Pamlico Sound yesterday and stayed in Oriental, though we didn't go to shore. The days in the sounds have blended together for me a bit, but I can say that we did a lot of sailing. One of the days, we only turned the engine on long enough to break out the anchor in the morning. This, of course, is nice and quiet, not stinky, free, and more fun.

Today was rainy and cold but we motored a short day to Beaufort/Moorehead City. The anchorages here are crowded with cruisers and with a lot of boats that probably haven't left the anchorage in decades. We ever saw a few fine examples of what I can only describe as shantyboats. It makes me happy that anyone creative enough to put a plywood structure on something that floats can live rent free. We're onshore tonight taking advantage of some coffee house warmth and the public showers. Charleston is about 260 miles away, and barring any big obstacles (the engine has not crapped out on us for days) we should be in Charleston in a little more than a week. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, but we are currently without any special plans. We need no special holidays to feast, but hope everyone else is warm and doing well.
Viva la boat shanty revolution...

PS~ Forgot to mention yesterday: Coming into the Beaufort harbor we saw groups of dolphins shooting around off the sides of the boat. The first time I've seen any dolphins closer than the horizon. Too cool to leave out.