SEAHAWKS!!!!

We never thought we'd see the day.

The Seattle Seahawks are going to the Super Bowl.

Grown men cried. Fans took hours to leave Qwest field. Pioneer Square rocked through the night. And in the Maier household, voices were lost, rats were frightened by all the noise, and sleep was hard to come by.

Our favorite sign in the crowd: "East Coast Media -- How do you like us now?"

Hats off to the whole team (but especially the defense)!!

See you in Detroit!!

Manhandling Rampage
Detroit Ticket Packages

Percolations 2

Here are some more previously unreported (I think) moments from our almost-cruise, in rough chronological order:

** Girls swimming alongside the dinghy at Cat Island. On one of our trips to shore, Marjie and Chloe decided to swim back to the boat ('though Chloe felt a bit nervous about being in the water with all the dolphins that had been around that day). It was a pretty long way, so Frank and I put-putted alongside them in the dinghy. When they got tired or we got bored (which came first, I can't remember), the girls grabbed on to the sides of the Tender, and we towed them. It was thrilling for all -- for them because they liked the speed and face-splashing, and for us because we felt like we were trolling for sharks with our daughters as bait. ;-)

** Getting turned away from Gulfport by the police boat. We stopped in there hoping to top off the diesel before the passage, but they met us at the harbor entrance and told us to go away. The harbor was completely closed due to Katrina damage.

** How good food tasted during the passage (once we quit barfing). For instance, we had one fabulous lunch – truly, one of the most delicious meals of our lives – consisting of crushed tortilla chips, Ritz crackers, salsa, and refried beans directly from the can. YUM!!

** Naples is a really pretty city. At the time, coming as we were from hurricane-ravaged Slidell, we were mostly aware of it being whole and undamaged. But now that we look back on it, having seen quite a bit more of Florida than we ever expected, we can “see” better how nice it was. It’s what people think of when they fantasize about winters in Florida, with pretty homes and quaint businesses; clean, palm-lined streets; a feeling that the whole world is on vacation; and an unmatched level of civic pride. I assume all that will soon be true again as they recover from Wilma.

** Walking to the Naples West Marine. When we pulled into the guest dock in Naples, they gave us a little city map. It says right on it, "Map is not to scale," but we figured it couldn't be *that* much off. It was. We set out one day to walk to West Marine, a distance of maybe 10 city blocks by the map and about 100 miles in reality. Okay, not 100, but it was a LONG way, and it was REALLY HOT. When we hit our moment of worst discouragement, lo and behold, there was a Joe's Crab Shack. We went in and had gigantic lemonades and a shrimp platter. You should have seen the waiter's eyes pop when he came back three minutes after serving our drinks to find that Chloe had emptied her lemonade glass already. Much refreshed and armed with the knowledge that we were actually close to West Marine now, we made the rest of the walk in good time and good spirits. A taxicab later returned us to the marina.

** Talking to Chiara. We miss our Italian daughter tremendously, every minute of the day!! But our phone conversations with her made for some of our best moments of the trip. The most memorable was that one lovely day at the Dry Tortugas. Totally fed up with being out of contact with her, I said, "I don't care what it costs!" and fired up the satellite phone one morning. We all took turns talking to her, and it was a happy, festive time. Afterwards, I was a little weepy but felt actual physical relief for having spoken to her. Then Frank and I got in the dinghy to go ashore and check the Wilma predictions. The forecast that morning said that the storm wasn’t coming to the Keys. It was erroneous but nicely timed to give us one lovely, relaxed day at Fort Jefferson.

** We aren’t the only clumsy sailors around. I had some moments on the passage of feeling like a pretty inept sailor, so it was kind of nice to sail to Key West with Delfina and see somebody else make some sailing errors. It was nothing major -- they made a couple of inadvertent tacks -- but it was reassuring.

** Visiting the Key West Municipal Library. My best friend, Stephanie -- who used to live in KW -- had a dream that we went to the Key West library. Not ones to ignore psychic vibrations, and since we had plans to go there anyway :-), we soon became regular patrons. They gave us a library card in exchange for $15, which seems pretty cheap now considering all the books, movies, and Internet time we got for it.

** Rain drills. Rain is always a major event on a sailboat in the tropics, because you typically have every port and hatch open in order to get some much needed ventilation. On the Zombie Princess (and a good percentage of the rest of the sailboats down there), this is compounded by a few leaky ports. So, every time it started to rain (once a day, on average), we had a mad scramble, "all hands" effort to close everything up and set out absorbent materials (diapers) under the leaky spots. We've been home for a month, in our nice waterproof house, and I still tense up and get ready for action when I hear it start to rain (17 times a day, on average). (Did I mention that we are currently enjoying a rain streak in Western Washington? It's rained at least once every day for something like 30 consecutive days, and rain is predicted for every day this week.)

** The Zombie Princess is one tough little boat. But I suppose you had all managed to figure that out, reading between the lines of this blog.

KQR

P.S. This may be the first time in my life I actually managed to follow through on a New Year's resolution!

Jerry

Our nephew-son (Jerry is Frank's sister Judy's son who lived with us for his junior and senior years in high school) is in the Marines, currently stationed west of Baghdad. We spoke to him yesterday. He says he's doing all right, except that they're all freezing right now. Seems the nice warm clothes the military provides don't fit real well under body armor. Fortunately, Jerry usually gets to stay in the warm truck with the radio.

Their base has been rocketed a couple of times since his arrival there in December, but the attacks went somewhat wide. He did send us a photo of a blasted toilet seat. The guy using the head at the time the rocket hit was unhurt.

There is some hope that Jerry's unit will be rotated out in the spring. Keep your fingers crossed for us. We really, *really*, REALLY want him out of there.

Photo of Chiara (because we really miss her!)

Here's a photo from Chiara's graduation party, not long before she went home to Italy.

We miss you, K-Dogg!!!!

Photo from New Year's Eve (by request!)

I was woefully neglectful of the camera at our New Year's Eve party, but I did get this one of Marjie and Ella asleep together on their pallet in the basement.

Still here?

Just in case anybody is reading this now that our lives are ever so much less fraught with danger, here's what we've been up to.

With the holidays done, we have stepped up our efforts to complete our big bedroom swap. Marjie is essentially moved into Chiara's old room, and as of two days ago, Chloe is essentially moved into our old room. Now comes the hard part: cleaning out 13 years of kid stuff from the upstairs bedroom. We've got the main room emptied, but that still leaves two closets, the toy shelves, the little alcoves that were Marjie's and Chloe's private spaces, and the 3/4 bath. It's all my fault for being a packrat and passing on the tendency to my kids!

Frank has moved up our bedframe and boxspring, and he cleaned the carpet up there. He accomplished these things on his own because I managed to slip on the stairs while moving Chloe's mattress down to the basement. My ankle is well sprained and quite colorful, but there's definite improvement already, and I'm being careful not to re-injure it. Frank's fancy Mardi Gras walking stick has come in handy and provides a much more dignified form of transportation than the crawling I was doing initially (much to the girls' amusement).

We held our annual New Year's Eve sleepover with all the cousins (eight girls this year, ranging in age from 2 to 13). It was the usual madhouse festivities, complete with musical chairs, ice cream sundaes, movies, and sparklers and shouting at midnight, even though we had to hold the party on Dec. 30th because some of the girls had a wedding to go to on the real New Year's Eve (our congrats to Tony and Jennifer!). Our neighbors thought we were nuts when we all went outside to count down to Dec. 31st. :-) Two-year-old Ella was the star of the show and probably the one who had the most fun, even if she did burst into tears when her mom came to pick her up the next morning, giving every impression that we'd spent the night torturing her.

Our actual New Year's Eve was a quiet one, 'though we had to struggle to stay awake that long. At midnight, we went out front to count down again and ended up receiving an impromptu invitation from our favorite neighbors to go hang around their backyard firepit. I was really dragging and left after only a short visit, only to get caught up watching Kate & Leopold on late-night TV with Chloe.

After two short nights, it was exceedingly difficult to get up and watch the Seahawks lose in the morning game on Jan. 1st, but we did. I wish Sean Alexander had been in Seattle when he broke the single-season touchdown record. As it was, the announcers barely commented on his performance, choosing instead to speculate endlessly and pointlessly about Brett Favre's likely (and one-season-too-late) retirement. East Coast bias rears its ugly head.

I return to work at Microsoft on the 17th, and Marjie and Chloe (and Frank) are preparing for a stint dogsitting Angelo for Grandma and Papa, who are traveling to Mexico. Frank is also preparing for some Ty Pennington time, since both girls have big plans for platforms and things for their new bedrooms.

I still have more Percolations to write up, quite a few of them, actually. Posting some of them before my return to work is one of my New Year's resolutions. ;-)

Partial update from New Orleans

The sale of Marty's house should go through in January. Having stayed dry and intact through the storms, it sold for about 18% more than they had expected pre-Katrina, with the new owners no doubt still feeling they got an excellent bargain. The place is really fresh and pretty after all the hard work put in by Garry, Judy, Chris, and, to a lesser extent, Frank and Marjie.

Judy and Garry have phone service at their place in Slidell again. It only took four months!

Cori came home from North Carolina for Christmas, to visit with our family and hers.

And Jerry is in Iraq. :-( Please keep a good thought for his safety and for a better set of orders for his unit.

Merry Christmas!

Top: Megan (10), Chloe (11), Marjie (13), Chelsea (13)
Middle: Emma Lou (6), Madison (7)
Bottom: Ella Bella (2)

Marjie and Frank

Finally! A listing!

It has taken SO long to get the Zombie Princess' listing on the Internet! Wilma has things marine and electronic in a tailspin down there, I guess, although it was amazing how fast the listing appeared once I'd discovered that our broker's parent company hadn't paid their YachtWorld bill. Anyway, it is up now, and it has several pictures of our boat, for those who are curious about our living space these past months. They left off the galley photo for some reason; I'm working on getting that added.

To view the listing, click here, and then click the Full Specs button.

KQR

Ratty holidays to you

Road notes and some belated photos

Florida
We chose the Lake Okeechobee route from Miami to Orlando. A lot of it was scenic/interesting, with the occasional gator and wings-hung-out-to-dry cormorant sighting, but our view of the lake itself was obscured by a levee. And then traffic through the greater Orlando metropolitan area was awful. All in all, we might have preferred the turnpike. ;-)

We spent Night 2 in Gainesville, where the temperatures dropped down into the @*#(! range. We actually had to run the heater and put on coats!

About the time we hit I-10, the van's engine malfunction light came on. The ol' tighten-the-gas-cap trick didn't help, so we drove into the Honda dealership in Ft. Walton Beach. They diagnosed some clogging in the emissions system, strangely reminiscent of our exhaust-elbow problem on the boat back in September. $200 and a few hours later, we were able to backtrack to Destin.

Many of you will recall that the four of us lived in Destin the winter of '96/'97 and have been back there for a couple of vacations since. The Florida panhandle has the best beaches Frank and I have ever visited, and that includes the Caribbean and Hawaii. I called the sand there sugar sand, as people are wont to do, but the texture is really closer to flour. It is very soft, very fine, and very white. Gorgeous. The girls and I spent a lovely couple of hours beachcombing (yes, some hurricane debris and damage here), digging, and scribbling movie quotes in the sand. The temperatures in Destin were a bit milder, too, although we did have the mother of all rainstorms our second morning there. (Seduced by the microwave and refrigerator in our hotel room, we just had to stay two nights!)

Alabama and Mississippi
Zoom zoom zoom.

Louisiana
Louisiana is still a very sad place. The scene in Florida is one of recovery; in Louisiana, destruction. East New Orleans made me cry, because it's a very battered ghost town still, more than three months after Katrina. Despite the claims of certain radio 'personalities' I could mention, things in Louisiana are NOT getting back to normal. Well, they are, but the pace of the return is beyond slow, and there are whole cities there that may never recover.

We drove over the Twin Spans. They have all traffic moved onto one side of the freeway there, to get past the section of I-10 that fell into Lake Pontchartrain. We were impressed at the amount of repair. Interstate commerce is a powerful motivator.

Farther west, where Chris and Marty live, the situation is somewhat better. Not normal, but livable. About a third of businesses are open, with limited, variable hours. Most houses still have heaps of debris in their front yards; Frank has taken to calling it "house puke." Make no mistake, residents here are aware every minute of every day that they are in a disaster area. Nevertheless, Christmas decorations are up, and life goes on.

We had a nice visit with Marty at his retirement villa. The staff there is working hard to reestablish their pre-Katrina routines, and Marty was looking forward to watching the Seahawks during that night's Monday Night Football party in the common room. He says not all of the staff and residents have returned, but he is obviously happy to be home, and he looked good.

We missed Chris but were able to visit briefly with her son, Paul, and his frisky dog, Sancho. Paul is working for a clean-up company. He is able to work at home mostly, working up bid and invoice spreadsheets. Having been in on some large-scale cleanup operations, he is more optimistic than I am about the amount of recovery that can happen. I hope he's right!

Monday night, we had dinner with Bob and Anita. Finding an open restaurant was a bit challenging, and we were on Veterans Blvd., one of the main drags in Metairie. Chevy's came through, though, and we had a nice visit. After we said our good-byes, we made our shivering way to the van and resumed our trek west, listening to our Seahawks kick butt on the radio. About half-time, we pulled into a motel in Lafayette, where we were able to watch the less exciting but still triumphant second half. Our first Seahawks game all year!!!

Lest we forget
Western Louisiana and eastern Texas were hit very hard by Rita. The damage there is being overlooked by the media (mostly), probably because no major metropolitan or tourist areas are involved, but it is as bad as anything we saw in New Orleans and Florida. Along one short stretch of Texas freeway, we saw three separate churches whose north faces were ripped off. Gigantic oaks have crushed homes that have obviously been given up for lost. And we saw more blue-tarp roofs through here than even in east New Orleans.

Mother Nature really had it in for Louisiana this year.

T-t-t-texas
I don't think I've ever been so cold. The cold snap that chilled us in Florida and Louisiana turned us into blue popsicles in Texas. The wind was bitter and relentless. On the bright side, the sunset was extraordinary. We spent Tuesday night in Ft. Stockton.

New Mexico
We were there for about two hours. It was uneventful.

Arizona
I love Arizona. But by this time, we had promised the girls we'd do our best to get home by Saturday the 10th so they could attend a tree-decorating party at my mom's. It meant driving with dedication, despite the lure of the beautiful Arizona scenery. We enjoyed another spectacular sunset past Tucson, cruised through the huge freeway superstructures of Phoenix, and settled in for the night in Buckeye.

California
We've driven the length of California so many times, it was mostly a chore this time around. We did cope with and enjoy some amazing fog, and were impressed by our 3rd stunning sunset in a row. Thursday night, we stayed in Tulare (north of Bakersfield on Hwy. 99). Friday, we drove past the stunning vistas of feedlots (not really stunning, except the smell), Shasta Lake (really stunning), and Mt. Shasta (and how!), and it was a very happy Krewe that crossed into Oregon about 8 p.m. On a whim, I took exit #1 so we could get out and play in the snow for two seconds. It turned out not to have a return ramp to I-5 N., so we ended up sailing right on back into California to turn around at exit #796 or whatever it is. The girls and I were wildly entertained by this, and cheered even louder entering Oregon the second time. I think Frank was less amused. :-)

Oregon
Somebody else pumped our gas for us. That's Oregon for you (state law requires attendants do the pumping). We slept in Eugene. Portland was as pretty as ever. And then we crossed the mighty Columbia River into...

Washington!!
...where we promptly got stuck in traffic. That's Washington for you. Travel the entire country and people keep right except to pass. Enter Washington and everybody jumps into the left lane. And traffic stops. Coincidence? I think not.

We did eventually make it to our very own hometown, though, with about two hours to spare before Grandma's party.

We got off the freeway and entered our residential neighborhood. It hadn't really occurred to us, but that was our first visit to a non-hurricane-ravaged residential neighborhood since Houston in early September. The first words out of my mouth were "It's so clean!" The lack of destruction here seems like a miracle, and it is certainly a big psychological relief. (Washington locals who want to know what the Katrina aftermath is like should imagine Tacoma to Marysville flooded then dried out again, with mud and mildew everywhere, and with *every single house* gutted onto its front lawn. Then imagine living in that environment for three months, with no real end in sight.)

And now
We've been home for a week. We're almost unpacked, almost settled into life here, almost ready for Christmas, and almost happy to be here. Well, the girls are completely thrilled to be here. Frank and I are still grieving for what should have been and wishing things were different.

We did finally plug in the CF card from our camera and found some poignant pictures of our time in Bayou Bonfouca. It's pretty ironic that turned out to be our only real cruising time, but they're fun shots. I'll close with a few of those.


Note all the cruiser gear shown in the 3rd picture: sun awnings, spare gas and water tanks, windscoop (colorful "sail" over the forward hatch, funnels breezes into the cabin), mosquito netting, laundry/dishes bucket, and cushion and pillow for lounging on the bow. The scuff marks on the side of the boat are Katrina damage. There are similar marks on the port side, too.

KQR

Home again, home again, jiggety jog

Yes, we are back to being landlubbers. Our 4,200-mile drive home was long and mostly uneventful. We froze from about Gainesville on, with our two days in Destin a relatively warm stretch and with Texas being especially frigid thanks to a cold snap. California and Oregon were more temperate, but very foggy.

Back in the great northwest, we're unpacking, getting back on top of the details of real life, and suffering a certain amount of culture and climate shock. We're also kind of jet-lagged after all the time-zone changes. But I do have some things to say to wrap up this blog, percolated stories to add belatedly and reflections-in-conclusion to share. If you check back in a few days, I might have gotten caught up enough to get some writing done.

KQR

'Home' in Destin, FL

After an unexciting bit of car trouble, we are cozy in our old stomping grounds. Sugar sand at last!

The last cruise of the Zombie Princess

Yesterday morning, we put to sea once again, to sail around Key West to the new home of the Zombie Princess at Peninsular Marine boat yard. It was a beautiful, sunny sail, with crisp wind and calm seas, but it was a bit chilly! (A cold front has come through that's bumped the high temp down to about 71 degrees. Brr!!) Marjie spent most of the sail huddled under a blanket, and we got an early (before noon) start, so nightowl Chloe slept through the whole thing. But we had a completely uneventful trip, believe it or not. No rain, no giant swells, no seasickness, so sail mishaps/errors, no spills below. Amazing.

At the boat yard, we tied up to the seawall and emptied off the last of our belongings. The rats found their shady space on the wall pretty interesting, and the yard guys found the rats pretty interesting. But duty called, and before long, the ZP was loaded onto the TravelLift, going up.

Seeing the bottom was pretty interesting. It was "done" last June when we bought the boat, but you couldn't tell by looking at it. I think they didn't do a very careful job. On the other hand, the boat's been through three big storms. There are a couple of whacks (my highly technical term for places where we obviously hit something), one at the bow and one at the crease of the keel, that must be from Katrina. I hope potential buyers won't be too turned off by them.

As for the Krewe, we are headed home. I write this from a motel in Florida City, the gateway to the Keys, or, in our case, the gateway to the continental United States. We've rented a small U-Haul trailer so we can haul home the dinghy and motor. (Our too casual effort to sell them resulted in only one lowball offer. We have always been tempted to keep them as our boat for home, and we figure it won't be too late to sell them once we get there.) It also let us pack quickly and with abandon, instead of having to carefully apportion van space. So we're loaded for bear.

We're keeping our options loose for the trip home, taking one day at a time. Today's big debate is which route to take through Florida. The choices are the Florida Turnpike (efficient but dull with about $20 worth of tolls), Alligator Alley (very, very cool -- gators sun themselves along the freeway -- with a return trip to Naples on the other side, but a longer, squared-off route), or this little principal highway that runs by Lake Okeechobee (an unknown, probably scenic but slow). Whatever we choose, we're all looking forward to some fun land cruising.

KQR

The cork pops

We move to the boatyard tomorrow, get on the road on Fri. Mixed feelings as we spend our last hours aboard the ZP.

Percolations 1

With time to breathe, we've had cruise memories percolating up in our minds and conversations, events and moments and observations that didn't previously make the blog. I'm almost out of Internet time here at the KW library, so I'll share just one now, then add more later.

**Chloe teaches Marjie to drink**
As you might recall, during the passage, Chloe got to a point where she began feeling human. She was stretched out on one of the dinette benches, crosswise to the boat's motion. Part of what helped her is finding a jug of juice on the floor under the table. She began drinking that. Up in the cockpit, we were aware that she was getting fluids, but didn't really understand how much juice she'd consumed until she popped up in the companionway with the nearly empty jug. The child was positively giddy on a sugar high. I asked her to share the remaining juice with Marjie, and she began teaching Marjie how to wrap her lips around the mouth of the jug so as to prevent sloppage when the boat moved. She made perfectly ridiculous "O" shapes with her mouth that had us -- even poor Marjie -- cracking up. It was a most welcome moment of hilarity after a grim couple of days. Weeks later, Chloe still remembers the necessary "O" and still gets a chuckle when she demonstrates it.

KQR

Creeping up on December

"The sun is shining, the sky is blue, the orange and palm trees sway; there's never been such a day in Key West, F-l-a." (with apologies to Barbra Streisand)

I hear rumors that winter has arrived in some parts of the world. Not so here. So, while we're getting a bit frustrated and anxious about the slow pace of things here, we are certainly enjoying the weather! Still hitting 80 or better during the day, with nights in the 70's. Love it!

As for getting out of here, we're hoping that today will be the day the cork pops and we get some action. Hurricane recovery efforts at the boat yards and then the holiday pretty much meant no action toward our goals for two weeks. Tough when we all just want to be home now.

On the bright side with the sunshine is the fun we're having as a family. We're still more homebodies (boatbodies?) than tourists, preferring to hang out reading, watching movies, and having family game nights, but it's a good time. Last night, we finally tried out Fluxx, a wacky card game, and we all *really* loved it. The rules and the goal of the game keep changing, so there's a lot of laughter and having to remind each other of what comes next. Kind of like life, I guess....

KQR

Gobble gobble

It sure doesn't feel like November here, but Happy Thanksgiving anyway, with love from the Krewe!

The Conch Republic

I learned the story behind Key West's being called the Conch Republic. Here's the story, borrowed from one of Lonely Planet's guides:

"In 1982, the U.S. Border Patrol set up sporadic roadblocks on U.S. 1 just south of Florida City in an attempt to stop drug smugglers and illegal aliens driving up fom the Keys. As traffic jams and anger mounted, many tourists decided to forgo the Keys altogether.

"Enter a bunch of outraged Conchs, led by Key West Mayor Dennis Wardlow, who came up with brilliant idea of seceding from the U.S. They established the nation of the Conch Republic on April 23, 1982, seceded from the U.S., rebelled for one minute, and then surrendered and requested $1 billion in foreign aid and war relief.

"Every April, Conchs celebrate the anniversary of those heady days."

The official store of the Conch Republic is located on Duval Street. There, you can purchase flags, t-shirts, shot glasses, etc., bearing the bright Conch Republic logo. You can also read posters and watch a video that reveal the more entertaining details of the rebellion. For instance, the Conch weapon of choice was hard Cuban bread, and their troops were sustained by conch chowder and Key lime pie.

KQR

Conchs

Residents of Key West refer to themselves as Conchs, and they call Key West “the Conch Republic.” The conch is even the fierce and frightening (not) mascot of Key West High School.

From what we’ve observed, your typical Conch is very friendly, a bit scruffy, a bit sun-weathered, smokes and drinks however much s/he damn well pleases, and feels vastly superior to mainlanders. One of the most popular bumper stickers here says “Slow down! This ain’t the mainland!” (No, we haven’t observed that Conch drivers are any less intense behind the wheel than the rest of us). They’re a funny mix of liberals and conservatives, but as a group they are environmentally conscious enough that bicycles are everywhere. (The marina here has a couple of sizable areas dedicated to scooter and bicycle parking.)

So, no, not all Floridians – or even Keys residents – are Conchs, and I think you have to live on Key West quite a while before you earn the name.