Days In Kansas

When we came back to the US this time we had a mission. I have arthritis and need a knee replacement. We been dealing with this for 6 months now getting it done. Dealing for ten years with it getting worse every year. Dealing with this if you are retired or if you have a routine job where you know from one year to the next what you a doing every day would be better knowing you can not tell them when you want it done because you have no say in anything they do. Every one we have talked to say it is easy. Bull crap, bull crap, bull crap. They tell you to go to the hospital and get a blood test. Then they say we need to back for x-rays. Then they say go back for something else. Then you go and they say it will be 54 days before we can do the surgery and then you will be coming back off and on for 3 month when we say for us to do things they call rehab. The last time we were here we told them we needed to reschedule and work it out. We went back to our boat in Guatemala and stared calling to reschedule. They would not take our calls or return our calls. You have no say in anything. Back here we told the hospital we use here that already set it up to see these doctors and they said they have to set this up to talk to them. We couldn’t. Then they said they were having trouble with them getting back to them. Now we have been back here 6 weeks they say we can go talk to the Doctor. It has taken that long. I’m going to go talk to him but this bull crap stops. It’s not happening. I will be back on our sail boat in Guatemala in a couple weeks. Maybe they can reschedule it in a year are maybe in the next 5 years and we can come back. This is not fluctuating it’s crazy. All the time knowing we can buy a nice house around here for what this cost. You can buy a new truck for what this cost. Our house is nice but in a little town that is slowly turning into a ghost town. That is how we got it so cheap. Young people out here don’t want to live where you can’t get a pizza-man to deliver a pizza because it’s so far out of town. Another thing is dust and cows people don’t want. This is farm country out here. You may hear a plane and go outside to see it looking like it’s taking the roof of your house crop dusting. You always drive definitely out here with deer and wild turkeys. Lots and lots of wild life. Sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night to the smell of a polecat just outside your window. All the trees out here around houses are planted to break the wind and just outside our bedroom window is a tree and we have a hoot owl that serenades us some nights for hours. We have a bird feeder at the kitchen window here and I never talk about politics in our blog but watching this bird feeder I wonder what there world is like. They definitely don’t all get along. Is it the color of there feathers or size? There is a little bird out here with a red head that will run the rest of the birds off. No bird will bother the little red headed birds. Does that mean if you’re mean enough you can rule. Medicine is a business and always has been. Witch doctors in the jungle get payed well. There is no paradise and life goes on. See our friends soon back on our boat. When we are out here we miss things back on our boat. On our boat thousands of miles away from here we miss things here. Living in two worlds even dragging my leg life is good. My granddaddy would say there are thing in life you can’t change but don’t let that become your life. Not getting my knee fixed is a set back but is it really? I been dealing with it for a long time. What’s new? Life is good if your gold in life is adventure. It’s an adventure out here most days. It’s an adventure most days on our boat. The adventure of life always having Pam with me with a birthday coming up I’ll be 76. In a year and a half we will be married 60 years and we have had some fun. Now still looking ahead not behind we still have things coming up we will be telling if it happens. Never give up. The adventure goes on.

Our little house in Galatia, Kansas

Our tomato plants are starting to bear a few small tomatoes. It has been very hot and dry here this summer.

one of our projects. We hope to get the mower painted and back together soon.

 

Honoring 9/11/2001

We still in Kansas. We been battling 100 degree plus and last night it was 44F and the furnace came on. It’s the rule out here living with the weather with not big but huge farms. Very few trees and lots of gentle people.

A SAD DAY FOR AMERICA

A far cry from where we were 21 years ago on 9/11. We were there in our sailboat anchored at Atlantic Highlands just up from Sandy Hook in plan view of the towers. It was a perfect day. Clear beautiful day. On the radio they said something happen. We went out on deck. There was a lot of smoke pouring out of one of the towers. We sat there and watched not knowing what was happening. We sat there a long time maybe 15 minutes when I went back inside to see if there was anything on TV when a women holding a mike making an announcement was watching a plane going real low behind her and the TV went off and Pam was screaming they’re bombing New York. Now both towers were smoking. Now our cell phone wouldn’t work no singal. A small plane the kind I have a licenses to fly, a little single engine pulling a banner was doing slow flight trying to maybe get down and there was no other planes in site. I can only imagine what he was thinking with what air control was telling him to do. It wasn’t long and the fast ferries was coming in unloading and going back as fast as they could. Not on any schedule bringing patients out of hospitals to free up beds on the New Your side. Remember we were on the New Jersey side, off the ship channel. We tried to walk up town to a grocery store when a cop stopped us. He seemed out of control telling us to stay on our boat and being me I said, “Were going to get groceries what is wrong with you? He said, “We are in an emergency. I said, “Us going to buy groceries is causing a problem how? He insulted us about us having a deep south accent and let us go. Pam doses have a deep southern drawl and up north some people love it and of coarse some don’t. Everyone there seemed to be tensed, really not knowing what was really going wrong. The next morning a woman we met in the marina there ask us if we wanted to give blood. We said sure and we went with her to what looked like a school in her car. There was not large lines but huge lines waiting to give blood with cops walking along asking people if they didn’t know there blood type to just leave they only needed one type of blood and people were stepting out but the lines were not getting any smaller. Made me feel like every one was trying to help. This was the second day when we tried to give blood and that night after midnight I thought the boat was having an electrical problem and I cut all the switches off to find the wind had changed and the smoke from the towers was coming over us. We still have the flag that was hanging on our schooner Pamela Ann the smoke from the towers is definitely on it. The next morning at five o’clock Pam was up going to the head and didn’t come back to bed. She was cooking breakfast telling me to look out in the bay and there sat a ship with MORGE written on it and she was telling me we are leaving today some way. We had motor problems with our transmission hook up and knew it was going to break soon. We left at day light and nursed the old motor out of the anchorage and on out to sea sailing south. The smoke was going out to sea now but was visible for a long time. A lot happen at that time. One is we didn’t have a camera that would work. Remember it was a different time. Now I wonder when they are going to make a tooth brush camera with GPS in it? Now when people say let me see your picture they say you wasn’t there. There is a reason for this I guess. We have met a lot of people that say they was there when some one says there is no way they were there. They were in Florida when that happen. Maybe this is why so many men say they were Navy seals are Army rangers. We were there and we did nothing to change anything. Why would you want to lie about that. We were watching history in the making I guess. By the way I or we Pam and I have never done anything to make us special.

ALL OF THE FLAGS OF THE PROUD STATES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Special Happenings

I did have an iguana poop all over me working under a tree it was in. When they unload they unload. How many people have had that happen to them where they can brag about that? Building an old boat out of other people’s junk and going sailing. Anybody can do that. I guess the only thing with not being special is knowing it. The Adventure of life goes on so all we not so special people can do is grasp what we can even if it just being where a wild iguana can poop on you. Listening to wild monkey at daylight. Out here it’s a mountain lion running down the road in front of us with us riding a motor bike. Stopping on the road and count the deer herd crossing. Hoping the wild turkeys and pheasants aren’t going to fly up into the bike or truck.

PAMELA ANN ON HER MAIDEN VOYAGE     JUNE 26, 2000

PAMELA ANN SETTING AT HER DOCK IN GUATEMALA

PAMELA ANN SAILING ALONG

 

 

Labor Day in Kansas

Being out here In Kansas it’s the weather. It is always the weather out here on the planes. We are still in Kansas. It’s dry out here. No real rain for weeks now. This causes bad weather in it’s self. “HOT & DRY” Sailing now for over half our lives, dumb as I am I have learned when it’s really hot and a cold front comes through the colder the front the more violent the storms are. Right now we are getting little fronts that don’t cover much of the state. Just pop up storms. We were headed to town and out here that means the closes is twenty miles away. 

INTERESTING TRIP TO TOWN

We ran into a storm. It stared to rain then it stared to hail. We turned around and ran from the storm. We finally got in just rain and it was clearing up when we ran out of gas. Maybe two miles to a station, in town. About a mile away was a Dollar General store. Our son headed out walking in a light rain to go buy a gas can and find a way to go get gas. In a short time he was coming back walking fast. I told Pam, “This is not good. He is going to try something crazy.” Pam’s response to doing something crazy was, ” Look who talking?” He pored a quart of charcoal starter and a pint of fuel treatment in the tank. All modern trucks have electric fuel pumps and as soon as the switch is on it start pumping. My truck is 50 years old so if you run it out of gas it takes a lot of cranking pouring raw gas in the carburetor. His truck stared up and we made the last mile running fine on charcoal starer and gas treatment. Pam and I bought an old dump truck when we were in our twenties with a bad fuel tank and drove it out of some woods and a cow pasture with her driving with the door open so she could hang out and see where she was going with me laying across the fender with the hood up pouring gas in the carburetor out of a bottle. A wild two minutes ride,  but we made it to where we could change the tank. Maybe our son has had a few lessons in crazy in his life. This week out her is the US holiday Labor Day. Parades and fireworks.

HERE IS A LITTLE OF THAT:

Went to fireworks on Saturday night. Good Show

BIG CROWD AT PARADE

 

LOTS OF OLD CARS AND TRUCKS IN PARADE

Two pristine 1951 Chevy pickups

Showroom quality 1954 Chevy truck.

Horses at the end then the street sweeper

COULD NOT SHOW ALL OF THE CARS, TRUCKS, TRACTORS, FLOATS, MARCHING BANDS, FIRE EQUIPMENT, SHRINER’S, DANCERS, BIG TRUCKS, AND MANY MORE ENTRYS.  THE PARADE LASTED FOR ALMOST TWO HOURS. WE ENJOYED IT VERY MUCH.