Kaimusailing

I finished reading A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe and until the last couple dozen pages I was totally rapt, the end ruined the book, in my opinion. My errors in the last post include saying the book is 770 pages, it is 740, also I got the title wrong. Netflix will release a movie or mini series based on the book later this year. I can see their casting indicates major changes of some of the characters. The plot is complicated with an earthquake interjected at a point where the author had to do something and chose a contrived natural calamity. It is a literary device. Some author said if you are stumped just bring in a couple thugs with guns.
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The main character, who throughout the previous 700 pages carries on like a Good Ole Georgia Boy, who through his dialogue and actions seems to have no inkling of anything other than down home hunting, fishing, and disdains urbane art and culture, suddenly becomes a philosophic evangelist. His dialogue doesn’t fit his character at all. Otherwise the book is pretty good. It’s like the author ran out of energy and just finished off the book the way he did. I found what may have been a typo that the editors didn’t catch. I returned the book to the laundry room where I found it.
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I had to go to the Legion and pay my dues, again, I’m already paid up with the Baltimore Legion post, but that is where they send you when you first sign up online, but that post doesn’t hold meetings or events or provide any normal American Legion post activities, and you have to dig to find out that you have to change posts so that your local post, the one who provides for you, gets that dues money. Should be a simple no brainer, if I were a local post I would make it very easy for a Legionaire to transfer to me, but no, the paperwork is literally in triplicate. You have to fight for your right to pay dues.
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Cuddily had a boat problem that we all talked about, but I know I can’t follow my instincts and jump on the problem, fix it, and be done with it, I can’t do that. She seems innocent and weak, gotta help her, but no, she is not innocent or weak. Don’t go steppin’ around on her boat. I had to go over there, near the Legion, and why not help her out a bit?
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I had to bike to the grocers to get some cash back from my debit card, the Legion will only take cash or check, in Visa they do not trust, and on the way, Cuddily’s is not that much further and the Legion is just a stone’s throw further.
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I thought the temperature was like 81, but it was at least 10 degrees warmer than that. I was winded and kept on cycling. Get those lungs aworkin’. I bought a couple bottles of Le Bleau water, another loaf of sourdough bread, a jar of Food Lion medium salsa, and as an afterthought, a pound of hickory smoked ham. The girl at the register loaded up my shopping bag which already had some tools and a notebook with 4 items on its shopping list.
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Outside was like sauntering into a blast furnace. That’s what it felt like. I had the water and jugged down a good gulp as I tied my shopping bag to the bike. It would make more sense to have a package tray or something. An old fellow, and when I say old, he must be old, asked me about my bike and I said it’s a Serotta, a sprinter’s bike, about 35 years old. I didn’t give him much else, just rode away with the bag tied to the front bars, swinging, and weaving down the parking lot to a side road. No traffic.
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The wind was coming from where I was going and I worked the pedals. It’s like going to the gym, no pain, no gain. I got to Cuddily’s front door and took a while to push the door bell. The door was locked. Nori, the wonder dog, was barking at me from inside. Cuddily came and let me in. I was sweaty and asked if I could take a breather on the back porch. I didn’t want to sweat all over her nice house. We sat out on the porch and she gave me an ice cold bottle of water. She said she was worried about the thunderstorms and the tornado warning. The sky was perfectly blue outside and there was no indication of any storm or tornado. We both looked at our weather apps on our phones and yes, there was some intense activity, but it looked like it would go North, like DC, Baltimore, and the other bunch of storms would go South, like Virginia Beach.
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I drank the ice cold water and knew I had to go out in the humid heat, onto her tippy boat, and at least look at the problem. I had plier tools and a 4 in 1 screwdriver. I was calmed down from my bike ride and had no problem getting onto her boat and taking the cover off the engine. It is fuel injected and the linkage is on the starboard side of the engine. I could manipulate the remote control stick and I could feel the resistance, but also it could move smoothly at times. If I could lubricate the ends of the control linkage, maybe that would help. We had no lubricant, but she got a can of WD-40 and I could spray that on. It seemed to help, but what it really did was indicate the problem might be inside the control lever apparatus itself. It was 11 minutes to 5 and that meant we shut things down, put away, and take Nori to the Legion.
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We can’t take a dog inside, but we did. I joked that they would let Nori in, but I would have to sit outside. Some serious looks at me. Air conditioning. Wine glasses filled to the max, you can’t take them from the bar to your seat without taking a hefty swig. If you can’t make it to the bar under your own power you are de facto cut off.
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I had to endure female conversation about hairdo’s, including my own. I’m glad I have some hair at my age. Conversation about our cats which includes only Teri, conversation about what who was doing what. Cuddily and Teri meet for dinner very frequently and now it had been a while and they had to catch up. I had my cold cut sandwich delivered and it was gourmet as long as a couple of over poured wines washed it down. Nori was well behaved. She liked ice cubes. She only barked a couple times. They didn’t throw her or me out.
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I took her out on the lawn in front of the Legion, or maybe it’s the back, facing North. A string of dark clouds in an arc terminated right in front of me to the North, it strung to the West, and I had to take Nori on a painful, for me, hike to see the vista that unfolded to the West. The late, very late, afternoon sun, the reds, we went to the waterfront and I sat on a picnic table while Nori nervously crouched with her face and nose to the Southeast. What was she seeing. I rested and took a couple of snapshots of clouds of the wrestling atmosphere. We went in.
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We had to leave before it got too dark. Me on the bicycle and Cuddily with her car would be much safer to get where we had to be before it got dark. Once again I was pedaling with a realization that my aerobic fitness was something that had to be addressed.
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I was back on board SUNSPLASH and sending some sunset photos, telling some that I was on board safe, or SOB. I had to put the ham in the fridge and I diddled around with some YouTube traffic, then I realized I had to call Hawaii. I promised.
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I called and got my nephew who said both his mom and dad were sick with cold like symptoms. I suggested they take covid tests. Painless, and important if you are elderly and sick.
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The football season has started with the Hall of Fame game and retired Jets players being inducted into the Hall of Fame. It is a different sort of season for the Jets and if it doesn’t pan out, it would be a huge disappointment.
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It struck me that the teams were like schoolyard teams that choose players, you choose one, and I choose one, and so on, but the first players chosen are the ones who can do the job, the last players are wishing they would be on the team that wins. In the NFL, the worst teams get to choose first, right on down to the successful teams who choose last. If you look like you are going to win, then some will try to get onto your squad. It ends up with some teams getting a crowd of good players, and that’s how it is with the Jets this year.
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But even if you get all the good players on your squad, how will they do, together? Football is an unquestioned team sport and the key to a team’s success is its coaches and coordinators. The Jets have a rich depth of players, but what can the coaches do with all of that? That’s what we will see from now on out through the end of the year.
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If it was another team, I wouldn’t give a R*** A**, but it’s the Jets, a team I have loyally followed for over 50 years. So I am caught up in it and so far it has been a blast. I know, as a Jets fan, there will be a downfall, a setback, but we will still be fans, just like we have always been. The tiny window of a Super Bowl Championship is in our sight. It will probably be snuffed out. Bad things can and do happen.
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I sent Eve a photo and she responded. I know she fell into the Magothy and I wish I had been there. She’s a tornado. With her out of Crisfield, Crisfield is deader than dead. Quiet. The town that has nothing now has a big chunk taken out of it. Less.
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I had to buy a lottery ticket, because if someone in Crisfield won the billion dollar prize, and it was not me, I had to buy a lottery ticket.
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The next day, which was the day of the lottery, I felt pretty awful. I ached and moved around slowly. I had almost no wine left but did not head out to the wine shop. I was invited for tacos at the Legion, but was not going there either. I had a tuna salad sandwich and later some cheese and crackers.
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Mercifully the next day I felt fine, although I did not win the lottery. I headed back to Cuddily’s waterfront home to continue looking at her boat’s control problem. I ordered a service manual for her outboard motor and downloaded it, then opted to not get the CD, was refunded the shipping cost, and was able to send her the link to get her own copy of the manual.
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I had been thinking about the problem and it seemed the resistance in the control might be the shift linkage. The whole control system of cables, levers, bellcranks, and the shafts, cams, and gears of the motor made a complicated system that could develop a problem in the control lever at the helm, in the motor, including all the way down into the lower unit. I thought it would be easy to disconnect the cable where it attaches to the motor’s mechanism, then we would know if the problem was with the remote control or in the engine itself.
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It was simple, just pull the pin at the junction and lift the cable end off a pin, almost inaccessible, then see if the remote lever moves freely. It seemed to do so and I could shift the motor’s mechanism with my finger, not jammed up at all. There was a slight misadjustment that I corrected, then put it back together. Cuddily pointed out that she thought the resistance was at low throttle after moving the lever to engage the forward or reverse gear. I felt it and yes, there must be a problem in the throttle part of the control.
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We had to go look on the computer of the section that concerned the control system. The engine had been idling slightly high, 1100 rpms intead of around 750. The throttle control assembly is very complicated. I disconnected the cable from the throttle control mechanism and found the engine to be idling around 800-900 rpm, which was not far off from spec.
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There is a warning highlighted in the manual that the end of the control cable had to be screwed into its terminating eye at least 8mm. There is a locking nut on the threaded cable end, so I set it at about 8mm away from the end and then screwed the eye right up to the locking nut, then reattached the cable to the mechanism. There is a sort of roller that slided within an S shaped slot in one of the throttle levers and Cuddily brought some vaseline to lubricate it. Now the control seemed to be working a bit better. I couldn’t really try it out at anything above very low throttle at the dock, we would have to take the boat out to do that.
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Let’s take the boat to the Legion, where they have their own dock, but Cuddily said we would have to take Nori and maybe Nori couldn’t make it from the boat to the dock. We shut it down and put all away. We can test it out tomorrow, Cuddily said.
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At the Legion they let us bring Nori inside. We shared an immense double hamburger and onion rings. Teri was with us and we consumed wine. I took Nori outside and around the building. I knew I would feel the aftereffects the next day. The bike ride back to the marina was another test of my cardio.
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The next day was achy, slow, and the weather outside was gloomy. Soon it began to spit rain. The wind was rocking SUNSPLASH from side to side like she was out at sea. I made breakfast a little before lunchtime. I texted Cuddily that I thought we were taking the boat out today. When she said too windy and rainy I texted we could have gone waterskiing. Funny but not funny.
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The concern was about the wildfires in Hawaii. The old whaling port of Lahaina burned to the ground and at least 36 people lost their lives. I couldn’t believe the footage on the news channels. There were fires on the Big Island also, on the leeward side, Kohala and Waikoloa. My niece lives there and when my younger brother called he appraised me of the situation. The Mauna Kea Beach hotel had its grounds burned over, but the hotel was intact. The brushfire at Waikoloa was not as serious.
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The fires were a result of a Pacific hurricane passing to the South of the islands producing high winds from the Northeast, coupled with dry conditions, so the fires progressed from East to West. At the West end of Maui is Lahaina. If you try to flee downwind from the fire you end up at the ocean. No where to go but into the water. The Coast Guard was rescuing victims who had to jump into the ocean to escape the conflagration. The whole town was devastated, burned to the ground. It was an iconic old Hawaiian whaling port. Very sad.
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The hurricane aided winds were above 50 mph and gusting up to 85. It was difficult to outrun the fire. Drone footage showed the advancing front of the fire sweeping right out of the video frame, faster than you can run, faster than you can get into your car and drive. Whole streets of houses, cars, trees, all ablaze. Conflagration.
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I will wait till Sunday to talk to my kin out there.
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It is the beginning of week one of the NFL preseason, so I will do as I have done so many times before, starved of football during the off season, I will watch a bunch of meaningless preseason games. They will not satisfy me and I will miss a few, even though the NFL is putting them up every day for the next four days. I want to catch the 49’ers, the Texans, and of course my Jets. Tonight the Texans will play the arch rival of the Jets, the Patriots. The Jets play late Saturday afternoon. The 49’ers are Sunday’s late game.
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I am interested to see how Sam Darnold plays for the 49’ers. I am interested in the Texans because Jake Asman, an up and coming young correspondent, who I like due to his coverage of the Jets, is stationed in Houston for ESPN and is on air about the Texans and the Houston Astros. Of course I want to see the Jets play.
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I was invited to an art exhibit and then dinner in Ocean City, but it’s on Saturday and I want to watch the Jets preseason game at 4PM. I think our art/dinner trip would start about 4. Maybe I will regret not going.
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The market trip on the bike was not too difficult, the temperature is comfortable, for me, my cardio got a workout, but the traffic in town is increased today, today the Giant Duck was inflated in an open area of the marina. Cars were lined up parked at the side of the road. The local gendarme had a speed trap near the market.
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I had a shopping list with question marks on it. I need to get protein. Chicken? More hot dogs? Steak, or maybe pork chops. I thought there was a BOGO on high quality burger patties, but it was last week and I missed it. A package of New York Strip steaks were on special. 3 steaks for eighteen bucks. OK. Hot dogs were on sale, Nathan’s, two packs for six bucks. I needed salad for the steak and should have gotten spinach or a spinach baby spring mix, but I ended up with romaine hearts.
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The bike back to the marina was into a 10 knot breeze which made me work harder. I am not aerodynamic. I cut across the lanes of traffic hoping a quiet vehicle wouldn’t run me down. A couple years ago a fellow on a recumbent trike was run down by an old lady with poor eyesight. His memorial side of the street marker is right at the intersection I use all the time. Chrisfield is a town with very little traffic, very safe on a bike, unless the Giant Duck is in town.
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I grilled one of the steaks, 10 oz. by the way, on the Coleman Camp Grill. It smoked up the cabin. 2:30 a side and let it sit for about 15 minutes, Anthony Bourdain’s insistence, but he’s dead now. I sliced up one of the romaine hearts and sprinkled my homemade dressing on the slices. They tasted fine, I expected to dressing to get stale by now. Should eat more salad. There was a corner piece of the steak I could slice off without disturbing the rest as it sat out its 14 minute reprieve. I had a couple glasses of pinot noir left in the Black Box, so I had some wine and the steak salad.
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I didn’t sleep well. Cornelia Marie and her mom treated me to a dinner and I said I would treat them at someplace better. Now they had offered me an opportunity to do so, but I decided to watch a preseason football game instead. I tossed and turned all night. The giant duck had been deflated.
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The next day I made the egg toast with ham and cheese on top. It looked like a beautiful day. No giant duck off to the NNW. I played the lower levels of woodoku and got up to the higher levels.
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The Red Shell Shanty was locked. I assumed the air conditioning was turned off. It must be over 90 degrees in there. I sat outside at a picnic table and phoned the marina office. I’m at the Shanty and it’s locked. Tom showed up from the office and we unlocked the East door and the West door so air could circulate. The air conditioning was not very effective. I thanked him and sat watching the NFL channel, just to make sure we had that service. Several people stopped in, the marina was packed with tourists who came to see the Giant Duck. Workers came in to get something out of the back and we talked about football. I said I was there to see the Jets play at 4, the worker said he didn’t get the NFL network at home. Well, it reairs at 1AM.
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I went back to the boat and filled an empty pint water bottle with pinot noir, then pedaled back. I was forced to watch a Chicago Bears game on NFL Network. I thought how different this was compared to a viewing of an art gallery and nice Ocean City cuisine. The Shanty was comfortable and I watched more of the Bears game. Then it was time for the Jets game and they announced due to contractual requirements we would be seeing yesterday’s Giants Lions game. I closed up the place and texted CM that the Jets game was blacked out. In Crisfield, MD. Neither team is anywhere near here. Jets up in NY, Panthers in NC, somewhere.
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I returned to the boat and I had put a couple hot dogs in a zip lok bag, almost severed in half, not the bags, the hot dogs, with a blob of the chili sauce on them, marinating and coming up to room temperature. I boiled the hot dogs and almost lethal chili sauce in a zip lok bag in a pot of water. I have no more potato hot dog buns, but I have some sourdough bread, so I have an open faced sandwich of Kunzler beef hot dogs, halved, and drenched with the hot chili sauce on top of a slice of the sourdough bread.
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Does it compare with some, perhaps, seafood up in Ocean City, an art gallery tour, with two of the best people to spend time with? I feel deflated, loser, eating hot dogs in a hot boat. Like I’m an outcast unable to link up with civilization.
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What made matters worse is the Jets trounced the Panthers 27-0. I can only watch highlights, later, much later.
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The next day was hot. The giant duck is still in the marina. The image is a shot of that duck.