A lovely afternoon here. Sunny and windless. Water like glass. 70ºF/21ºC in the Great Cabin with the hatches open.
I checked the weather sources as I do each day and each day the most likely departure day moves a day forward, always a week in advance, though there is a chance next Monday. I am getting bored. With GANNET in passage mode, I can’t do any work on the boat without tearing the interior apart and I won’t devolve into that chaos.
Steve Earley ran a link to a disturbing article about the breakdown of the Polar Vortex which likely will mean severe winter weather in the eastern US for many coming weeks.
I need to get out of here.
I am sitting at Central writing just after 6 PM and a dinner of freeze dry Mountain House Chicken with Dumplings. This was a new one for me and as soon as I opened the packet I understood why they stopped selling chicken stew in individual pouches. Chicken with Dumplings is Chicken Stew with some balls of flour added. Not being a lover of starch, I prefer Chicken Stew, but the dumplings version is acceptable.
I have been biking to supermarkets every other day and returning from them with among other things a salad for dinner. On alternate nights I eat a freeze dry. But yesterday my breakfast was limited to a protein bar because I had to go to the condo early to accept delivery of a hearth stone Carol picked out when she was here. So we now have a hearth, but we don’t have a floor.
There are four restaurants within about a mile of here. One, the Old Fort Pub, is in walking distance but only open in the evening. The other three are just outside the Plantation gate and an easy bike ride. I decided yesterday I wanted some real food for a change and went for a late lunch/early dinner to the long time favorite, Hudson’s, which at 2 PM on a winter weekday I found atypically empty. I had a taste for a grilled fish, but that isn’t done much on this island, so I had a blackened shrimp Po Boy and a local ale. If you recall the Tibetan proverb, I really do eat half. I managed to finish the Po Boy, but I was stuffed.
I am considering biking to a pizza place tomorrow for lunch/dinner, and bringing the leftovers back, which with my usual breakfast, should see me through the weekend.
That I am writing about food is proof of how bored I am.
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The GUARDIAN recently ran two articles of particular interest to me.
One is about a cruise planned by the Flat Earth Society that will of course be on a ship navigated by science and seamen who know the Earth is round.
Flat Earthers believe that all the moon landings were faked and that those of us who circumnavigate only do so by following the edge of the pizza. That I, among others, have done so multiple times following different routes is not explained.
One of the many problems with democracy is one man, one vote. I fully understand the possibility of abuse in deciding what beliefs are so inane that they are proof of insufficient intelligence to vote, but clearly some are. A flat earther’s vote counts just as much as yours and mine.
Cringe for the future.
The second article was about a scientist returning to a Puerto Rican rainforest after 35 years to find that 98% of the ground level insects and 80% of those in the canopy have vanished. The likely culprit: global warming.
There are those who deny global warming, just as there are those who believe the Earth is flat. I believe that what can be quantified is no longer a matter of opinion
There are parasites who invade a host and ultimately cause the host’s death, as well as their own. They do so unknowingly.
We presently have on this planet businessmen and women who are destroying their host planet for short term financial gain. They are doing so knowingly with deliberate campaigns to deceive and distort quantifiable science.
Again, cringe for the future.
