The Pretenders in Aspen

On Wednesday night, Nan and I were in Aspen to see the Pretenders at Belly Up. They are on tour promoting their new album, Break up the Concrete, and passed through western Colorado between gigs in Denver and Dallas. Belly Up's owner, Michael Goldberg, has done an amazing job booking first-rate bands into his popular nightclub. In the last couple of years, we have seen the English Beat, Deep Purple, Todd Rundgren, and the Dandy Warhols. There are some important factors working in Belly Up's favor: the nightclub is small so most big acts sell out, even with high ticket prices; it is located in an area that makes it a natural link to larger cities; and musicians enjoy playing in Aspen, despite the high altitude, some even treating it as a vacation from their busy tour schedules. Whatever the particular reasons, we are more than happy to take advantage of the opportunities as often as we can.

The Pretenders were terrific. They opened with "Boots of Chinese Plastic" and another one off the new album, and then launched into "Talk of the Town" and "Message of Love", two of their classic hits. They continued in that mode, switching between new material and old, for a solid hour and a half, ending with two two-song encores. The crowd went wild with every familiar song, like "Brass in Pocket" and "Back on the Chain Gang", singing the lyrics back to the band and bouncing around the dance floor like it was still the early 1980s. The place was packed so Nan and I stayed in our seats near the bar, where I took the photo below using my iPhone, which I have decided takes pretty bad photos in concert settings. The shutter is just too slow for the lighting, so the photos are always blurry. Photoshop helps but not much. Click the photo for a larger view.

The best thing about the concert for me was a new appreciation for how talented and unique singer/ songwriter/ guitarist Chrissie Hynde is. She has fronted the Pretenders since 1978, through the deaths of two original band members and a constantly changing line-up of musicians, but her music has never wavered. You can tell a Pretenders song in the first few seconds, or as soon as you hear her distinctive voice. Chrissie's guitar playing was incredible. I don't know what I expected, never having seen even a live video, but she played her silver Fender Telecaster like a rhythm guitar rock god, like Keith Richards if he could also sing like Mick Jagger at the same time. It made me think she must be the most talented woman in rock and roll. At age 57, she looks the same as she always has, with her trademark dark bangs and tight jeans, and shows no signs of slowing down. Go, Chrissie, go!

"Leave It to Beaver"

When I was attending the University of Wisconsin in the late 1970s, we used to watch late afternoon reruns of "Leave It to Beaver" in Curt Haensel's dorm room before heading over to the commons for dinner. We called it "our daily dose of morals." If you're familiar with the TV show, which originally ran from 1957 to 1963, you know that every episode presented a lesson to be learned from Theodore "the Beaver" Cleaver's misadventures, usually explained to him in knowing tones by father Ward, played by real-life pastor Hugh Beaumont, and mother June.

Blogging frequently reminds me of an episode in which the Beaver decided to keep a diary. His problem was that his life was so ordinary that he didn't have anything to write about. So he started doing crazy things to provide himself with subject matter. Of course, he got into trouble and had to confess to his parents what he was up to. The lesson was contained in Ward and June's reaction: "Oh, Theodore! You don't need to impress us. We love you just the way you are."

The connection between living life and writing about it is intriguing. If we were required to write about every aspect of our lives, we might live a little differently, maybe a little larger and more honestly. Being able to pick and choose the events we share allows us to present ourselves in a better light, to craft a persona of our own choosing. Does it go to the Beaver's extreme, where we do something just to write about it, or is it a more subtle influence, where we know in the back of our minds that there is a possible blog entry in everything we do?

Nan's good deed

A few weeks before Christmas, Nan noticed that a homeless man who hangs around at a busy intersection downtown had a dog. It was a medium-sized, rust-colored mutt, and it followed the man everywhere. Sometimes she would see the man riding an old bicycle with the dog balanced on a rack on the back. When she told me about them, she said she felt sorry for the dog. We both smiled about that because we have a saying that when you see a homeless guy with a dog, you always feel worse for the dog than you do for the guy. She said she was going to buy a bag of Kibbles & Bits and give it to them. I told her it was a thoughtful thing to do but that she should be careful.

So Nan went about her shopping and errands with a bag of dog food in the car for a few days until she spotted the man and his dog at a small park near the busy intersection. She pulled up at the curb, rolled down the window and called the man over. She handed him the dog food, saying only that she thought he could use some food for his dog. She said he was touched and genuinely thankful, and not threatening in any way. The next day we saw the man pushing his bike with the dog food strapped to the rack and the dog trailing behind. I could tell Nan was pleased to know that the dog was being well fed now.

But then we didn't see the man and his dog for several days. The next time Nan spotted the dog, it was walking with a different man. There had been a report on the news about the murder of a homeless man by another homeless man, and we both worried that maybe the victim was the dog's owner. When she saw the new man and the dog a second time, Nan stopped the car and asked about the other man. The new man was kind and said that the other man had taken a bad fall and was laid up for a while but that he was getting better and would be around again before too long.

Just before Christmas, Nan asked if she could share an idea with me. She said she had noticed that the man's bike was in rough shape and she wanted to get it repaired for him. I told her it was fine with me and that I would help in any way I could. She said she would try to figure out a way to coordinate it and let me know.

It wasn't until after Christmas that Nan saw the man and his dog together again, walking up the street with the bike and the other man. She went to the grocery store to get another bag of dog food and then went looking for them to discuss her idea. She found them in the park and walked over with the dog food to talk with them. She found out that the dog's name was Bear-Bear, the man's name was Jerry and that the other man was Scott, Jerry's friend. Jerry said the bike wasn't working so well, that the back brakes were shot and that it wouldn't shift gears, so if there was anything that could be done to fix it, he sure would appreciate it. Nan told him she would be back the next day to pick it up and take it to a bike shop to get it fixed.

Nan had me put the bike rack on the back of the car and drive over to the park with her. Jerry, Scott and Bear-Bear were waiting for us with the bike. Jerry walked it over and introduced himself to me. He looked to be in his mid-forties and rough from living outdoors, but there was no look of drug addiction or smell of alcohol about him. When I shook his gloved hand, it was gnarled and twisted. He said the fall he had taken had knocked him out and that he had frostbitten his fingers as a result. He would be going to the hospital for surgery in a few days to have the affected fingertips removed. Nan told me later that Jerry had been sleeping outside during this unusually cold winter because the local shelter would not allow animals and Jerry would not leave Bear-Bear outside alone. They were camping down by the Colorado River and he had slipped on an ice-covered stone.

Jerry and I looked his bike over for problems, and I started making a mental list. Jerry said the bike had sentimental value because it had gotten him from Florida to Grand Junction, so he was really hoping it could be fixed. I tried to imagine him riding this bike that far and then I tried to picture Bear-Bear riding on the rack. It boggled the mind.

Nan told Jerry and Scott that she would let them know what the bike shop had to say, and we drove over to Brown Cycles to see what they could do. We explained the situation to Chris, the owner, while he looked the bike over. He said that while the bike was a classic, a mid-80s Peugeot, it might be beyond help. He pointed at the seat post, which was jammed all the way into the frame and causing the seat tube to chip and break. He said he would try to fix this problem first to determine whether the rest of it was worth fixing. We told Chris about Bear-Bear balancing on the rack and he showed us some baskets that would make for a safer ride. And we looked at a new bell, one that said, "I 'heart' MY BIKE".

Chris called a few days later to say that George, his bike mechanic, had worked on the seat post problem and determined that it could not be fixed. The bike was used up. It was time to look at a new one or maybe a new used one. I stopped by the shop to pick up the bike and talk with George about it. He showed me exactly what the problem was, and I asked how much we owed for his work on it. He said there was no charge, that he and Chris appreciated what we were trying to do. Then he showed me some used bikes they had in the back. They were not too expensive but they were still less than the estimate Chris had given us on the repair. I said we would need to talk with Jerry about it and let them know. George said we should try to get Jerry to come in so we could be sure we were getting a bike that would fit him. I said I would have Nan talk to him about that.

Nan and I discussed it that evening and decided that the best thing we could do would be to buy Jerry a new used bike, with a basket for Bear-Bear, and also buy Scott one as a thank-you for looking after Jerry and Bear-Bear. Nan also suggested that she would help Jerry coordinate a new hospital appointment, since he missed his first one, to make sure he gets treatment for his frostbitten fingers, but that might be a little more complicated.

Yesterday, Nan took Jerry's bike back to him. She apologized that it could not be fixed and told him about our idea to get him and Scott new used bikes. Jerry was sad about his old bike but happy about getting a new one. Nan and I will go take a closer look at what Chris and George have available next week and then work out the details with Jerry and Scott. I'll let you know what happens.

Blogger posts using email

I received an email message today from Chris and KT of SV Billabong, currently hanging out in Finike, Turkey. They are promoting a product they have put together that they call Blurb Bits. It allows far-flung cruisers to stay in touch with family and friends through their blogs by posting text, images and current location maps using just email through an SSB radio connection and SailMail or a similar service.

I have been thinking about this idea myself and have experimented in the past with using Blogger’s built-in Mail-to-Blogger feature, but I have never tried it with images or links. So this post is an experiment, sent from my regular email account, that contains an old photo of Charlie as a puppy along with a Google Maps link to the exact location where he was sitting when the photo was taken: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=39.248880,-106.895943&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1. Let’s see if it works…

Follow-up: The text and photo came through just fine, although the paragraphs are widely spaced and the photo is its original size instead of a scaled-down version. In the future, I would probably use line breaks instead of paragraph breaks and format photos to fill the available center-column space. The link is not really a link but rather a Web address that would need to be copied and pasted into a browser, so I guess Blogger doesn't automatically interpret Web addresses the way Outlook and Word do. It might be worth trying the HTML "a href=" version to see how it gets interpreted. Even with the minor issues, it's pretty cool to think that it's possible to publish full-blown blog posts from anywhere in the world you can get some kind of email access.

Moby-Dick revisited

Paul and Honey Caouette enjoy hosting dinner parties. While I was with them in Miami aboard their Valiant 40, Wild Iris, they invited people over for dinner almost every evening. This was no easy feat since the boat was moored about a hundred yards from shore. They would have their dinner guests call from their cell phones when they arrived at the dock, and Paul would row the dinghy over to pick them up while Honey worked her vegetarian magic in the galley and I did little else but set the table and pour the wine.

Our guests at the second dinner party were Randy Boiko, a local marine surveyor who had done the survey on Wild Iris, and Matt Hennings, a marine mechanic who had done work on Wild Iris's diesel engine. Once the wine started flowing, Matt launched into stories about his experiences with delivering boats and working on fishing boats, where he learned his current trade out of sheer necessity. For a guy in his mid-twenties, he had already had some serious adventures.

One story Matt told reminded me of a key scene from Moby-Dick, the one where Pip the cabin boy falls overboard and almost drowns. Matt was working on a large fishing boat bottom trawling off Georges Bank near Nova Scotia. They were working around the clock and hauling in the nets every three hours. He was on deck at night when the boat's crane brought over a full net. A young man who was new onboard was trying to release the net's contents into the hold, but he was short and needed to jump to reach the catch. He slipped and fell overboard into 35-degree water. Matt said he didn't even think about what he was doing and went right in after him. He was able to grab the young man and swim him back to the boat before they were both overtaken by hypothermia, but they were both badly shaken by the event. Matt said it took him almost eight hours to stop shivering, whether from the extreme cold or from the adrenaline. He said the young man basically shut down, that after he recovered he would not return to work and wanted only to get off the boat and never return.

Moby-Dick's Pip reacted similarly to his near-death experience. It put the insignificance of his life into horrifying perspective and drew him into himself, to the extent that his shipmates thought him insane.

Matt is far enough removed from the experience now that he can chuckle about it and strong enough in his constitution that he can be humble about saving a life and yet exuberant that he is alive to tell the story.

Boat Quest, Part 13

On the Saturday while I was in Miami, I drove up to Fort Pierce to meet with Stan Dabney and take a look at a Valiant 40 sailboat he had listed through his brokerage, Offshore Atlantic Yachts, Inc. Stan is one of the founders of Valiant Yachts, and no one knows that boat or its history better than he does. The boat we looked at was Otter II, a 1979 centerboard model that is currently owned by Bruce and Phyllis from Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. They had just spent thirty days sailing up from Panama, and Phyllis, who was on hand to show the boat, said they had taken a pounding beating upwind in heavy seas. You wouldn't have known it to look at the boat, which was in immaculate condition. I had studied the listing on YachtWorld.com carefully, but text and photos didn't do her justice.

Coming directly from the Caouettes' Valiant 40, which is crammed to the gills with stuff, Otter II looked almost austere. In place of the standard teak, there was light-colored Formica on most of the vertical surfaces, which brightened the interior dramatically. The original plastic hatches had been replaced with steel ones and the woodwork was freshly varnished, making the boat shine all the more. The navigation station was nicely laid out and well organized. There was an SSB radio but Phyllis said they had not had success with getting it set up for use with email. The radar screen could be viewed easily from both the station and the cockpit.

One feature I was curious about but couldn't figure out from the listing was the centerboard's workings. The Valiant 40's off-center companionway allows the cable that raises and lowers the centerboard to run through the boat's centerline, making it relatively unobtrusive. There is a separate steel pipe next to the one that acts to connect the deck to the hull just aft of the mast. Where that pipe meets the cabin ceiling, there is a teak box containing a block which redirects the cable coming through the pipe to a winch located at the cockpit bulkhead. According to Phyllis, it takes exactly thirty turns of the winch handle to completely raise or lower the centerboard; there is no easy way to gauge its intermediate positions. The listing showed photos of the boat hauled out, with the centerboard partially lowered, but in the boatyard where she is now sitting, the boat is resting on her keel with the centerboard fully raised.

There were several nice features topsides. The mast-furled mainsail is operated electrically, making reefing as simple as pushing a button. There is a small crane for raising and lowering the heavy dinghy outboard and for moving heavy items like fuel tanks and batteries in and out of the boat. The cockpit has a nicely designed folding binnacle table, a propane barbecue on the stern rail and a booster step behind the wheel for extra height when looking over the dodger.

The only negative aspect of Otter II is that she is a "blister boat," one of the Valiant 40s built by Uniflite between 1976 and 1981 that have a blistering problem in the fiberglass laminates. Stan pointed out the many small blisters on the hull and even chipped off a few with his thumbnail. They are more cosmetic than structural and can be repaired by stripping off and replacing the outer layers of fiberglass. Stan said that this is an expensive and unpredictable process in the United States but that when President Obama loosens restrictions with Cuba, it could probably be done there for about $5000, with a higher quality result. In addition to the blisters on their hulls, blister boats usually have blisters on their decks but there were none visible, so it is possible that the decks had been repaired at some point but I didn't get a chance to ask Phyllis for the details.

All in all, Otter II is an excellent boat and an excellent value at an asking price of $95,000. These current economic conditions favor the buyer over the seller, but Stan says that sales have been especially slow in the last few months as people wait to see if the recession has bottomed out or if it will continue into the foreseeable future. If things turn around before too long and Otter II is still available, who knows what might happen?

Back from Miami

The trip to Miami to assist Paul and Honey Caouette with Wild Iris, their Valiant 40, was an eye-opener. The previous owner had sailed her extensively for twenty years and accumulated a vast collection of tools and spare parts, and all of it is still on the boat. To say the boat is cluttered would be an understatement. It's like an overstuffed refrigerator, where you have to take armfuls of stuff out of it just to get to what you're looking for. The Caouettes have owned her for about four years now and they are still sifting through it all. Part of their problem is that they live and work in Denver, so they can only get down to the boat every other month or so. Another part of the problem is that to keep expenses down they are moored rather than slipped at the Crandon Park Marina in Key Biscayne, so there is no place to move anything off the boat except into the dinghy, but then there is no storage space to move it to after reaching shore. Still another part of the problem is that they stay on the boat while they are working on it, so every project must take into account that they will be eating, sleeping and trying to keep clean in the midst of ongoing chaos.

Those are some serious impediments to preparing the boat for a May trans-Atlantic crossing, but Paul will be taking leave from his work starting in March in order to work on the boat full time. He plans to have it pulled out of the water in order to paint the hull and address any below-waterline issues. And he is planning to reduce the boat's weight by at least four thousand pounds by removing most of that heavy clutter. We had some difficulty with the diesel engine and power generation while I was there, so he will also be addressing those systems carefully to be sure they are working reliably. Finally, Paul and Honey will take a shakedown cruise up the coast to put everything to the test.

Based on what little we were able to accomplish while I was there, Paul will need all of those two months to get Wild Iris ready. The days passed quickly as we worked on numerous projects, everything from installing a new mainsail and running some new wiring to repairing the dodger and doing routine maintenance on the winches. The highlight was getting to finally sail on the fifth day. We needed to field test the new sail, didn't we? So we motored out into Biscayne Bay, put up all the sails--main, genoa and staysail--and then cut the engine. There were big smiles all around as we sailed out toward Stiltsville, until the wind died. We started up the engine again and turned around since it was getting late in the day. But then the engine started cycling strangely, so Paul shut it off, gave me a heading and went below to investigate. Fifteen minutes later, I ran us aground. Completely ignoring the shallow-water warning marker about a hundred yards to port, I had doggedly kept us on Paul's heading, noting that the depth meter was showing a relatively safe four feet from the bottom of the keel, when there was a shuddering and the boat stopped moving. Instead of being angry, Paul and Honey shrugged as if running aground were a common occurrence. It turned out they even had insurance against it through BoatUS. Paul got on the VHF to summon a towing service, and within a half-hour we were safely back on our mooring.

Aside from my role as unpaid labor, how do I fit into Paul and Honey's plans? Well, if things go as hoped, I (and maybe Nan as well) will be joining them for the first leg of their trans-Atlantic crossing, sailing from Miami to Bermuda. They have only one other crew member lined up for that leg at this point, so they really need the assistance, especially considering that if anything is going to go wrong, it will probably happen in those first several days. I'll keep you posted as plans develop.

Nan's Birthday

Today is Nan's birthday. I won't reveal her new age, but I will say that we made the most of her special day. After I made omelettes for breakfast and Nan opened her gifts, we went ice skating at the almost-new Glacier Ice Arena here in Grand Junction. Neither of us has skated in many years, Nan in about twenty and me in almost forty, since I discovered skiing at age ten. We were both a little nervous as we stepped onto the ice, which is much slipperier than either of us remembered. After a few tentative steps we were both gliding along, though a little unsteadily, with big smiles on our faces. We spent most of our hour on the ice holding hands as we skated around the oval dodging falling kids and trying not to fall ourselves. It was a blast, and we will definitely do it again.

Nan organized a poetry contest with her family to get them involved in celebrating her birthday. The idea was for each family member to submit a poem or limerick with Nan as the theme. The fourteen entries were compiled and voted on, with the winner receiving a gift certificate to TJ Maxx, Nan's favorite shopping destination. The winner was Nan's brother Jim, whose limerick conjectured about Nan's fictitious choice of running over liposuction. My entry was disqualified because I am too close to the subject, giving me an unfair advantage, but here it is anyway:

Listen up, everyone, I’m not “Nancy,”
You know that I’m never that fancy,
My name is just “Nan,”
Yes, I’m always this tan,
It’s my birthday, so don’t make me antsy!

New Look for a New Year

This year marks the beginning of the fifth year for my Whispering Jesse blog. Over the years, I have made little tweaks and adjustments to the layout, but one thing has never changed: Dots! When I first set up my blog, Blogger's Dots template looked fun and was somewhat in keeping with my nautical theme if you thought of the dots as looking like bubbles. But it started to get tiresome after a couple of years and I started looking for alternatives. I checked periodically to see if Blogger had introduced any interesting new template choices, but nothing ever caught my eye enough to justify changing from my old one. So Dots it has been but Dots it is no more!

I was standing in the shower yesterday, thinking about my blog. Don't laugh! Like many people, I do most of my best thinking in the shower. I wondered why my blog's content was compressed into a narrow 700-pixel band down the middle of the screen when most people now have computer monitors with much greater resolution than the old 800x600 standard. Why couldn't I widen it a couple of hundred pixels or add a third column to the existing sidebar and main columns? When I was toweled off, I went to the computer to check Blogger's template offerings yet again. Nothing new. So I went to Google and typed in "3 column blogger templates". I quickly discovered that I was not alone in my frustration. There are all kinds of third-party developers out there putting their creativity into designing three-column blog templates. My great fear was that they would not be completely compatible with what I already had going, so I kept looking.

I finally found an excellent blog post by a guy who calls himself Nitecruzr and is the brains behind The Real Blogger Status: "Making A 3 Column Template". Using the simplest of the existing Blogger templates, Minima, he explains how to edit the template to make it display three columns instead of the standard two. I set up a new test blog in order not to screw up my existing blog and tried it out. It worked perfectly on the very first try. The main column was a little squished but I experimented with the settings until I had a serviceable-looking 900-pixel blog with a 450-pixel main column and two 200-pixel sidebars. Then it was decision time. Was I ready to give up on Dots for this new look? You bet I was!

As you can see, the new look is a huge improvement. The endless collection of stuff that was in the left sidebar is now distributed between the two sidebars, with the text, photos and widgets on the left and all the advertising on the right. Hey, can you blame me for trying to get a little more out of blogging than simply the joy and satisfaction of sharing my life with my readers? If you were wondering, the photo in the banner at the top is one I took during our 2004 sailing trip in the British Virgin Islands. It shows the mooring field at Cane Garden Bay on the north side of Tortola. The sun is setting behind Jost Van Dyke, the small island to the northwest of Tortola.

I welcome your questions and comments and will reply as best I can. Happy New Year!

Circumnavigation Routes, Part 5

Google Maps is one of the most useful tools I have found on the Internet. I have been using it for about three years for everything from figuring out the shortest driving routes for road trips to looking at satellite views of the pyramids of Egypt. But most of the time, I just use it to fantasize about the places where I would like to go. Even if I never visit them all, at least I've improved my understanding of geography.

Until today I never bothered to check out the My Maps feature. It allows users to create their own custom maps with points of interest, routes, photos, videos and other content, and then to share their maps with others. Of course, as a sailing dreamer, the first thing I did was to lay out a circumnavigation route--not the one I have been dreaming about lately, which will appear in future "Circumnavigation Routes" posts, but the one I came up with in 2001. Here is a link to it: Circumnavigation Route 2001.

Back when I was working for the Aspen School District, I had a giant National Geographic map of the world on the wall in my office and I would spend odd moments staring at it and figuring out where I would sail if I ever had the chance. Since it was pure fantasy, I wanted to sail absolutely everywhere, with the idea that I would never see some of the places if I didn't include them in one incredibly ambitious circumnavigation. So remote places in the Pacific Ocean, like the Galapagos Islands, Robinson Crusoe Island, Easter Island, and Pitcairn Island from Mutiny on the Bounty fame were naturally on the list, as were most of the Mediterranean port cities of Europe. I had recently finished climbing all of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks and was looking for new climbing challenges, so the four peaks of the Seven Summits (the highest peaks on each of the seven continents) that I would encounter along the way--Cerro Aconcagua, Mount Kosciuszko, Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Elbrus--were also on the list. Since my parents own a vacation home near the ocean in Savannah, Georgia, that was my logical starting and ending location.

The circumference of the earth is about 25,000 miles but according to Google Maps, my "Around the World" route would be a little more than twice that distance. That's an awful lot of deviation from the shortest possible distance, and it doesn't even remotely take into account the prevailing winds or weather conditions, which I knew little about when I was planning it all out. I have studied other circumnavigators' routes, from Joshua Slocum's to Robin Lee Graham's, and they seem to average about 35,000 miles and take about five years. Applying the math, my route, if it was not impossible to complete, would take at least seven years. But most of those other voyages were continuous, with quick landfalls for reprovisioning. What if we decided to spend a year in France? That is why I think of this dream, as I have mentioned in previous "Circumnavigation Routes" posts, as a for-the-rest-of-my-life experience rather than as just another accomplishment to be checked off the "life list." As they say, the journey is the reward.