Call Before You Come Over. Seriously...

I have had no one to fish with yet this year.  My favorite travel-about companion has been inundated with work projects to the point of working 6.5 days a week. Hardly a minute for fun, let alone the chores that come with that fun!

The boat sits in the tractor shed at the farm. I forgot to winterize the motor. Yay me! So, a little extra maintenance will have to be done before we can AGAIN try to go fishing on actual water.

The following will be considered stupid of me to post.  I am not concerned. Really.

So, as some of you already know, I am newly living alone, for the first time in my life. A month ago my ex purchased his own house and I was able to move back into my little "cottage" (yea, I am calling it a cottage; It sounds so much better than "little hovel").  A good friend asked me when the last time was that I lived alone. I stood there with the phone in my ear, dumbfounded and said "I have never lived alone".  I had not realized, until that point, that I had NEVER really ever lived alone.

I went from parents to army to married to having a child, etc. Child is off to live her life and I am divorced. End of story. NEVER LIVED ALONE!

So, yes, I live alone, but safety is no longer much of an issue because of the alarm, the dogs and the Baby:

• Alarm - I have ADT. It is an annoying set up, but monitored, loud and effective.
• Dogs - If the alarm does not dissuade an intruder, I have Cleo and her brother Genghis. These dogs are close to 100 pounds each, with cranky fighting dog lineage. They have not been socialized so they are not the friendliest dogs to cross paths with.
• Baby - Finally, if those two things do not deter an unwanted visitor, the Glock 9mm compact (otherwise known as a Baby Glock) next to my bed, and the following story, will take care of any doubts.

A lot of people out there will have you believe that "Guns kill people" but I am one of those Americans that believes that "People kill people".  My younger brother and I traipsed around the Grandparent's farm as little kids - toting loaded rifles and target shooting. Our Parents and Grandparents taught us gun-safety. We never shot each other or anyone else - nor did we do damage to property.  If people are incompetent or untrained, they are going to hurt or kill either themselves or others.

I also believe in what my GrandMa Taylor said; "If guns are outlawed, only the outlaws will be armed".

Enough said.  You know my stance on proper training and Gun Control now.

I have been frequenting the indoor pistol range not far from here. I learned that I was not a bad shot (not that I ever thought I was really).  I come from a good lineage.  My Grandfathers both had to hunt for part of the family food.  They did NOT starve to death.  My father had been on a winning rifle team in the army (even though he was blind in his right eye and right handed - you do the math) and my mother thinks he did pistol competitions as well, but we cannot confirm this with anyone.  My parents were both decent shots. 

I did my time in the military (which I think the country would benefit from every able bodied American of age 'doing compulsory military time') when I got out of high school.  I was barely 17 when I signed up for the Army on delayed entry as I had to finish high school. I was so young my parents had to sign for me because my signature alone was not enough legally. That August I was off to Fort Jackson for Basic Training and Advanced Individual Training (AIT).  Let's just say it was hot, dry and I inhaled/ingested a LOT of sand. 

I was no good at the physical training (PT).  I managed it, but I hated it. I was not a morning person.  I am still NOT a morning person. I did fine enough in most other aspects of training and excelled in Drill and Ceremony. I guess that high school marching band business was beneficial. The one area that I stood out right fine in was at the firing range. I did not care one way or the other about the machine gun training. That thing was heavy and I was not interested in being the one to carry it. The M-16 rifle training was fabulous. The short story is, having had experience with rifles and being thus comfortable with said rifles, M-16 training was a breeze. So easy that the females who were not so blessed got out of KP (Kitchen Patrol) to practice at the H.O.T! range while I was politely asked by the cranky Drill Sergeants to stay in the vented chow hall so the females who could not hit the broad side of a barn could practice!  YAY!  No, seriously, KP was a blessing in the hot summer at Fort Jackson SC.  That was cool with me. I drank soda (which we were not allowed to have otherwise)!  Benefits!

Just as a side note, my favorite training in my military career was hand grenade training.  Running up, high-crawling or low-crawling to a bunker or fence (or whatever) - and tossing that biatch in/over!!!  YES! Just say'n...

Back to today's life...

In January of this year I discovered a couple of competition .22 pistols that my dad left when he passed. They were in a cabinet no one ever went into. I pulled them out, cleaned them and went to the range with my favorite companion.

It was all over but the crying.

After a few magazines, I found my stride. I settled into pistol shooting. I got all misty as the memories came back to me. Memories, vague as they were, of dad instructing me on shooting. Little things he had told me.  The military training kicked in about the same time.  It was, as they say, like riding a bike. I had hardly ever shot a pistol before, but I used mostly the same techniques I had learned from firing rifles. 

Hooked

My fun-time companion and I joined the indoor range as members.  We have gone back quite a few times, but not nearly enough.  We learned that I am on par with his Former-Army-Drill-Sergeant-Farm-Boy firing abilities.  From target to target and weapon to weapon it is anyone's guess which of us will out-shoot the other (barely).  He seems proud that we are on similar footing here and that fellow practicers o'da'day notice me.  It makes me proud to know that I can hold my own at the range with him because we are exceedingly lopsided in so many other areas (and not in my favor mind you).

Now, as far as daily life goes... Just remember:

• The ADT alarm is your friend.  
• Genghis and Cleo are a fair warning. 
• Baby is a permanent solution.  

Seriously, do not come to my house unannounced.

Just say'n.

Maiden? Not So Much...

So, 3 months later I continue this story…

After hitching the boat and trailer to the Jeep, we headed down to the public access boat ramp on the Cumberland near General Burnside Island – boat in tow.

Massive…

There is no other way to describe this boat launch/ramp. It was maybe 10 vehicles wide and a 10th of a mile long? Two-tenths? It was huge. I do not recall a launch this big in my memory. And boy, was it a busy launch.

My person backed the boat down to the water, we pulled it off the trailer and I walked it around the ramp to a floating dock. I looked like (as well as felt like) I was walking a puppy. I started talking to the little boat; “here you go little fella. Right over here. You mind so well”! Right then and there I named the boat “Little Puppy”. ‘Nough said.

The boats I saw while waiting sort of forced the question; “I thought the economy was bad”. Cigar boats, fishing boats, large pleasure craft. The only puny and old looking boat in the joint was mine (although in reality it IS cute).

My person parked the Jeep up at the parking area, walked the 4 million miles down the ramp to the dock in 900 bagillion degree heat only to realize he had left the water-proof container with my temporary boat registration in it.

Let me explain something to you all here… I do NOT do that well in heat. He seems to do even worse in heat (as far as I can tell). But, one of us MUST go back for that registration. This boat is so out of the norm out here, due to its age, that we would be noticed straight away so not having legal documents would be a bad idea. This boat was drawing attention. Or stares of disbelief maybe… We needed that document just in case. Period.

One of us has to go back up the 40 mile ramp in the heat to the jeep to get the container.

Dammit.

So I knew (and know) too little about the boat to mess with it and get it going. I volunteered to walk the walk (or climb the climb as it were) while SKW takes care of the boat prep. This was the first time this puppy had been started on the water in 10+ years we think. I was not going to be the one pulling the string!

I think I was also postponing getting in the boat until I knew it would hold us all without sinking. “Us All” is defined as my Person, the full gas tank, the motor, the battery, the cooler, the tool box, the, the, the, and me. I had this horrible thought as we added items to the inventory that we would overwhelm the boat and it would sink straight out the gate! This was a fear for like over a month. Y’all, did you know there is a math equation for that? Had I confessed my fear to my engineer favorite person, he could have told me (proof positive) that the water displacement was going to be minimal…

Fast Forward past the cussing, puffing and mumbling under my breath…

I put my vest on upon arrival back at the boat with the water-proof vessel (which also acts as a bucket for bailing water). I climb into the boat and feel an immediate sense of pending doom, death and destruction. What is this? The boat does not sink far in the water which is great but it is so unstable with the turbulence caused by my person’s weight, my arm flailing, waves, fish blowing bubbles, rocks tumbling on the river floor, seagull farts and cat meows that I was about to have a heart attack!

While I quietly shit my britches, he used the trolling motor to putter away from the dock towards a small inlet – mainly to get out of everyone’s way! In the mean time, I was HEMORRAGING! The motion. I was sure we were going to tip over and die. Why!????

We had on life vests. The worst that could happen would be the boat would sink. The probable outcome is embarrassment and the boat takes on water and we have to have it towed ashore and use that stupid orange water-proof container to actually bail the water out of the boat…

We were going to die.

When we were out of everyone’s way, SKW went to start the little old motor. It ran, a little… We could hear it running, but we were not gaining ground (or water as it were. So SKW is moving around trying to figure out the problem, the boat is a rocking and I was pitching a good old southern hissy. It is like an anxiety attack on steroids. I never saw stability as a concern until I was in the boat. Damn.

Turns out, a pin had broken. The shear pin. That is the shear pin’s job. It is found in the transfer connector that connects the shaft from the motor to the shaft for the prop. The pin is designed to break under times of stress (such as the prop hitting a rock, stick, submerged log or running aground) forcing a sudden stoppage. This stoppage, without the pin, would reverberate right up to the motor and basically destroy it or the shaft (not sure which, but both equal BAD).

We pulled the boat out of the water, headed back to the campground to drop it and went to town where we found material at Home Depot to make a new shear pin because, AGAIN, all the boat places were already closed. SKW sat for a few hours making pins, lots of pins. SPARE pins so this would not happen again.

Little did we realize that my ever prepared cousin Wiley had two pins stashed in a holding area in the motor. Had we taken the time to familiarize ourselves with the motor, we could have STAYED ON THE WATER!

To make a long story no shorter - we did not end up getting the boat on the water that weekend.

Lessons learned:

• Launch the boat at a more remote/unused location
• We need to learn to pay more attention to details
• I need to learn to speak up with concerns
• If we both have life vests on, stop stressing
• The boat is not so important that I need to stress my Person out on the road or on the water…

Off We Go… The Maiden Voyage! (Or So I Had Hoped…)

Such foolish expectations... Just Say'n. And yes, it has been since August that I wrote. Finishing grad school and working full-time killed a semblance of a life.

So it is Friday!  The day I have decided the boat hits the road on a camping trip and maiden voyage! This week was an insane week! Jim worked on the motor that probably had not seen action in maybe 10 years. Luckily, it isn’t a use it or lose it item!  The boat rebuilding triad had worked on the boat at night, in the heat, and the humidity. Those couple of nights I sweated like I have never sweated before – in my daytime office-work clothing! It was hot and the humidity, I swear, was 4 million %.  I was tired.  I had wanted, dearly, to go pick the boat up Friday early, but Jim was still working on the motor AND I was still at work running around like mad. We had a special event that day which had been planned for long time and I could not leave as it ran longer than I had hoped.

My best person volunteered to go get the boat from Jim’s and that made things go a little faster.  Actually, it probably made them go a whole lot faster.

When I met up with my person, I noted we had A LOT of gear for two nights of camping, fishing and golf.  Wow, how had we managed to stuff all this gear in the vehicle on previous camping trips?  Ok, the golf clubs normally did not go and the fishing gear was not a normal addition, but still?  The boat and the vehicle were packed full!  What was the one thing I could not find that morning – when ready to go?  My life-vest.  Tired, now grumpy and bummed because I have a NICE vest somewhere…  No fear, WallHell will have them! Right?

We get on the road at maybe 5:30p with the plan to go to General Burnside Island in Kentucky. Some of the best fishing is on the Cumberland – so I hear… We get gas, a quick bite to eat on the road and drive, drive, drive.  We are not even out of Knoxville before my exhausted ass has a complete and utter internal (and sooner than later external) meltdown.  It is the after work Friday traffic and we are towing my little boat. Yea, this boat might as well be worth a million dollars because I have emotional stock in it. Weaving in and out of traffic we go.  All I can think is – I don’t weave in and out of traffic when towing (because as you have probably read in an earlier post, I have SO MUCH EXPERIENCE in towing)!  Why are you weaving in and out of traffic?  Why can’t we just stay in one lane? Why?  Why? Why? Whine…

‘Nough said on that part of the trip…

The plan now?  Stop at WallHell and pick up a cheap life vest on the way. Two WallHells later and nadda! Seriously? WallHell has everything…   But not a vest in even remotely my size. I made the command decision to give that up and decided to get one the next day.  Great plan!

We did not get to the campground until maybe 10:00p, got unloaded, got the tent up and I, by cracky, am in my “going to cook the baked beans with beef and onion mixture that has been the first meal of each camping trip if it kills someone” mode.  It must have been midnight or later before that was done and food was eaten.  Dishes?  Not happening tonight!

At somewhere between 1:00a or 2:00a I realize there are still kids playing and making noise and also a camper moving in next to us – noisily. I have never experienced such campground noise in Tennessee.  Is it a cultural thing in Kentucky? Kentuckians are not concerned with reasonable quiet hours? Say, oh, I don’t know, Midnight? It took awhile to get to sleep.

We get up in the late morning, drag around and eat leftovers after not getting a lot of sleep due to the seriously loud and rude late camping arrivals one space over. We managed to get up a little too late to hunt a life vest, try the boat in the water or go fishing before the heat strikes - so we decided to go play golf.

Uh, little background with me and golf – I have played very few rounds of golf:

One round at Dead Horse Lake in maybe 1997

Two rounds at Silver Lakes in Alabama around the same time

One round at Dead Horse in about 2002

One round at Millstone in Morristown

Now I have this set of golf clubs, new, fresh out of the box – for a lefty.  Note, I am now and have always been a right handed person.  But my thinking is – golf is a foreign activity no matter which team I bat for (insert obvious crude joke here) so why not go left-handed. When trying the clubs out, I tried a left and a right handed club.  With the left-handed I was consistently bad. Right-handed I was inconsistently worse!

Let me just say, 9 holes of golf in 90+ degree heat wore us out. I think par was 32 or so.  I shot 96.

We are done, it is maybe 3:00p and I STILL need a life-vest. We drove to 3 places and finally, after a marina made a couple of calls, we found ONE store open that had vests.  Who knew that boating places were either closed on Saturdays (in a heavy boating region) or closed early. So, while I am no fashionista, I am not overly excited by my “man-vest.”

We get back to the camp-site and hook up the boat trailer. Off we go to the park ramp.  All 40 football fields’ worth of ramp.

Flash-back in grand southern style to follow.

Fishing Tackle Shopping?

Yea, so I am a girl and by that I should like shopping, right?  Well, I don’t…

On that note, Bass Pro Shop rocks when you want to look at fishing gear! Apparently I DO like Tackle shopping.  No, not full contact football-esk ‘tackle’ shopping, just shopping for fishing tackle!  I have zero clue what fish are found where, what bait they require, what bait goes with what – but I can tell you my reel is pretty…

It’s July 3^rd and my daughter and her fiancé have come for a visit. Future Son-in-law wants to go to Bass Pro Shop.  I am secretly like – YAY!  A little group of us are on the road, in Old Blue, rolling with the windows down!   Everyone takes off in different directions – “ooh, guns!” – “ooh, boats!” – “ooh, fishing gear!” – “ooh, Starbucks!!!”  Yea, I can sniff out a venti iced caramel macchiato at 2 miles!

At this point I got a little bonding time with my daughter (who I do not see nearly enough).  She went to the fishing ISLES with me. Aisle after aisle… Fishing rods, bait and reels as far as the eye could see.  Ok, I was blinded by it all and could not see past the tackle and my macchiato…

I start shopping and my daughter starts saying things like “do you have sinkers?”  “Do you have bobbers?”  “I remember fishing with these and they seemed to work well!”  And I am thinking – how does she know all this?  I never took her fishing.  She fished with her PopPop Delaware (her name for GrandPa Carson).  I think she may have fished with Wiley as well.  I am not sure.  At any rate, we tooled through the isles and found me all manner of tackle, a little RED tackle box and even a small tape measure to measure the fish by (her idea - such an optimist!).  My idea in bait shopping?  If the lure was pretty, I bought it.  Yea, daughter and my best person can attest to this.  All in all, it was well over $100 which is sad because I did NOT get that much!

Later that week I went to Bass Pro Shop with my best person and we looked around. Drooled over fishing rods and reels, purchased a trolling motor, fishnet (no, not the stockings I wear - and proof of optimism again) plus a bevy of things that I cannot even remember now.  That was a large bill.

So no one ever told me the incidentals for getting a boat onto the water (even a little nothing boat) would be so costly!


Lesson learned?

1. Motors are expensive.
2. Batteries are expensive (thank you 'best person')
3. Boats are a lot of work, no matter how small, how old, or how simple they seem.

The Boat

Along with Old Blue came “The Boat.”  A 1970 Wolverine <14’ aluminum “V” hull with a 15hp Gamefisher motor and a somewhat rusting trailer to tote her with.  The trailer was white and rusting a bit, the boat was tinged in green paint splatter from some DIY adventure and the motor was surprisingly clean!
The boat was towed from Wake Forest NC home to Tennessee without incident and put away.  Now, by “put away” I mean my then husband thought it sufficient to put the motor in the garage (reasonable assumption), the trailer beside the garage (in the weather uncovered?) and the boat upside down behind the garage (fairly reasonable idea – or so it seemed at the time).

A Ladder? Seriously?

There the boat sat. And sat… And sat…

Life got in the way of living – or is it living got in the way of life?  I don’t know, I just know the boat sat for well over a year, unused, unloved and uncared for  before I said “dammit, this is a waste!” 

This year I was in the midst of my infamous divorce and clamoring for projects to keep me busy. I had gone camping a few times and got the bug to go fishing (more on fishing later). I started talking to my friend/Saturday Boss and found out he had resources for helping me get the boat up and running.

Sad....

Out she came.  My then soon-to-be ex-husband had to help me get the boat up on the trailer and I towed her with “Blue” to my Saturday job at a drag car builder.  No – not a builder who wears ‘drag,’ a genius who builds dragsters and motors. I always seem to manage to ‘drag’ him into working on one thing or another…

Now, something you have to understand is – I have towed a trailer only a few times in my life.

1. I towed a U-Haul trailer with my ’89 Integra from Morgan County Tennessee to Pennsylvania filled with a bedroom set and appliances.  I could not pull the trailer up a hill in the rain very easily – that car was NOT meant for towing anything!
2. I towed a Sea-doo personal water craft twice with the Integra. That went well enough.
3. I towed my ’89 Acura Integra on a tow dolly behind the biggest U-Haul truck I could find – from PA to Knoxville TN in the middle of the night. Yea, same bedroom set and appliances and everything else I owned were in that truck!  I should never have moved to PA!
4. I towed a triad of dirt-bikes on a shade-tree mechanic trailer behind a Chevy 2500 from Windrock Mountain after a ride.
5. I towed a 14’ utility trailer loaded with my daughter’s dirt-bike behind a Lincoln Continental – from Mom’s to the farm (all of 5 minutes away) and back.
6. I towed, I towed, wait, that was it…  The sum of my towing experience from about 1993 until this year.

After getting her loaded up behind Old Blue, I took off down the road and made it maybe 3 miles when the stress hit!  Questions were flying about like flies on cow manure! Are the lights hooked up? Is the tongue locked down properly?  Will the trailer come flying off? Is the motor really screwed down? Will there be mass casualties on Pellissippi? Am I going to be on the news? Will there be ambulances involved? 

Yea, it got all ugly up in my head!

I stopped on the side of the road and did a quick inspection to make sure all was right in my little world. A quick check of the light connection, tongue and motor proved to me that all I had to do was drive, carefully.  In the mean time, as I was readying to pull back out into traffic, a semi-truck pulled over up in front of me.  All I can figure is the driver was concerned that I was having an issue because as I drove past him, I waved, he waved, he pulled back on the road and we were never to meet!

When I arrived at my Saturday job, my boss/friend, Jim, came out to see what the noise was.  Me, my truck with no muffler, and a boat – a poor sad little boat, trailer and motor had arrived. I pulled in facing away from the roll-up doors and hopped out of the truck.  Jim looked, shook his head and asked just exactly how long this contraption had been sitting dormant.  He walked around, poked about and popped the motor cover.  Sweet mother and all that is holy – the stench was horrific!  The motor had developed an “odd smell” that brought tears to my eyes.  It did not take long to figure out it was from the MOUSE’S NEST that had been built in it.  I am still working on cleaning that…

After the quick inspection and  not so kind comments aimed at the poor little unloved boat, Jim told me to back the trailer up to the doors and we would roll it into the bay. Yea, back it up.  Me.  It seemed like a simple enough job.  I had managed to get the boat to the shop unscathed – so backing it STRAIGHT should not be a problem. Right?  Let me just say, I was wrong.  The driveway is rutted and slopes heavily and THAT, my friends, was a problem for me.  I tried to back that puppy up 3 times before I jumped down out of the truck cursing like a sailor and 2 seconds from throwing things.  Jim climbed in (he is all of 5’5” maybe?) and backed it right up to the door.

Show-off.

We unhooked the trailer and rolled it into the bay. I was hot and went home. Done for the day.  I guess I missed telling you it was Sunday. I did not have to work that day!

Two weeks passed and I showed up at work to find a trailer-less boat in the bay – all up under a car-lift with an old school flip-top dragster over top of it.  I wish I had taken a photo of that!  The trailer was gone. Jim had stripped it and taken it to a buddy to sandblast the paint and rust off. He then had moved it to another guy to powder coat it. It was in process. 

Another week goes by and I drive to work – and what should come into view? The trailer, white powder coat, red and blue hand painted pin stripes to match the wheels from WallyHell and the wench reattached. I took one smiling look at the trailer and told Jim the trailer was so fancy looking, it would probably pass the truck up. More aerodynamic with all that pin-striping you know!

That day we worked on cleaning the grunge and tarnish off the aluminum on the boat.

During the next weeks, I went over and worked on the little boat’s interior – trying to make it cleaner and prettier. Used some semi-trailer chemical to clean the metal. Used the air sander to scrape out the loose old anti-skid paint. Used lacquer thinner to get the bulk of the green paint off (still need to work on that more), applied more anti-skid paint to the floor in medium grey (not to dark which collects heat and not to light so it doesn’t reflect light up into your eyes). Jim worked on not killing me as I used his air sander on it and I worked on not killing him as he wired the new trailer lights on. My best  “person” came by and worked on wiring the battery for the new trolling motor and on the light wiring.  He even  brought a battery, battery case and a new light bar as a donation to the fishing cause! I was determined to take that boat that weekend.  We did a lot of sweating.  I guess we call it sweat equity?

What did I learn from this adventure?

1. Know the chemicals you are using and wear gloves.  Lacquer thinner hurts!
2. Always wear safety glasses when using a sander! Luckily I have Oakley sunglasses that are ANSI rated!
3. Anti-skid paint takes a long time to dry when the relative humidity is 4 million %!