Some of Our Travels

Last week the big event here in the US was a commercial aircraft hitting a military helicopter. I have a pilot’s licenses but haven’t flown now in about ten years. We have for the most part been out of the country. My licenses are small. Just single engine land with variable retractable and a tail-dragger certificate. I’m most proud of my tail-dragger endorsement. I know I would never fly across an active runway being used as a final approach to land and when I fly, I monitor my radio to help watch for traffic. Listen for pilots in planes talking to the tower and where they’re at. What ever happen it’s sad. All those young people having the time of their life and in a moment they’re gone. With Pam and I buying our (little house out on the prairie) here in Kansas near our only kid, a son. We bought it so cheap we just couldn’t turn it down. Still calling our home the sailboat we live on. We fly on the cheapest commercial flights we can find to our sailboat back in the Caribbean and back here about every 3 months. Stay there 3 months and back here for 3 months. If you’re out there going like we have all our lives maybe it doesn’t change your odds of getting hurt, but we have had some close calls. Truck drivers know the odds are high, that they will be coming back home when they leave but know some day, they may not make it back. Years ago, when Pam was still in her early thirties, we were driving big rigs cross country together. (Seeing America.) I was in the sleeper. We were driving what was normal at the time, a White Freight-liner cab-over where you literally set over the front wheels, and this makes it ride rough. It would do only about 74 miles per hour and knowing Pam that was what she was doing. I knew something was happening to the truck, when she screamed. As I came out of the sleeper it was raining a little and we were on black ice. The truck in front of us jackknifed with us almost hitting it and cars and trucks going off the road and crashing into each other. Remember how fast all this was happening. I was screaming at Pam now, “Just drive! Don’t hit the brakes. Just drive and let the truck slow down by itself.” As we got on the side of the road Pam was going to get out to let me drive and I was screaming again, “No!” as a car came by almost hitting us sliding sideways. She crawled in the sleeper as I got over and behind the wheel. I put the truck in enter-lock (that’s all wheel drive) and started to try to get the truck to move up the road out of all this to where I could see an off ramp. We made it down the off ramp and over to a small truck stop with just two fuel pumps and a restaurant. Spent the rest of the night there. While the emergency road crews were trying to clean up the mess on the highway. The driver in the jackknifed truck in front of us was already dead when they got to him. Lots of people hurt. It’s quick sometimes and you’re gone. We will be flying back to our sailboat up a river in Guatemala in a few weeks. Cheapest flights we can find. Am I worried? That is hard to answer. I guess a little with Pam always with me. I do feel better when we are down and taxing to the gate, but it doesn’t stop there with being maybe not scared but worried a little sometimes. We were on a delayed flight one time and after we got our bags we walked through a door and realized we were outside the airport on the street at 4AM in the morning and they wouldn’t let us back inside. We were back in Guatemala City and any city if you’re out on the street at 4 in the morning can be scary. I found a cab driver asleep in his car and he said the bus station open at 4:30AM. We had planned to get a room and rest some but now we found ourselves in the bus station waiting on a bus that would leave at 9:30AM. By this time, we had been up over thirty hours and still had a six-hour bus ride to our boat. There are things to worry about if you’re out there going for a lifetime like we have. When Pam and I married I think we didn’t know what we wanted more than just being together, figuring it out. But over time we knew we didn’t want a lifetime of keeping up with the Jones. They are risk in life, and I know for sure now after a lifetime of doing what we wanted to do dreams do come true for those that go after their dreams.

                                  The Adventure of Life Goes On

Pam and I on a trip on our old antique motor bike we still have.

Safe back on the ground in the airport.

This has no part in the blog it’s just Pam being crazy at a Halloween party and was in these pictures.

Pinata for a burn the devil cerebration in Guatemala. Always on December 7th and it’s still hot there.

Our sailboat. Remember we designed and built ourselves. Setting at a dock in Guatemala.

 

Still Patriotic

It’s risky to ever talk about politics but today here it’s still really cold with us off our boat up here at our little house on the prairie. Out here in Kansas with two-foot snow drifts in our yard and minus 4F last night. Staying in watching the inauguration made me think about people we met traveling and how a lot that have left their home country feel. Lots of expats. A lot of people seem to hate their own country. Their favorite saying you hear with us traveling in 3^rd world countries throughout the Caribbean on our boat is. This is Paradise. (Really?) Hearing this makes me think of what I miss in the US like going and buying what you need when you need it. I don’t think everything is prefect in the US and remember this, there are things in places as we travel where we won’t go back. How long throughout history have people been looking for Paradise? When Pam and I built our boat to go sailing it wasn’t to go looking for paradise or wanting to just leave the US it was, looking for the adventure of traveling on a boat. Living simply and maybe somewhat having more control of our life with what we need there on our boat with how we built it. Hoping we could just leave if we stopped somewhere and didn’t like something there. As I just said, one country we spent time in we won’t go back, and I hear other sailors say the same thing. It’s their politics along with one group of people there. I can hear people reading this saying prejudice. It their prejudice that bothers me. If they over charge you when you buy something they laugh and say it a skin tax. You can feel it and their government officials always try to get more money from you somehow making you feel cheated. Years ago, the place to not miss as you travel on a boat was Venezuela. Now you are crazy to go there. (Politics does changes things.) My granddaddy would say when politicians were changing things. How does this effect you? Inflation hurt us the last 4 years but think about this with inflation and pay scales rising to compensate for it. When Pam and I ran away and got married 60 years ago I was working 6 days a week in a cotton mill and took home 54 dollars after taxes. Try living today on $54 a week. Remember with us being young and living on love looking back it wasn’t all that hard. With a new president all we really have is hope. Vote and then hope but hearing he is not my president you won’t hear from me with all the president we have had in the past. Several I did not vote for, but I still love my country as I strongly disagreed with what they did. With all this I think as we go back to our sailboat the schooner Pamela Ann up a river in the Caribbean in Guatemala.

Pamela Ann in the boat yard in Guatemala.

I think we will be more careful about having our US flag always flying of the stern of our boat and more careful having their courtesy flag flying as they require in respect for both countries. In some way you do feel freer in some of the countries we have traveled to with it up to you if you wear a seat belt in your car or a helmet on you motor bike. No one there stopping you checking your life jackets to see if one on your boat has a small tear in it the kids play with and now you have to pay a fine just for having it on board with them saying. I’m here to protect you. I don’t care how many you have. You have defective equipment on your boat with that one life jacket. As I put in a blog already Pam was hit with rocks flying from a rocket that didn’t get where it should at a Christmas tree lighting. The police here in the US would never let them shoot fireworks that close to where people were standing. Remember it was our chose to stand there. Sometimes I wonder. What is the price of freedom to do as you please. Another thing there was no lawyer coming running to us saying, I think we have a case we can sue. Where we built our sailboat there in the little town of Southport you’re not allowed to have a clothesline in your own back yard. Out here in the rural part of Kansas remember I said rural we can deal with the freedoms we still have.

                                            The Adventure of Life Goes On

Rural Kansas, where you can drive for miles and not see another car or truck. You may see a tractor or a farm ATV.

We still like to fly our American flag.

Pamela Ann docked in Alabama. We hope we will get her back in the USA this year.

 

Simple Living

As I get older, I realize more and more what I heard from my grandparents. They were a great example of this about how different people think. I don’t like talking politics or religion, but you can see it’s there for sure. One thing my granddaddy talked about has been a lesson for me with how people think was the great depression he lived through with people saying how bad it was for everybody. He said, that’s not true that it was bad for everyone living through it as you hear all the time. He said, it was the best time of his life. Is there a lesson in that today with what you hear? He said his farm was paid for and he had a car he owed nothing on. Not new but it run okay. My grandmother was young, really pretty and they had what they needed there on the farm. Said money was in short supply but he had a trade in high demand by accident working as a boy at his daddy’s sawmill. A Steam engine mechanic. Telling me people always want to go back with how they think if things get hard. People coming to him to get steam engines back running again. (How close to the truth is in what people think that just listening to other people anyway?) Is living off the grid a way to protect you from hard times. Maybe not. We put in our blog all the time how we love living simple and somewhat off the grid but think about it this way with us living somewhat of the grid. Living with a generator or solar panels you are still using electricity. Are you really living off the grid? Can you go in the woods find a proper tree cut it and make a spit oak basket, today? That was so necessary for farm life back in the day before the grid stared. I can and most people think they can, but it takes real skill most people today don’t have. Pam’s Granddaddy helped me with this to learn how. He lived a few days short of his 100th birthday. I’m old now and I can do a lot of things people did back then, but can’t I make a modern light bulb. You see what I mean. Can we really get away from the grid we depend on so. If you’re thinking about living off the grid. Maybe think some about why you want to live that way. With Pam and I it’s living simple and having some control of our lives. On our sailboat we have lived on for years living with electricity makes life simple. The downside is I can’t build what runs on electricity or make what will generate electricity. We still have to buy what we need to set up our boat. With having some control of how we live on shore or off. Just think with our boat set up when we are crossing a long stretch in the ocean with solar panels and a wind generator nothing changes as we have all we live with every day. Not much changes with that as we leave land. The big thing now is how much work we don’t have to do with having electricity. Most dreamers don’t think about that. How much the work thing changes if you try to live with electricity. We have an autopilot that runs on electricity, that steers the boat. (12-volt) It doesn’t get sleepy or tired, won’t need to be fed or go the bathroom. Believe me on a long trip that is work you don’t want to do. Steering a boat for days. The zest of all this the way I think is set up your life as simple as you want and don’t ever try to go back. Learning to make something from the past like making farm sausage is just carrying it on. Necessary skills learned back then is good for the sole or good to know if you are ever in a place where you need them.

Our small solar panel. Facing south.

At our little house out on the prairie we live in part time, we have a small solar panel. (remember small) with all the lamps in the house on LED 12-volt and one overhead light in the kitchen. 12-volt TV and car stereo system built in for the radio. “Sounds good.” All the other modern appliances are still on the grid. Remember how much less work you have to do with these appliances. Our house is small (800 square feet) we live simple nothing big and when we’re out here we pay and average of maybe $150US a month in utility bills. Now with our solar system, remember simple and small is “just what we need” we have less than 500 dollars in it including the 12-volt TV and car radio.

Our little 21-inch TV

The DC car radio is installed in the hall with two speakers. We can hear it through most of the house.

It’s been in place for 5 years now. I hope with all this if you’re not just dreaming. Start small and build on it. Again, think what you really want. If it’s just a more simple life maybe you just need to work your way slowly down to where you want to be. Do you really need a TV that covers a whole wall? One more thing. We have an old truck we put back together to drive out here runs good.  It gets 12 miles to the gallon. An old motor bike that gets near 50 MPG if you drive it right. Both paid for when we bought them. Do we really need to buy something newer and pay 2 or 3 times what we paid for our little house out here to save gas. It’s all in how you think. One foot note. Pam and I have never been much on following the herd.

The book we wrote Little Lies is coming out soon in a revised addition.

                                   The Adventure of Life Goes On

 

One Extreme to Another

As I have put in our last blogs Pam, and I have been together over 60 years. This means we have seen a lot together. (Well, here we go again.) Left our sailboat we live on most of the time in the Caribbean and flew back up here to be with our only kid for Christmas in a little house we say we bought by accident. The farmer that had it just wanted it gone. It was so cheap and easy to buy we bought it, a very quaint 4 room house with a full basement and a closed in garage. Truth is this is almost a ghost town out here now that still has dirt streets in town with a few houses out on the Kansas prairie. Only business left here is a grain silo COOP. Go from our house 2 streets and farmlands, fields go over the horizon. Closest town maybe 20 miles away and driving there sometimes you won’t see another car. (Now with the here we go again) I just said, left our boat and a few weeks ago before coming up here with the temp hitting 112F during the day. Now out here we are in a blizzard. Blowing snow and chill factor below minus zero for days. Roads closed. We knew it was coming and being us we were prepared. If you know us are read our blog you know we like living simple. Have most of our lives. We like living the old way when we can. Some of the old ways are gone now and I don’t see them ever, coming back and we are the only people we have seen in years that still live this way. It’s hard to go to grocery stores out here and buy a whole fresh ham but Walmart, 45 miles away sells whole pork shoulders. (If you can’t do what you want to do what you can.) Our first day back we hung one up to cure using the receipt people used before electricity or running water living out on the farm. This goes back a long time before modern times curing ham and meat this way. Another thing we did as soon as we got here was hit the meat markets looking for pork with lots of fat. Mostly marked down because of all the fat in the meat. The more fat the better. Back at the house we made sausage with the old family receipt going back hundreds of years. This is sage sausage. We grow our own sage in a little box garden. Pam likes to plant flowers and maybe a pepper plant just outside the back door when were here. Living simply Pam being a bean counter when she sees something that is cheap not just marked down she buys enough to last for a while. This makes for a nice pantry with her buys more than we need so we don’t have to shop so often. Now living like this we are usually prepared for bad weather and things that come up here or on our boat. After the hurricane Katrina some people were talking about getting hungry. How they couldn’t find anything to eat. I told them you can cook in a truck hub cap are about anything you can build a fire under. Telling them about a simple camping trick we use a lot. You can bring large Lima-beans up to a boil for maybe just ten minutes. Let them cool all the way down then bring them back up maybe boil them ten minutes more and they’re done. The women said, “Where you think you could find them beans with the mess everything was in for days after that hurricane?” I didn’t say anything about how we live and that at in the worst of times least we have beans. If you have ever been in a hurricane, you know people, go crazy emptying the sheaves in grocery stores before the storm hits. Buying thing that are left they wouldn’t normally ever buy. With hurricanes sometimes lasting so long and the boat going crazy it’s sandwiches but as soon as it starts to calm down, we have plenty to cook. The worst after a hurricane is it’s so hot. Now here with the snow stopped it’s how cold it is outside. Complain or see it as just another adventure?

                                           The Adventure of Life Goes On

Looking Forward in 2025

The new year approaches and we all hope we can do better. With Jimmy Carter dying you hear how hard his life was growing up on a farm. I grew up on a farm and I did work, hard but I loved it. I’m old now and have lived a lot and seen a lot. Is living well not having to work. Are people that don’t and won’t work happy than the rest of us. When I was young listening to people that had lived before electricity and running water I never heard them talking about being that unhappy. Being back on the farm when people farmed with mules a young married couple worked together. This working together seemed to make them happy. I know when Pam and I work together I’m happier that running off to jobs some where. We have worked together a lot in our life. Can you really have enough stuff to make you happy. When Pam and I was young remodeling houses working together she had her own 3 yard dump truck. Can a women be any happy that one that has her own dump truck? Never heard her complain about how hard we was working. Our golds have always be different than most I guess. The oldest question in life is what is love and what is happiest? Buy a kid a toy and he is having more fun playing with the box. In our long life together we have had some times when life was a little hard , who hasn’t but I think we have been happy most of the time. Having lot of money has never been our gold. Being young selling our house we bought and building us a log cabin on a lake to live there sleeping under a plastic tarp getting up in the morning to go work on it was never any problem. I don’t know how you can be any happier young working hard together for what we wanted with so little. Building the sailboat we live on now was hard raising the money we needed and all that work but it’s hard to explain how happy we have been at times traveling and living on our boat. I have told before in our blog we ran away and got married young. On our wedding night with all we went through that day to make it happen after we ate supper and was back in our motel room. We laid down together in bed and Pam laying there went to sleep with in minutes holding me. I watched her for a few minutes and decided to rest my eyes and when I open my eyes it was day light. Her saying. Well we made it through our first night together. Even if it was and uneventful wedding night. Her there with me when I open my eyes just 15 years old with us starting our live together I’m sure with times like that I have experienced happiest. You hear young people don’t know what loves is but that morning when I woke up with me just 17 years old with her there with me I think I know today how wrong they are about that.

This picture was made after we had brought the house, just after we had rode our old bike from New Orleans the second time to Kansas.

We are hoping this year the book we have coming out soon an my art will pay off just enough for us to just get by. Let us travel and enjoy what we are doing with our life now. This year I’m sure we will have the repairs we are doing on our sailboat, Pamela Ann, named after her, completed and will be sailing again. We are old but still together and going on. Remember dreams do come true for those that go after their dreams not just set around and dream. With us working on our new dreams after talking to people that have written books and do art, one thing they say is we will be lucky if we make a dime. Never give up so we go on. The other thing they say is we are going to have to self promote. This is going to be hard for me but if you would like to help, and if you like our blog tell your friends and help us build our blog readership. How we are going to promote our book and art coming soon but for now I hope all that read this feel love and happiness this New Year.

                                         The Adventure of Life Goes On

Christmas Cheer

In our last blog about how hard we live to “some people.” We hear some say, “Why do we live this way?” The reward for living simple is not the dream most people have. As I have put in our blog buying raw corn and making grits with a grain grinder on our boat because where we have traveled they have never seen grits. Catching rain water to take a bath. Setting a water jug out in the sun to heat water when we can. All ways, money in short supply. With days at sea working to get our old sailboat across the endless open ocean. Remember it’s 24 -7 working making a crossing. No place to stop till you make it across. Bad weather and things break. You’re on your own out there. Maybe this will explain it’s the little things that make us go on.

Waiting on plane.

Here in the airport in Guatemala city there were some people maybe taking a family member an older women with them as we were flying to the US for Christmas. There was a woman there I was talking to that could speak Spanish really well so I ask her to ask these women if I could make there picture. This seemed to thrill these older women dressed in traditional clothes. They were doing all they could posing to get their picture made. To me this was heart warming to me with how they wanted to have their picture made dressed as they were keeping there tradition alive.

Two Guatemalan women with traditional dress on headed to the US for the Holidays.

This is what I enjoy about Christmas as we have spent Christmas in other countries. The love you can feel if you look for it. The sparkles in kids eyes no mater where you are. This year we are back in our little out on the Kansas prairie we bought some time back from a farmer that just wanted it gone. Our son lives out here. Last summer with us living on our sailboat in the Caribbean with the temperature hitting 112F the sparkle right now, in Pam eyes is her setting by the fire in our wood heater eating ice cream.

Our pellet stove we are so proud of.

Years ago Christmas day may have changed our lives in a way forever. I went to see Pam at her house with her being 15 she was not allowed to date. Southern tradition if a girl was not 16 she could have a boy over but they had to stay in the house with the family there and not go anywhere. Pam begged and her mother let us have a 30 minute car ride. As soon as we left I stopped at an old store with no one there and gave Pam a friend ship ring. Back then boys would give girls there high school ring on a chain to wear around there neck. I didn’t have a school ring and knew I never would. The jeweler said it was a friend ship ring. Not the way her mother saw it. It was bad for a while trying to see her then as I thought it was getting better it came to a head in the church parking lot as I was there to go to church with Pam. Her mother said she was getting the law involved if I ever got near Pam again. Pam was not getting involved with a boy at her age like we were. Two weeks past with no way to even talk to Pam but as things happen we bumped in to each other. With the girl Pam was with screaming as we left in my car for only ten minutes before we were back so we could talk. Pam crying hard saying. Let’s get married. This is what I have decided I want and we need to do. For the people that know Pam she is hard to turn when she has decided what she wants to do. With a well made plan two weeks later as people were saying, we ran off. Still makes Pam mad hearing that with her saying we got married. We didn’t run off. Memories of that Christmas day spending what little time they allowed us with Pam being 15 still warms my heart. That was 61 years ago and in a couple of month that is how long we have been married. One saying that I still like to hear this time of year mostly on Christmas night. “Christmas is here and all is well.” This is true for us right now. We may be getting old still together but we have big plans for this coming year. As for living simple out here we have a sugar cured ham hanging. Be ready in a few weeks cured the old way like we are back on the farm. Fresh sausage from the old family recipe we just made. Blackberry jam Pam just made from frozen blackberries from Walmart. A Christmas tree we cut off the side of the road. This will be a quiet Christmas for us out here. For all that read this. Merry Christmas and may you feel love in your life where ever you are.

                                         The Adventure of Life Goes On

Our little tree we got off the side of the road decorated. It turned out quite well.

 

 

Plans and Dreams

When I was young I listen the grownups telling me how I should live. Most important to them. Go to church and make money. After I met my wife, Pam. We ran away at 15 and 17 and got married. I had a job and we both tried hard early in life to make money. That is a little off with having a job and making money. With a job you just make wages, making money is a whole lot harder. That is why most people have to work for someone all their life. Later we had a kid and now more responsibly but early in our life together we stared wanting a more simple life bad enough to try to make it happen. With our love of simple living this has brought on a life time of criticism. The big change came when Pam was just 24 years old and I was 26. We sold our nice house and 10 acres of land and used the equity to take a year off and build a log cabin down on a large power lake. Building it all ourselves. Living some what off the grid in a log cabin on a lake. Doing this we heard a lot how we were not living responsible but what a dream that was to us. Later we sold the log house. Pam would never call it a a log cabin and bought our first ocean going sailboat. Another dream coming true but not to our families with us now living on a sailboat and just making enough money to get by. Later we decided we were not happy with the factory built sailboat we bought so we sold that boat and designed and built the schooner we live on now. Leaving on our first trip with the schooner “Pamela Ann” we built ourselves was another dream coming true.

Pamela Ann leaving Southport, NC on her maiden voyage.

The day we did the haul-out at Abel’s boat yard. Rio Dulce, Guatemala

Now with Pam knowledge of how to use a sew machine and my math skills another dream came true. Together we homed our skills as sail-makers. This allowed us to make enough to get by as we traveled on our schooner is another dream to us coming true. This pass week as we were laughing with new friends as some of old friends there they were saying this could be a dream coming true to other sailors living like this as we cut a used sail changing it to a hank on Jib for a roller furling system under a catamaran here in the boat yard to, get out of the rain. Not your normal sail-loft. Now this was a first even for us with all the places we have made and reworked a sail. Maybe this would not be a dream to some working this hard in these conditions in Caribbean with, days and days, of rain. The money we can make working like this is not money to be put in the bank but we can make enough to make it another day. We have been told for a lifetime now living like this we will end up old with very little to show for a life time of work. I know you can’t put a memory in a bank or live off your memories. We know now dreams are hard to make come true but they do come true. We are be back in the US this week at our little house out on the prairie working on our next dream of becoming a writer and an artists if we can just find some way make it pay enough for us to just get by. Just enough to go on our next adventure with us being old now or not. We are working on it. Would that not be a dream to live and travel on our sailboat and out on the prairie in the US as we want. Making it as a writer an artist. Our plans of how, coming soon but for now the adventure goes on. Holidays coming and remember if you read our blog and get anything from it. “Dreams do come true.” Still with my dream girl now married 60 years and counting. Lot of sea miles behind us now on a sailboat we designed and built ourselves, that we left in the Caribbean to come here for Christmas. Who could have dreamed we would end up with a little house out on the Kansas prairie with how different it is out here in cowboy country where you can go outside at night and still listen to coyotes howling. If you enjoy our blog share it with your friends and never stop dreaming.

                                         The Adventure of Life Goes On

Happy to be in the Western Caribbean.

 

Christmas is coming to Guatemala

You hear rainy night in Georgia in songs as it sound so good and peaceful. It’s the same here in the Caribbean on our old sailboat we dreamed about building for years before we found a way to make it happen. Even then it took ten years from the time we stared it till we made our first trip. This is their rainy season here and we are having a lot of peaceful rainy nights. With Christmas coming the Christmas spirit is in full swing here. Jingle Bells on the radio in Spanish. Lights going up everywhere.

We went to the Christmas parade and tree lighting here in the little town of San Felipe. It was pouring down rain, but we enjoyed it.

There is something you hear in songs around the world always stop and smell the roses. We always try but sometimes it’s hard. We are here in Guatemala up a river in a boat yard needing to work on our boat with all this rain. I told Pam the other day I feel like I get up everyday and work with one hand tied behind me. The young people you can hire here to help can vary as they do all over the world. One young guy we hired was so lazy and UN-trainable we let him go after we tried hard to use him. Every day he showed me on his translator he was going to the US so he could make big bucks he was so smart. I try to never talk politics but I’m afraid this is who has been crossing our border in the US. Lazy won’t work dreamers. Another young man came to us and he is just what we need. Maybe that’s not true. He doses work good when he is here. He has 3 kids by 2 women but he has trouble coming to work. Kid sick, water is up and he lives in a village and can’t get his motor bike across the creek. Now his motor bike is broke and no money to get it fixed. A lot of these hard luck stories are true and not just excuses. It’s hard for a lot of these people to work. Working steady if you can just get by is not looked at the same as I was raised. Comparing yourself to anyone may be wrong but at 16 I quit school, lied about my age, went to work in a cotton mill and there I never missed a day in 4 years. I found a way to work. How can we work this out and get what we need done on our boat so we can get back to traveling. It won’t happen soon. We are flying back to the US in a week to a little house we have in Kansas near our son that lives out there. We have things to attend to out there and we will spend Christmas there. We have a book we been working on and we hope to publish as a revised addition after the first of the year. I have an art studio in out little house out there and have been working on an art exhibit. Maybe we are changing our lives again with this if we can make this work. Maybe we are too old but Pam and I have never been one to give up easy. This time we will be using the media to get it out there along with taking time to improve our blog. The most used word in life, “If”. If we can pulled this off and get our boat back in the water in great shape we can live out our lives living the dream, Traveling. Writing doing art and living on the schooner Pamela Ann. A fully rigged top mast schooner. Guess where the name came from? Pam and I have been married 60 years now. How old is too old? I guess with this we will just have to wait and see.

                                        The Adventurer of Life Goes On

We hope to have Pamela Ann back in her element of sailing in the new year 2025.

 

Food We Like

Living like we do and have now most of our life people say we live hard. I have wrote about this before. We have someone we met here that says he would rather be unhappy and rich than happy and poor. I think a lot of people feel that way. We have been bothered by people now most of our lives that feel that way I think. When Pam and I ran away at the ages of 15 and 17 and got married we were on our own with no help by the end of that week. I had quit school, lied about my age and was working in a cotton mill running a man’s job when we ran away. I had a car, I was making payments on. We rented a small house down a dirt road and as I said we were now on our own doing the best we could with what I was making at 17. We decided to get rid of the car we were making payments on and I bought and old car that needed work. A 1952 Chevy. Remember this was a long time ago. Pam and I have been married 60 years now. After I got it running Pam was 16 at the time and we already had a baby. We did not have sex before we were married but getting pregnant this soon after we married meant Pam was not going back to school. Here we were teenagers with a baby with out a high school diploma. Like I said we have had a life time of criticism. I worked nights and slept during the day and Pam took the baby with her in his little bassinet out and polished and cleaned that old car. It ran good and looked like it was new. Still heard people saying we were living hard driving that old car I put back together from junk. It has never stopped after all these years.

Aboard Pamela Ann

Now living on a home-built boat we built ourselves traveling we have tanks to carry water. One for drinking water and one for shower water. The shower water tank we can catch rain water off the decks. We cook with propane so we have to take our tanks in some where to have them filled. Power if we are not near a dock is a wind generator and a solar panels. The motors have alternators so if we are running the motors we can get power from there but you have to monitor how much you have, you can use to get along. The fridge is the power pig but so nice to have. Traveling, food can become a problem with finding what you like to eat when you get to shore. Even traveling in the United States what people eat can change a lot. Pam and I are from the deep south so we like southern cooking. Our boat is well equipped to live off the grid.

Grits  and Sausage

A little while after we arrived back here in Guatemala we are grinding dried corn, You can find it here to make grits. We also found some pork with a lots of fat so we made sausage from our old family recipe, just like we made back on the farm.

Our grain grinder. We brought it here in Guatemala. We make grits with. 

We made our grits. They are in the jar. The sausage is ready. Guess what we had for supper and breakfast?

At our house in Kansas we have an electric meat grinder. One of the first things we do when we arrive in the US is go to the grocery store and by meat to make sausage.  We make up several pounds and freeze it.

Maybe, we are living hard and don’t know it. Maybe this is living poor but happy, as the man said he would never want. I don’t think now we will ever be rich and unhappy. Sometimes I think not knowing how poor you are is a blessing. In any case we enjoy the way we do things.

                                        The Adventure of Life Goes On

 

 

A Parade in Guatemala

If you read our blog you know we live in two worlds now after we accidentally bought a house a few year back in the center of Kansas. Our little house out on the prairie. How do we live in two worlds? For 40 years now we have lived and traveled on boats. Here in Guatemala in the Western Caribbean you can only stay for 90 day and you have to leave for 72 hours or pay a fine. It is called fleshing up your passport. Our boat we designed and built ourselves and went sailing is here in a boat yard where we are doing some repairs and getting it ready to take back to the US. Now with us having our little house back in the states we stay here for around 90 days and fly back to the US and stay there for a few months before we come back. At one time flying was cheap. But doing this lately with politics and inflation it’s a lot harder now. Maybe now it being an election year it will get better. We still love living on our boat when we are here. It’s hard to know about events here when events are going to happen but Pam listens every morning to the cruiser’s net on the VHF radio. Boaters use VHF radios to talk to each other and we try to do a few things here beside work. They have a celebration some people call a Wolfe Dance here and I don’t know why it’s called that or why they celebrate it but it’s crazy. They stop traffic in town and have a parade with lots of pretty girls and lots of fire crackers. In the US a pack of fire crackers are maybe 6 inches long. Here maybe 20 feet long. They lay this long roll out in the street and set them off. Now after all that you have smoke and paper every where. To make this more interesting they do it all the way through town in front of the parade as it passes through town.

The Parade is coming

Getting more fireworks ready.

Beginning of the parade.

We don’t understand these costumes. They have to be hot.

The people in the parade, for some reason they wear rubber mask that have white people features as you can see in these pictures. The parade goes on through town to finish in place under the bridge, that goes across the river. There they have a stage and beautiful girls dancing on stage. There people dance, buy food to eat and the music is so loud it hurts your ears. Remember when you are looking at these pictures all these people are wearing mast. This is not their real faces. It’s truly something to see. Don’t understand it but who cares? It is part of the life we see in another cultural. Living like we do we get to see different events that goes on in these different and interesting places.

                               The Adventure of Life Goes On

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