To the Water's Edge

While sitting in the hotel lobby at zero dark thirty, waiting for a bus to take us to the airport, so we could walk to a gate to board a plane, to fly us to Seattle, where we would walk to a bus to shuttle us the the rental car place so we could walk to the car, I got to thinking about traveling in this day and age, the difference between travelling and a trip.

I am old enough to remember the 1950's, before Alfred Kahn deregulated air travel while working for Jimmy Carter, when people treated air travel differently, as a novel, and for many, a first time experience. That novelty meant suits and ties for men and, if the pictures are correct, dresses, hats and gloves for most women. Fast forward six decades .... what a difference. The jeans and t-shirts dress code is way better. The actual traveling,though, is an inconvenience to be endured not enjoyed, suffered not savored.

The Charlotte check in for the plane was fairly painless. Carol, in the full Nordic Princess mode, commandeered someone to help with the self check in process. Whether he was frightened by or fascinated by this lady towering over him by 8-in. or 9-in. I could not tell. Regardless, he made quick work of it and sent us on our way. Carol, having packed a bag the same size as a Greyhound bus, couldn't fit everything into it. Predictable. So she walked through the airport with sundry bags, articles of clothing, pillows and such festooned about her person like a bag lady in search of her shopping cart.

Today, Thursday, a disaster was avoided. I had gotten new glasses and frames in Asheville. I did not think that there were any mistakes left to be made: three wrong lenses, wrong frames, just a series of "never have happened in 60 years of wearing glasses" errors. I had scratched a lens and picked up a replacement on the way to Charlotte. They ordered the wrong prescription for the lens; I was almost seeing double. Fortunately, Carol had asked for the old lens and kept it with her. I carry a small glasses tool kit in my bag and, easy peasy, the old lens was back in. The scratch I can live with; the other would almost have ruined the trip.

After leaving Charlotte, with the temperature about 90^o and the high humidity from tropical storm Alfredo's rain, Seattle was almost a shock. Very cool, in the 50's, overcast and very breezy. I don't think that there will be issues filling the sails; keeping me warm may be harder. We shipped ahead all our foul weather gear and fleece clothing. I'm sure that this will work out but it will not be toasty at the helm. I hope that the diesel heater performs well.

There were a couple of difficult questions packing for this trip. The first was: what electronics to bring since they all need charging. On our boat we probably had a dozen interior DC outlets, many of which I added myself. No problems. On the Maine boat there was only one interior DC outlet. Major inconvenience. Don't know about this boat. The computer was a simple decision ... no computer, no blog. Ditto the camera. We are taking both phones, just in case, and they will provide wi-fi hot spots when we can get a cell signal. We are both carrying our Kindle e-readers; lots of pages, no space and good battery life. I am also carrying a DC multi-outlet plug in case we have a similar paucity of outlets this time. Carol solved a major issue: cell phones. I had thought that we would have to buy an unlocked phone and get a plan from a Canadian service provider. Turns out that Verizon, which works on an older standard, has a roaming plan that will work in Canada. All we have to do is make a change in the setting for our phones to work in Canada, Pretty cool, very easy and way cheaper than the alternative.

The second question was harder: I know what gin & tonic weather is and this is definitively not it. The sun will traverse the yardarm sometime and all sailors want a healthy dram to celebrate its passage. We'll have to figure out what that will be. Carol is not much for dark beverages, e.g. scotch or rum. Other provisioning is always difficult with one person, guess who, viewing food as an emotional issue and the other seeing it as an existential issue. We will surely have more than enough food to survive and a sufficiency of choice.

We seem to have come to the right place; this is a very big marina teeming with sailboats. The good news is that we are done with traveling for now; the trip will start when we are on the wet side of the water's edge, and we are only hours away from that time.