Thursday November 20th, 2014
Today I have to get my sailor pants on and get some work done. The car has been returned to the Enterprise folks, we are trapped here now. The big job today is to get the masts ready for stepping. The modified radar bracket is now the wind generator bracket and I have mounted the new bracket on the main mast to get the radar out in front of the obstruction of the main mast. The work is going along well except that it is taking much longer than anticipated. The beer is located at the boat and I am located in the boat yard. ML is unwilling and unwilling to bring me beer.
John and Karen from Last Mango (affectionately referred to as Mango) and Grant and Cindy from As the Crow Flies (aka Crows) rented a car together. Today is the last full day for their car. Mango was kind and generous and invited the car challenged FRACAS to journey over to Fairhope Alabama. Mango told us that there were some very cool and interesting shops in Fairhope. After the wandering and shopping we were also planning to go to Gambino’s an Italian restaurant. But first we have to get to Fairhope. When we parked the car in Fairhope as I was getting out of the car I said “Remember where we parked”. This is a great quote from a Star Trek movie. Any more foreshadowing would be excessive.
Orienteering: is a sport that requires navigational skills using a smartphone and a compass to navigate from point to point in diverse and usually unfamiliar terrain.
Ok, Ok, they were nice enough to ask us out and here I am about to bash him up for a simple thing like the route he took to the Gambino’s restaurant. “I may have the right to remain silent but I lack the ability”. John set the navigator in his ‘smart’phone to find Gambino’s but first some confusing shopping to get it dizzy. John’s phone must have a setting for “It was a dark and eerie night…” routing.
Did I mention I was in flipflops? I was not wearing my Croc utility flipflops but my Sperry flipflops that make a loud ‘flipflop’ noise. I don’t think I mentioned that I was also in shorts and a short sleeve shirt, no coat. John insists that the route was only 2 miles… I’m not so sure. Twice I had to find water to cool off my flipflops, and two of us had birthdays on the way. Strange and scary sounds issued from the roadside. We could not determine what was creating the sounds as it was very dark. Finally we saw some civilization.
Gambino’s was still open when we arrived. Our dinners were extremely good. I had the veal marsala and it was especially nice. Real veal if you know what I mean.
Dinner over we had to return to the car wherever it might be????
Seriously, Thanks to Mango for the nice evening off the boat and out of the marina.
