It happened! The motor came back (more about that later….)
Ross Marine, or MarineMax
Marina is located right in front of the Aquarium, a fine location. Bart, the MarineMax ‘guy with a golf cart’ gave us a lift to the
bus stop, and we rode the [free] trolley to the Chattanooga Choo Choo where we
picked up a souvenir coffee mug for my brother.
The choo choo on the mug he bought 40 or so years ago has been lost to
the dishwasher.
Happily, the trolley brought
us back to 212 Market---my favorite restaurant, the one with the gluten free
menu. Delovely. Walked ‘home’ and at 7:30 we watched with
curiosity as a Stand Up Paddle Boarderwent back and forth across the
Tennessee---maintaining a straight course next to the bridge, despite a 2-1/2
mph current! Of course we went out to chat.
Ben Friberg’s story can be
found at www.CubaSUP.com. His intention is to be the first person to ride
a StandUpPaddleboard across the Gulf of Mexico from Cuba to Key West! Really. He has governmental permissions, and a crew of
11 on a sailing catamaran to ride near him.
His plan is to complete the 90 mile trip in less than 24 hours. That
is as soon as he has a weather window.
(I just checked, he is waiting in Cuba for good weather.) Ben has paddled over 248 miles on the Yukon
River in Alaska, and up and down every river, creek and stream on this part of
the Tennessee so this isn’t such a long trip, but I know what we go through
with the weather on the Gulf, and we are inside a great big boat. It does give one pause, doesn’t it?
Another type of paddler, the
antique Paddlewheeler DELTA QUEEN is now a hotel, and is permanently docked
just across the Tennessee from us. Sadly, they don’t serve dinner. We made a last minute decision not to walk
across the bridge for the 7am breakfast buffet.
Next time.
By 7:15 Thursday morning we
were underway, and at 9 am it became 8 am again as we passed into Central
Standard Time. Long day! One interesting thing we saw was the Coast
Guard repairing buoys. Actually, they
were
replacing some that have gone missing.
Fun to watch---and stay out of the way.
Lock, Marina, Lock and
suddenly we’re back in Huntsville, AL where
YOUNG AMERICA got in line with SEA DREAM and LONE WOLF, creating a GH
display that turned heads and brought out many cameras.
On Saturday, Mike and Linda Borum (and Louis
the Sea Dog) returned from Nashville, and Sunday evening Kathy and Jim McQuade
arrived from Bluffton, SC. With
cars!
So off we went with the
Borum’s. What a great weekend! We toured the historic part of Huntsville,
where the old train depot is filled with Civil War memorabilia. The railroad here was taken by the Union
forces, breaking a major east-west Confederate supply line. The building became a prison housing
hundreds of Confederate captives. Graffiti from 150+ years ago can still be
seen on the walls.
Outside we were delighted with the ‘climb
aboard’ train and the fire truck whose engine startled kids large and small
when they pushed the ‘start’ button! A
fun display.
Another neat part was the
roundhouse. A 440 steam engine sat on
the turntable, patiently awaiting service. Approximately 25,000 of those wood,
coal or oil fired steam engines were built in America.
The railway was THE way, back then.
Saturday evening we were
incredibly lucky to be able to attend a Drum Corps International show. Every November, DCI auditions kids age 13-21,
and the lucky ones who make the cut have the opportunity to learn music,
marching, precision, teamwork, stamina, and self-confidence as a member of a
competing drum corps.
In the spring there are two
weeks of camp to get acquainted with each other and to learn ridiculously
intricate and difficult music and marching programs. Then comes a six-week tour
(this was Huntsville’s first time as a venue) for tweaking the routine into a
world class performance.
Each Corps
becomes a ‘mobile village’, traveling in a convoy of 6-8 vehicles with up to
150 members, plus staff, volunteers,
equipment and supplies. This year’s tour
visited 36 states with 100 performance sites.
The tour will end in Indianapolis, IN Aug. 6-8 for the final competition.
Fifteen Corps of the twenty
two groups performed in Huntsville and as luck would have it, the winner of the
evening was
the Madison Scouts—the Corps
my nephew and godson, Tracy, marched with when he was a young man. A very wonderful evening.
Next day we went to the Marshall
Space Center Museum and Rocket Center.
Spent a full day there, seeing movies about the Junk in Space and
Astrology work being done to discover more and more about the Universe. It was fascinating, and a bit
overwhelming. My mind boggled at the
enormity of the projects, the time, money and expertise invested and most
profoundly, the discovery of how little we know about so much.
I was very happy to learn
that Werner Von Braun lived to see the success of the Apollo moon program, even
though John Kennedy did not.
Monday Fred spent aloft,
working on the afore-mentioned Dinghy motor.
We know that when it is finally fully fixed we’re going to love it. It is definitely a process. There were many
small malfunctions inside the case of that puppy, and as of today, they all
seem to have been corrected. Ask Fred.
Monday evening, the six of us
went to Rosie’s Cantina for a yummy Mexican dinner.
And then we are off. The Borums went home to Nashville to wait out
the hurricane season, the McQuades are heading for Chattanooga, and we’re on
our way to Minneapolis!
Will keep you posted! In the meantime, be well, and remember to
breathe!
No comments:
Post a Comment