Wilderness Drive

There was a chance of thunderstorms yesterday so my lovely wife and I decided to do a drive. We traveled a 24 mile loop, mostly on dirt and mud.

We took a lot of photos, but my bandwidth is so narrow here that they haven’t been uploading. Eventually I will get them up.

While the mosquitoes and other biting flies aren’t quite as bad here, we’ve been struggling with fire ants. I hate those little beasties. Our poor dog isn’t a fan either.

Sunnier and cooler weather is in the forecast. It’s not going to be the brutal cold of up north, but cool for the Everglades. No complaints from me.

By the way, my lovely wife and I just celebrated 41 years of marriage. I’m going to have to give her better experiences than fire ants, that’s for sure.

-Sixbears

More Everglades

My lovely wife and I have moved to a different campground in the Everglades. We are currently at Midway, which is between Naples and Miami. I had almost no connection to the Internet at Flamingo. If you have AT&T there’s service, but everyone else is out of luck.

On Christmas day my lovely wife and I took the sailboat out into Florida Bay. It was a great day sail. We hadn’t been sailing out of there since before the Hurricane Irma. The channel into the the marina is heavily silted in.

We put the swing keel down in the marina basin then headed out to the channel. Part way down the channel we stopped dead. After lifting the keel we sailed on. Then the rudder started dragging and that had to be kicked up. Once we got to the end of the channel there was enough water to sail in.

One of the tour boat captains told me how he gets the big tour boat out into the bay. Basically he goes through the channel at full speed so the boat’s up on plane. There are places where he has to lift the motors so the props are barely in the water. The Army Corps of Engineers has studied the channel and is thinking about dredging it.

While it’s possible to get my boat out, the marina is useless to most boats. There’s a dismasted cat staying there, but it belongs to one of the workers.

My lovely wife and I enjoyed watching the wildlife. We even got to see a couple of rare baby American Crocodiles. The marina basin had a lot of manatees and that kept folks entertained. You’ve got to watch the vultures and crows as they’ll fly off with anything left at your campsite.

The warm humid weather has been very good for my lungs. I’m feeling better than I’ve felt in over a year. It only took a month.

The big downside on this trip has been the biting bugs, but that’s camping in Florida.

-Sixbears

Not Eaten by Giant Lizards

It’s been a while since my blog readers have head anything from me. Frankly, it’s been a while since most people have heard from me. A few family and friends received text messages by way of an Inreach satellite communications device. Christmas evening we drove the long road into town to get cell signal to wish people a Merry Christmas.

We are currently at Flamingo Florida in the Federal Campground. There’s an ATT&T tower here, but that’s not what my cell phone or hotspot connects too. Only recently have I learned that there’s wifi at the Visitor’s Center. It’s weak and sketchy, but it’s there. I’m hoping this post can go out on it.

Our trip from the Ocala to here was a bitNot Eaten by Giant Lizards

It’s been a while since my blog readers have head anything from me. Frankly, it’s been a while since most people have heard from me. A few family and friends received text messages by way of an Inreach satellite communications device. Christmas evening we drove the long road into town to get cell signal to wish people a Merry Christmas.

We are currently at Flamingo Florida in the Federal Campground. There’s an ATT&T tower here, but that’s not what my cell phone or hotspot connects too. Only recently have I learned that there’s wifi at the Visitor’s Center. It’s weak and sketchy, but it’s there. I’m hoping this post can go out on it.

Our trip from the Ocala to here was a bit of a nightmare. That’s partially my fault. Theoretically it’s possible to drive it in one day. However, that assumes there wouldn’t be accidents that slow traffic down to a crawl.

Just to make it more interesting, after a gas stop we pulled off in a parking lot to assess our situation. Soon after a nice Hispanic gentleman informed me I was in his space. No problem, I tried to start the car and it wouldn’t turn over. Fortunately his non-English speaking drunken friend was able to help me jump start the car. They really were actually very nice about it.

By then we were outside of Miami and decided to take a room for the night. The next day I had a garage check out the Blazer and find out what happened. To my surprise it was just a bad battery. The battery was only a month old so I didn’t think that could be it. My thought was that perhaps the alternator was bad. Nope, turned out to be the battery after all.

We’ve been doing fine here. There’s been some interesting weather, but even when it rains it’s warm, so that’s good. There’s been a lot of small craft advisory days. Christmas day we took the boat out in Florida Bay and had a good sail.

We’ll be here for a couple more days then we are moving to a different park in the Everglades for a three nights. After that we’ve booked ten days in a marina in the Keys.

The good weather and exercise has been doing me a lot of good. Another thing, I’ve almost no idea what’s been going on in the news. That seems to have helped me state of mind some too!

-Sixbears of a nightmare. That’s partially my fault. Theoretically it’s possible to drive it in one day. However, that assumes there wouldn’t be accidents that slow traffic down to a crawl.

Just to make it more interesting, after a gas stop we pulled off in a parking lot to assess our situation. Soon after a nice Hispanic gentleman informed me I was in his space. No problem, I tried to start the car and it wouldn’t turn over. Fortunately his non-English speaking drunken friend was able to help me jump start the car. They really were actually very nice about it.

By then we were outside of Miami and decided to take a room for the night. The next day I had a garage check out the Blazer and find out what happened. To my surprise it was just a bad battery. The battery was only a month old so I didn’t think that could be it. My thought was that perhaps the alternator was bad. Nope, turned out to be the battery after all.

We’ve been doing fine here. There’s been some interesting weather, but even when it rains it’s warm, so that’s good. There’s been a lot of small craft advisory days. Christmas day we took the boat out in Florida Bay and had a good sail.

We’ll be here for a couple more days then we are moving to a different park in the Everglades for a three nights. After that we’ve booked ten days in a marina in the Keys.

The good weather and exercise has been doing me a lot of good. Another thing, I’ve almost no idea what’s been going on in the news. That seems to have helped me state of mind some too!

-Sixbears

Let History be my Judge

. . . because then I pretty much get off Scott free.

Being judged by History is a pretty weak punishment. It doesn’t much affect the here and now, and that’s when judgment really matters.

History is a funny thing. First of all, it’s written by the winners. Sometimes there is Historical revision years later. It’s a squishy thing.

Saying that History will judge someone is just a way to make yourself feel better. It’s one step removed from saying they’ll be judged in the afterlife. That might make someone feel better, but provides little relief in the present time.

Justice is a fine concept but hard to come by for the average person. It’s been my experience that you get the justice you can afford. What kind of justice is that? We claim to be a nation of laws, but unless you can afford high priced lawyers, it’s not available.

So yeah, I’m in a bit of a mood.

-Sixbears

Site prices

It was an interesting day. The weather was cloudy with some rain so we postponed outdoor activities. There was good wifi at the main campground office. The big downside was the constant blaring of daytime TV. That made it hard to concentrate.

We discovered one of the places we planned on staying had more than doubled their prices since were there two years ago. They were already at the top end of what we were willing to pay. Such is life down to the Florida Keys. We did figure out at least one option and we have a good lead on a second. By the time we came across the second we were too burned out to deal with people on the phone in a civilized manner. We can always call them today or tomorrow.

Some of our new friends moved to a campground less than a half hour down the road. It’s one of those little places that almost no one knows about. It’s really cheap, and there’s no full time caretaker. Payment, such as it is, is on the honor system. The place is maintained and has regular bathroom facilities. It’s along a little river with otter and manatees so might make for good kayaking.

So what do you do on a night when thunderstorms come blowing through? Laundry. It’s got to be done sooner or later and this place has both wifi and good music. They’ve upgraded many of the machines since we were here last.

I’ve been using more electric power than expected so have drawn down my solar battery. The days are short and we’ve had some cloudy weather. No problem, as I just temporarily stole one of the solar electric systems out of the boat. It was built to be easily removed for just such a contingency.

-Sixbears

Launch Abort

Monday we’d hoped to launch the sailboat, but like so much in life, that did not go to plan. We thought we could anchor it close by and use the Sea Eagle inflatable kayak to dingy back and forth.

Unfortunately, the skeg had come loose. Without the skeg the kayak tends to go around in circles. The glue on its mountain plate failed. My lovely wife found some 5200 adhesive in the boat so I was able to glue it back. That takes time to set, so instead of launching the boat, we did some cleaning and organizing. The winter roads from NH to FL took their toll.

The campground is pretty much emptied out. All our new friends have left, but we’ll meet up with at least some of them down the road. It’s never goodbye, but see you later!

Today is supposed to be a bit ugly in the weather department. Boating will be put off until at least Wednesday. It’s a good thing we are out and about for a number of months. There’s time for things to come together.

Sixbears

Still Here

I suppose it wasn’t very nice of me to mention a big storm was coming and then to go silent for a day.

Yes, the storm did hit. There was lightning, heavy rain and high winds. The inside of the tent stayed dry so I thought we were doing fairly well. When I tried to exit the tent the vestibule had been knocked over. Both pegs that hold it open had been pulled out. All in all, not really much of a problem.

So why no blog last night? It was pretty simple, really. We had a really nice campfire going and it was a good night for watching meteors.

My lovely wife and I had big plans for the day. Instead we met some interesting people and had some fascinating conversations. One of our fellow campers will be staying at our next campground too, so that’s something to look forward to.

While I haven’t launched the boat yet, I’ve done some work on it. Everything is in disarray after bouncing down the road for all those miles. The inflatable kayak is inflated and ready so go, so we’ll at least get something on the water later today.

One of the odd things, for us northerners, about Florida is that it feels like summer to us, but still gets dark early because it’s winter.

I’m feeling better the longer I’m here. It’s all good.

-Sixbears

Calm Before the Storm

My lovely wife and I had a rainy night in the St. Augustine Florida area. It rained heavily. Our tent held up well and we only had a bit of ground seepage. L. L. Bean makes good tents.

However, it’s going to be put the test sometime during the night and early morning. We’ve been warned that a line of thunderstorms is moving in. 60 mph winds are expected. Currently we are in a Federal campground in the Ocala.

I put down extra stakes and lines. Hopefully that’ll keep the tent on the ground. This is going to be a real test. While the sky is currently clear, the dog is worried. She feels something coming.

We were warned that cell phone connection is pretty bad here. My cell phone isn’t cutting it. However, the hotspot device puts out a stronger single. That’s how I’m able to get this blog post out.

Our plans are to stay here for a week. We stocked up on provisions before coming out to the forest. There is a store not that far away but last time we looked at some bacon that was many months out of datee. We don’t shop there for perishables.

Once the weather clears we hope to launch the sailboat on the St. John and check out Lake George.

My lovely wife and I are really starting to settle in after our stressful trip down.

-Sixbears

Winging it . . . somewhat

Ah, the joys of on-line camping reservations. Some people plan their camping reservations a year in advance. My lovely wife and I pretty much just plan on having a landing zone when we get to the right area. From there we figure it out as we go.

On the plus side, we are open to new adventures as they present themselves. We also have the flexibility to adjust to changing conditions. For example, right now Southwest Florida is experiencing some issues with red tide. It’s a good thing we don’t have any reservations in that area. With my respiratory issues, the toxins would be very bad news indeed.

Of course, planning at the last minute has some downfalls. As soon as we check out of this campground Friday, we don’t have any place lined up for the next week. However, there are some first come, first served places within reasonable driving distance that should fill the bill. Right now there are enough openings that we should be able to get into one of them. We’ve stayed there before so know what we are getting into.

After that we are booked through the rest of the year. One of the things we are looking for is boat launches near where we will be camping. After all, we did bring our sailboat.

I would like to lock in a week at the start of the year. That’s when my lovely wife will need to do the medication refill dance. It should go better this next time. However, we need both good cell service and a nearby CVS. After that, we hope to so some extended salt water sailing for a bit. Lots of interesting places to take a small sailboat in southern Florida.

One big plus for us is having a 105 watts of solar electric power sitting on top of the Blazer. It’s powerful enough to run our small cooler style fridge and a 440 watt inverter. That takes care of our basic needs. We save a fortune by being able to stay in more basic sites.

The little compressor type fridge has been amazing. While the fridge is small, none of the interior is taken up with ice. I really really really hate using ice. It’s a constant hassle finding it and food is always in danger of getting soggy.

I’m feeling better and better the longer I’m down here in the warmer climate. Life is looking up.

-Sixbears

Business on the road

My lovely wife has been trying to sort out her medication supply issues since before we left New Hampshire. She finally succeeded. In fact her full allotment of meds won’t be at the pharmacy in time, but he was able to issue her enough to bridge the gap. We hope this goes more smoothly the next time she needs a refill. Every year it gets more difficult to get prescriptions filled while traveling.

In other news, apparently one of the places we thought we had reservations has no record of it. Things get glitchey on-line sometimes. I’ve no idea how that disappeared. Today we plan on getting our ducks in a row as far as reservations go.

Just to make it interesting, some of the places we occasionally stay don’t take reservations. They also sometimes fill up. You need a solid plan B in place.

We’ve got a couple more days here in St. Augustine to sort things out.

-Sixbears

Still Alive

It was another long strange trip, but we made it to Florida.

We left New Hampshire about a day and a half late due to the Blazer having a broken windshield. The guy at the windshield place did right by us. He put in extra hours to get it done. Once that was in the vehicle was legal for a New Hampshire inspection sticker.

There was light snow in New Hampshire followed up by horrible Massachusetts traffic. We ended up taking a hotel off of rt. 84 in New York.

Bad weather held off, allowing us to get below the predicted storm bands with only a bit of light rain to show for it. Turns out weather was not our main problem. In southern Pennsylvania the boat trailer made a horrible noise as we pulled into a rest area. The lug nuts had loosened, distorting the rim and damaging the lugs.

Since we were in a safe place I decided not to try and move it an inch further. It took some time on the phone, but I found a 24 hour road service that said they could do the job. They pulled the hub to fix the lugs in the shop. The bearings were still good. I had a spare tire, but it was pretty worn. I had them mount the newer tire on the old rim. All in all there was a four hour delay and a three hundred dollar bill. Part of that bill will be offset with my Bloat US towing insurance covering the road service travel time.

By then I was exhausted. My lovely wife and I caught a late dinner and checked into a motel. It was all I could do to have a quick shower and stumble into bed.

Originally we’d booked three nights at a campground in S. Carolina. We lost the first two days of that right off the start of our trip. However, my lovely wife talked to the campground people and they said they kept the gate open. We decided to try and spend a night there. It was paid for and cheaper than another night in a hotel.

We went from southern Pennsylvania to S. Carolina in a day and pulled into the campground around 8:30 p. m.. We have two tents with us so we set up the small one for just one night. By morning we were back on schedule.

Sunday we pulled into our campground near St. Augustine. Monday we went into town to enjoy the massive light display the city puts on. It’s starting to feel more like a vacation.

When we left I was truly struggling with the cold causing me to cough constantly. That wore me out as much as anything. Now that I’m in a climate with warm moist air, my cough has already diminished by at least 70 percent.

While the trip down was a bit of struggle, we survived with fairly minimal issues. The Blazer ran well and even the trailer problem was solved without anyone getting hurt or being in danger.

-Sixbears

Still trying to get out of Dodge

My lovely wife and I had expected to be ready for the road Wednesday afternoon. Welp, so much for that. The guy who’s changing my windshield had a job go bad. I called him about forty-five minutes before his shop closed and he hadn’t touched it. However, he said he’d work late to get it done. We are picking it up at seven in the morning.

I think I’d better tip the guy. He took the job even though he’s booked solid into next week. The guy’s doing me a solid so I can head to Florida.

The cold has made my cough worse. That really saps the energy out of me and the pain wears me down. Once my lungs get a steady diet of warm moist air they should soon heal up. Hopefully I haven’t done too much damage to them.

I love the North Country, but winter and I no longer get along. It’s a darn shame as I used to really enjoy winter, snowshoeing, cross country skiing, ice fishing and other activities.

Fortunately, I’m lucky that most years I can get away from the worse of winter. All I have to do is to keep it together for a few days of travel.

The blog might go dark for a few days as I travel south.

-Sixbears

Paperwork day

It was a boring day of dealing with paperwork. My local post office held a month’s worth of mail for me. Most of my business was done over the Internet or the phone. However, I knew there was some stuff that would have to be attended to. For example, my new driver’s license was in the mail. I’ve learned from hard experience that the State of New Hampshire will not ship a new driver’s license out of state. Glad that’s been sorted out.

For the next five months my mail will be forwarded to one of my daughter’s. It’s going to be interesting when I collect that pile. Most of it will be duplicates of information of things like bank statements. I access them on-line while on the road. When it comes to financial information I’m more of a belt and suspenders sort of guy. It’s taken me a long time to adjust and I don’t full trust having just electronic records.

It was a good day to deal with that stuff as it snowed all day long. Today the Blazer goes into the shop for a new windshield. My lovely wife and I will make one more pass through the house to see if there’s anything we forgot. If all goes well we should hit the road on Thursday.

Brownie the Sailor Dog is staying will my oldest daughter in Massachusetts. She was pretty upset with us when we headed north without her. We are staying with one of our other daughters and her husband is allergic to dogs. We plan on picking up the dog on the way through. I suspect she’s not going to let us out of her sight for a while.

My lovely wife and I are really looking forward to leaving the snow behind.

-Sixbears

Best laid plans

It’s a good thing that there’s a fair amount of slack in our travel schedule. The trip has already been set back a day. Our departure date has slipped from Wednesday to Thursday.

Originally the Blazer was going to get a state inspection done at my mechanic’s on Monday. There was nothing wrong with it when it had been parked. However, while parked, a tiny crack in the windshield spread completely across from one end to the other. The crack was definitely big enough to cause the Blazer to flunk the inspection. The earliest I could get that fixed is sometime Wednesday afternoon.

I kept the appointment at the garage anyway. With the exception of the windshield the Blazer would have passed. Once the windshield is replaced it they’ll slap a sticker on. Since the vehicle had barely started, it seemed like a good idea to load test the battery. It was weak so that got replaced. No sense being stuck on the highway somewhere.

The Blazer was pretty much fully loaded, so I had the mechanic adjust the headlights. With a full load and trailer on, they would have been pointing too high. That’s something a lot of people don’t think about.

Monday my lovely wife and I connected with a couple of friends. We won’t see them again for months so it’s good to have caught up. While the Internet helps us stay connected, it’s just not the same.

We are fortunate our daughter and her family have been putting us up while we sort out our preparations for the trip south. Next year they are moving to Vermont so we’ll have to do it without their support.

-Sixbears

Snow, Ice and a Boat

My son-in-law gave me a hand digging out the sailboat and Blazer. Both of them were encased in about eight inches of a frozen ice/snow mix. The town plow had also left pretty good snowbanks behind. When my lovely wife and I shut the house down at the end of October we hoped the snow would have waited. It didn’t.

Thank goodness my son-in-law has a powerful snowblower. However, even the blower wasn’t fully up to the task. A lot of the ice and snow had to broken up with shovels and pitchfork. It was one degree Fahrenheit. The Blazer wasn’t too interested in starting. I tried to open the hood, but everything was frozen solid. On a whim I tried the starter one more time and the engine cranked over. The Blazer was able to pull the boat out due to new tires and four wheel drive. Now it’s sitting in my daughter’s driveway.

After lunch I went back up to the lake. It took a few more hours to pack up the rest of the gear we need for our southern trip.

Today will be spent running around taking care of business. My mechanic will be checking out the Blazer before my lovely wife and I tow the boat south.

Right now there’s a huge snowstorm hitting New England. We are fortunate in that the storm didn’t quite make it to the northern tip of New Hampshire. We could get some light snow later in the day. With that in mind, I’m going to cover up the boat with a large tarp.

Wednesday could be our departure day, but that hinges on everything going well. I’m not going to tow a boat throw a blizzard.

-Sixbears

Points north and south

Black Friday the family went into Boston, not to shop, but to visit the Museum of Science. Our crew consisted of my lovely wife, our two daughters, their husbands, four grandkids and myself. It sure beat shopping for stuff.

However, my lovely wife and I were getting burned out on city crowds. People in Boston were actually generally fairly nice, but there are so many of them. In our hearts, we are country people.

Today we are driving back to northern New Hampshire. Our middle daughter is putting us up for a few days. She only lives about ten miles from our house. We have some last minute packing to do before heading south. There’s also last minute business that needs to be attended to.

Sunday a snowstorm is supposed to move it. Right now it doesn’t look like we’ll have decent travel weather until Wednesday. Our schedule has a fair amount of slack built into it. It’s the first time towing our boat with the Blazer. I always take it easy when towing. Those little trailer wheels have to make a lot of rotations. Stopping to let them cool and keeping they well greased is a big help.

My lovely wife has me checking the weather along the way. We have some time booked in a campground near St. Augustine Florida. Sometimes it’s actually fairly cold there, but the long range forecast looks decent. If it didn’t we’d keep heading south, even if we have to go all the way to the Keys.

I really enjoyed Thanksgiving. My lovely wife and I were blessed to be able to experience it with family.

-Sixbears

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday. What can be better than getting together with people, having a good meal, and being thankful for the blessings in our lives?

Unlike Christmas it appears that Thanksgiving has limited commercial possibilities. Outside of turkeys and a few decorations, there’s not a lot of stuff to sell us. One of the reasons I like it so much.

Hope everyone has a good day, no matter how they celebrate.

-Sixbears

Malled

My lovely wife and I refuse to go shopping on Black Friday. We certainly don’t shop on Thanksgiving. That’s when people should have the day off to spend with their family.

With that in mind, we thought we’d get some early Christmas shopping done on Tuesday. We’ll be far from home on Christmas so we want to get a few things for the grandkids ahead of time.

There are a couple of massive thriving malls near my daughter’s house. My lovely wife and I split up. I spent hours going from one end of the mall to the other. Nothing in the place interested me in the least. Hours later I caught up to my lovely wife. She was still in the first large store she stopped in. The poor girl was bouncing around the store like a ball bearing in a packing crate. She hadn’t found anything of interest either.

At one time malls provided at least a few things of interest to us. Now it all seems like so much nothing.

On the bright side, we did find some gifts in a large bookstore earlier in the day. Large bookstores aren’t all about books anymore. They had a good selection of quality toys and games. Of course, being a bookstore, I found a few things of interest. At the very least they can be counted on to have some boating magazines.

-Sixbears

Electric Vehicle Revolution?

When we were out in the California Bay area I never saw so many electric vehicles. They are rare in the frozen mountains of northern NH. It wasn’t until I was in California did I see my first Tesla dealership. Those electric cars were everywhere.

Tesla just shook things up with their electric truck. It doesn’t look like what we’ve come to think of as a truck -more like a six grader’s doodles on what at future truck should look like. Then there was the whole fiasco about the broken windows. That controversy aside, the numbers on the vehicle look pretty good. Acceleration, speed, handling, and towing look excellent. The fact that it’s giant rolling battery with a built in air compressor could actually make it handy as a contractor’s vehicle.

Of course, it will be years, until the thing makes it to market. Tesla’s previous launch dates and pricing have proved to be wildly optimistic. It really doesn’t affect me personally as my budget allowed for a used 2004 Chevy Blazer.

Tesla’s making a big splash, but that won’t affect most people. The company that’s going to really change things, best I can tell, is Ford. They are coming out with their Mustang Crossover Vehicle. The only thing it borrows from the Mustang is the name and a few stylistic details.

The big thing about Ford is that it’s committed to electric vehicles. They are putting their vast resources into the project. Ford has a massive dealership network and are committed to building a huge charging network. That’s the sort of effort that will jump start the whole EV market. You can be sure that other car companies are jumping in on the electric bandwagon. China is heavily committed to electric so that will bring prices down even lower.

Maybe some years down the road I’ll get one. One of the big advantages of electric, which often gets overlooked, is their reliability and lack of needed maintenance. Electric vehicles are robust and at their heart, mechanically simple. Now that companies are making EV trucks with decent towing capacity, they are even more attractive.

There are some hurdles to wider adoption, but with major companies putting vast resources into it, expect to see a lot more electrics on the road. It could happen so fast that it will appear to happen overnight. That will an overnight sensation about a hundred years in the making.

-Sixbears

What cities are good for

It’s no secret that I’m a country boy. I’d rather be out in an isolated forest or even a swamp than a crowded city.

However, there are some things you only really get in decent sized cities. One of them is really good museums. My lovely wife and I accompanied my daughter and her family to the Peabody Essex Museum. We plan on going into Boston later in the week for the Museum of Science. My daughter home schools so museums are a good resource for her.

The PEM was founded by those who sailed the world back in the day. The maritime collections are especially interesting to us. Salem MA was once a major marine hub who’s sailors traveled the world.

One of the cool things about museums is that you never know what treasures you’ll find there. My lovely wife was excited to discover the original artwork for one of her favorite prints. There’s something about seeing something in the real world that digital copies just do not capture.

A good museum reminds me that humans really have made progress over the years. That cheers me when I despair at the current state of things. We’ve survived some pretty awful stuff. It might have been two steps forward and one back, but progress has been made.

-Sixbears

Always planning

I’ve been pretty focused on travel. First is was our train trip to California. Now I’m focused on the last few details before heading south for the winter. It seems I’m always planning something.

So what happens after we get back in the spring? Plenty. On thing we are going to concentrate on is getting the house and land back in shape. While we were in California a contractor removed the old deck from the house.

My daughter was concerned that the whole thing would collapse. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened to the contractor. Fortunately, he had staging and supports in place to protect his crew. I’m glad nobody was hurt. Hiring someone to do the job kinda bugged me, but it was the smart thing to do. My family only had to twist my arm for weeks to make it happen.

When we get back home in a week or so I’ll inspect the house to see if it needs any work to survive the winter in good shape. Cleaning up the debris will have to wait until spring when the snow is gone.

Spring projects will include a new stairway to the beach, raised beds for the garden, and a new waterline for the well. I better spend the winter getting into good condition because I’m going to need it.

It’s not going to be all work, of course. The is no sense living by a nice mountain lake if you don’t take time to enjoy it. We also plan on having a lot more campfires and cookouts. While rebuilding the house is good, rebuilding relationships with friends and family is even more important.

-Sixbears

And now the Boat

My lovely wife and I are staying at our oldest daughter’s house in Massachusetts until after Thanksgiving.

I’ve been doing a lot of on-line research for our trip to Florida. We will hook up our Oday 19 trailer sailer and head south in early December.

One of the things about hauling a boat is that you need a somewhat secure place to keep the trailer and tow vehicle. Many boat ramps do not allow overnight parking. Others limit your stay to two or three days. On-line information is not always accurate so that makes planning a bit of a pain.

One time the on-line information said the parking pass machine only took one dollar bills. Considering we planned on staying the maximum allowed time, that would have been a lot of one dollar bill.
The banks were closed so we finally got our dollars from a Publix. When we got to the boat ramp, there was a brand new credit card reader and it didn’t even take cash.

With that in mind, I’ve been doing the research, but not fully trusting it. In general I’m looking to find backup boat launches for each area I want to sail in. Of course price is always a consideration. There are advantages to having a smaller trailer sailer with us this trip. We can use boat ramps for smaller boats. The shallow draft lets us use the same boat ramps that John boats and canoes use.

California was fun, but too dry for my tastes. My lovely wife and I are looking forward to the trip to humid Florida.

-Sixbears

Back East

Wednesday evening my son-in-law picked up my lovely wife and I at the Back Bay Train Station in Boston. We are staying with my daughter and family about a half hour from Boston.

The train came into the station about an hour and a half late. We stopped for some time in Rochester NY for a medical emergency. Since the emergency was not in my car we really don’t know more than that. There was also some delay in Albany NY. That’s where the Chicago train is split into a Boston and New York train. There were some issues with the procedure that also caused delays.

Thursday was a day of rest. I did a little laundry, visited the family and took a nice long nap.

So . . . was the train trip worth it? I thought so. My lovely wife and I had a great time. It’s a good way to see the country and to meet interesting people. Of course, there’s a certain romance to train travel. I was happy to experience it before all the joy is sucked out of trains. The current head of Amtrak has a background in the airline industry. He appears to want to make train travel as soulless as air travel. There’s a lot of push back to that, so we’ll see.

There were some things that made train travel special. The California train still had dining and observation cars. That’s where you really get a chance to meet and visit with people. The lack of wifi on that train might have been a plus. The director wants to eliminate dining cars and has done so on some routes.

That’s a mistake. People don’t take the train just for the travel. If getting from point A to point B was the whole point, we’d all fly.

-Sixbears

Not Much to Say

There's not much to say. Still traveling on the train. Should hit Chicago in the middle of the afternoon. We have a layover before the Chicago to Boston train.

Having a beer in the observation deck sure beats driving.

-Sixbears

Blogging on a Train

My lovely wife and I are back on the train. As I write this somewhere in the high desert I can see this will be a short post. Typing on a moving train isn’t the easiest thing to do. Rough sections of track generate some weird typos.

It was a great visit with family in California, but it’s good to be heading home again.

This train is quite similar to the one we took out to California. The problem is that the cars are in different order from the other train. Everything seems to be in the wrong place. It took me a bit to get used to it.

One of the nice things about train travel is the opportunity to meet people. There’s time and the common spaces facilitate conversation. On the flip side, the little rooms have enough privacy so you can take a break from people if you’d like.

If I do miss a few blogging days it’s due to traveling. Happy trails.

-Sixbears

Back on the train

We are hopping back on the trail today. It was a good visit with family.

There is no wifi on the trail until we switch in Chicago. However, I was able to finally get my Straight Talk hotspot up and running. I spent a lot more hours on it that I should have. If all goes I might be able to blog while on the train. Of course, there are areas where the cell phone service is pretty sketchy.

On the way over I was trying to use the cell phone to transfer funds from my bank account. Just before the transaction was about to go through, we’d enter a tunnel. The connection would be lost and I’d have to start all over again. After that happened for the third time, I put the phone away and waited until we were out of the mountains.

When we left New England at the end of October the weather wasn’t too bad. Since then my home area has been hit with a deep freeze. In California I’ve been running around in T-shirts and shorts, so it’s going to be a shock.

-Sixbears

New California Preppers

California now has a lot of people who’ve been thrown into the prepping world. Thanks to the power shut offs people have to suddenly deal with being on their own. They are being encouraged to have a bug out bag, generator, solar chargers, stored water -the whole nine yards. The only thing they aren’t encouraging people to do is to prepare for their own security. California isn’t exactly a gun friendly state.

A lot of people have had a rude awakening. If you haven’t done any of this stuff before you soon find there’s a learning curve. I was talking to one guy who put in a huge generator capable of running his whole house. When the power went out, the generator turned on. His refrigerator didn’t start. The guy’s wife was in a panic, especially after spending all that money on a generator. As it turned out his fancy computer controlled refrigerator needed a full half hour to reboot after a power shut off.

There’s a lot of people who’ve been suddenly thrown into the deep end of prepping. If you were lucky, only your power was turned off. The unlucky had to flee a fire storm.

Of course, like everywhere else, most people will forget the lessons learned. There will be a lot of lightly used generators for sale soon. Just like after a Florida hurricane, the lessons are soon forgotten. Staying prepared takes though and effort. Most people want things to return to normal so they never have to think about this stuff again.

However, there will always be a select few who learn the lessons and stay prepared.

-Sixbears

Is California Unlivable?

There are articles out there claiming just that. People are leaving in great numbers. The fire situation seems to get worse every year. Water is always an issue. Taxes are high. It’s the land of earthquakes. Homelessness is a huge problem. State government is a mess. The problems go on and on.

So is it the end? Far from it. All of California’s problems can either be solved or lived with. One example, the number of homes lost to fire is directly related to the lack of affordable housing in more urban areas. Because of that people live further out in the hills where fire was always a problem.

The vast majority of the state’s issues can be solved with political change. I’m not even talking right or left wing politics. Drought does not care what your political party is. Things like better housing codes have greatly reduced the chance of severe earthquake damage. Many of the state’s issues can be addressed in a similar fashion.

Why would one bother? There’s a lot of vitality left in the state. I grew up in a dying New England mill town. It’ a real eye opener to see downtowns with thriving businesses and activities. There are millions of people who really want to live here.

On a personal level, my daughter and son-in-law are opening a second restaurant. Even with all the drawbacks, there’s plenty of opportunity to make a ton of money. While that’s still possible there will be people who want to live here -in spite of the drawbacks. California is a huge economy eclipsing the GDP of most nations.

Of course, all those sunny days are a real draw for a lot of people. As for myself, it’s too dry and I actually miss the rain. While I wouldn’t want to live here full time, it’s easy to see why people would.

-Sixbears

Business on the road

There’s a lot of talk about the joys of being able to work remotely. It’s a fine idea, but to actually do it can be a pain sometimes.

One of the big issues is getting access to everything. The financial stuff can be the worse. I ran into some problems with one of my banks. Sure, I remembered the password, but because I was logging in from a new location they asked challenge questions. Even when you know the answer that doesn’t mean you can successfully log in.

Here’s an example. Let’s say the question is the name of the doctor who delivered my first child. I know it was Doctor Jones. However, did I write Doctor Jones, Dr. Jones, Doctor Bob Jones, or Dr. bob Jones, or Doctor Bob O. Jones? The spelling has to exact. I guessed wrong on the spelling and was locked out.

Yesterday I had a meeting over Skype. It took almost an hour to get all the connections and the audio just right. Later one of my partners sent me an audio copy . . . and the file would not open.

That’s with a good wifi connection. It can be tough to get a decent connection. I still haven’t gotten my hotspot device to work properly. Maybe later today.

Next month I’ll be in a remote location where the only cell service is provided by AT&T. I’m not sure if I’ve got anything that can connect with that service. Worse come to worse I’ll look for a burner phone that piggybacks on AT&T.

One of these days satellite communications will be fast enough and cheap enough that none of this will matter . . . or the whole technological world will collapse. Either way, my problems will be solved.

-Sixbears

No Post Yesterday

There was no post yesterday. Frankly, I was pretty much out of stream. One six year old can easily wear out two grandparents.

Another thing is that there’s not a lot to say. We’ve been catching up with family that I don’t get to see too often. It’s a long way from New Hampshire to California. That’s one reason we haven’t been doing a whole lot more touristy stuff. Frankly, I’d rather shoot baskets with a six year old. (He out shoots me by the way.)

Then there’s the issue that some areas we’d like to visit are on fire, or at least are smoke covered from those fires. My days as a firefighter have taken their toll and I can’t deal with more smoke. I even packed a filter mask just in case the smoke here got too bad.

We have a few more things we’d like to do before taking the train back to the east coast. However, the big thing has been our visit with family, and that’s more important.

-Sixbears

Famous Fog

San Francisco is famous for its fog. I took a photo from the famous Pier 39. If you look closely you can just see the tops of the Golden Gate Bridge poking up through the fog.


I also got a blurry fog photo of Alcatraz.


In spite of the fog, it was a good day. We took our six year old grandson to the aquarium and that’s always fun. My lovely wife and I got to poke around the marina -like we always seem to do when traveling.


We played tourist for a day, and it was worth going into the city.

-Sixbears

Avoiding the deep freeze

The weather back home is cold, but it’s supposed to warm up a bit . . . then snow for a couple days. After that sub-zero cold is predicted.

Here I am in the San Francisco Bay area, enjoying sunny days that get into the high 70s. Seems like a good time to visit my daughter here on the West Coast. I’ve worn shorts and t-shirts almost every single day since we got here. It has dropped into the 40s at night, but when the sun comes up it quickly gets comfortable.

Of course, I’ve lucked out as we’ve avoided most of the fire problems, only getting a little smoke one day. My daughter was also lucky to not have her power shut off. All those clear sunny days make it tinder dry. Then there’s the constant earthquake danger.

Just like everything else in life, you have to take the bad with the good. While I wouldn’t want to live here full time, this has been a great vacation for me.

We plan on heading back to New England just before Thanksgiving. At the end of the month we have to go back to our home to finish packing for Florida. The house has all the plumbing drained, Internet turned off, and most of the power shut down. On the bright side, we can light the woodstove and get some heat into the building while packing. It’s going to take plenty of hot coffee to get the job done.

Originally the plan was to have the Blazer and boat packed and ready to go. As the day of our California trip departure crept up, we concentrated on that. Even so the boat is about 95% ready and the Blazer about 90% packed. It shouldn’t take too long . . . except for cold, snow and ice slowing everything down.

There’s some slack in our schedule. There’s no need to pull a boat trailer through a snowstorm.

-Sixbears

The Sailboat Deal Breaker

My lovely wife and I were talking about sailboats. I know, big surprise. There was something that was bothering her about living for months on a boat, but she didn’t want to talk with me about it. She expected a fight.

It turns out her deal breaker was the head, or bathroom for you land lubbers. We had a composting head on our Ranger sailboat and I was really happy with it. There was a learning curve, but after that it was pretty easy to take care of. My lovely wife knew I was a fan of those systems.

Turns out what she really wants is a regular marine head, with a holding tank and everything. Not only that, she knows they can be finicky and require maintenance and repair. She also didn’t want to have to deal with any of that. It would be my job and responsibility. If you want to know how bad those jobs can be, watch a few Youtube sailing videos about marine toilet problems. It’s not for the faint of heart.

Here’s the thing, it’s the only item keeping her from long term sailing. She said she doesn’t care about hot water, showers, refrigeration, air conditioning or even a stove. My lovely wife doesn’t require a newer fancy boat, or even a dinghy with a motor. All in all, her one requirement is amazingly reasonable.

That’s the first thing I’m going to look for when we go boat shopping next. I’m also going to study up on different models and head repair. Probably also stock up on heavy duty rubber gloves that go up to my elbows.

All in all, it’s a small price to pay for a wife willing to go sailing.

-Sixbears

Irrigation and Civilization

For thousands of years irrigation has made civilization possible in dry regions. This part of California is no different in that way. All around me I see green lawns, tall trees, high populations and busy activity. However, looking out over at the hills one sees lots of brown with strips of hardy evergreens. Lately we sometimes see smoke from not too distant fires.

Without irrigation the land could not support too many people. With it, farmers can grow enough food to feed a good sized segment of the country’s population. Civilizations have collapsed when their water supply failed. I don’t see that happening in the short term here in California. There’s too much invested in the region to give up on it. Politicians and engineers would move heaven and earth to repair a broken water supply.

Considering this is also earthquake country, that’s a good think. Personally, I feel a bit better knowing my daughter has some water storage in her apartment.

California is such a contrast from my home in Coos Country New Hampshire. The local Forest Rangers jokingly call it the “asbestos county.” Large forest fires are rare. We get a lot of rain and the area is full of natural ponds, lakes, streams and rivers.

My home has a well about 75 feet from the house that constantly overflows, even though it’s only about 5 feet deep. People are encouraged to store drinking water, but I really don’t have to bother with that at home.

Out here in the dry west, it really hits home how important emergency water storage can be.

-Sixbears

Perspective

There’s nothing like traveling to the other side of the country to get some perspective in life. It’s always good to occasionally get out of one’s comfort zone. In short time I’ve been her I’ve heard more different languages and eaten more different foods than I normally do in a year. The Bay area is quite the melting pot.

While this is my first visit to California I’ve been out West before. My earlier observations still apply: it’s too dry out here. I hear it’s wet in the Northwest, but I don’t know if or when I’ll ever make it out there. The problem is that the best time to visit is in the summer. It’s hard to leave my spot of heaven in Northern New Hampshire during the summer. During the deep freeze of winter, it’s a lot easier to head out on the road. That’s not really the time to visit the Northwest.

Another thing that I realized is that there is no way I could afford to live out here. There’s plenty of jobs and opportunities but everything is expensive. The price of rents and fuel really stick out. Gas is about two dollars a gallon more expensive than back home. Rents are at least three times the cost -if you can find one. Everything seems to be taxed.

Being so far from home I have the opportunity to see it with fresh eyes. It’s hard to get a good hard cold assessment of your home area when living in it. Too much gets taken for granted. You have to go to someplace significantly different to become aware of how home differs from other places. Some things you think are universal are not. That can be a shock.

My lovely wife and I will be out here for a while yet. While here I’m going to take some notes and make plans for when we get back. The trip have been very educational.

-Sixbears

Backside of America

Funny thing about traveling by trail. You see things you don’t normally see. Every hear about “the wrong side of the tracks?” When traveling by train, you see the wrong side of the tracks all the time.

A lot of time the trail runs though industrial zones. It makes sense. Passenger trails travel mostly on freight lines. Trains are used to move a lot of industrial supplies. My lovely wife and I saw a lot of scrap yards while traveling the country. Maybe I’m weird, but I find that interesting too.

We also saw a lot of homeless encampments. If you are living in a tent pitched in a pile of trash next to the tracks, your life has gone seriously sideways. I feel both compassion and despair. As a human being it hurts to see other humans suffering. My despair comes from the fact that some people are capable of soaking up massive amounts of assistance without changing their lives. Having come very close to being homeless myself, I realize how easy the downward slide can be. It can be tough out there.

The train also goes though some very remote areas. I can’t but wonder what people do for work out in some of those places. There has to be some reason for small communities of mostly trailer homes to exist out in the middle of the high desert.

Of course, mostly we saw some amazing landscapes. There are also some amazing houses located way up in the mountains with million dollar views. Train travel shows you the best and the worse of the country. Unlike car travel, you aren’t concentrating on driving so can take it all in.

-Sixbears

Cool places you won’t see for long

One of the best things about traveling by train is being able to see the country up close. One of the worse things is not being able to see much of it for long.

We had a stop here at the Albany New York train station. It was a nice break. We walked around and checked out the place. My lovely wife and I even went outside for a while. That gave me the false impression we’d do that more often.


Our stop in Denver was just long enough to get to the end of the train platform, ride a couple of random elevators to the wrong place and then hoof it back to our train.

When we got to Reno the conductor warned us not to go to the casino. He said there was just enough time to run inside, put a coin the machine and then head back to the platform in time to see the train leave. He claims they leave people there all the time. They do not wait.

We did see one exception to this leave anyone late behind policy. Apparently the cook stepped out on one stop and the train left without him. They quickly noticed he wasn’t on board so they backed up the train. You don’t leave without the cook.

We did have some time in Chicago as we were changing trains there. We went and caught lunch at someplace not on a train. Our return trip is supposed to have an even longer layover, so we have some plans.

If you are a smoker you’ll probably find it tough to get your fix. Trains are nonsmoking. They do let you smoke at most of the short stops, but there are some fairly long gaps between those stops. Smokers have fewer stops than they used to because they left butts littering the place.

Our train ran into some delays due to broken tracks. It felt like they were trying to make up time by shortening the stops.

-Sixbears

East Coast and West Coast Trains

Amtrack is in transition. The current head wants to concentrate on the short runs which are more lucrative. That’s a disaster for those people who need or want longer train trips.

One of the things that was cut out was the dining cars on the eastern trains. All that’s left is the snack bars. We were warned that there wasn’t much in the snack bars. With that in mind we brought our own healthy snacks. We figured fruit and nut bars were healthier than bags of chips.

As it turned out the snack bar wasn’t that bad. They had some decent microwave sandwiches. While that’s not great eating, it’s not too bad. My lovely wife actually enjoyed her cheese burger and my ham and cheese sandwich was fine. Still, we were glad we had plenty of healthy snacks with us. One bonus of Business Class was that non-alcoholic drinks from the snack bar were included.

Our train from Chicago to California had both a snack bar and a full dining car. The snack bar on that train was more like what we expected. The food in the dining cars was fine. Food is included if you have a room. They seated people with rooms for dinner first. If there were still seats available the dining car was opened up to Coach passengers. If you were paying for those meals you’d find them to be pretty expensive.

There’s enough menu variety that one could eat a different meal every time for the duration of the trip. Dinner requires reservations and someone comes around your room to see which seating you’d like. They fill up the booths so you never know who you’ll share a meal with. It’s a good way to get to know your fellow passengers.

Breakfast and lunch are first come, first served. There is always a vegetarian option if that’s your thing.

One thing the western trains have is an observation car. That’s a great way to take photos of the trip. That’s where I took this picture of Donner Lake.



That’s where the famous Donner party ran into bad weather and experienced some disturbing dining experiences of their own.

-Sixbears

Made it to California!

I’ve been silent here on the old blog for a while. Things have keep me busy. After winterizing the house for the season, we made our way south. Along the way we met up with friends for a late dinner. By the time we pulled into my eldest daughter’s place in Massachusetts, it was late.

After a couple days my daughter drove us to the train station in Boston. We made our connection. The business class part of trip from Boston to Chicago went well. The seats were fairly comfortable and leg room was good. Wifi was excellent. However, the tracks had a lot of rough parts so blogging with a laptop on my knees didn’t sound like fun.

I thought that it would be easier when we were in our own room on the California Zephyr. While the room was more comfortable, that train did not have wifi. Also there were a lot of places that didn’t even have cell phone signal. All we could do was enjoy the ride and entertain ourselves.

The Western trains still have dining cars and the food was pretty decent. Staff on the train were pleasant and helpful. I’ll blog with more details later. Right now I thought it best to send off a quick post to let everyone know I’m still alive and doing well.

I’ve some photos. This one was in Colorado on our way up the mountains.



More details later.

-Sixbears

The regular job trap

My lovely wife was finally able to find a home for some glass blowing equipment we had kicking around the house. Our youngest daughter had once been into that art and was putting together a studio. Then some other stuff happened. Such is life. I was ready to haul the remaining equipment to the dump, but my spouse found a young man from downstate who was a professional glass blower and could use the stuff.

I’m glad she found someone who needed the equipment. My lovely wife praised the guy for following his dreams and working on his art. Unfortunately, he and his girlfriend are “on a break” because she wants a regular job. Right now she’s training for one of those 9 to 5 positions. She was unwilling to put up with the uncertainties of being an artist.

Regular jobs sound good, but they can be a trap. The consistent paycheck sounds like a good idea. It’s great for your credit rating. With good credit you can buy nice things like cars, furniture and even houses. However, that could be a trap. Once you have those nice things the payments need to be made. For that you have to keep going to that regular job, even when it is no longer any fun at all.

Once could always change jobs they say, but it’s not that easy for most. Even if you find a job you’d enjoy more, it had better pay enough to cover those regular bills.

When you follow your dreams it may or may not pay. A few days ago we were talking to a young married couple we know. He’s avoided regular dreams most of his life. She works as a potter. They were struggling with a problem. He had a job interview for a state mechanic job. It was 40 hours a week with decent pay and benefits. The problem is that he’d have to have a regular schedule and do the same type of work over and over again.

He’s very talented when it comes to mechanical devices. While he could do the job, he said what he really wants to do is things like build rocket powered skateboards. Fortunately, his wife is very supportive of his dreams so I’m sure they’ll work something out.

Another problem with working non-traditional jobs is that it spoils you. After a number of years of that you become unfit for the shackles of the normal working world.

-Sixbears

Lost Technology

My niece and I were talking the other day I happened to mention that we used to use an acoustic coupler to connect a laptop to the Internet.

She had no idea what the heck I was talking about. My lovely wife and I started traveling during the winters about 20 years ago. We had to do a certain amount of business remotely. It’s hard to believe right now, but cell phones weren’t all that common.

Back then I used to carry a bunch of prepaid calling cards to make long distance calls. I’d do my banking over pay phones. Getting e-mail was an issue. That was back in the day of phone modems. Some places had phone jacks customers could plug into to connect to the Internet at dial up speeds.

A number of places only had pay phones. There was no way to connect directly to a phone line. For that I used an acoustic coupler. It looked sorta like a old school phone handset. It would attach to the phone with a velcro strap. Since it worked by actually making tones, it was even slower than regular phone modems. Often it would take 15 or 20 minutes to download my e-mail.

The best thing that could be said about them is that they worked . . . sorta. Old beat up pay phones didn’t have the best audio quality and that degraded speeds even more. Most of the time we made it work. Sometimes we’d connect late at night when it was quieter out as even outside noise could mess up the signal. Since we were tying up one of a handful of payphones, it was best to do it when most people were sleeping.

Why did we even bother? As clunky as the system was, it worked just enough to make doing our business possible. That allowed us to travel and have adventures so it was worth the hassle.

-Sixbears

Winter Boat Preparations

West Marine keeps sending me notifications about sales on things used to winterize one’s boat. There are local businesses advertising their winter boat wrapping services.

I’ve been prepping my boat too, but for a different sort of winter. My boat is ready to be sailed in warm southern waters. A lot more gear and equipment has been loaded onto the boat, but not too much. The single axle trailer shouldn’t be overloaded. Some of the boat stuff has been loaded directly into the Blazer.

My lovely wife and I will be closing down the house for the season. Most of November will be spent on a train trip out to California. I hope we don’t get too much snow while we are gone. Once we get back to New Hampshire we’ll do a final load up on the Blazer and head south. It would be a pain to have to dig the boat and Blazer out of the snow first.

One year The boat was encased in ice. It didn’t all melt until we were almost in Georgia. To prevent that happening a large tarp will cover the boat for a month.

Before we had a sailboat we used to haul a large Old Town canoe down south. One year it was left down by the beach and we had a lot of snow. I had to snowshoe a trail 350 feet down to the beach and haul it up the hill. On our trip south we stopped for fuel in New York State. The attendant asked what the heck I was doing with a canoe in the snow. I told him I was going to drive south until it didn’t look silly -and that’s what we did.

One major preparation for the winter was buying boat insurance. It’s an essential part of my winter boating plans. Towing insurance is part of that too, both on land and on water. You never know.

-Sixbears

Wrong store for the right things

Sometimes the best place to buy something is not in the proper specialty store. Back when I was in the Fire Service one of the officers had a plumbing business on the side. He pointed out that you could take a valve from a plumbing supply house, slap some red paint on it, and sell it for five times the price in the Fire catalog.

One of the worse places to shop for boating supplies is at a marine store. One example, they sell a bosun's chair for ascending the mast. It’s possible to get better and cheaper gear from mountaineering stores. If you have to get marine stuff look at places that sell to fishermen. Often they’ll have the same products for a lot less money. Other things like foul weather gear might not be as pretty, but will probably work better.

I’ve even found stuff for my boat while shopping in craft stores with my lovely wife.

The little solar panel on my sailboat has been working fine for years. That came out of the garden supply section. The price was right and it’s held up perfectly in the marine environment.

If you want to see a huge price difference, look at a marine alcohol one burner stove. Then check out alcohol stoves designed for backpacking. One year I was cooking on my Oday 19. It’s too small to cook inside the cabin so I cooked out in the cockpit. Since it was outside I could use a MSR hiking stove that ran off regular gasoline. I put a fitting on my fuel line for filling the stove tank. It worked out just fine.

My local hardware store has gotten used to me wandering around their store seemingly aimlessly. The manager asked me if he could help.

I told him, “No, I’m looking for the wrong parts for the right job.”

“Oh,” he said, “You’re an inventor.”

He left me alone after that. The hardware store is where I bought 90% of the parts I needed to convert diesel engines to run on waste vegetable oil. That was much much cheaper than the kits available out there.

A lot of money can be saved with a little creativity.

-Sixbears

Helping hand

There I was driving down a back road out in the woods, not far from my house. In the distance there was this truck that was half in the ditch. At first I was thinking that maybe my Blazer, in four wheel drive low range, could pull him out. There was a tow strap in the back. Back home there was some scrap wood that could be used for a ramp if needed.

When I got close I saw the back of the truck was full of beer cases and there were empties scattered all over the ground. My interest in getting them out of the ditch disappeared. In fact, I was kinda glad they were stuck in the ditch rather than driving drunk on the roads.

I like to help people. It’s good to feel useful. There are limits to my generosity. Heck, often I don’t mind helping people who are just plain stupid, but enough is enough. Those guys who drank too much and ran in the ditch? They are on their own. I didn’t force those beers into them. If that makes me a bad person, so be it.

Later that afternoon the truck had been removed. Maybe once they sobered up they figured it out.

-Sixbears

Less than a week

It’s less than a week before we close the house down until sometime in the spring. We’ve been concentrating on the nuts and bolts stuff, like getting the boat and our camping gear ready. My lovely wife is almost done sewing new covers for the boat cushions. I’ve a transponder to mount, but that’s about the last of it.

There’s still a fair sized list of the business stuff that needs doing. I just made a list so as not to forgot anything. Monday it was my New Hampshire DMV day. My state allows residents to renew driver’s licenses up to six months ahead of time. Since mine was going to expire before we plan on getting home, it had to be done. Overall, it went fairly well. The lady who did the eye test seemed surprised when I passed. She asked in an angry voice if I had contacts on. Guess I look too old to see without glasses.

My Internet company allows me to suspend service while I’m gone, so that’ll save a few dollars. No sense spending money when I don’t have to. My mobile hotspot needs to be sorted out. The company says it’s activated, but there’s some sort of password issue that may require customer support. I hate talking to those people, but the clock is running.

By the way, after my little woodstove creosote incident, I ended up taking the woodstove all apart and removing all the soot. Since it’s a cookstove there are channels for the hot smoke to circulate around the oven. Those tend to soot up and need cleaning now and then. It’s in great shape now.

You never really get everything done before a big trip. The main thing is to make sure the essential items are ticked off the list.

-Sixbears

Fire and Police

Some days do not go as expected. My lovely wife and I had a nice breakfast planned. My oldest daughter, my son-in-law and two grandkids were staying with us. It was a 20 degree morning and the woodstove was putting out some heat. Then it was putting out too much heat.

Creosote buildup in the stovepipe ignited. It became cherry red all of a sudden. I woke up the household and told them to get out. Then I called 911 to report a chimney fire to the local volunteer fire department.

I was able to put the fire out with a fire extinguisher. It had been contained to the stovepipe and the chimney was fine. The firefighters inspected my chimney and it was clear from top to bottom. All the creosote had been confined to the stovepipe. When it came right down to it, I’d successfully put the fire out before the firefighters got here, but I’m glad they checked everything out for me. You never assume you got it all.

With the stove and the house cold, we all went out to a local restaurant for their Sunday brunch. My lovely wife asked if I was going to change the stovepipe and I was happy to oblige. I left brunch a bit early to find new stovepipe before the local hardware stores closed at noon.

While changing out the stovepipe, my neighbor came over. She’d had a restraining order on her husband -which he violated. Now he’s in jail. They’ve been married for a little over a year. She was shocked to learn he had a felony conviction. The police were impressed with his firearm collection, especially his sawed off shotgun. My guess is that those violations alone will keep him out of circulation for a bit.

It was an emotionally trying day. It does feel good right now to have my feet up, the woodstove running well, and a good cup of coffee.

-Sixbears

Safety on the docks

There are some boaters who only stay at Marinas. Others prefer to anchor out. The pros and cons are well known. Marina people can easily access land and all it’s amenities. Those who anchor out need some sort of dingy to get to shore. Marina boats can tie directly into grid power. Anchored boats must rely on their own systems, be they solar, wind, generator or a mix of sources.

Another big concern is safety. There are two kinds of safety I’m going to address here. One is security. How easy is it for thieves and bad people to get on your boat? The other is general boating safety. How safe is your boat from collisions, fire, and other boating hazards?

One would think that a very high end marina would be very secure. They have security guards and access to the docks generally requires a key code. My lovely wife and I stayed at a pretty high end marina while outfitting a boat. The sailboat was based in the marina when we bought it and they cut us a deal to stay there.

While they had full time security, the guard was a jack of all trades. Security was an incidental responsibility to his many other duties. There were gates with a keypad, but it would not take a lot of agility to get around them. That wasn’t really necessary though. Just follow someone going onto the docks and have them hold the gate open for you. After going past the security gate day in day out, you tend to think of it as more of an annoyance than anything else. You could just say you forgot the code and someone will probably shout it out to you.

Anchored out you are protected from casual thieves who don’t have a boat. If someone shady comes by, help is often just a shout away on the radio. However, that might be a problem in more remote anchorages. Personally, I feel pretty safe in a remote area. Most problems happen where there are a lot of people.

With your boat tied up at a dock you’d think it was safe. While we were at that fancy marina we saw a number of collisions. Often it was power boats going out of control. Alcohol is often a factor. Not only that, some people just aren’t very skillful at the helm. Real estate at a marina is expensive so boats are really packed in tight. Current and wind can really mess up docking maneuvers.

Anchored out, your main concern is the quality of your anchoring system and the bottom conditions. Even if you are secure, it’s common for other people to drag anchor and collide with other boats. During a storm it’s necessary to be concerned with everything going on around you.

So there are pros and cons to both staying at a dock and anchoring out. One of the big factors for me is that anchoring is free. Often that’s what tips the balance. It’s safer for my wallet.

-Sixbears

Annoyance Exercise Plan

There are times when I think it’s the annoyances in my life that keep me healthy. Lately I’ve been out splitting firewood at least once or twice a day. I’m burning the stuff that’s been set aside for being too knotty or twisted to spit easily. Just breaking up enough for the day’s heat can be a workout involving wedges, axes, and a chainsaw.

It got me thinking about how much exercise I’m getting just living day to day. My land is steep and hilly. A trip from one end to the other can be a hike. My house has three levels so there’s a lot of stair climbing involved. Often I’m carrying stuff like baskets of laundry.

It’s seems I’m always lugging tools around and doing projects. There’s always something heavy that needs moving. It was worse when I was collecting waste veggie oil for my converted diesel engines. A 4.5 gallon jug weighed about 35 pounds. You pump 18 gallons of fuel into your car without even thinking much about it. For me that was 4 jugs hauled from the restaurant, to my basement, then back to the vehicle. That’s a 140 pounds of stuff lugged around. Frankly, that’s one part of the whole veggie diesel thing I don’t miss.

In my home town there used to be a lot of four and five story tenement blocks. A lot of them were built back during the depression when labor was cheap. Invariably there’d be little old ladies living on the top floors. Not only did they go up and down those stairs all the time, they’d haul their groceries long distances in little two wheel carts. Those old ladies were too tough to die.

Exercise is good for us, but going to the gym is hard. If there are enough annoyances in your life you can get by without one.

-Sixbears

Coming Home

This was a quick photo taken through the dirty windshield of moving vehicle. I was just coming to the southern end of the White Mountains on rt. 93. After spending the night downstate, home was calling me. No time to stop for proper pictures.


I had a meeting with some good people for one of my side endeavors. Part of what was discussed was how to keep in touch and do business while I’m on the road. Even though getting ready for travel has taken up a lot of time, it was definitely worth taking a couple days to sort out some plans.

Once again this year my lovely wife and I missed the big boat show in Annapolis. Months ago we’d done some preliminary planning and research. Like so much else, time and money issues killed that idea. We’d even looked at possibly going to smaller and closer boat shows. There we ran into two problems. Once was scheduling conflicts. The other was that the boat shows we could make mostly concerned powerboats and not sailing.

When it come right down to it, instead of going to shows, we should save our money for the next boat. To be honest, we really can’t afford much of anything at those shows. That doesn’t mean it’s not fun to look. There are usually interesting talks and discussions that are worthwhile at these shows. By themselves they are often worth the price of admission.

Oh well, can’t be at all the places doing all the things. As it is we do an awful lot with very little and sometimes in life there are rainbows.

-Sixberars

Procrastinating Preppers

Sometimes I get these weird thoughts. Think back to your school days. Wasn’t there always some guy or girl who always procrastinated . . . and got away with it? You could be up half the night studying. They skim the textbook ten minutes before class and get a better grade than you.

I had this crazy idea that the world will be full of people who prep at the very last second and it all works out for them. That’s not as crazy as it seems. The world is full of potential problems, disasters and general craziness. There’s a lot of potential madness to prepare for. That in itself can be paralyzing.

The last minute prepper only has to focus on what’s really going down right in front of them. Instead of trying to prepare for everything from nuclear war to economic collapse, they have just the one big immediate problem to deal with. Their preparation, while hurried, can be laser focused.

Most preppers think in terms of scenarios. They imagine what could happen and prepare for those things. You ever notice how different preppers focus on different things? For some it’s all about defense and they absolutely need their AR-15s. For others it’s about food and their pantries and root cellars are stocked to overflowing. Other’s might focus on economic collapse and stockpile precious metals. The problem is that when something bad really is about to go down, these people will try to fit the problem into what they’ve prepared for, not what it really is.

Am I advocating preparing at the last minute? Not exactly. For all those folks back in school who could pull off procrastinating, there are many more who failed because of it. We can’t all trust to luck and winging it. However, survival is more than being ready for anything. That’s impossible. What is possible is having the basics for survival squared away and developing a diverse skill set. Keep your eyes open on what’s really happening. Don’t let your preconceived notions get in the way.

Class dismissed.

-Sixbears

Waste of time and money?

At age 61, I just had my first visit to the eye doctor. Well that was interesting, but I probably could have skipped the whole thing.

I’ve been using reading glasses for a few years. With my driver’s license renewal coming up I figured I’d better get my eyes tested. Last time I was at the DMV I saw some poor woman flunk the eye test. She didn’t know she needed glasses and couldn’t get her license renewed.

Long story short, I’m not going to have any problem getting my license without glasses. The eye doctor showed me what glasses could do for me and it wasn’t much. Without glasses there was the very slightest blur to the letters -nothing to worry about. She admitted that people with my vision don’t normally bother with glasses.

So was it a waste of money? Not really. Now I know for sure how good my eyes are. Even more importantly, the doctor dilated my eyes and examined them for disease. They checked out fine. The dilation messed up my eyes for the rest of the afternoon, and I couldn’t get anything else done. Oh well. That wraps up the last of my medical visits before we go traveling.

-Sixbears

Odds and Ends

Sometimes you sleep on a problem and wake up with a solution. I was able to paint most of the bottom of the sailboat while it was on the trailer. The parts I couldn’t reach were where the boat sat on the carpeted skids.

In the past I’ve dealt with that in two different ways. One way was to just beach the boat and heel it over on its side. The time I did that at the lake a number of people called to ask what was wrong with my sailboat. Another way that works is to float the boat off the trailer and load it off center by about four or five inches. This time around I happened to have a huge piece of an oak log, a jack and some scrap wood. By lifting the stern of the boat it had enough clearance to do the last of the painting.

A lot of people don’t even bother with bottom paint on a trailer sailor. If I’d only sail in New England I probably wouldn’t worry too much about it either. Down to Florida, marine growth is very aggressive. Just a few weeks in the water is enough to cause a barnacle problem.

Yesterday while working on the boat, three police officers showed up at the neighbor’s across the street. Looks like their constant fighting led to a restraining order. While I got along well enough with them, they didn’t get along very well with each other. The neighbors haven’t been married much longer than a year. I am curious to see who, if anyone, will be living there when we get back in the spring.

This afternoon I’ve an eye exam scheduled, just in case I need glasses. Rather find out now than at the DMV. That’ll be one more thing off the list. There’s some other business that needs to be dealt with yet. I can suspend my Internet service for when I’m gone and save a few dollars there. My hotspot for Internet connection isn’t working right yet. The list of little annoyances goes on and on. There’s no way to do them all so one has to set priorities.

-Sixbears

Another job done

It was finally dry enough and warm enough to apply bottom paint to my sailboat. This late in the year that’s not a given. Big boats are nice, but when it comes time to paint the bottom, a small boat on a trailer has its charm.

While under the boat I discovered some fiberglass wear on the swing keel. Since there was still some epoxy lying around the house, it wasn’t too big a deal to mix up some filler and take care of that. The job was a bit awkward and messy, but that’s what old shirts are for, right? Felt pretty good about that until after I changed. Right then a glob of thickened epoxy fell out of my beard onto my good shirt. So it looks like this job cost me a good shirt and about a half inch of beard.

There’s a couple of little boat projects to do yet, but nothing major. My lovely wife is sewing up new boat cushion covers. I’m mounting a new transponder for the depth sounder.

We are getting down the last two weeks before shutting down the house. I’m feeling the time crunch. This week already has a number of things scheduled, including an overnight trip downstate. There’s a lot of packing to do. We have to prepare for a cross country train trip. Since the house will be closed up when we get back, our camping and boat stuff will be stored in the Blazer. I hope we don’t get completely buried in snow while I’m gone. It always feels weird to tow a boat through snowstorms.

-Sixbears

Extremely Cheap Cars

I once bought an old Dodge wagon with the 318 engine for fifty dollars because the junk yard only offered the previous owner thirty five. It had a blown torque converter and the engine had lifter noise. A cheap can of additive solved the hydraulic lifter issue. A buddy at work found a torque converter in a vehicle abandoned in a farmer’s field. I did the work in my dad’s backyard. The car, after repairs, still cost less than one hundred dollars.

Unfortunately the gas gauge never worked. One cold night it left me stranded a long walk from home. That was it, time to trade the car in. We had driven it for two years by then anyway.

My lovely wife and I bought the first new car of our marriage. It wasn’t much of a car, a Dodge Omni with the four speed manual transmission and the gutless 1.6 liter Peuguet engine. The car was cheaply made; it didn’t even have a radio. We drove that thing for 10 years and it was falling apart: rust, broken door handles, and a host of niggling mechanical issues. One day my lovely wife got into an accident with a tractor trailer fuel hauler. She totaled the truck, so you can imagine what the car looked like. She was lucky to survive with minor injuries.

Over the years we’ve owned way too many junk cars. At least we aren’t buying Dodges anymore. Probably the best car we ever owned was an old Mercedes 240 D. It was very old when we bought it with 100,000 miles on the odometer. I converted it to run on waste vegetable oil and we put an additional 400,000 miles on it.

All I ever wanted from a car was transportation. It’s not about ego. I don’t have to have a big fancy lifted 4X4 to compensate for my short comings. Cars just don’t excite me, especially new cars. They cost too much money and are poorly made. While the best car I ever owned was that Mercedes, I would not buy a newer one. They are now over engineered with too many computers and too much cheap plastic.

While I had fun running four different diesel vehicles on waste veggie oil, that’s come to an end too. Newer diesels are too complicated and don’t convert well. Then there’s the issue that waste veggie is no longer free and harder to get.

So what’s in my future? With my budget, maybe walking. My lovely wife is currently driving a very cheap Nissan Versa Note with a manual transmission. I’ve got that 2004 Chevy Blazer for the main purpose of towing my boat. When those are gone, I’m just not sure. Maybe we’ll spend half the year living on a sailboat and not needing a car. For the other half? It’s anyone’s guess. Maybe there will be cheap reliable used electric cars on the market? Maybe the whole car thing will be over and we’ll be back to horses.

-Sixbears

Some thoughts on California power cuts

A lot of ink has been spilled about the California power cuts. First of all, it’s inconvenient, but not the Armageddon that some people want you to believe. That’s not to say there won’t be some real suffering, especially for those people with medical needs.

There are some things people should know. The first is that the shutdowns were announced a long time ago and there’s been plenty of time to prepare. Western states are a lot drier than eastern states, making for a much higher fire danger. That’s true in years without drought and dry years make it much worse. After being blamed for the death and destruction of last year’s fires, PG&E can’t afford more lawsuits. They are already in deep financial trouble.

LA is in serious danger from major fires. There are no natural fire breaks and no way to really stop a major burn. The only danger more serious to LA is earthquakes. If there is a major earthquake, fire is a major hazard at the same time.

Many fires have been caused by high tension power lines. Personally, it’s my opinion that the nation should be moving away from big interconnected grids. When power is generated near where it’s to be used, there’s no need for high tension wires. A lot of energy is lost in transport and alternative energy is now cheap and clean enough to do the job. Doesn’t that sound like a better idea than shutting down the power every fire season?

California doesn’t normally experience power outages of this scale. Where I live in Northern New England, power outages can be measured in weeks for some people. Winter weather takes its toll, but I’ve lost power on clear sunny days. Such is life out in the country. That’s a major reason why I was an early adopter of solar electricity. It just works.

California is going to have to figure something out. These problems aren’t going away. Remember, what happens in California has a habit of eventually affecting the rest of the country.

-Sixbears

Getting back in the swing of things

Well, the heating oil ran dry. Frankly, I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did. The nights have been cool. No, they’ve been down right cold. Some of the days haven’t been all that warm either.

So now I’m down to firewood. Since we’ll be closing up the house near the end of the month, I really don’t want to invest in a load of heating oil. That can wait until sometime next year. Firewood will have to do.

My wood pile has a fair number of unsplit logs. Last year when I was splitting wood, a lot of the twisty and knotty ones were set aside. Now that’s much of what’s left. Some of them are bad enough that I chainsaw them in half before splitting them smaller.

There I was puttering around the woodpile. It was going fairly well -until I realized how sore and tired the work made me. That long recovery from that nasty infection took more out of me than I realized. That last thing you want to do is swing an ax around when sore and tired. No sense getting injured. Instead of pushing on I took a couple of ibuprofen and had a nap.

Now I’m pacing myself until I get back in the grove of things. I’m not one of those guys who spends a lot of time in the gym. Normally my day to day life gives me a fair bit of exercise. After convalescing for a number of months I really got out of condition. While a lot of progress has been made, now and then some activity knocks me back harder than expected.

A winter of camping and sailing should be just the thing. Looking forward to it.

-Sixbears

Vehicle to home conversions

There’s a lot of information on the Internet about people who convert vehicles into traveling mini-homes. Having converted an ambulance I’ve some ideas on the practice.

There are some really nice conversions out there. Some people put a lot of time and money into their vehicles. In many cases that’s a mistake. I’ve seen where someone did an amazing conversion: fine wood work, sophisticated water and electrical systems, and great attention to detail. No expense was spared.

Then I see the base vehicle that they started with is something like a 1987 Chevy Van with 200,000 miles on it. No matter how well it was maintained or updated, it’s an old van. It will fail. Then you are stuck with a lot of money sunk into a dead vehicle.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t do a conversion on an older vehicle. Just don’t spend a lot of money on it. You could also built it in such a way that the components can easily be removed and installed in something else. For example, when I finally sold my van, the fridge, bed, microwave, tables, and solar electric system were all easy to remove. All of that stuff found new homes.

If you are going to spend crazy money on a van to live in, might as well buy something ready to go. There are quite a few choices based on Mercedes Benz, Ford, GMC, and RAM vehicles.

Of course, some people convert vans for the joy of doing the conversion. Actually using them is secondary. If you are going to really use such a vehicle for extended periods of time I recommend going one of two ways. Either go high end and get something commercial, or go low end and do a quick and dirty conversion. If you take a used older vehicle and put a lot of money into it, it will break your heart when the engine or transmission fails.

-Sixbears

Final Checkups

The crew is getting ready for travel. One of the things we need to do is to sort out any health issues.

I’ve had two doctor’s appointments so far this month. The first one was with a foot doctor to see how my ingrown toenail surgery worked out. The results were great and the doctor didn’t even schedule any followup. I just had a meeting with the doctor who sent me to the hospital with my leg infection last winter. That went well. He thinks my leg now looks “perfect.”

Next week I have one more appointment. This time it’s with an eye doctor. There are two reasons for an eye exam. Reason number one: I’m sixty-one and never had an eye exam. Reason number two: my driver’s license is due for renewal and an eye test is part of the process. Better to find out if I need glasses before the license test.

Unfortunately, my lovely wife is dealing with a broken toe. She’s determined to not let it slow her down two much but she really needs to rest it right now. Her next appointment is on Thursday and we have a our finger’s crossed that it goes well.

Even Brownie the Sailor Dog went to the vet. She had her annual checkup and her shots brought up to date.

With any luck we won’t have to deal with health problems while we are traveling. All that fresh air and exercise should keep us healthy. All we have to do is avoid injury, disease, and encounters with wild animals. Piece of cake.

-Sixbears