Drawing on the Memory Battery
September 22, 2011

It’s a bit like the sailors up north that are stuck in a cold basement in February just dreaming about last summer’s voyage to the Abaco Islands. I am speaking of the process of looking at pictures or dragging a memory from the dusty back side of the old gray matter and savoring the thoughts of how it came to be. We have just relocated to a different room high above the parking lot with a view of the rolling hills of San Antonio. The presence of a lofty view on a sunlit day is a good thing for the Bear and for me as it helps run off the cluster phobia of a dark hospital room such as the one she had earlier. Bear is to stay here for a few more days to learn how to protect the delicate repair to her spine. That means that both of us are now using some of the memories of the cruise a bit earlier than we planned. Fortunately, said memories do not wear out. For instance, my screen saver is a shot of the sunset beach on Great Guana Cay at Grabbers bar and grill. It shows Why Knot at anchor in the distance with the sun setting behind. One can sail to more remote or exotic places but this place is a wonderful as any.
After witnessing the therapy post surgery, I am wondering why we do not have a mandatory class in every school to show the right way to get out of bed or how to lift stuff or how to protect joints from the stupid stuff we all did as younger folks. If we had known then, say before jumping out of airplanes, we might have taken a slightly different path. Had Bear known about the slipping disks or the floating vertebrae, she (we) might have settled into different seats in the cockpit of Why Knot on those long nights or bumpy rides. Though we knew as kids that we were going to live forever and that we could not seriously be injured, for we were bullet proof, it is now those dues failed to pay that are being extracted now.
Bear is recovering nicely but that is a relative thing. The mission, should she choose to accept it, is to protect the new mega vertebrae and remember that there will be some diminished capability. No, wait, the capability, albeit less than when we were 16, will be vastly improved beyond that of the past 20 months. We have perfected life on a cruise boat with capabilities less than perfect. We have gotten fairly consistent with docking, anchoring and mini passage making. We will crank in our capabilities, whatever they are and continue to march.
Many thanks to those that expressed best wishes for they gave Bear and me warm fuzzies when most needed. There was a smart runabout on Lake Delevan, Wisconsin many years ago that best sums up our gratitude. On Phase VII of the Cruises of Why Knot, the name of that runabout applies: Youcanallgo. Cool actual name huh? More later.

The picture is of the Fishers Bay (Grabber's Beach) on Great Guana Cay, Abaco, Bahamas. In the distance on the far left is Why Knot at anchor. Hurricane Irene rearranged this beach some and removed the dock on the left of the shot