At the Border

After a wonderful two day visit with our good friends and sailing buddies Paul and Kathy Eugina we headed to Nogales. Tuesday morning we plan to start our 2011 adventure by driving down to Puerta Vallarta. With any luck we should post Thursday that we have arrived safe and sound. Keep your fingers crossed.

On our Way

Most departures do not go as scheduled but I think we did very well considering all we had going on just before we left for Mexico. On Monday of our finale week at home I found out I have Valley Fever and not pneumonia as previously diagnosed. That means all new meds, more blood tests, bed rest and no exercise. The no exercise is the worst part!

Since I was confined to the house I decided it was time to update our IMac to the current operating system and put all our important documents in "the cloud". Decision was both good and bad because our printer needed to be upgraded too. All was working well, no problems with the email so far, but at 10pm on Thurs I could still not upload certain documents that I had just scanned into the computer. I scheduled a 7am help call with Apple support so that I could get this resolved before we left. Wrong, after an hour and a half I learned that my new printer imported certain documents as PDF files and not doc files and the ICloud would not accept them! By now it was 8:30 and I had not cleaned out the refrig, we would be leaving late.

I was finally pleased with the way the house look so we locked her up at 9:45 and started our 2011 adventure. First stop would be Chino Valley to visit with Paul and Kathy, our crew from the 2010 Ha Ha.

Rog and Nicholas

This past weekend was spent honoring different fathers on their respective birthdays. First it was Roger's birthday that we celebrated in Healdsburg with my brother Don and his wife Page as well as Jenny, Andy and Nicholas. Then we migrated over to Sacramento to celebrate Roger's father Nolan's 90th birthday. The entire family made it a very memorable event for him and We had all our kids come in to wish him well. The last birthday we celebrated was my father Don's 96th. He celebrated by ordering two Rob Roy Perfects much to my horror. So much for not letting him have anything to drink.

Nolan may not be able to see much anymore but his was still smiling at Nicholas and Nicholas was more than willing to go gets hugs from his Great Grandpa Nolan.

What Have we been doing all summer?

The summer has not gone quite as planned but we are having a great time never the less. I thought we would be in Bakersfield doing home projects and playing in the garden everyday. We have had a few days of tree trimming and a short stint of weed pulling but it certainly has not been the quality time I had expected. No new plants to replace ones that are not doing well and not one bedding flower to add a bit of cheer to the place. I did purchase two succulents to put on the patio table but that hardly counts as gardening. That being said we have had the summer to remember!

We spent the month of July just ordering all the new gadgets that will make the next cruising season even more enjoyable. We have our new Engle Freezer that should double our frozen food capacity, two more solar panels that will double our amperage on the boat, noise canceling speakers for the SSB as well as a new grounding system so Di can better communicate, and new sandals for both of us. We are all set to drive down.

August saw us visiting Canada for the first time. We went to Saskatoon to share the Baptism of our grandson Nicholas with our son in law's family. Andy's parents Peter and Sofie played host for five beautiful days while we got to soak in all of Canada's charm. I have never seen a city with more beautiful flower pots decorating each corner of the streets. Truly beautiful, and the climate was perfect! Not too hot and just a hint of rain to keep everything green. Loved every moment we were there.

September has brought us to Carmel in order to help Di's Dad move into an assisted living facility. Many of our friends have had to do this already but for us it came about very suddenly. Dad is 96 and has been living at home with some daytime assistance but it became apparent to us that he just was not safe by himself. So with little complaining we moved him into a lovely assisted living facility in Monterey which is close enough all his friends could still come by to visit. That has just left us the job of sorting through thirty years of personal effects, cleaning an acre of land that was badly neglected, insisting that the Gardner remove his chickens from a back yard pen, finding a home for a very distructive cats, selling all the furniture and finally painting the house inside and out as well as installing new carpet. If all goes as planned we will be out of Carmel by the first of October and the house will be on the market. Rog has earned his time back on the boat!

The patio roof has to go!

House looks better already

We filled three dumpsters with all yard waste! What a job it has been

Dad is very happy at his new home and has admitted that he had no idea that he could make so many new friends at his age!

What time are we playing???

Ok, we have been home one month now and we have settled into retired life back in the states. This is completely different than being retired on the boat where life was very laid back and casual.  Here you move at the speed of traffic or life passes you by.  No calling a doctor and getting in the next day here in Bakersfield.  You are lucky to even find a doctor willing to take new patients so there goes our plan to get prescriptions refilled!  Plan B is of course to visit our doctors back in the Bay Area just one more time.

But what are we doing with all our spare time now that Rog doesn't have to work in sea trials and surveys, well we are playing golf and a bit of tennis.  At least Di is just playing a bit, Rog is going out three evenings a week and Saturday morning too!  Now we have been invited to play with another couple at 7 am on Monday morning.  That is right, 7 am.  Never in all my years of working did I ever arrive somewhere at 7 am, you couldn't even get me to open my eyes at that time so the thought of a 7 am tennis game just does not make any sense.  Even worse, we are getting golf times no later than 7:30 am and we do that twice at week least.

Di prefers working out in the air conditioned gym here at the Solera gym

Early morning activities are the norm here in Bakersfield and that had never occurred to us in all our previous visits.  By noon it is over 95 degrees most days and at 5 pm is when the heat actually peaks so late afternoon activities are limited to the pool.  In fact, 7:30pm is when most people start emerging from their homes to take walks or even start small gardening projects.

So what do we do during the middle of the day??  I have been working on a photo book of our journey over the past year trying to distill over 2,000 pictures down to a manageable 250 that would tell our story.  This has consumed all of my time and I am glad to say I have finally ordered my book through two different on line publishing programs.  I used the Mac program and found it very easy to use except when using photos that had been emailed to me.  I also used MY Publisher as it was running a special on no charge for extra pages.  With over 50 extra pages their deal really appealed to me. If anyone would like to look at the finished project it can be found at 
http://www.mypublisher.com/bookshelf/friendbook

The login name is:   M2211998     and the password is:  2414997
Many of the pictures included are the ones I have already used on my blog but there are some new one too.  I think the sunset pictures are my most favorite in the book.

We do plan on some traveling this summer including a trip to Carmel to visit Di's father and then a  quick run up to the Bay area to play golf with John Estes and back down to Los Gatos for a tennis game with Bruce and Paul Tomlinson.

The following weekend we are off to Canada for Nicholas's Baptism.  We can not wait to get our hands on the little guy.  By the time of our visit he will have started taking solid food and trying to sip water out of a cup.  What fun we will have.  Think I better get the sewing machine out quickly and make up some cute bibs to take up with us.

Not sure what caused this look but I think it is my favorite!

The Green Light

Most sailors get quite excited when they see the green flash at dusk but what really gets my
heart pumping is the sight of the green light on my printer. For some unknown reason my printer decided to stop talking to my computer sometime last January. It would not even talk when connected by the printer cable, not good. How could I print off pictures of Nicholas for my Brag book!

Two days ago it became a do or die situation here on the boat. Rog had ordered a new IPad 2 for me for my birthday and I read about it's ability to print via AirPrint. This sounded great but would require a new HP Printer that had AirPrint capabilities, even better I thought until my good friend Eric found out I would still need to work through a network system on the boat. So back to the drawing board to try and resurrect the network on the boat.

I had a couple of problems I had to overcome including USB ports that have become faulty. Several phone calls to Fujitsu and different repair ideas I realized there was no hope for running more than one USB port at a time. Maybe a new small computer was the answer, something that would talk to a new HP Printer that would also talk to a new IPad. It all sounded good to me until I realized it would require updated navigation software, at the cost of $495.00, and other various programs I like. I am still running off an old XP operating system so none of my programs would match up.

Back to the drawing board once again. After uninstalling both the router and printer and then reinstalling them I finally got the green light and boat network was once again functioning as it should. However that was only half the problem, could I get Roger's IPad to recognize the network and connect to the printer. This required a phone call to Lexmark and downloads to both the iPad and computer before there was success! My first print job was a photo of Nicholas and Andy that I had recently received from Jenny.

So after one full day of frustration and elation I am finally ready to turn Roger's IPad back over to him and know that my new IPad will work with everything when we return to PV in November. To my way of thinking, this new IPad did not cost Roger a penny because I did not have to buy a new printer for the boat or computer and navigation programs. I am so proud of being thrifty now that we are retired!

Party Time

The season is drawing to a close here in PV, the rain, thunder and lightning has the majority of cruiser headed for dryer climates. That does not mean we can't get together for one final party to celebrate Philo's birthday and 10th anniversary of his restaurant. A very large crowd was on hand to enjoy music and dancing into the wee hours.

We shared a ride and table with Chuck and Clista off the power boat Shilo. They are the parents of our good friend Chip and Katie on Miss Teak. Shilo had planned to join all of us
up in the Sea this spring but Boat gremlins kept them tied to the dock.

It was great to see Teapot Tony there along with his wife Tealady Ronnie. I still remember meeting them for the first time and wondering why anyone would go by those names. Still do not know the history of the names but with their British accents I can not imagine calling them anything else for all these years. They have certainly earned everybody's respect and admiration in the PV area.