April 23, 24,25,26 and 27, 2007

April, 23, 24, 25, 26 and 27th, 2007 - The day seems to go by fast even when you are not moving anywhere. I have been working diligently on my stove problem daily. I have discovered that nowhere can I get service that will be done here without shipping the stove back to Finland. That is not an option at this point. I have a need to just go and buy something that works and worry about the latter option when the trip is finished. The stove starts up okay and then when it should kick in and really heat up it just goes poof and dies. I took the screws out and lifted it out of the hole in the cabinet and said no way should a color blind man start taking wires loose and then hope to get them fixed again and in place when you reassemble it. It won’t make any difference because I think it is basically dead anyway. I can’t believe that a Finnish product with such a good name world wide cannot be serviced in this country and in a city as large as the Norfolk area. It basically went to pot when we really did have to use it as a heater on a really cold night. It worked well all night but since that time it has decided that if you want to use me as a heater or cooker I am on strike because that is too hard work. Now I am in the process of figuring out the bus schedule to get me to Hampton, VA so I can go to Bass Pro Shop and buy me a new stove to camp out with. It is a seventy dollar taxi ride and I am ready to starve before I pay that. I almost starve some days anyway so why pay to do it. As you can tell this is not a happy camper at the moment because this is delaying my tourist duties. I just have this attitude that if you pay for something with enough dollars it should work. If you don’t want it to be a heater then don’t advertise that it is one. After recharging my phone from making so many calls locally for service I feel I have tried to work out the problem every way possible way even by reading the instructions for things that can go wrong. Another thing is no one has kerosene and the closest thing to it lives at the Airports along the way and I even called the dealers who said they sell it. So the closet thing to it is to use diesel fuel and when you go to the website they sell diesel heaters so why make this to run on Kerosene. I am just venting and I will quit now. I just feel that people should know this is one possible problem you can have on a trip like this. You have to be ready to come up with alternative solutions when the problem arises and the answer is not a car trip to the store. In this case you have to also solve the transportation problem which is not easy when you live in this country. Although this is one of a few problems I have had do not think for one minute that I don’t like the boat. This is one of the best boats for this trip and many people look at it and say how are you doing this without something much larger, well I pass many larger boats every day in the same weather conditions and I am tied up enjoying life when they finally get there.

After all the griping above I should also give the other side to this dilemma and that is if I have to suffer I am doing it in style. I have a microwave which is covering my starvation duties quite well and I am also fortunate to be at rest in a very nice marina at the moment with all the amenities as they call them that I need. I have a nice supply of food and a nice restaurant on the property should I decide not to cook and starve. I am choosing to get along on what I have because I also feel that it is not bad for me to loose a few pounds because I am not eating what I like. If you take away my bacon and eggs in the morning you are not going to have a happy camper that day but I also know my doctor is saying that it is not going to hurt me to do this. A few days of having to eat cereal for breakfast is normal just not for me. I feel much better after the above because it cleanses the soul and prepares you for the next challenge which always involves much walking. After eight blocks one way yesterday I finally found somebody that sold batteries at there store. At home you just get in the car and drive there; here you put on your walking shoes and go find one. In that process though I passed some more lovely historic homes and many other businesses that I might have a use for and discovered which street they are on. I also passed a beautiful garden of roses which I stopped to admire and smell to my hearts content while I rested a moment, so for everything that is wrong there is always something that is really right. The roses were my wife’s favorite color which is yellow and yes I thought of her at that very moment and wished she were here to smell them and enjoy there beauty. And of course I did not have my camera with me to record the moment because the problem was batteries.

Today is a very cloudy and humid day here and yes it is showering. You know what they say about April showers. This morning there has been a lot of work boats passing but no ships as of now. It means I can spend some more time reading about what is up ahead and then I will be ready when my charts arrive in the mail to begin seeing how many miles it is from place to place and putting a time frame on the next part of the trip. Laundry will just have to wait until the showers pass. It is wonderful to have the time to mull over all these things and know that sooner or later they will get done so just enjoy what is happening now. It also a good day to go to the library which is just a few blocks away and see what is happening in the world around me. I hear the sirens and noises but they make no difference here in my isolated section of the world which is very quiet most of the time. Every marina has its gulls, herons, and ducks which also have there own little world that they seem to travel in daily as no one disturbs the daily rituals they have and there food supply seems endless here as they fly off in the morning like business people and then return in the evening to there little areas of seclusion where they hide out just like us humans do. The navy commutes to work by helicopter in the morning and evening where as time immortal goes on and rank has its privileges to enjoy. They fly a regular route past here just like a bus route on land. Another thing I noticed and don’t know for sure is that tied up next to the navy ships in dry dock are square barges that I think hold the crew of that ship while it is in port and being refurbished. They are just big grey boxes that sit next to the ship. And then there is the seeming endless circles by the homeland security people in there boat to protect the navy yard. That must be an exciting job but the one boat assigned here disappears with great regularity and that is when we will get attacked. I think he is on break for two thirds of his day and bored to death the other part and no one is on patrol after his nine to five day of circling and this is visible to me a normal crazy citizen so I know a terrorist would have no problem here just wait till he goes on break. Enough of the rambling for now it is time to figure out a better way to do nothing, When the trip is over I will have a masters degree in how to make a day go away and can probably make millions of nothing dollars as well.