Bob's Junkmail

Important Stuff.

Monday, June 8, 2009

You're in luck! I haven't had time for any rants in this Junkmail, just some pictures. If you want real stuff, you might have to wait for next time. Brian was 27 yesterday! Today he is 27 and one day.

Mike and I are on the Minnow, headed for Texas.

The Minnow was in Everett Washington over the winter. Normally in Everett, there's not a problem with frozen plumbing on a boat. So we decided to, or were too lazy to winterize the boat. (Besides that, we really didn't know how.)

This year in Everett it was cold. I visited the boat in January and even the salt water in the harbor was freezing.



So we ended up with some water leaks and broken fixtures. Oops.



Mike took the boat from Everett to Astoria, Oregon. Just about the only thing he remembers about that part of the trip is that it was cold. But Mike's a wimp. We had hired a guy in Seattle to fix the heater on the boat, but we only gave him three months and a few hundred dollars, so he didn't get it fixed.

I got on the Minnow in Astoria, and Mike and I headed up the Columbia River in case Lewis and Clark missed something and we could get to Texas that way.

The scenery was amazing as we set sail.



Actually, we set the engines. Then only one engine, because the transmission on the other engine would only work in reverse. There was a whole lot of black smoke trailing the boat when we figured that out.

Eventually the fog lifted and we got to see nature in its finest.



Here are some pictures up the Columbia:

      columbia

      http://hmsminnow.blogspot.com/2009/04/to-dalles.html

      http://hmsminnow.blogspot.com/2009/04/from-dalles.html

After our unsuccessful attempt at the Northwest Passage, Mike and I headed to Arizona for annual flight training. We dropped the plane off in Las Vegas to have an airworthiness directory completed that was due the next day, and drove to Scottsdale.

      desert

Mike left Scottsdale for Pryor, and I flew back to Astoria for more sailing. I spent a day going to Newport, Oregon..., and then flew to Seattle and picked up daughter Melinda and boyfriend Josh (Melinda's, not mine). We played around Newport for a while.

     http://hmsminnow.blogspot.com/2009/05/may-8-10-2009-n...

     newport

I flew Melinda and Josh back to Seattle, then took the boat to San Francisco.

     sanfrancisco

After San Francisco Bay, I went to Long Beach. I did some repairs, repaired my repairs a couple of times, and now the boat is only slightly worse than when I started work on it. I even had to repair the dock. With my superior boat-driving ability, I ripped a cleat out of the dock. As with any sport, I blame the equipment. The cleat was pretty flimsy.



I headed home for a week, and ended up in a 100-mile bike ride (Tulsa Tough), after sitting on a boat for weeks. It was actually fun. It was also actually 104 miles, after I took a 2-mile accidental detour.

When I got to Long Beach, I decided on a whim, the day before the event, to run in an olympic length triathlon in San Dimas. I've never run a triathlon that long, but the bike ride last weekend was good training, right?

I think I was the only person swimming on my back, and I might have been the only mountain bike in the championship (olympic course) division. We only have mountain bikes on the boat, and it felt right to give all those youngsters a chance. I finished, and while I haven't looked at the results, I think there may have been a couple people ahead of me. As usual, I excelled in the transitions.



Mike got here yesterday, and we're headed out tomorrow for Texas, or maybe Florida. People are racing sailboats here, and we're trying to learn from the catamaran sailors.



In the absence of the Northwest Passage, we're going to try for the Panama Canal. We might end up in Tasmania. We'll be updating the blog:

      http://hmsminnow.blogspot.com