Wednesday 232 April - After having spent the night on the Texas City Dike and hoping for the promised wind that never developed, I returned to town, completed the paperwork for the sale of the house at Office Depot and returned to my motorhome in the parking lot. There was a business card from Joe Huntington, whom I had met while he was working on a boat to sell for charity. He had invited me to dinner with several of his friends at his home and I had had a nice evening. His card said, "Please Call Me - URGENT". He had seen my motorhome in the lot and parked right in front of me. Well, his real need was that in his charity work, he also buys old bicycles at thrift stores, refurbishes them, and donates them to poor kids, and he needed help restoring several that he had it the back of his pickup. We spent the rest of the afternoon and until about 10:00pm fixing flats, repairing axles, loosening up chain links and washing bicycles, then had a steak and wine dinner. Great Guy!

Thursday 24 April - Wow!!! I've been on the road and on my quest for 3 months already. I drove by NASA the other day and realized how long I've been right in this area alone. Visiting the NASA Space Museum was the first thing I did when I arrived here and it seems like so long ago.
                  I've finally decided that of all the hundreds of boats that I've looked at, the only one that I would consider buying here in the Galveston Bay area is the second CSY that I viewed. It is so much nicer than all the rest of the boats, it would be worth staying it this area for. Don't get me wrong, the area is nice, everything I need is close, and the people I've met here are friendly and helpful, but the water itself is so murky and opaque that I really wouldn't want to make this my home. It apparently has its advantages. I mentioned to Gary Powers the other day that I was going to head down to Galveston to look at sailboats and he said there would be very few sailboats down there. He says that the water there is much saltier than up here 30 miles inland, that barnacles are a problem attaching to the hulls of boats, so most people keep their boats up here. Most of the boats down there are fishing fleet, deep water sport fishermen, or shrimpers. I took his advice and cancelled that trip.
                  That also convinced me that my exploration in this area is about finished and that I need to move on further east. My next realization was that I should make one more attempt to convince Gary and Anne Banks to sell me their beautiful CSY that they keep at the Houston Yacht Club; that second CSY. I called Gary Banks to try one more time to convince him to sell. It worked!!! ...but he's too busy this week moving his mother or mother-in-law into a senior center, so we can't get together to let me have a second look at the boat until near the end of next week. The first time I saw his boat, I was really just in it to see what ANY CSY looked like. I hadn't even actually been aboard one at that time. This time, I'll certainly be looking at more specifics and in much more detail. It's certainly not a done deal, but at least there's still hope...and, like I said, this is the only boat, in my estimation, worth the layover. This is going to be a tough week, just killing time in anticipation of seeing a boat that I might actually buy.
                  My God! What are people thinking? I hate abbreviations. I just received an email wanting me to participate in "eMerge Americas." They used the following abbreviations in the short email: ERP, CRM, MBAF, AX, GP, and RBDLMBA. All in two paragraphs. I have no idea what they were talking about. I don't think I'll be joining them in Miami. - END RANT.
                  I have a few days to kill. I think I'll go work on a bicycle. Life should be simpler.

Friday, 24 April - We managed to get 15 bikes in good enough condition to be used by the kids. Some of the bikes were in fair shape, others were very poor. The poorest part on most of them was the chains. On one, we actually couldn't even bend many links at first and we finally had to heat a couple of links with a propane torch to loosen them up, but we got them working. Now, as they get ridden, the chains will loosen up even more, and stay that way, IF they'll keep some lubricant on them; which they won't. We had spaghetti and meatballs with wine for dinner about 11:00pm. It was nice riding my bike back to the motorhome in the cool, quiet streets about midnight. This morning I've driven back to the Texas City Dike, hoping for the winds that are predicted later this afternoon. Right now it's blowing about 2 mph. In the meantime, I'll relax and watch the seabirds on the beach and the fishing boats, shrimpers, and tankers pass by.
                  I arrived here at the dike about 10:30am thinking I'd be here for an all day sail. Light winds until about 3:00, so I moved down the beach to a good launch and rigged. Just as I was locking up the motorhome, the wind died down a bit and I walked around it to see what was going on. Whoa! The visibility had dropped off to about a mile and it was pretty dark off to the southwest. I reopened the motorhome, got out my trusty phone, (they do everything now, you know) and checked the radar at 4:15pm. It looked like a pretty good storm was headed this way and about 15 - 20 minutes away, so I quickly de-rigged and put everything away just in time to close the doors on the trailer to keep everything from getting wet. The storm rolled right over me, but wasn't nearly as strong as it looked on the radar. The wind switched directions a bit, got strong for about 10 minutes and the motorhome swayed a little bit, but has now died off again...too light to sail. Now, the radar is all blues and greens. Gone are the reds and yellows that indicated stronger rains. I'm not afraid of the rain, but there is a thunderstorm alert for the next couple of hours. I haven't seen any lightning it this storm, but I don't want to be on the water if it hits. I met a kid one time that had lightning hit him while windsurfing. He had entry burns at his wrists and exit wounds on his ankles. Lucky to be around at all now I suppose.
                    Oh, well. Skunked again!
                    The weather gurus are saying there's a 30% chance of rain tomorrow, but a 70% chance from 8:00am to 11:00am. I'm not sure how that works. I think I'll stick around to see. At 5:20pm there are calm seas and winds and I have nowhere else I need to be.

Saturday, 25 April - I think I have it figured out. Maybe 30% of the area has a 70% chance of rain and I was in the 70% area. At 8:00am it started raining....and lightning started jumping around it the clouds above me at a rate of about one bolt every five seconds. I couldn't see the bolts, only the flashes inside the clouds and I could DEFINITELY hear the thunder...VERY CLOSE! Rained most of the morning off and on, then cleared a bit and I got in a little sailing. I rigged and made about four passes out to sea, then the wind died off quite a bit. I had to go to "Plan B" to get back to shore. "Plan A" is "Never, ever, go to 'Plan B'." I hate "Plan B". In plan "A", if I am in the water instead of on the water, I let the wind and sail pull me up out of the water onto my board and I sail away. In plan "B", the wind has died off so much that it won't lift me, so I have to crawl up onto and balance or the sailboard, then slowly, and with much effort and back strain, pull the sail out of the water. Although the board will easily support me and is stable while under way it will barely support my weight and is VERY unstable while trying to climb out of the water and onto it, but that is nothing compared to its instability after I've gotten aboard and raised the sail out of the water. As the sail comes out of the water, the stability decreases by a factor of about a hundred until I can sheet in the sail and get under way. I hate "Plan B". "Plan B" is very untrustworthy. On my small boards, I may have to put "Plan B" into action several times before it is successful even once. I hate "Plan B".
                  The rest of the afternoon went nicely. As I was de-rigging, another sailor stopped to "discuss conditions" and saw that I am from Utah, where he had just come from on a hangliding trip. Since I've done a bit of that too, we discussed hangliding conditions in Utah a bit along with kayaking, canoeing, rafting, skydiving, skiing, and motorcycle riding conditions, too. What a great evening!
                  Did I mention that I don't like "Plan B" very much?

Sunday, 26 April - Sprinkles and light breezes in the morning. A little thunder.   Wind speed 9kts.    Air temp. 76°F    Water temp 72°F         Maybe the wind will pick up a little later. I think I'll go do a little beach combing. Well, I didn't find too much on the beach, so I went out to the end of the dike on my bicycle. Just as I arrived at the end, a CSY passed by about 300 yards off the point and headed north. I wonder if it was Gary and Anne Banks out for a last spin in their boat, Invictus, the boat I want to purchase. What a coincidence to see a CSY, even more so, the boat that I want to buy, but it did have the same layout and paint scheme. I wish I had had my binoculars with me to confirm my suspicion. When I returned from the end of the dike, there still wasn't enough wind to sail my sailboard, but there was just the right amount of wind to fly my one meter two string kite, so I did that for about an hour and a half. I probably haven't flown that in 3 or 4 years, so I'm pretty rusty at it, but it was still fun. A one meter kite really zips around the sky and turns on a dime. If you're still young enough to fly a kite, you'd love this thing! Right, Kent?

Monday, 27 April - At midnight last night I found another CSY that has just come on the market, or rather the owner is thinking of putting it on the market. I left a message on the forum it was on and emailed him, too. That was 23 hours ago and I still haven't heard back from him.
                  It was a nice day, overcast most of the day, but breezy. I sailed this afternoon, but not well. There was quite a swell with short frequency of the waves. Having sailed in Utah most of the time, I'm really not used to the waves and I couldn't get my timing right for my jibes. Either my inside rail of my sailboard would get caught in the wave I was on when I initiated the turn, or I'd catch the wave ahead of me, which would kill my speed as I tried to run up the back of it. I was really sailing poorly. Tomorrow's another day. Perhaps I'll do better.

Tuesday, 28 April - Wow! It really cooled down today. Windy, but cool. I must be getting old. Twenty years ago, I would have been out there in the water all day. Sailboarding keeps you pretty warm, but you sure can cool down quickly when you come out of the water to de-rig and take off your wetsuit. I stayed in the motorhome, worked on the computer, and then went and bought groceries. What a wimp! Tomorrow's supposed to be warmer.
                  I did get a response from the fellow with the CSY that he's going to put on the market soon. It's clear over on the southeast coast of Florida. There's another boat over that direction that I've been thinking I wanted to see, but I realized that I've already gotten quite a bit of information about it, and it's in much worse condition than is shown in its listing. The new boat looks good and has lots of new equipment on it, but they're asking a lot of money for it.

Wednesday Morning, 29 April - The motorhome bounced an jostled in the wind all night, but the wind has now died off to 7 - 8 mph, so I think I'll get on the bicycle and ride into town and buy the raisins that I forgot to buy yesterday when I went grocery shopping. Actually, I guess I'd better take the motorhome in because, even though I just updated my computer and phone last week, they're telling me that I have 13 Apps that need to be updated. My God! It's never ending. It's a gorgeous day here. Still a little cool at 62°F, but not a cloud in the sky. I'll be wishing it were sixty degrees again here in a month or so, when it's 95° and 99% humidity. I guess I'b better get going. Have a great week.

            Until next time,
                        Keep in touch!