Thursday morning Sam and I started packing up all our stuff and we collected all our perishables and tossed them in the trash. I walked up to the office and was able to talk to Linda about a bottom job (not for me but for the boat). I explained how I was locked in by the lock outage and might as well have some work done rather than just paying about $400 for the boat to sit in a slip. She pulled out a form and started scribbling numbers on it and when she finished all the numbers added up to almost $2,000. Now, before I bought this boat I was told that B.O.A.T. stood for "Break Out Another Thousand," so I wasn't really shocked... after all, I've broken out another thousand several times and I've only had this boat for 3 weeks. Okay, I may be slow but it's beginning to sink in as to what that really means.
Just as Linda and I were concluding our conversation Mike stopped by... he's in charge of the department that installs generators. I explained that we don't have a generator but would really like to have one so that we could run the air conditioner while anchored out. He fully understood the undesirable dilemma of laying in bed sweating with windows open and fans blowing and skeeters biting so he started running calculations in his head while leaning against the door frame. I sat patiently watching wheels turn in his head, ever so often he would touch his hand to the forehead to help keep them rolling, then he began to speak. Wait for it... wait... $15,000 was the number that came forth from his mouth to my ears. Now I may have been slow about that B.O.A.T. thing as I mentioned before but my reflex was lighting fast on this one... No Thanks! I'll figure out some other means to keep comfortable at night.
As I was about to leave Linda's office I asked one more question that I thought would result in a definite "no" but was pleasantly surprised... "Is there anyway someone could drive us to the rent-a-car place." Sam had a car reserved for us at Thrifty (or is it Dollar Thrifty?) for a one way rental at a descent price. A very pleasant lady by the name of Mary arrived at the dock with a pickup truck to carry all our stuff and hauled it and us to the airport... which was very fortunate because that's where the rent-a-car place was located.
Sam and I drove home and had wonderful conversations where we solved several of the world's social issues such as illegal aliens, food stamp scammers, lazy people receiving welfare and came close on some religious issues. Someday we're going to write them down and send them to our congressman.
I plan to get back on the boat in a couple of weeks and head north from Mobile Bay. It's intimidating to look at 450 miles of ditch carved out of shallow creeks and little lakes and plain old farm land, but it can't be all that bad, others have done it and so can I.
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