Monday September 26: Road Trip

Finally, Steve felt well enough Friday that we decided to visit the Lexington Market. It's very similar to the West Side Market in Cleveland but in our opinion wasn't nearly as good. Anyway, it was again an adventure as our number one rule now when using the GPS is to double check the address!!! After driving all over downtown Baltimore we finally found the market but couldn't find our way out of the parking garage! Mirrored glass and minimal signage. What a trip. And now it's raining. And we didn't bring umbrellas. What a day. But Steve still managed to find something for supper :-) In the end - a great rainbow :-)

Saturday was another overcast day but that was ok as it's cool when the sun isn't out. Steve must be using the computer too long as he had sought out a meat market that has been in business for the last 100 years - how could we possibly miss that on our stay in Baltimore?! So after breakfast at Denny's, we headed out to not-sure-where as we have come to rely on the GPS for getting us to where we want to go even if we have no idea where we really are! Dave had joined us for the trip to Denny's and was game for the trip to the meat market also - he really didn't realize what he was getting into! But it ended up great as Steve found some great steaks. Now all we needed was to clean the grill (it REALLY needed it). Sad to say, Steve dumped a grill part into the water - not realizing it wasn't attached. Sadder still is that it was stainless so no chance of snagging it with a magnet kept on board for just such an occasion! So off to WalMart to buy a 12" pizza pan (perfect!). Steve marked the holes he needed and I drilled them. Worked perfect - steaks were great!

Yea Browns!!! What a game yesterday :-)

It was up early this morning as Steve had another physical therapy appointment (it is really helping!) He's feeling better but still not sleeping much at night. Must be time for that road trip! The boat was out of the water by 10 and we were on the road by 10:30. The damage from the stump encounter was minimal - as Steve had verified by his dives under the boat (this was before "The Fall" of course). The dings will be fixed, new barrier paint on the exposed fiberglass and then 2 coats of antifouling paint and we'll be good to go. Our first stop of the day was at the Delaware Welcome Center (we were headed north toward Atlantic City) for lunch.

So depending on the weather, we may go a bit south to Cape May and actually SEE the town as it was raining when we stopped there as we were moving south.

Friday September 23: Really? That's a Car?

So we trekked back to the airport yesterday - it was time to turn our car in again and get a different one (made sense $wise). The two previous times the rental places didn't have an economy car so we had ended up with a midsize car. Nice. But this time, there was actually an economy car: a Fiat 500! How cute ... and how tiny. It was crazy small, two doors and a feeling of riding around on a bike with a windshield. No, no, no. This is not what I ordered! As cute as it was and how well it fit into ANY parking spot, it just wasn't going to do - and we had it for the next 2 1/2 weeks. The question was how to get Alamo to swap me cars without charging me additional fees. The argument that won the day was Alamo advertises their economy cars as seating 5. The Fiat 500 seats only 4. A very nice young man didn't believe me but when he went and looked at one and saw only 4 seat belts, I was good to go. They found a Chevy Aveo instead - acceptable for sure. Took an hour on the phone the night before but then it was very easy from there.

We did manage our late lunch out for my birthday at La Tasca Spanish restaurant overlooking the Inner Harbor downtown yesterday. It was a lot of fun and Steve ordered some good stuff. It was the desert that really did it though. We don't often order desert but chocolate cake with ice cream? Too good :-)

Last night one of the large ships that has been here at the dock finally was fixed and moved on. A tug boat came in to assist it leaving the harbor. Not sure what the ship normally hauled but it was fun to see it finally on it's way.

Tuesday September 20: Birthday Number 62

Well, it's official: I'm now 62! How can that be possible? It remains to be a mystery to me as it doesn't seem that I get any older yet some memories definitely seem a lifetime ago. We had plans to go to a Spanish tapas restaurant in the Inner Harbor (1/2 off coupon at LivingSocial if you haven't tried it yet consider it - as it's kind of fun) but Steve woke up feeling really crummy. So after a breakfast in, we spent the day hanging around the boat reading. Later in the day I went to the grocery store and found cake by the slice so I ended up with carrot and german chocolate cake. And squiggly candles which were kind of fun! Blackberry ice cream on the side and we were good to go!

Oddly enough, it is also my brother's birthday! Dick was born 3 years to the day after me so every year we celebrated our birthdays together. My cake would be the bottom half of a double decker cake and his the top. He said last night that he grew up thinking we were twins :-) So he's only 59 this year - the baby of the family. Guess we're ALL getting old! This picture is probably his first grade picture :-) but I'm not sure of the year.

Yesterday I finally took the time to put my new portable scanner to work and started getting papers together for the insurance work on the bottom (from the stump) of the boat done. I LOVE this little thing! It scans and produces PDF documents so everything can be filed electronically and all of the records we need to keep can now be electronic instead of paper. Makes organizing things very easy and it works great!

At breakfast this morning we ran into Mike from MI-T-MO. With him were a couple of other boaters so we joined them. Turns out she (Linda) is the captain of the pirate boat that plies the waters of the Inner Harbor! We saw the pirate ship when we made the trip to the Inner Harbor when Becky was here. She's pretty funny and really enjoys dressing the part. Very popular thing to do in Baltimore and most weekends are sold out 2 weeks ahead of time.

More later this week .....

Sunday September 18: A Good Day :-)

I broke down and just watched the Browns play today but figured that I would just assume they were going to lose. That way I wouldn't be disappointed when they did. How's that for logic?

It was a wonderful surprise to see them not only play well but win!! So I'm back to watching for real on Sundays :-

Steve is feeling better by the day (well still not so good at night) when he can be distracted. He does the exercises faithfully which makes his arm sore but he's getting the muscles back to moving. Still cat napping to make up for the not sleeping at night. Here he's making chicken noodle soup with farina dumplings (of course everything that required 2 hands I did) but he tackled it pretty well. The weather has changed - we're now wearing jeans with the occasional sweatshirt and running heat at night. Low last night in the high 50's. Much better than the 80's late last week.

We met Dave the other day (he's living on the boat on the hard while working on it). He made Steve feel really good as he shared his experience of basically being laid up for 5 years with health issues from a fall. He joined us for breakfast this morning - it's nice to meet other normal people :-) Dave just recently bought his boat and is preparing it for the sailing trip back to Texas (he's originally from Idaho) where he will finish redoing his boat how he wants it and then will sell all stuff and live on his boat. Amazing how many people we meet that do this!

We walked over just a hundred yards or so beyond our marina to an old wharf. The wood timbers are broken through in places so we didn't go all of the way out but it must have been quite an operation in it's day. These are the Reserve Ready ships that are docked at the end of the marina here. Quite huge as you can tell by the people standing on the dock at the right of the picture. The cruise ships were back yesterday and today. They are very loud with their horn as the mandatory evacuation drill has to be completed about 30 minutes before they shove off: 8 longs blasts and then 1 extra long blast. And then 5 more when they are headed out.

Tomorrow: dentist appts (thought this was a good time) and maybe a ride to check out Ft. McHenry - we'll see how Steve does :-)

Thursday September15: All Play and No Work ....

is sort of starting to get old! We've seen a lot of Baltimore in various treks around the area (sometimes while lost!), found several great places for breakfast and in general haven't done much beyond reading and surfing the internet. Time to get some work done!

It was time to fix the oven which had quit working while Becky was here but somehow it took this long to get around to thinking about fixing it. First place to start: read the instruction booklet that tells you how to change out the lower oven element. It's amazing how informative an instruction book can be! And as we suspected - a broken wire. The nice part was I didn't need to pull the stove out to fix it as it was doable from inside the oven. Job 1: done!

Job 2 wasn't quite as easy. We needed to raise the thru the hull fitting for the main bilge pump so water couldn't siphon back into the boat when the pump had emptied the bilge. It used to be fine but with full fuel and water tanks, the fitting was under the water. This meant the siphon created by the pump running simply reversed itself when the pump shut off and started letting water pour back into the boat! When enough came in, the pump went back on and the cycle repeated itself endlessly - definitely not a good thing when your bilge pump lets water come back into the boat! So first drill a hole in the side of the boat, add a fitting, connect the hose and good to go. Almost all from under the floor of the cabin.

Most satisfying moment of the day? I'm at a red light this morning that has a sign "No turn on red 7am - 10pm", ok? So I'm sitting waiting for the light to change. This guy behind me starts honking and carrying on - wanting me to turn! He continued to berate me so I put the car in park, walked back to his car and told him I wasn't going to turn right on red because of the sign. He agitatedly indicated it was now 10:05. I indicated the sign said 10 PM not AM. He sheepishly apologized. Changing the rednecks of the world one at a time :-)

Steve is feeling better and is now only on Tylenol (instead of Oxycontin which seemed to mess up his whole body). He has a followup appointment tomorrow so hopefully they will do another xray to see how the arm is really healing. Still not a lot of sleep though so in the meantime, we make it a point to get off the boat and drive around at least once a day. Pretty soon he'll feel well enough we can truly do some sightseeing of the area :-)

Monday September 12: Still Sleepless in Baltimore

The arm continues to improve but it seems it is still hard to lie still for any kind of meaningful sleep for Steve - which means no one really sleeps very well! So we decided to go for a folding "lounge chair" - this it is waiting to be brought on board. It actually works well, fits ok in the boat (with some other furniture rearranging) and provides another place for Steve to move during the night. Sitting too long makes the arm stiff - which causes it to be painful again. Anyway, it's a step in the right direction!

There were fireworks over the Inner Harbor the night before last that were just visible over the large ships sitting around our marina. Not sure why there were fireworks but it was fun to see as fireworks always are!

The cruise ship left yesterday afternoon again. It docks just on the other side of the small harbor here and seems to come and go on a regular basis. So I thought: maybe we could pick up a quick 3 day cruise when we have the boat hauled to have the bottom work done. Well, it was a good thought but the shortest one was a 5-day and went to the Bahamas. Seems like a long way especially given that that's the direction we'll head anyway once we leave here. Norwegian has an 8 day that goes north up the coast and includes Nova Scotia. Mmmm ... that may be a plan. Well, we'll see how soon Steve is up to traveling.

In the meantime, we spend the days reading, sleeping (to catch up on nighttime sleep lost) and driving around Baltimore for short periods of time.

Also: a revelation after watching the Browns lose yesterday. No more wasted 3 hours on a Sunday for me. I'll record the game, find out if the Browns won or lost. If they lost, then I don't watch the game. If they won, then I'll watch it! Perfect solution :-)

Friday September 9: On the Mend

We were up early yesterday as Steve needed to be at the hospital by 7:30. It was finally time to get this shoulder taken care of for real. Nice hospital but a long day. The surgery lasted from just before 10 am until 2 pm. Interesting though how they track a patient. He was assigned a number (for privacy) and then on a screen in the waiting area was a list of the surgery patients (by number) and where in the surgical process each was. So I could see from the board when he finally went to recovery and then when he was assigned a room. Kind of like tracking a package from UPS!!

Anyway, they kept him overnight for pain management which I was all for (as was he). The nurse wanted to know if I wanted to spend the night. I just laughed. Nice room though - small sofa and private room. And what a view! I put an arrow in this picture to show the approximate location of the boat. Literally 5 minutes from the hospital parking lot to the parking spot by the boat. How great!

So I arrived this morning about 8 am thinking that they would kick him out pretty quickly ..... meanwhile about 4:30 in the afternoon we were finally able to leave - along with several pieces of equipment. I kept saying - you know we live on a boat, right? 36 feet. With limited space. So we now have a cooling sleeve that has a container of ice water connected to it - way better than trying to keep ice on it. That stays on for another day. We have now the third sling - this one has a reflective strip on it so I guess that means he can jog in it in the dark and still be seen? And a new piece of technology (that I'm told has been around for quite some time): a bone growth stimulator. It uses magnets to align whatever it is in the bone that needs to be aligned so the growth is better. Go figure. So that is 3 hours a day for the next 2 to 3 months - should be interesting.

In the meantime, it continues to rain. And we continue to stay ahead of it for the most part. Harve De Grace (where Steve broke his arm 2 weeks ago) is flooded due to the flooding of the Sesquahanna River. This is a picture of the marina office. Check out the fuel pumps - half flooded. We were on a dock during Irene that would now be about 2 - 3 feet under water. The poles are tall enough that the boats are fine but there would be no way to get off of the boat. Glad to be where we are for sure.

Tuesday September 5: Back to LA

Yesterday was Labor Day and Rebecca's last day in Baltimore. Because her flight didn't leave until 7:15 or so, we had time to squeeze in one last goal for her trip: visit Delaware. For someone that has a goal of visiting every state in the Union, she saw a golden opportunity to knock off the original state in the US. The weather was supposed to turn ugly so we were up fairly early for our 1 hour road trip. Steve cooked the sausage (special sausage that he bought in Waterford knowing Rebecca would be coming to visit) and I took care of the eggs. Great way to start the day! Off to Delaware we went - crossing the border near Newark, DL.

Of course it wouldn't be a day out without going out for lunch, right? I was looking for crab bisque so that was my only requirement - which is pretty easy to find given that we are on the Chesapeake - known for blue crabs. We found the Howard House Tavern - perfect :-) Great food and a fun crab light to boot. Back to the boat for some Nintendo and relaxing - as the rain moved in for the rest of the day. Time to leave for the airport - what a great time we had! It seems like we packed a week into 3 days! To view all of the pictures from her visit, go to: https://picasaweb.google.com/103245253437046742377/RebeccaSVisitToBaltimore#

It is still raining this morning and not much going on so after a bit of driving around and a lot of waiting, we managed to get Steve's phone replaced. For a while we thought his old one was going to survive the swim but no such luck. It actually still worked but the screen died. Not a problem unless you needed to see anything! So he's back in business - same phone number as before.

Tomorrow: surgery pretesting in the afternoon plus we'll also find out what time the surgery is on Thursday. Seems they may be doing this as an outpatient - which to me is a little shaky but we'll see!

Monday Sept 5: The Saga Continues!

This is a catchup blog so I'll go back to Thursday night. We had another wonderful sunset - this time at the marina in Baltimore at which we will spend the next month. Steve was still having difficulties finding a comfortable sleeping position so we thought we would take our friend Nurse Sue's advice and try making a "recliner" in the boat. A pillow was duct taped to the back wall, the yellow chair (in which you can lean back) and a plastic deck chair with a pillow became the recliner. While it may look fairly comfortable, it wasn't! So back to sleeping in fits and starts for Steve. Friday morning at 7 am, we picked up Rebecca from the airport (a convenient 20 minutes from our marina).

After a morning of doctor's visits for Steve (during which Rebecca and I stayed on the boat) and a lunch at Fell's Landing Bertha's Mussels, we put her to work handling the ropes as we needed to move to the pumpout dock to empty our holding tank. It was a reminder of what boating is! We also had to move back to our dock against a fair current and get the electric lines hooked back up (it's not as easy as it seems it should be).

After much discussion Friday afternoon, it was a group decision that Rebecca and I would head to Washington, DC, for a couple of days. This would give Steve time to be on the boat himself so he wouldn't feel a need to try to be quiet as he moved from one sleeping spot to the next on the boat. So Becky and I headed out, hotwired a room and spent a nice night at a Sheraton. We drove the next day the remaining 30 minutes to DC with the first stop being the Ford Theatre. We've been in DC many times but somehow never made it to the theatre. They had a great audio tour so we spent an hour and a half touring both the museum part and the actual theatre (which isn't always open).

Next on the agenda was the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. We were driving and without exception managed to find a great parking space to each of our destinations - it was truly amazing (Owen would agree, I'm sure :-)). Rebecca had a very nice tapas restaurant in mind for lunch. New experience for me and it was very good! Next was a trip to Arlington aboard the tour bus (it was getting too warm for me to even consider walking) Tour busses are also high on my list of fun things to do in a new city. Almost as good as movies at a museum :-)

We wanted to visit the Bureau of Engraving but it wasn't open on Saturdays. Bummer. So we found a great Chinese place for dinner and called it a day. Rebecca took a run Sunday morning around DC spotting the White House, the Reflecting Pond (which as you can see is being renovated) and the WWII memorial - among many other of the sites along the mall. Someone of course had to stay in the hotel room to guard our valuables so I volunteered :-)

When Rebecca and I arrived back at the marina, we found that Steve had managed (with the help of Mike from MI-T-MO) to move to a new slip which was much less rocky than our previous so that was great. Off we went for a water visit to Baltimore. We unplugged and headed out of our new slip. The Inner Harbor was fun - busy with lots of boat traffic in and out of the harbor. We stopped at Fell's Landing for a gelato and then headed back to Tidewater (our marina).

On the way back, we passed Ft. McHenry again but were a bit closer than when we first entered the harbor. The cannons were very visible as was the original flag of the 13 colonies that flew over the fort during the war for independence (this is the Francis Scott Key song that became our national anthem - about the being able to see the flag flying over the fort in the dawn's light). Note the 13 stars - what a change from our current 50 star flag!!

More tomorrow about our last day with Rebecca. Steve's surgery (after 2 consultations) is scheduled for Thursday (not sure what time) so we're both happy this arm issue will be improving.