Kaimusailing

The perfect weather is predicted to continue. Great. I get inquiries about how my boat work is going. I am not getting much done. On a day when I was scheduled to work on Cornelia Marie’s outboard motor I also started making dough for the Shanty to try out on their pizzas. Also news came that the chef at the Legion was leaving and there was a farewell party. CM said maybe tomorrow, so all I had to do is make the dough. I dropped it off, the chef wasn’t there, with instructions and a barbecue lighter for the oven.
.
At the Legion I biked in and didn’t recognize many people on the deck, walked in, saw a few who knew me, most of them were quiet and then I realized I was wearing the hat from Oxford, my daughter’s Father’s Day gift. It was a nice hat, but it said “Captain” above the brim, which was suede. So all these fellows in the American Legion are wearing whatever insignia they have on hand, and here I am with a hat that merely proclaims Captain on it. Some of them have legitimate Captain’s Caps, with gold braid, whatever, and they sniffed at me. Who does he think he is, with a cheesy hat like that, Captain, my ass.
.
I sat at a table with fellows who snubbed me so bad, go ahead, snub me. The ladies started coming in when I was trying to get, in a long line, a refill of wine. They gave me my orders and I waited my turn. I gave a complex order, Pinot noir, or merlot, pinot grigio, chardonnay, glasses of ice. The eager beavers, if I can use that term, showed up to get the white wines and ice. I followed them and grabbed my glass off the table of the taciturn, nay, snobby, gentlemen. Sorry, gotta go.
.
I planned on two glasses of red wine here, but it turned into 3. They fill their glasses almost obscenely to the brim, but I won’t complain. I mainly focused on my role as the only one who could turn this scenario into a zen kind of thing. I realize it is in the eyes of the beholder, and I wanted to focus on the things that never change, forget about them, whatever it is. Clear your mind of old things. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Don’t even worry about now, experience it, savor it. I left after the light began to fade and biked to the Shanty without even crashing. We made a pie out of my dough, on the propane pizza oven. It came out great. I had an Orange Crush to celebrate. We all shared the pie and talked pizza, pizza, pizza, then a lady with a real pizza business intrigued me, I could visit her massive commercial pizza business. I had to find time to bike, right within town, to that business. Obsessions can be shared.
.
The next day Cornelia Marie advised me that one of my medications had come in. She also wanted me to work on her Suzuki outboard motor. The symptom was unsteady idle and stalling while idling, then becoming difficult to restart. We took the air cleaner cover off, then removed the carburetor and began to strip it down in a large plastic tray. The float chamber came off, all the jets were inspected and cleaned. The idle jets were cleaned. The insides of the carb were not bad at all and no jets were blocked. All in all disassembly, cleaning, and reassembly took about an hour.
.
We packed up the boat and trailer for the marina boat ramp, launched the boat, and I tried to start it. It took several pulls to get the fuel into the carb, then the engine fired off. I ran it on a high idle until it smoothed out, came up to temperature. I tried to bring it down to idle and it struggled at lowest speed. Maybe the idle needs adjustment. It quit at one point and we couldn’t restart it. We tried choke, we tried clearing with open throttle and no choke. No go. We brought the boat back to the house and Cuddily drove up. They made plans to visit Gallery 413 in town. I made plans to watch Tour de France highlights and maybe have some steamed shrimp peel and eat cocktail. We dropped the boat and trailer at Cuddily’s house and I biked back to the marina.
The Tour wasn’t on, but I could watch highlights on YouTube. They were opening up the Tour de France in Copenhagen, Denmark, with an 8.1 mile time trial, and you’d expect these high powered cyclist to really take off, only 8 miles, but it was raining. Now it was a balance of power and skill. The time trial bikes are special and not as maneuverable as regular racing bikes. Riding them with vengeance in the rain is a delicate balance. Any paint on the road is a potential slick spot, so I cringe when I see some bike stud hitting the pedals coming out of a turn and he runs over white striping for maybe a pedestrian crossing, and some do crash, they go down like they’re on ice.
.
The ladies of the Arts Council attended another gallery event. There are 3 galleries and a shop that sells art in town. The art is here, easy to get to see it in a nice quiet town. I neglected to go to the event. I’ve been to enough of them. I’m moving on.
.
I made it to the Red Shell Shanty and had a couple Orange Crushes. I ordered a burger with american cheese and mushrooms, a tomato, and mayo. The chef suggested provalone cheese, yeah, go ahead. The burger was one of the best I’ve had recently, unusual for this bistro. I ended up having a couple more Orange Crushes. Then the ladies rolled in, Cornelia Marie with Nori, the wonder dog, Cuddily, Teri, and Eve.
.
The weather was nice, a little breezy, the conversations that ensued were wonderful, so many sourpusses were now smiling a bit, things change, things change back, we remember how much fun we had last year.
.
It is the holiday weekend with fireworks on schedule, maybe a couple of pies baked at the Shanty. I watched on TV qualifying session at the British Grand Prix in the rain and stage 2 of the Tour.
.
My phone stopped working and I found myself at the Shanty again but no one was texting me back. I received notifications: “Message Blocking is Active”. It turned out that what I thought was a Verizon scam was in fact Verizon, new owners of Straight Talk, I had to order a SIM card from them, then my phone began working again.
.
I was able to call Hawaii and talk to my brother who was recovering from a recent heart attack. His throat was sore from being entubed in the ICU. We had a short conversation and then I had a longer one with my niece. I was due to buy airline tickets to Hawaii, if you wait you pay much more.
.
I was able to order reasonably priced tickets and travel insurance using Travelocity. I had tried to use Priceline, but it kept bumping me out, that flight is sold out, etc. Travel insurance costs about 10% of the ticket price.
.
The image is of the puppies in their outdoor pen. They are so cute.