Sovereign Nations

Happy birthday Dena!

We took a train to Dover, (Live Free or fucking Die) New Hampshire, bussed to Portsmouth, then we walked to Maine…

That was cool.

A New England interlude ensued, including a freezing cold snap, some rain, and another cold snap which put glass-clear coatings on every twig and berry and branch.

I (Dena) put on all my new smartwool and omniheat gear and we wandered far and wide.  From a wide-open non-war-making submarine tour to the epic walk looking for a birthday meal, we tromped around town with pink cheeks and bright eyes.

The walk to Maine took us across a bridge, an island, and another bridge.  The second showed us this strange sight – the burned-out husk of a nuclear sub set on fire by a guy who just wanted some time off.

They put the $400 million repair on his tab and sent him to jail for the rest of his life.

The restaurant on the other side is a classic NE joint.  Except they also have the largest salad bar in Maine.  It was big, but not, like, Texas big.  The seafood rocked, the potatoes comforted, and I had hot Indian pudding for the first time.  Cornmeal, molasses, spices, yumyumyum.

We also walked along a highway marked no pedestrians (ha! take that!) and scrambled up a steep overpass hill with a broken down fence.  And punted the remains of every rotten snow pile along our route.

Upon our return, there was a little snow.

Some layering up for warmth.

And a little getting paid for my writing.  So many gifts!

The organic manipulation of the toe rail project is done for the winter!

We burned, epoxy-coated, scraped, sanded, rubbed, brushed and stuffed all the man-made organic chemistry we could into/onto/throughout our 53 year old toe rails and it worked, they look great!

…And they’re tough as, well, epoxy-coated, painted, 53 year old teak can be.

Over the next few days we’ll put the hardware back on it such as the roller furling rig, the Genoa track and the wind generator tie-downs. This time we’ll be adding some stainless rub-rails at all the fender points to prolong the life of the coated wood.

This, this life, this partnership, this project, this boat, it’s the only work worth doing and we’re doing it right.

…Next!

That Nor’easter, she gonna blow!

The fall in Boston finally got fed up with all this beautiful… ness! And just like that, it’s winter.

We got the 3 coats of epoxy on the toe-rails, we got ‘em sanded and we got that thick coat of “Bristol Beige” on ‘em, and then that Nor’easter blew…

It kicked up to 50 knots and damn near tore our finger pier off. The starboard side holding-bolt on the finger pier broke off thus causing the finger to drop about a foot, knocking our fender out of the way causing the pier to slam in to our newly rebuilt toe-rail on the port side… The sound was unmistakeable.

Later that day, I’m at my wage-slave gig, I get a call from the marina telling us they’d moved our boat to the T-head by the bridge in front of the big hotel.

Ok… Safe there for now, we go rollicking for our 18th anniversary!

When I get back to work on Monday I discover they have finally fixed the leak in my work office that has been drizzling ooze, Whole Foods Market Juice if you will, on my desk, head and paperwork for the last four months.

They fixed it! Hooray! When I go to move my work computer back into the office the STL (corporate speak for store team leader) informs me that they are, from that moment on, going to reallocate my office to “other store needs”.

I wrote a letter to my regional coordinator (RC) telling him that I just got my job under control and the STL, without notice, turns around and makes my job harder by taking away my work space. I told him that my new work space was a ergonomic train-wreck and that this really was the last straw, I told him that I didn’t think I could work for an STL that could even think about this kind of thing before our busy season. And then I asked him to relocate me to another store. The RC  forwarded my email on to my STL.

I was fired 45 minutes later.

Well, they asked me to resign and I laughed and walked out of the office.

I blew a whistle on a manager and my regional representative took it back to that manager.

Of course I (James) feel shit on, but I hated all forms of capitalism long before I started working for a publicly traded grocery store chain, I knew they’d fuck me somehow that’s just the nature of that animal. They never, even for a second, made me believe they were anything else but a bullshit wage slave factory, just like all the rest, but, they’re rhetoric is definitely speaking to people much like myself.

I have to admit I rather enjoyed indulging in that company’s Pseudo-“Green Message” hashtag…

Recycle, buy local, “values matter”… It’s all bullshit. The only things that matter are the egos of the store leadership and that money, oooh that money!

fuck’em… I’m over it.

We did get to move the boat away from the falling-apart marina to another marina, one that is quite a bit more expensive but feels a lot better in so many ways.

Boston Yacht Haven…

So yeah, I got fired but we didn’t waste anytime!

We got a second coat of paint and the repairs done on the toe-rails the day after I got the boot so now we’re almost ready to sail to Nantucket for the winter!

What!?

All this and so much more, in the next chapter of…

Around the World in 80 Years!