The Boate

ghoste on the boate

this was a spring cleaning weekend for me. yesterday the apartment felt the wrath of mr. clean (i guess i probably should have put the large hoop back in my earlobe to fully look the part). today, i headed down to the marina, thinking that i would go for a sail. somehow a bottle of tung oil had been leaking, and so i ended up cleaning that, then evaluating which other projects i should spend the afternoon working on. the cabin lights had stopped working, so i pulled my ammeter out of the toolbox and started poking at the contacts. after about 45 minutes of complete mystification (everything tested out a-ok, but still no lights), i decided to take a break before i started tearing everything apart in frustration. i washed my hands, sat down and unwrapped my sandwich, then looked up. the lights were on. one of those moments that, were it in a movie, would be accompanied by a triple-forte string wallop, causing your heart to skip a beat in its simple, yet frighteningly incongruous appearance. but life is not a movie, and i just stared at the glowing bulb and said "fuck, that sure is weird". i also hauled the '69 johnson outboard out of the storage locker and walked it up to the dumpster. i spotted some guy on a bicycle giving it a hard lookover, and later when i passed by on my way home, it was gone. good luck pal, make sure you steer clear of the hornblowers with that thing.

news flash: bay bridge still not done

phil and i took a break from playing myst to get out on the bay today, and we sailed down to the bay bridge to investigate rumors that the project is nearing completion. nope. it looks like they've given up. every time we sail out there, phil and i remark about how we wish that we were the owners of those cranes, leasing them to the state. that rental revenue is some serious "fuck you" money, i bet. i've been feeling a bit scatterbrained the last couple of days, and steering around all the flotsam pushed into the bay by all the rain was just the kind of meditative therapy i needed. there really isn't an issue of trying to be "in the moment" and "here and now" when you are bearing down on a waterlogged telephone pole at six knots with a front blowing from the north, filling the sails with a more than ample amount of wind. . you just are, very, very present.