Eating with the Sikhs

Jo and I had traveled south to our boat in Connecticut because a potential buyer was flying in to make a bid on her. We got there a day ahead of him so we could check that the batteries were fully charged and there was no mildew from sitting closed up.

After getting her in presentable condition, we drove to an Indian restaurant in the town of Middletown, CT. We were the only customers because it was a bit early. In the background there was a drone of a holy man on TV, chanting over what looked to be a corpse. The owner of the restaurant explained that it was evening prayers and it was being beamed in via satellite from the Punjab in India. I thought it was a little strange to engulf us in prayers while we ate but I asked how they could be doing evening prayers when it was getting to be dawn in India. He patiently explained that the satellite people had recorded the ceremony so it could be transmitted for evening prayers on the east coast of the U.S.

I commented on the fact that the holy man was wearing a turban which, in my limited understanding, meant he was a Sikh. "Oh, yes. Yes. We are all Sikhs in this place," said the owner.

He said when he first came to the U.S. he had a beard and had never cut his hair, like all Sikhs. "But that is not good here," he said with a laugh. "I was not permitted to cook food in the restaurant because I had a beard. So I cut off my beard and I cut my hair and I took off my turban." As he said this, he stroked his glossy black hair. "When I get older, I will grow it all back. But not now," he said.

All the other young men working in the restaurant had gathered around by now, wanting to share in his story. All of them were like him. Our waiter had a bit of a beard, but he was quite young.

The next morning, we drove back to the boat to await the potential buyer, an Englishman named Napoleon Mannering. I had Googled him the night before. There is only one Napoleon Mannering in our world, apparently, for he showed up in Argentina and in Toyko where he had been teaching English and running a soccer (football) club. He'd been interviewed by a Tokyo radio station and they had provided the transcript.

He arrived with the yacht broker. His surveyor had already been on the job for a couple of hours before they arrived. When you think you wish to purchase a boat, it is important to pay a surveyor to provide you a nuts-and-bolts analysis of what you are buying. It is the surveyor's job to protect the potential buyer. And so he did.

He informed him that there was water in the deck, causing some delamination. He did a pretty good job of scaring Napoleon away because he decided to walk away from the transaction without proceeding to the sea trials. He explained to me that he needs a boat to be perfect because he has no fix-up skills. Good luck, Napoleon. There is no boat that I'm aware on that doesn't need fixing up and regular maintenance.

So our trip to Connecticut was a bit depressing. But it caused us to drop the price of the boat by more than half. So we expect lots of people now will want to grab our beloved Quiet Passage since that price makes it the bargain of the year.

The $5 Haircut

We've both gone for three months without cutting a hair on our heads. So the ad in the free paper from the Vermont Academy of Hair Styling that offered haircuts for $10 so that students would have an opportunity to learn their new skill on our heads seemed like a fairly good deal. The ad noted that the students worked under the guidance of professional instructors which gave me a sense of comfort.
So we made the appointments. And then we showed up. We were greeted by a rail-thin woman who wore the brightest red hair and the whitest face makeup. Mmmmm. Maybe a portent of things to come. But Tiffany came out and shook my hand. Jo landed with Andrea. Both of them seemed pretty normal. The student in the next booth had day-glo blue/purple hair and two nasty-looking studs through her bottom lip. Another girl had so many tattooes in interesting places that it was better than reading a magazine. All of the tattooes seemed to have a Gothic overtone to them. Not a good way to put geezers at ease.
Tiffany gave me an outstanding shampoo and skull massage. Almost as good as I remember getting in Phnom Penh from the hairstylist who always finished up by whispering in my ear "You very handsome man." This, of course, always guaranteed an extra dollar in her tip.
I asked Tiffany how many students were in the academy and she told me 80. But half of them are housed in the basement where they spend the first 500 hours of their training learning about the hair and the chemistry involved in the changing of color. She told me the 11-month course was coming to an end for her since she graduates in October. That, too, gave me some heart since she had some experience on the cutting room floor.
The instructor came by and asked her what she was planning. "He wants me to take an inch off," Tiffany told her. The instructor fluffed up my hair and told her to get to it.
The first cut was two and a half inches long. Mmmm. Should I stop her now? I didn't but I watched with some interest as 80 per cent of my hair dropped onto the floor in front of me. And still she kept clipping.
Ever single hair on my head met her scissors at least four times. She snipped and snipped. She stood back to see if it was even...and then she snipped again. I mentioned that I do like to part my hair on the left and she nodded and said she could see where the part fell. But there would be no part in my future. I now was moving quickly toward looking like some Roman emperor. It was beginning to look like I was a natural to join the Army.
Jo, sitting beside me was telling her hairstylist to clip a little more off. The instructor came by and told Andrea that she had left "a corner" and suggested how to improve that. So Jo was done and waited out at the front desk. But Tiffany still clipped away.
The instructor came over to see how she was doing. She asked what I thought and I said it was a pretty good haircut but I doubted I would need another until well into 2009. That's not a bad thing, of course. But I surely am glad I don't have to stay up in the North through the winter months for I would have a chill on the brain.
Tiffany finished me off, then she handed me her card with a "$5 off the first haircut" discount. So my $5 haircut, if amortised over the next eight months when I shall be growing my hair back, will be the cheapest haircut I've ever had.
She gave me extra cards to pass out to family and friends. But I can find no takers. Are they trying to tell me something?

Up, Up and Away

The mist hung in tendrils in the valleys of Vermont at 5 a.m. as Jo and I drove south to beautiful Stowe, a favorite of skiers in this part of the world. There's no skiing now, of course, but it was chilly in the early dawn.
We'd come to Stowe for a balloon fest and watched as 25 balloonists rigged their baskets to filmy nylon and polyester. They use a large fan to partially inflate their enormous balloons and at just the right moment they fire up their propane burners which pumps hot air into the cavernous interior of the balloon
The tipping point arrives and the balloon pops upright with the captain inside the basket. People load up (up to five passengers, depending on the size of the balloon and the propane burner). Then they ignite the propane in short bursts and the balloon finds that instant when the weight of the basket and people is overcome by the lift. Then they are off, oh-so-gently. There always is a look of euphoria on the faces of the guests aboard (at a price of $250 per person for the ride!)
They drifted upward. over the treetops. The cold still air forced many of the balloons down into the trees and the passengers leaned out of their baskets and picked the leaves as they drifted by.
It was two delightful hours in the early morning. We drove north and had breakfast and then back to our motor home.
If you click on the picture on this page, it will take you to our photo album of this event.

Dr. Pane

One of the issues we gypsies must deal with is the handling of health issues as we roll along. Our Medicare does pretty well since urgent and emergency care can be handled from anyplace in the world. But dental issues: now that is a different kettle of fish.
Jo ran into a mouth problem in Connecticut and she visited daughter Lynn's dentist who diagnosed she needed a major root canal. In addition, he said, she had an abscess and that would require 10 days of antibiotics before any endodontist would drill into her teeth. Ten days took us out of Connecticut, however, so we then phoned daughter Stephanie in Vermont to see if she could find an endodontist (a person who specializes in root canals). She talked with her dentist and received a recommendation. Jo called and lucked out by getting a cancellation the day after we arrived in town.
But the best laid plans didn't work out. The endodontist suffered a heart attack just as Jo settled into the drilling chair. Not good. That took him off to the hospital where, happily, he survived. But Jo now had to find a new specialist since he would be out of commission for a number of weeks. Who should she find but Dr. Pane, truly, who was able to take her in because of a cancellation on an hour's notice.
He got down to work on the root canal and managed to carve out one of three roots on the first visit. Now she awaits a call about another cancellation so she can have the job finished. We can't get the new crown installed because of the time lag. But Dr. Pane says he'll plug up his work with a temporary filling and when we return to Florida in September we can have that final work done.
In the meantime, Jo and I are enjoying life in Vermont. This is a beautiful state: endless horizons of green mountains, laid back people, and a general dislike among the natives for the faster pace of the urban states.
Stephanie and Alex have taken us sailing on Lake Champlain a couple of times - always a great thing. We stay here for another month then we plan to roll through the White Mountains of New Hampshire and on into our beloved Maine.

Sailors Ahoy

There may not be anything better from our point of view that hearing from fellow sailors (boaters) as they travel along.

Imagine our delight this weekend, to hear from old Bradenton, Florida, boaters Jerry and Marsha who had brought their boat up the Chester River on the Chesapeake to the lovely town of Chestertown. We had visited this great place sometime ago as we were meandering through the Chesapeake.

We drove two hours up to meet with them to hear of their adventures aboard their boat. I might have written about Jerry a couple of years back when he ran his Hatteras powerboat onto a rock in the Okeechobee Waterway across Florida. The rock ripped the stabilizer fine off the boat and then push it into the hull, creating a Titanic-like slash on the back of the hull. The boat sank in the waterway, with its bow up on the bank. Jerry and Marsha escaped and their boat was a complete write off because the water got into their engines and ruined them.

Now, I thought that would be the end of their adventures in the water world. But Jerry and Marsha are tough stock. After licking their wounds, they found another Hatteras powerboat and began the adventure all over again.

And here they were, making their way to Long Island Sound for the summer.
We drove through the lush Delaware and Maryland countryside, with the hundreds of chicken houses that house millions of cluckers then eventually end up in American ovens or frying pans. The houses these guys are penned in are long and low. They generally have two huge (4-6 foot diameter) fans that suck in fresh air. Delaware is the home of Perdue Chicken, as well as a host of other markets. There are many processing plants scattered around the state. Quite surprisingly, you rarely smell the chickens as you drive by.

We sat on the banks of the Chester River with Jerry and Marsha and had a delightful lunch. A waterman came in with his crab boat and we watched as he untied Jerry's dinghy so he could tie up.
Jerry sent Marsha out to the dinghy (he has a weak leg and has some difficulty walking). When Marsha and Jo got there, a marine cop pulled in behind the waterman and cited him for something. He wrote out a ticket then turned his attention to the dinghy. He asked Marsha if she was the owner because the dinghy had an out-of-date registration sticker. Marsha said her husband was in the restaurant and the cop waited for us to come out.

He radioed in the registration information and the radio squawked after a few minutes that the registration had lapsed in 1901. I laughed when I heard that. But the cop didn't seem that amused.

He checked to see that Jerry had four life jackets aboard (he did) and then followed us out into the river and to the boat to check the registration. It was, in fact, expired and he wrote a ticket for $65 for the incident.

Then he stood on the back deck and chatted in a friendly kind of way about how he had arrested the waterman who had moved the dinghy last year for placing several illegal nets in the river. He had caught 25,000 lbs of some kind of fish. He said his fine amounted to $130,000 because the nets were a $30,000 fine and the fish were assessed at $4 a pound.

We waved goodbye to this fellow and then sat aboard as the wind blew at 20 knots, creating a bit of tempest in the river.

Marsha and Jerry returned us to shore when the breeze quietened down and we drove back to the campground, meeting thousands of cars heading the other way on their way home from the weekend on the shore.

Tuesday morning, we received a phone call from old friends and sailing buddies Corky and Sue. They had just sailed into Ocean City, Maryland, aboard their 47-foot catamaran. This is 32 miles south of us. Now we head down to have dinner with them on Wednesday before we head out of Leisure Point Resort on Thursday morning.

We found them lugging laundry back to their dinghy and we settled into a waterside restaurant for a four-hour dinner to hear their tales of cruising Bahamian crystaline waters... as well as stories of life aboard, weather horrors and future plans for their 47-foot carbon-fiber catamaran named Surprise. We'll meet up with them once we get to Connecticut since they still own a spectacular home that's been on the market far too long.

We had toyed with the idea of immediately heading for Alaska this year but have abandoned the idea because we really need to be on the west coast of the U.S. right now to make it possible to spend enough time in the remote northwest of Yukon Territory and Alaska in June, July and August. So we are now planning to head out from Delaware on today (May 29) and drive north to Connecticut to visit with our daughter and family. We'll spend a few weeks there and attend the graduation of our oldest granddaughter who moves up to high school in the fall. Then we'll move north to visit our younger daughter and family in Vermont for a month before setting out across the Maine woods and down to the shore during August.

Free at Last....

Yes. They put us out of our misery today. We knew our chances for continuing at Leisure Point Resort were shrinking day by day. We were terminally bored with our duties. Working the marina store ended up being a joke. I would sit outside the store for eight hours and would help a boater tie up when he wanted gas for his boat. I handed him the nozzle and chatted with him while he filled the tank and then spilled the gasoline into the bay - every time. I told the owners they were liable for a $10,000 pollution fine from the U.S. Coast Guard if someone reported the ongoing pollution. I suggested they provide oil-absorbing pads (retail cost 77 cents each) to prevent these spills. But they laughed at that idea.
Jo's job inside the store was to see that the coffee pots were filled regularly - not exactly brain-expanding.
We kept looking for ways to make the hours less boring. I would endlessly sweep perfectly clean decks, Jo walked around the store with a duster, flicking an invisible dust.
So we were just relieved this morning when Stu, the essentially useless and bumbling manager, called us up to the office and said the resort would pay us for the gas we'd used to drive from Florida. And they would allow us to stay rent-free on the site for two weeks while we got our ducks in a row.
Thank you, very much.

Now we are free to reconsider our options for the summer. So we'll let you know how the adventure changes.

On Staying in Touch

We've been Workamping now for one month...and we're surviving well enough. Work is not all it's cracked up to be, of course. But that, as they say, is why they call it work. We have done everything from weeding (ugh!) to cleaning bathrooms (hate it!) to vacuuming, painting, planting, sweeping up goose poop. Now we have started work at the marina store (the reason we were hired), things are looking up. We open the store tomorrow and folks will be able to come in by car or boat to get food, groceries, fishing gear and even gasoline. We're pretty excited about the possibilities.
We don't have to cook because the owners have hired a cook and he and we will make it happen after the first few days.
Now while all this is on-going, there have been lots of other interesting diversions. We've made the 320-mile trip north and east to get the boat uncovered and readied for sale. Now it's in the hands of a broker so we wait.
I also have been editing online the work of a wonderfully bright reporter in Namibia. Luqman Cloete has a good story he's working on about a handicrafts center in his town being told they will lose their funding and will have to make the crafts, market them and sustain themselves without outside help. I love the concept that Luqman can simply email me the story with a request that I edit it and come up with suggestions for improvements. All of this happens as though he is in the next office. Time and distance simply has no meaning because of the Internet.
And equally exciting, as I was reading the New York Times on Tuesday, I discovered that Hla Hla Htay, a brilliant, bright young woman who passed through the Southeast Asia Media Center training school while I was there in Phnom Penh, popped up with two pictures in The New York Times from Myanmar.
Hla Hla got her job as a reporter for Agence France-Presse when the Bangkok bureau chief called us in Cambodia one day back in 2004. She asked if we had trained any good Burmese journalists who might be candidates for the bureau position in Yangon (Rangoon). Hla Hla was in training with us at that time. She is a tiny woman but I felt she had the heart of a lion. She is smart, thoughtful, inquisitive. She was honest but she was oh-so-shy and self-effacing.
After I recommended her and the bureau chief in Bangkok said she would meet with her for an interview in Thailand on Hla Hla's journey back home, I sat down with her and coached her on the art of the job interview. She got the job and we kept in touch for a year. But then her emails bounced back as the junta in Burma cracked down on Internet use. I kept trying to reach her but without success.
So you might imagine my delight at finding her credit line on two pictures played across half a page in The Times on Tuesday. She clearly has established herself. I remember that Hla Hla made $50 a month as a reporter before coming to our media center. When she returned to Yangon, she was employed at $1,000 a month - an astonishing increase in pay.