Kaimusailing

The days of Autumn are wonderful on the Chesapeake, but in Crisfield it seems like the world has better things to do than visit here, the streets are almost empty, I ride through the intersections on my bike like I'm alone in a ghost town. I still have pain in my hip and lower back, but my stamina is improved, my strength, I can ride with the pain and I'm on a sprinter's bike with the big chain gear in front and near the top gear in back. It takes me a long time to get going up to speed, especially against the wind. So now, when I spin up, it's twenty turns on the crank and I count one one thousand, etc., up to twenty, I'm even with the cars, at least the ones that are not speeding in the 30 mph zone. I feel like I'm in pretty good shape for my age.
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I went with Eve to shop, I was going to go on my bike, but if I went with her I could get more water, that was the deciding factor. I got a crate of water bottles and a jar of Coenzyme Q10, the water costing 3.98 and the enzyme 20.98. Eve is like my sister and she is a bother. She is my kryptonite.
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I am probably the same to her. But I shouldn't be. Crisfield is a small town where things get concentrated, coalesced, if I can use those words, it's not an island, but it is remote and prone to flooding, eventually being underwater.
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I could post pictures of empty storefronts, streets almost devoid of cars. And maybe I will do that. Right now I am aboard SUNSPLASH with 35 knot winds hitting us. I was at Eve's all afternoon, helping her, or more likely, getting told not to help her, she insists on doing it herself, such as I do, two locomotives with the gas pedals down to the metal, and no brakes. I play with her dog who likes to play. Then cars pull up and I caution the dog to stay out of the way. Friends for dinner, friends bringing wine and good cheer.
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So it was a steak and salad dinner with corn on the cob grilled with butter and spices, and friends that overwhelm me, and Eve, chugging away like she always does, don't take her for granted, nor anyone else. Such a simple great evening.
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The weather was a problem, a front coming through, winds warned as gale force, and they came. In the marina I was feeling like I was tossed at sea. I spent time with locals about this wind, it seems like bad weather gets people down to the nitty gritty and they spill their guts, not like sea sickness, but realization that we are vulnerable to nature, and opening up about their dreams and fears.
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I was going nuts on football. I saw that the University of Maryland Terps were going to play the #4 team, Michigan. The terps were two touchdown underdogs. Their quarter back is none other than Talia Tagovailoa, younger brother of Tua who is the Miami Dolphins quarter back. In the first half Talia had his team up 13-10. In the second half it turned around, their opponent, Michigan, intercepted Talia and from there it went further downhill. They did lose by one touchdown, but they beat the spread, as they say.
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The SailGP races for day one were on YouTube and I scrolled through the hour and a half presentation to see the actual racing. One race was ten minutes long, there were 3 races, but I also watched some of the commentary. In the end I was late for dinner at Cuddily's house. I biked over. It seems now I regulate my bike riding by the wind in my ears. If I am going into the wind I go slower, but the sound in my ears is the same. When I am going with the wind I ride much faster and keep that sound of wind the same.

I am often asked, usually while helping someone out in their kitchen, do I cook aboard my yacht. The answer is yes, but I prefer to eat ashore at such exclusive restaurants as The Red Shell Shanty, or the affordably elegant American Legion Hall. When the Shanty closed for the season I was actually depressed. I needed a pick me up meal and I also wanted to cook not from a recipe, just ad lib.
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I had some garden rotini pasta on hand, actually it was on the damp carpet near the galley stove, and I thought it would be a good idea to use it as the basis for my tour de force. Maybe have the pasta with a red clam sauce. Then I remembered I had a half jar of Italian pasta sauce made by Barilla in the fridge. It had been there for quite a while, it was time to use it up.
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The pasta was strange out of the box, dusty, and it looked like mold had attacked it. I soaked it in water and debris floated to the top. I picked out some badly decomposed rotinis and tossed them. Not with sauce, into the trash. I drained the pasta and added the clam juice of a can of baby clams. When I was retrieving the sauce from the fridge I noticed an old can of wild caught salmon, maybe 1/3 full. I grabbed that and added it to the pasta. I was going to add water, but first the pasta sauce. I added water to just cover the pasta. I added a couple cloves of sliced garlic and dusted with fresh ground black pepper.
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The mixture came to a slow boil, eventually, on the alcohol stove when I remembered a bottle of Food Lion cocktail sauce, that should liven the dish up, I added about ½ cup of that. It tasted great. Better than some of the local cuisine. After a while the pasta was done and I added the baby clams. What a treat.
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It was not better the next day. I actually didn't eat it again for a day or two. Eve, the artist, the best cook in town, was out of town, so no good cooking from her. When she came back she balked at my description of the seafood pasta mix. Don't disgust me, she said. Doesn't she know there are many people on the planet who would pay several dinars, or whatever that is, for some of this stuff? To feed their starving children. Maybe this would finish them off. After eating it I had some strange dreams.
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I was feeling better on the bicycle and riding around the marina I noticed workers setting up for the next event in a week or so, the Crab and Clam event. I rode on the city dock and I realized it was the equinox, and I realized other things. This town is going down. Flooding will occur. Someday it will be under water. The ferry destinations will also be underwater. It will become a greater tourist attraction as it sinks.
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I decided not to bring SUNSPLASH down South this Fall, it makes no sense. I will try to bring KAIMU South to the Keys or somewhere in South Florida for the Winter. I'm looking for somewhere safe in case Russia or China attacks with nuclear weapons, but there is probably nowhere safe if that happens. Don't say it won't happen.
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The NFL has what they call parity, a team that is not doing well can draft college players who play for not much money, only ten million or so, so they can spend, within their salary cap for other players.
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Parity is when a team that was at the bottom last year meets a team at the top and knocks them off, that's what parity is. The NFL is all about parity and it has happened everywhere, except at my team, the NY Jets. To evaluate the coaching you have to look at the quality of the players and the quality of the players they're playing against. Parity gets you good players. Nothing gets good coaches except hiring them. And firing the bad coach.
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It seems like this game that I watched, because somehow they played it on local TV in Crisfield, Maryland, unheard of, shouldn't be available, might be a set up by the football gods who condemn Jets fans to purgatory and hell, and might be, paranoically, aimed just at me, the only Jets fan in Crisfield, easy to target. I wonder what else is in store for me.
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In short, parity did not rear its ugly head in this game. The Jets played and there was a lot of good play from the Jets, but it didn't translate. They scored 3 point field goals while the Bengals scored touchdowns. This is another Jets game where you can dissect the plays and see play after play of good football, then, there is some sort of breakdown, a missed block, a dropped pass, a desperate act to break this fatal chain, but the result is a cheering victory for the other team, a first down, a touchdown, the field goal that just makes it through, the Jets lose.
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My life isn't over, even if I over react, I have great friends and nice photo ops, such as this one from the Small Boat Harbor. It's hard to get good light like that. More later.