Folks,
Looks like time here at Dockside Marina is running out; I have a couple of interviews in Tampa at the end of the week, so we are planning to take the plunge and move ourselves and most of our remaining wordly goods up there in a day or two. When we have a firm commitment, I will return to Marathon with my father and sail Womble up the west coast, leaving Claire and Lump to their nesting rituals for a few days.
I will take the opportunity to attend a Red Cross CardioPulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) course; this is the last element of my Divemaster qualification, and I will then be professionally qualified to take out my fellow divers and drown them (Karen will be relieved to hear this, no doubt). Should things not work out after 23:59:59.9 on December 31st 1999, I now have a fallback profession... The course involved some self-study drudgery, but most of the knowledge was re-learned from my British SubAqua Club (BSAC) qualification years ago; I think it is a little alarming that the PADI professional qualification is about as demanding as the BSAC basic amateur qualification was 20 years ago; still - we've all got insurance. A chap who was doing the course with me, Jeri, did not have so much luck - during rescue training, he decided he was not fit enough (as one of his victims, I had to agree), and determined to buy a bike and ride everywhere. This laudable commitment was rewarded two d
ays later when he was knocked off his bike by a car, putting him out of action for weeks. Still - the driver had insurance...
We have really enjoyed time here in Marathon, and with my father's sterling help we have taken the opportunity to do chores on the boat that otherwise would have taken a month of Sundays. All the portholes are now watertight, the engine cooling has been re-plumbed and the heat exchanger flushed out; we have removed an astonishing amount of slime from the drinking-water hand pump (sorry Neil, but it obviously wasn't too noxious), the companionway trim has been cleaned and protected, and Claire has resourcefully avoided sanding down the toe rails by being pregnant. The navigation lights have been repaired, rewired and resealed, the windlass wiring has been repaired and the hole sealed, the rusting galvanised bolts on the anchor roller replaced, and no-one has volunteered to go up the mast to replace the windvane. Boring I know, but if I've got to do it, then you can jolly well read about it.
On the social scene, we've been pretty staid, but I did enter the local Texas chili cook-off, and can now add "prize-winning chili chef" to my resume (possibly a second-tier fallback profession). The Superbowl party was al fresco - our neighbour plonked his 9" TV on top of his truck, and everybody brought food, snacks and drinks; Claire entertained the locals by viewing the game through binoculars, and probably had a better picture than anybody - of course, those of you who saw the game will realise that we didn't miss much, and we had the benefit of a beautiful moon rising through the clouds. Predictably, the favourite items in the program were the adverts, and these engendered far more debate and discussion than the game itself. The majority of support was for Atlanta, but when it was clear that Denver were going to win (by the end of the first quarter), most happily switched allegiance to gain the most pleasure from the game. Last night I managed to avoid dancing the hula a
nd limbo at the pig roast and luau, but I did hog (heh heh) the pig when it came to be carved. In the tail-end of the evening, a ghastly, leering, dark-wood statue of an emaciated Polynesian cannibal was seen to have speared the head of little Mr. Piggy, leading to reminiscences of "Lord of the Flies".
We have taken the dinghy out to explore Vaca Key (Marathon), and were pleasantly surprised at the extent of undeveloped mangrove swamp that still exists. We have seen dolphins and manatee, iguanas (escaped pets), a neighbourhood osprey hovering, and a green heron (so called because of its extensive blue, grey and brown colouring) fishing expertly from our boat power cable. In the evenings, large shrill flocks of tawny-winged blackbirds swoop and poop, descending on sailboats to line the rigging in symmetrical groups and reminding victims of Hitchock's "The Birds". Down the road on Big Pine Key there are larger iguanas, alligators, turtles, huge golden carp (released pets) deer, frigate birds soaring to share our appreciation of dawn's beauty, and the usual Keys human wildlife. Claire fended off an ant invasion, and smeared grease on the power cable to foil the ants attempts to de-provision Womble; she felt guilty about killing the ants after the anthropomorphic charms of the
"Bug's Life" characters, but managed to steel herself with the thought that they were, after all, just creepy-crawlies. At sea, I was amazed at the cascading walls of silver as shoals of baitfish surged into the air like inverted waterfalls to evade the menacing jacks; the speed of both fish was impressive, and the threshing and churning as each baitfish was caught and shredded by several jacks was mildly gruesome - nature red in tooth and fin...
We went up to the the seething hell-pits of Miami to buy a car and hang out with the beautiful people on South Beach for the Art Deco festival, generously accommodated by Rob Sealey. The car is a 1994 Pontiac Grand Am (for those who are interested), and is a startling red colour, officially described, I believe, as "Arrest-Me-Officer-I'm-A-Speeding-Drug-King Red". To avoid any possible misunderstandings, I am going to install reflective windows and string neon lighting around the underskirts, and we are awaiting our vanity number plate - "F U PIGS" - I am reliably informed that this will blend in perfectly with the prevailing milieu of Dade County, though I'm not so sure how it will go down in the less-sophisticated environs of Tampa. We had a slight problem with misfiring, and after a day back at the dealers, we negotiated their diagnosis ("Leads arcing" - like wow! and it ony took them half a day!) and parts for free, on the basis that I would replace the plugs and leads mys
elf. I soon understood why they wanted to charge me three hours labour for this, as I dismantled half the ignition system to get at the plugs, but I persevered and saved $200 dollars, and everything is all right (though I did have some regrets about it being a V6 model, with all those extra leads and plugs to do). Doubtless driven by hormonal preparation for our parental roles, we have gone all soft-headed about our new possession, to the extent that we actually washed it - once. However, fore-warned is fore-armed, and I will be sure not to molly-coddle the baby so.
I apologise to anyone who might have been interested for my failure to update our Web page; I can only say that I have had to refrain from using this verdammt machine except for necessary e-mails (like this one, folks), or I would have had no choice but to stomp it to oblivion and strew the pieces in the sea (after ensuring that they were all ecologically inert, of course). I can't wait to get my Amiga back... On that front, those anti-intellectual swine (funny how this porcine theme keeps cropping up...) at CompuServe have now determined that anybody who matters uses either Mac or Windows operating systems, and have dropped support for any other systems, such as my Psion and Amiga (and numerous others). This ignorant act is the proverbial last straw, and we will be leaving Compuserve at the first opportunity - new e-mail address will be notified. Their MAC software is awful (excuse me - "sucks", for the technically-inclined), and the bloody president (Mayo Stuntz) keeps litte
ring our mailbox with PR drivel, despite my requesting him to cease and desist. When your own ISP spams you, you know you're in the pits.
Which reminds me - conclusive proof that this county is utterly screwy follows : If you have ever tried to find natural yoghurt, you will share my frustration that there appears to be no alternative to this ghastly, artificial "Low Fat" sludge; well, I finally tracked some full-fat, natural, unflavoured yoghurt down the other day... Yes folks, to get full-fat yoghurt, I had to go to a health food store!
On that note of insanity, I shall drool farewell.
Gregg, Claire, and The Thing That Never Stopped Growing
NOTE : Please pass this on to Mayo Stuntz and other seventeen people you
really dislike, or you will get another one every week until the end of
time (or the year 2000, which is apparently much the same thing). If you
really don't want any more of these, please send an e-mail to :
AnybodyButMe@black-hole.com