Back at last

It’s really been far too long

This weekend, for the first time in four months, we got up north to Five O’Clock Somewhere. It was good to see that the place was still standing, although the last time we left it, we thought we’d be back in a couple of weeks, so we hadn’t turned off the water heater. So we used up propane to keep 40 gallons of water hot in the dead of winter. Actually, we probably used more propane to keep the house from freezing – we did remember to turn down the thermostat as far as it goes, but we couldn’t turn the heat off completely, or the pipes would have frozen.

Tadpole had a Boy Scout campout, but Pat and I packed up Dulce and headed north Friday afternoon. Friday evening my brother Jerry (of Muddled Ramblings fame) arrived. We built a fire in the fireplace and just generally vegetated.

Saturday, Pat went to the marina to join other members of the New Mexico Sailing Club in a work party to prepare the marina for the season. Damage caused by winter freezing and shallow water needed to be repaired, and the understructure, which had been unbolted to prevent damage in the event the marina grounded, needed to be reconnected. They didn’t complete all of the needed work, but they got a lot done before weather moved in – in this case, a light snowfall accompanied by stiff winds, so the flakes were often horizontal.

Meanwhile, Jerry worked on various stuff on his laptop and built a few of the rock stacks for which he is famous, and I mostly vegetated, except when I got energetic enough to load ingredients into the bread machine to make a loaf of cheddar-onion bread.

Sunday, Jerry needed to find a broadband signal to make a hefty software upload, since the Internet connection at Five O’Clock Somewhere is a very slow dial-up, so he set off in search of a signal in Chama. Pat went to the marina to do some more work, and I got a bunch of reading done and made a loaf of whole-wheat bread. The original plan had been for Jerry to return to Five O’Clock Somewhere, but the place he found an Internet signal was the sort of bar that he enjoys very much, and he ended up spending several hours there. So Pat and Dulce and I headed back to Albuquerque.

We need to work out a few logistical issues: Jerry wants to leave his Miata in our garage when he goes back to Prague, and his airline tickets are for May 1, departing from San Diego. He needs to get to San Diego quickly in order to have time to get some business taken care of before he departs, and he needs to have a car to drive while he’s there. Meanwhile, I have to remain in New Mexico at least through Sunday, April 29, to race in the final spring series regatta.

So there are a couple of options: Jerry could drive to San Diego, take care of business, drive back to New Mexico, leave the car in our garage, and fly to San Diego. Or I could find some way to get transported to San Diego after the racing is done Sunday, meet up with Jerry, and drive the car back after he returns to Prague. There are some interesting options for getting to San Diego, too. I could return to Albuquerque and take a plane, train, or bus (one excellent benefit of NAFTA: Mexican first-class buses are far superior to American ones, and now they operate north of the border) on Monday. Or I find a plane, train, or bus that departs Sunday night from El Paso, closer to the lake, and get a ride to El Paso with someone who lives there.

Of course, there’s also the problem of coming up with money to use for such travels, so it’s more practical from Pat’s and my standpoint for Jerry to drive the car to Albuquerque. But still, it would be fun to go to San Diego, especially if I got a chance to go sailing while there.