San Diego: linger
San Diego: linger
I rode my bicycle over to Mission Beach this morning. While this is not the flatlands and there are hills here, the ride is level except for a steep arc up and down a bridge high enough to enable boats larger than GANNET access to most of Mission Bay. It was from that bridge that a seemingly aerial shot of CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE was taken long ago. The incline is steep enough to be challenging on a one-speed bicycle. At least I was challenged; but I made it sitting down and not breathing too heavily. This beach cruiser requires me to pedal faster than on my 18 speed in Evanston, which I don’t shift from the lowest gear.
I never sailed CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE under that bridge and I doubt I will GANNET.
Almost from the moment of our arrival, and certainly from when we unpacked in our hotel room and I was able to look down on Quivira Basin, I have remembered how much I like being here. Combine that with my having been assigned a perfect-for-me slip, and I think I am going to linger and enjoy San Diego and the sea lions who are presently serenading me for an extra year, departing in 2014 rather than in June 2013, which I have been moving toward.
Those who do not know me will believe I am wimping out. Those who do know me in person or through my writing will know that I have always moved to my own rhythms.
At my age delaying a year is risky; but then turning away from joy is too. That joy may never come again. I either have the time or I don’t. And if I don’t, I won’t be worrying about it.
I may yet change my mind, or circumstances might change it for me; but I rather think that, having reached the sea, GANNET is going to linger a while.
The photo is of Mission Beach, looking north toward La Jolla.
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I have learned that by paying ATT another $20 a month I can use my iPad as a hotspot for my MacBook Pro and so post to this site from GANNET. That and using Quicken to check on what might amusingly be called my finances are the only computer functions I can’t do on the iPad itself.
In the past I have usually reread my journal entries three or four times after posting them, often making corrections or small changes. Since being here I haven’t been able to make those changes after posting from Starbucks or the Hyatt.
So last evening I did reread the recent entries and found a number of typos and errors. As you know I seek perfection but seldom achieve it. Most of these were minor--’an’ instead of ‘and’; ‘there’ for ‘here’; a sentence that ends in both a comma and a period. I’ve corrected those I’ve found. But one was more significant, when in the entry headed “cured” I wrote that the prevailing wind here is NE, when it is in fact NW. GANNET’s slip is on the preferred east side of the dock, so I don’t have to back into the wind when exiting and can round up into the wind when returning.
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Another small boat sailor visited GANNET the other day and when he looked below commented that her interior is smaller than it appears in photographs. So I measured.
Now there are extensions, both aft along both pipe berths and forward on the v-berth all the way to the bow, but I spend most of my time in those 87 ¾ cubic feet. Put a prisoner in such a space and it would be considered inhumane. To me living in so small a space is an interesting problem, as was living on CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE, which I think I have mostly solved.
Thursday, October 25, 2012