Kaimusailing

I was trying to get some participation in a dinner at the American Legion, but Eve said she didn’t want to go there. I asked Cuddily and she said she was making meatloaf dinner. I had to return some Tupperware to her. I was doing an online jigsaw puzzle and also had to replace Sunsplash’s AC umbilical cable. She was out shopping at the grocers and offered to pick me up. No, I’ll ride over on my bicycle. It’s chilly out there, I hoped it wasn’t a big mistake.
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Cornelia Marie said she was coming to dinner and I said I would bring her random orbital sander to give back to her, after borrowing it and repairing it so that it worked like new. I cycled into a cold North wind, it felt like there was something wrong with the bike, but it was just the wind against my non-aerodynamic body. Tuff Slug. I finally got to Cudilly’s.
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We talked about a few things and she said she had to go back to the grocers for more string beans. She had gone there earlier for bacon. She was making two trips for two items. I offered to go with her, how dumb it would be to sit around while she goes alone. We spent too much time shopping for one package of frozen green beans. Old people.
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Back at her wonderful waterfront home I offered to prep some of the vegetables. An onion. A green pepper. Her very sharp expensive German knife, which I was now leery of, sliced up the onion in a jiffy, and no cuts on my person. Diced. Green pepper next. Oh, I’d like the onion finer than that, easy with the sharp knife, throw the minced onion in a bowl. Dissect the green pepper and mince it, into the bowl. I was done. Pleasure with the sharp knife, especially as I hadn’t cut myself with it.
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She worked with the rest of the ingredients and we talked of Chef Alton Brown’s meatloaf recipes. She put the loaf in the baking pan and covered it with a secret ketchup based glaze. She questioned a potato that had a green tinge to it and I said, well that’s because it was exposed to sunlight. I Googled further and found that green potatoes can have toxins. She changed that one out to a non-green potato. They went into her air fryer oven while the loaf went into the regular oven, once it beeped that it was up to temperature.
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The frozen green beans went into a large cast iron skillet with olive oil with low heat. Nothing seemed to happen. Oh, look, it’s Nori the wonder dog, and following her was Cornelia Marie come to dinner. She looked radiant, regal, happy, I gave her her sander, repaired and like new. Cuddily opened another bottle of red wine. CM said the beans didn’t look like they were cooking. I tasted one, like ice. Turn up the heat. Wine tasting. Eve the artist had been invited, but didn’t respond. Have a toast to her.
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The beans were sizzling like in a wok. The timer went off and the meatloaf came out. The air fried baked potatoes came out at the same time. I asked if I could get my potatoes now, yes, I sliced one in half on my plate and cut into it in a hatchwork pattern, melted butter on it, sprinkled black pepper, ready to go. Green beans too. The others were not as quick but got theirs. The meatloaf was not rested as recommended, it was torn apart. Nice clumps of meat and other ingredients, juicy, my plate was full.
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CM was drinking from the Black Box Malbec wine as I was, it’s pretty good. I hoped it wouldn’t run out. It didn’t. We enjoyed the dinner and talked of fashion, intricate ornate ankle boots, body shapes with various dresses, and I was just an agog participant. C’mon.
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CM was yawning and had to go. I was ready but stayed while Cuddily got out her bottle of Jameson’s whisky. We talked too long. I was hesitant to leave with it cold outside. I knew I had to go at some point. Cuddily offered to drive me, but I know she hates to drive at night, and how could she explain the bottle of Jameson’s to the officer.
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I went out and didn’t feel cold at all. I felt strong and rode strong. It seemed like winter was trying to get in, that feel of cold damp air, still air, no traffic on the streets, just me struggling with the sprinter’s bike, fast in spurts, slow down here and there, breathing huge gulps of cold air into my lungs, like the old days, just as cold, just as fast, wait, stop, enter the code at the gate, ride inside the marina and onto the dock, oh no, I left the boat open to the cold air. Get on board and close the hatches, make sure the heater is up to the mark, heat this boat up.
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The next day I woke up at around 6:30 and felt OK but didn’t want to get out of the sleeping bag into the chill of the cabin. I thought about it and then got up and started the alcohol stove and then put on a teapot of water for the coffee. I put on my clothes of the day before for warmth and got out the egg and the package of ham and some cheese for an omelet. The alcohol stove takes longer to cook things, but as I wait for it, it also heats the cabin. It works well enough.
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Back on Kaimu the alcohol stove is the same manufacture, but it doesn’t work as well. The one on Sunsplash is almost fifty years old and is much better. The parts work well, on Kaimu they didn’t, tinny, and there I developed the method of calculating just how much alcohol I needed to cook something. It works well for breakfast, but when you are cooking things in a pressure cooker and need more time to cook, it doesn’t work so well. Propane, although dangerous, regulates like a restaurant stove. I’m out of propane right now. Heading back to the boatyard with a lot of questions and trepidations.
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Geoff, the chemist, and his wife Karen, also a chemist, texted me. Karen’s mother had died up in Wilmington and they were coming down, apparently on route 13, down Delaware, and going right by Crisfield. He thought we could have lunch on Sunday. I will be subjected to a going away party, although I am still alive, presently, so I sent that along to him, as well as the news that I would probably arrive on Wednesday, in Georgia, in the boatyard. He said he would see me there, no lunch, I’m stuck with that going away party.
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It is chilly here and I should have left a week ago, but I am cooped up in the cabin, unwilling to go out. I spent a lot of time looking at YouTube videos from Dark Skies. They drag up old warplanes with a nice presentation, they have been copied by others. Then I ended up watching a Chris Simms video that was over an hour long. His father, Phil Simms, come on, and it was his 65th birthday, but they talked football. Just a nice YouTube show.
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I wanted to buy one of Eve’s paintings, but I have nowhere to put it. Previously I bought one for Cornelia Marie, not a one that I wanted, but it was going on her wall, it was one that she wanted, and Eve said there is a personal connection with that painting. Now it was Cuddily who had a bare space on her wall in her waterfront home. She had discarded, donated, a large painting that was too jarring, they described it as, “Too Ocean City”. Big space. She had none of Eve’s artwork and I suggested she get one, they were going to a new gallery event, all dolled up, get one before anyone else does. I will pay for it. It’s a Christmas/Birthday present for Cuddily, Eve will sell a painting at the gallery event, and I will feel good contributing to two of my friends, win win.
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The Zen book I purchased from Amazon wasn’t able to be sent along to anyone else. This pissed me off because they charged me twice for it, once when I bought it to download, and then again when I wanted to send it as a gift. I went online and read it, page by page, took screenshots of each page, saved them, converted them from .pgn to .jpg, smaller, and sent them to others. No one seemed to be interested. What was I doing.
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Yeah, what am I doing, where am I going, why am I doing, why why why. Winter is closing in on Crisfield and it is hard to bike around town, but it is hard to do life the way I do it. Maybe harder is not so bad. I will be going down to the boatyard in Georgia, probably cold down there too. We can avoid some things but we can’t avoid everything. Sooner or later we have to deal with ourselves.
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I hate to leave Crisfield because there is the off season aspect of the community, the winter months, the time when the tourists should come, but they don’t, they miss the off season. I’ve already seen it, a gray overcast sky, the windmill is sitting still, no congestion on the streets, the streets that are almost never congested. The artist could respond.
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I will regret going away, not from the town, but from the souls who have changed me. Maybe I have to go somewhere else to complete the process. Now I don’t want to die and not know what happens. To them. Not to me. It’s like I didn’t realize that I needed external agents to get me going again. I thought I was in control. Not in my heart. My heart is not in my control.
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I kept looking at a boat as I bicycled out of the marina, green, with a skewed keel. I tried to look it up on the internet using all of my skills, no dice. I met a fellow on the dock and he asked me how are you doing, well everyone knows the response, Terrible. He laughed, that was a good reply. He wanted to talk, like me, but you have to back off sometimes. He seemed like he was glad to see another human being. Yes, the marina is emptying out for the season.
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Later I biked out on the road and passing by the wrought iron fence of the marina I looked to the side and there he was, the fellow from the dock, working on the green boat I wanted to know about. Hey, and we talked across the road as cars went by, I hate it when people do that, I found out it was a Victory 21, a race winning boat, I hope to meet him again. I cycled off.
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I went to the Legion to see the football game between the New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers. The Patriots routinely destroy young quarterbacks, of the opposing team, and they had done so with Sam Darnold, when he was a NY Jet, my quarterback, so I wanted to see this, also Cuddily is a Patriots fan, so why not invite her to see the same game, not available on local TV.
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I had worked hard cycling against the chilly wind and ended up at the Legion only to find Mitchell, the chef, sitting on the stoop with bags of food, calling on his cell phone, trying to find out why the place was locked. I sat and thought maybe someone would be a little late and no harm done. It wasn’t like that. It was like an hour and a half before the bartender showed up and unlocked the Legion, and I whimpered on the steps, I’m hungry, I’m thirsty. The crowd marched in. The TV sets were turned on. Mitchell gave some of us chips and salsa. He got the wheels of culinary motion in motion and I ordered jalapeno poppers whenever they could make them.
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The Patriots brought upon Sam Darnold his final meltdown. 3 bad interceptions. Each one contributed to the Panthers demise. Cuddily had arrived and was drinking beer like me and watching her team crush the other team.
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I watched Malcolm and Nancy, marina trawler dwellers, come into the legion, I was glad to see them because, although I had their contact information, there was a going away party for me today, and I didn’t plan it, nor was I supposed to even know about it. I have spies.
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After I greeted them they said they had been in Belinda’s shop and talked that they were from the marina and my name came up, so they were clued into the party, so here they were. Others came in. The Bad Crowd. Eve, Diana, and Teri. Cornelia Marie and Wilbur. CM had made a rum cake, just bring the rum I had said. It was great. That came after wings and pizzas, our little group was big and overpowering in the Legion. We had well wishers and time seemed to pass on too quickly, but no, time hadn’t passed along at all. It was just me, squirming from my innards reaction to jalapeno poppers. Time stood still, would I explode. Belinda and her fiance came in. I was given glasses of wine such as you only get at the Legion, filled almost to capacity. Hey, that’s not the right way to do it, but OK, if you will.
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People were saying Happy Birthday to me, but I corrected them, this is not a Going Away Party, it is a Please, Go Away, Party. They laughed. I did pay my bill, 24 dollars, and someone elses, not much more. I had to ride back to the marina in the cold. Eve offered to drive me and sure, I thought, the easier way.
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She said she had to stop at her house for her cooped up dog and why didn’t I come in out of the cold while she got things organized. It was nice to have another glass of wine. It sure was cold out there. She showed me the results of a project I had got started on with her, but she was completing it without me. Her studio had clear vinyl windows that had started to deteriorate. We ordered some new vinyl and she began repaning her windows. The result was fantastic. The studio was now totally closed in, bad windows were gone, clear vision all out on Cove Street.
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She didn’t want to go out driving anymore, which was good as we were both very happy with wine. I could sleep over in her guest room and we went upstairs. Well, could I sleep with her and her young black lab bitch Kahlua if I kept my clothes on. Yes. We could all try to sleep in the same bed. I was very tired. I would be even more tired. There was no room for me to sleep and I was somehow shortsheeted to leeward. I was freezing. The jalapeno poppers of the evening were making me feel like an exploding gas balloon, ready to pop. Eve, the beautiful Eve, snored like a champion, Kahlua loudly barked at times. I should have opted for the guest room. On the edge of the bed, ready to fall off, shivering, can’t turn over because of what that might mean. Keep the faith, bro, you were a tough sailor.
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In my mind the idea that Belinda and her fiance would be arriving around 7:30 in the morning got me to check the time. It was 6:16. Sometimes in cold weather you simply don’t react to the chilly temperature, you are going to get some warm clothes on and then react to it. So I did. I went downstairs. It reminded me of another cold night long ago. I let the cat out. I went back upstairs to Eve, comatose and happy. I’ve gotta go, Belinda and her fiance will be here. This is a small town. She didn’t respond.
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I went out and down Cove Street, I should have left a week or so ago. Through the pedestrian gate and into the marina, I rode quickly down to K dock, and up the dock to Sunsplash.
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The boat was left open. I shut it. I turned the heater up to max. I got into the sleeping bag and pulled it right over my head. I slept for about 2 hours, necessary sleep, coma. Then a bit more, have to go with Cuddily to get a rental car to leave Crisfield. Maybe they would stop me somehow, they almost have.
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I made a last breakfast, at least from what I had on hand, the last of my ham, the last of my cheese, I had plenty of eggs, almost the last of my bread. Cuddily would pick me up at the dock and give me the gifts from the Please Go Away Party. A bottle of red homemade wine from Nancy and Malcolm, salsa and cookies from Eve’s sister. I brought all that to Sunsplash and then went with Cuddily on a long drive to Salisbury, to the airport.
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We always talk, if we didn’t talk I would know something was very wrong. She is a sly talker and in control. We Google map our way to the airport and she drops me off to go inside to see if this is where I should have been dropped off. She is anxious to be on her way to return purchases and continue to shop. It is the right place. I wait in line for a while. They give me a car, a Toyota Camry. I’m supposed to pack all my stuff in this?
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On my drive back I experience all the new active responses of a modern car. The car tries to self steer itself, so you feel it around the bends. If you pick your hands up off the wheel it will try to follow the road. If a car or obstacle, and some cars are obstacles, lands in front of you, the car will instantly back off, and you are saved from a collision. Other cars will overtake you and cut you off, right in front of you, the car will instantly back off, and you are saved from collision. It ends up you are at the back end of the line, way back, you won’t get to where you want to go, everyone else with get there, just by cutting you off..
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I pull into Eve’s driveway and park next to her huge SUV. I’m trying to find out about bridge tolls and she texts me, are you reading a book about how to drive? I go inside. Her cat is interested in my Aqua Sox infused feet. I can smell them, even after covid. The dog, too, brings her dog saliva laden toy to flop at my feet. Thank you animals. Eve has her piercing blue eyes and perfect hair, how can she do it, I’m a wreck.
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I know I will only be in Crisfield for a few more days, hard to believe. She mentions her porch entry lights, how they have not come on for a long time. I can’t stand looking into her eyes. Yes, I’ll go look at them. Looks like a simple thing, just the thing for me. Go down into the cellar, not damp, wet, maybe muddy in places, put on your feculent Aqua Sox, find the power line that comes down from the porch studio. It goes to a power strip. Yes, the house wiring consists of a lot of power lines terminated with plugs and plugged into power strips plugged into the house wiring in the basement. Not to mention I’m working on this stuff shod in Aqua Sox and the basement floor is semi-flooded.
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The power strip to the porch is turned off, I turn it on. It doesn’t make much of a difference. I’ve got the digital multi meter, I’ll just measure the juice at the switch. I hit something wrong and there is a big spark, an explosion, and we jump back. Eve says she was surprised, I say, you were surprised?
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I get strange readings when I look at the voltages on these AC lines. I test, take apart, and rebuild plugs, switches, and the terminals on the sockets themselves. The best I can do is to reassemble the whole mess carefully and run up and down to the cellar to click the circuit breaker so that I can’t be electrocuted, and keep working at it. I test everything to make sure there won’t be a big explosion of electrical energy on some of the work I’ve done.
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I’m almost completely exhausted, have a glass of red wine. Eve is gathering ingredients for a great dinner, no request for help to me, but then Cuddily shows up. I wanted to thank her for bringing me to that rental car. But Eve said to me, Belinda and her fiance saw you riding away on your bicycle in the early morning. So what, a lot of people are leaving houses in the early morning. Maybe I was looking for something I had lost.
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I suspected Eve’s electric test meter had a low battery and I opened it up. Maybe I can read the battery voltage with the meter. That’s when I saw that this meter has the AC and DC voltage measurements on opposite sides of the dial compared to my own meter. I was trying to read the AC voltage of the porch light circuit with the meter set on DC. That explained my strange readings. I went to the porch and turned the light switch on. The lights came on. All the work I had done was superfluous, the lights hadn’t been coming on because they were plugged into a power strip that was turned off. Turning the power strip on was all we had to do.
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I minced garlic and halved a lemon. Potatoes were in the oven. The grill outside was lit. Asparagus was sauteed. A salad was made. The steaks went on the grill and I set a timer. After the timer went off I flipped the steaks. When the timer went off again I brought the steaks into the kitchen where they would rest while the potatoes finished in the oven. We ate salad and warm baguette and drank more wine. Then we polished off steak dinner with asparagus and baked potato. After more conversation and dish clean up Ann and I left. I was very tired and slept on board a very deep sleep.
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The image is of the steak dinner. Ribeye.