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Home from Isla Mujeres, Mexico

Nan and I arrived home on Monday night from our vacation in Isla Mujeres, Mexico. We cut our two-week trip short by five days due to work concerns and lousy weather. The remnants of hurricane Karl were still causing rain when we arrived, transitioning seamlessly into hurricane Matthew's near miss, with its own downpours and high winds. When it wasn't raining, the heat, humidity and sand gnats drove me mostly indoors to sit in our air-conditioned Color de Verano penthouse apartment reading Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, a topical, enjoyable page turner. Nan toughed it out without me, getting as much "beach time" as possible.

Every time we go to Isla Mujeres, and we have been there eight times now, we spend time with the same friends, see the same sights and eat at the same restaurants, but we always make an effort to explore new areas and try new restaurants. This time, we even went on a "parade of homes" tour with a real estate broker named Rogelio and our Spanish instructor, Juan Torres. There are still oceanfront and lagoonfront lots for sale on the island, but they are ridiculously expensive for foreigners and would require an inordinate amount of work to build on, not to mention extensive communication in Spanish.

We tried three new restaurants: Chuuk Kay, a new Mayan-themed place located on the Laguna Macax channel and managed by our friend Ventura, whom we know from his days at Na Balam's Zazil-Ha bar and restaurant and from Brisas Grill; Rooster, a new, upscale place at the north end of Avenida Hidalgo that features wonderful creations by chef Sergio but unfortunately does not take credit cards; and Mango Cafe, an excellent breakfast and lunch place that is usually closed by the time we drive our rented golf cart past its location on the Caribbean side's main drag, but which we were lucky to find open one afternoon for jerked chicken tacos, grilled chicken empanadas and ginger lemonade.

The Sunday before we returned home on Monday was our best day, even though it had its share of rain. But we were out on our friend Ariel's panga for some snorkeling, so we expected to get wet. We had run into Ariel on our first night, working as a waiter at a new restaurant on Hidalgo, and agreed to do a boat trip with him. I asked if we could invite our good friend Juan Gomez's family to join us, and Ariel agreed enthusiastically. September ("septi-hambre") is always a very slow month for business, and Ariel told us he had not had a paying boat trip in more than a month. If you're down that way, please call (011-521-998-165-6332 from the US) or email (arielsantizo@yahoo.com.mx) him for a boat trip of your own.

Ariel, his wife Rosi and her son Chris met Nan and me with the panga on the beach across from our apartment. When Juan showed up with his wife Paula, kids Manolo and Paulina, and nephews Paul and Daniel, we all piled into the boat and headed over toward El Ferito, the little lighthouse that marks the entrance to Isla Mujeres's large bay. There is a partially submerged wreck there, a casualty of hurricane Wilma back in 2005, that is a natural haven for sealife. Juan and the kids put on lifevests and snorkel equipment before jumping overboard to see what they could see. A dark passing cloud soaked everybody left on board. Already wet, I jumped in too, but all I saw in the churned up water was a school of needle fish.

When everybody was back on board, we headed east for a slow circle around Laguna Macax, admiring the many yachts that are moored in its protective waters. Juan and his family could just see the top of their house in the Lol-Beh colonia over the mangrove treetops. The kids were intrigued by the inhabited "plastic bottle island" that floats on the opposite side of the lagoon. We departed through the channel and passed by Sac Bajo, where "the white house," another casualty of hurricane Wilma, sits abandoned except for its caretaker unit. From there, it was a short trip down the western coast to Playa Tiburon, where Ariel had arranged for "tic-n-xic" barbecued grouper, with rice, pasta, salad and tortillas supplied by Rosi and Chris. Delicious!

We plan to return to Isla Mujeres next June, when we will sail the new boat there from the United States. More on that later...

Dog Days 2010

I was walking back from dumping lawn clippings into the dumpster yesterday when my neighbors Rich, Diane and Mim pulled up in Rich's truck with Kola, Rich and Diane's schnauzer. They said they were on their way to Dog Days at the city swimming pool and that Scout and I should join them. If I paid more attention to our local news, I would have known about the event, which I have attended several times in the past with both Charlie and Scout.

I finished up the yardwork, put Scout in the car and drove over to Lincoln Park. Even though the event had been going on for two hours by that time, there were still plenty of wet dogs and damp owners in attendance. It took me a few minutes to locate my neighbors at the kiddie pool, encouraging Kola to swim after the tennis balls floating on the surface. I pointed at a ball for Scout to go after, but he just stood at the edge looking at it, so I gave him a nudge. After that, he belly-flopped off the edge after balls until he wore himself out. When they weren't swimming, Scout and Kola played keep-away with the other dogs, even though there were more than enough balls to go around.

After an hour, the dogs had had enough. Rich suggested that we go to Dairy Queen to get Blizzards for the adults and kiddie ice cream cones for the dogs. Scout had never had more than a taste of ice cream, so I thought, why not. Scout finished his cone in about two minutes, so quickly that I wondered if dogs get "ice cream headaches" the way people do. Apparently not, because when he was done, he wanted some of Kola's, too.

What's wrong with Colorado Springs?

Last week, I listened to a segment of "Colorado Matters" on Colorado Public Radio that featured the budget director from Colorado Springs. She said that tax revenues were so low that the city couldn't afford to maintain its parks or turn on its streetlights at night. This wasn't due to the current sad state of the economy; it was due to tax cuts approved by voters.

To keep things from going completely to hell, volunteers have been stepping in to cut the grass in the parks, and some neighborhoods have paid to have their streetlights turned back on. According to the budget director, this was a point of pride for many citizens, that they were actively engaged in keeping their community running.

My immediate reaction was, "Are you freakin' kidding me?! This is not a community! This is every man for himself!" The whole idea behind taxes is that we're all paying our fair share to support the services that benefit all of us, that make us a community instead of a bunch of selfish, small-minded individuals.

Extrapolating to the nation as a whole, this is what makes me so angry about the Tea Party, where Tea stands for "taxed enough already." I happen to think that income taxes are a reasonable price to pay for living in a free society, even though I take very little advantage of the services those taxes support. To think otherwise is to believe that you and your kind deserve some kind of special deal, maybe because you think you're working harder than the slackers who are milking the system. The truth is that, with few exceptions, people are doing the best they can. The sooner you understand this, the sooner you will realize that we are all in this life together. There are no winners, no losers. We all die in the end. Wouldn't you rather reach the end of your life knowing that you contributed what was needed to help your fellow man and support your community?

Minifish

I have owned an AMF Alcort Minifish sailboat since one was given to me as a present from my family for my eleventh birthday in 1969. My father and I taught ourselves to sail the little boat and enjoyed cruising it around the Chain of Lakes in Waupaca, Wisconsin over the next several summer vacations. When I was old enough to drive, I would take the boat out to the lakes west of Milwaukee, where I grew up, and sail it with friends. I even took it with me to college in Madison, sailing on Lake Mendota after classes. When I moved to Aspen, Colorado in 1986, there wasn't room in the U-Haul trailer for the boat, so I drove it out the following year. Nan and I would sail it every summer on Ruedi Reservoir, about an hour from home. Now we live in Grand Junction, and there really aren't any good places nearby to sail. There's Highline Lake to the north and Ridgway Reservoir to the south, but they're both so overrun with powerboats most of the time that we haven't even bothered. So the boat has been sitting unused in the garage for more than five years.

When I was back in Milwaukee visiting family in July, my sister Jane mentioned the boat. She and her family live in Seattle near Green Lake, and they also have a vacation home on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound. Her sons, Max and Ben, are developing an interest in sailing from lessons they have been taking on Green Lake, and she was wondering what I was doing with the old Minifish. I explained that we weren't really sailing it anymore and asked if she would like to have it for the boys to sail. She said yes, and we emailed back and forth about it again this past week, so next spring the Minifish is going to get shipped up to Seattle. I need to do a little work on it first: the plastic rings that attach the sail to the mast and boom are missing or cracked and need to be replaced; one of the mast's endcaps got dinged when the mast and boom fell off the trailer the last time we used the boat; and the current nylon halyard needs to be replaced with a better, non-stretching one. None of these repairs is too major, but I want to hand off the boat in good condition. Ideally, I would like to fly up there and introduce Max and Ben to the boat after it arrives to give them the benefit of my forty-one years of personal experience in rigging, launching and sailing it. I'll let you know how it goes.

My "aha moment" is live now

I just received an email message letting me know that my Mutual of Omaha "aha moment" is live now at http://www.ahamoment.com/pg/moments/view/17011.

The final film clip actually turned out better than expected. They managed to distill about ten minutes of my interview down to a single minute and still have it retain the points I was trying to make about how my dream of sailing around the world got started and what I am doing to fulfill it.

Nan liked their photo of me smiling so much that I have made it my blog's new profile image.

If you have a chance to watch the film clip, please leave a comment to let me know what you think. Thank you.

A Hard Day on the Planet

Loudon Wainwright III is best known for being the father of singer Rufus Wainwright and for his early '70s hit, "Dead Skunk (in the Middle of the Road)". I was thinking today of another one of his novelty songs, "A Hard Day on the Planet", which has as its refrain:

It’s been a hard day on the planet,
How much is it all worth?
It’s getting harder to understand it,
Things are tough all over on earth.

Today was a bad day--not for me personally, but for the planet as a whole and mankind in particular. Everywhere I turned, there was bad news: jobless claims are at new highs; there's still much more oil in the gulf than BP is telling us; Pakistan is underwater but nobody is contributing any money for assistance; Russia is on fire; China's air is unbreathable; Indonesia's coral is dying from water temperatures seven degrees above normal; the stock market is swinging wildly up and down; the midterm election ads are all negative; people still believe that Obama is a Muslim; and Israel is on the verge of attacking Iran.

I am normally a fairly optimistic person, but it's all enough to make me give up hope. Since I have been old enough to think for myself, I have known that nobody really knows what is happening and that nobody is really in control of anything. The most we could hope for was that our better natures would predominate over our baser instincts to prevent utter chaos. Now it seems that chaos is winning. In my gut, I know that life will never, ever be as good as it was just two years ago, before the housing bubble burst. We have reached the point of diminishing returns. It's all downhill from here.

Do we take deep breaths, steel our resolve, and keep doing the best we can, knowing that it doesn't really make any difference, or do we take stock, re-evaluate our situations, and move in new directions, knowing that it is somewhat selfish but ultimately more rewarding to make the most of the time and opportunities we have left? Nobody ever gets to the end of their life and wishes they had worked harder, but as Loudon sings, "Things are looking kind of gray, like they’re going to black." Life is short. Make the most of it.

My aha moment

Late this afternoon, I drove over to the Mesa Mall parking lot, where Mutual of Omaha's Airstream mobile studio was parked. I had received an email invitation last week, as a result of a marketing person's discovery of my blog, inviting me to be filmed for their "aha moment" campaign. You have probably seen the commercials on TV featuring ordinary people talking about the moments that changed their lives. They couldn't guarantee that my spot would make it into a TV commercial, but it would definitely be posted to their website.

The invitation was specific that my aha moment should be about sailing and that I should plan to bring a prop to the filming. I didn't need to think too hard to come up with an idea: My aha moment happened in 1968, when I was ten years old. I read a National Geographic article about Robin Lee Graham, the first teen-ager to sail alone around the world. I knew right away that I wanted to do the same thing someday.

The studio people, Jessica and Dave, interviewed me for about ten minutes, starting with my dream and expanding on it to discuss my plans for actually sailing around the world. It was a nervous blur, but when it was over, Jessica said that it went really well, that my face was lit up with excitement. She told me that my aha moment would appear on the Mutual of Omaha website at http://www.mutualofomaha.com/aha within three weeks, and she handed me my clapboard as a souvenir. When it goes live, I'll be sure to post a direct link to it here.

Trip to the Boatyard

A little over two weeks ago, I took a trip out to Solomons, Maryland to check on Little Walk for a couple of days. A few days before I left, Don, the boatyard manager at Spring Cove Marina, called to tell me that the boat's mast had been unstepped. This was good news because it meant that he had found the time, after two months of the boat sitting in the boatyard, to begin the refit. As the marine survey had indicated, the corrosion at the mast's base needed to be addressed, and the standing and running rigging needed to be replaced. Removing the mast was the first step in the repair process.

When I arrived at Spring Cove, the boatyard was very quiet. It was a Sunday and most of the staff were off for the weekend. Little Walk's mast was resting on sawhorses outside the boatyard fence. The horizontal perspective allowed a close-up view of all the mast's workings. Ray, the previous owner, had told me that the boat had been hit by lightning in the last couple of years, but there was no evidence of any damage. The lights, wind instruments and VHF antenna at the top looked almost brand new, though, like they had been recently replaced.

The boat itself looked a little funny without its mast, more like a motorboat than a sailboat. I found a ladder and climbed aboard to see what had been done. On the deck, duct tape covered the hole where the mast had been, and the boom was lying between the hatches. I unlocked the companionway hatch and went below. It was unbearably hot in the cabin, so I opened every hatch and port to cool things down. There is a fan in the salon, but I couldn't figure out how to turn it on. I had originally planned to stay aboard, but the weather reports had been showing temperatures in the high 90s and humidity at 90 percent, so I had booked a cheap hotel instead. Now I was happy I did, because there wasn't enough breeze or cloud cover to help lower the cabin temperature to more tolerable levels. I took a quick look at the place in the bilge where the mast had been stepped against the keel and then fled to the air-conditioned marina office to inquire about some packages I had sent out ahead of my arrival and to use the guest computer to send Ray an email about the fan.

The vacuum cleaner, coffee press and box of dishes, towels and linens I had shipped were waiting for me. I had thought to use my time on the boat to clean, sort through all the stuff left behind by the previous owner, and unpack some of my own stuff. But with the heat, I knew I wouldn't be very productive with work inside the cabin, so I started with the deck, tidying up loose equipment and stowing the fenders and dock lines that were still in place from when the boat was hauled out. Thinking it might get cooler as the sun went lower in the afternoon, I went off to Jerry's Subs for a late lunch. When I returned, the cabin was still "instant sweat" hot. I checked my cell phone's email and saw that Ray had responded to my message. He said that the salon fan did not work, which explained why I couldn't turn it on, but that the ones in the forward and aft berths did. I fooled with the unmarked electrical panel switches until I got both fans working. As long as I was at it, I figured I would try to get the stove working as well, since I hadn't been able to when Kevin and I sailed the boat down from Baltimore. No such luck. I think there might be a blown fuse in the solenoid panel because flipping its switch does not cause the little red light next to it to light up. I spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking and stowing stuff, and cleaning in the area of the companionway since it was the coolest spot in the cabin. By dinnertime, I was dripping sweat and ready to call it a day.

The next day, a Monday, the marina was a noisy hive of activity. I met with Don in the morning and spent some time walking around the boat, inside and out, to confirm the work that needed to be done, and looking at the mast to determine what the rigging needs would be. Don told me that Collin from Chesapeake Rigging would be on-site in the early afternoon to evaluate the rigging, take measurements and talk options. As we parted company, Don said that he would catch up with me in the afternoon with a quote on what he thought it would cost to correct all the issues in the marine survey. I climbed up the ladder and went back to work in the cabin. It was still cool enough inside for me to unpack the vacuum cleaner and spend most of the morning lifting cushions and moving equipment in order to vacuum underneath. At lunchtime, it was back to Jerry's Subs and then over to West Marine. To open the hatches the day before, I had to first remove their screens, and I had managed to break one of the latches in the process, so I wanted to see if they had a spare. They did.

When I got back to the boatyard, Collin was already taking measurements on the mast. "Are you the rigging guy?" I asked. He smiled and replied, "Are you the owner guy?" I laughed. We shook hands and started talking rigging options. The boat's standing rigging was a combination of rod and cable. Collin said that while rod is stronger than cable, it's more prone to catastrophic failure. We agreed to go with cable throughout. The single existing jib furler was an old Hood one. Collin said I should send it to a sailing museum. I had been leaning toward Profurl furlers for both the jib replacement and the staysail, but Collin said that if they failed, I would need to order parts from France. He suggested American-made Harken furlers instead. I wanted a whisker pole added to the rig for poling out the jib in light winds, and Collin suggested a Forespar one on a track attached to the forward surface of the mast. Some of the halyard sheaves showed wear and needed to be replaced. Collin said he would include all that in his quote, which he expected to have ready in a few days. Don stopped by and the three of us went to look at the boat together. Collin looked closely at the chainplates, the mast step, and the sagging life lines, which also needed to be replaced. He offered excellent ideas for improving just about everything he saw, including the addition of an electric "bitch winch." Dollar signs were dancing in my head as we climbed down the ladder and said our good-byes.

I went back to work in the cabin, cleaning up the V-berth. I felt a little melancholy as I peeled off the hundreds of glow-in-the-dark stars, moons and planets that Ray's daughter had stuck to the ceiling when she was a little girl and they were living aboard Little Walk in Boston. I followed that with scrubbing and vacuuming, both in the V-berth and also in the port-side pilot berth. Late in the afternoon, I took a break and walked over to the marina office for the last of my many trips to the deeply appreciated, refrigerated drinking fountain. It was getting close to the time for me to close up the boat and get ready to go home. On my way back to the boat, I stuck my head into Don's office. He invited me in to discuss his quote. He had written out a detailed list of improvements and assigned a price to each one. It added up to about what he had told me it would when we first talked about it back in May, after the trip down from Baltimore. I stared at the list, trying to figure out how I was ever going to pay for it all. Don sensed my consternation and said that the work could be done in phases, spreading out the expense over a long period of time. "A very, very long period of time," I thought.

Little Walk sails to Solomons Island

Part 16 marked the end of the Boat Quest series. As of May 15, I am the proud owner of Little Walk, a 1980 Valiant 40. As one dream is made real, a new one is enabled. I now have the means to sail anywhere in the world. Where to go?

Well, the first stop is the boatyard, to make the necessary repairs and upgrades that will ensure safe travels. During our Central America sailing trip a few months ago, I spoke with John Kretschmer about my plans to sail the boat--if I ended up buying it--from Baltimore to Savannah, where my parents have a vacation home, to get the necessary work done. He had a better idea: his sister Liz and brother-in-law Trevor are partners in a marina and boatyard in Solomons Island, Maryland. Their people are experts at the kind of work I needed, and as an FOJ (Friend of John), they would take extra special care of me and my boat. What more could I ask for? John said he would contact them to make the necessary introductions.

That just left figuring out how to get the boat from the Riviera Beach area, southeast of Baltimore, to Solomons Island, a distance of about seventy-five miles. To be safe, I didn't want to sail alone, especially on an unfamiliar boat. I needed to find someone to go with me. The kicker was that the boat needed to be moved from its current location at Tony's dock within a week and a half, so I needed someone who would be available on short notice. Kevin Harrison, from our Odyssey sailing trip, came immediately to mind. He lives in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, only a hundred miles from where the boat was docked, and he would have just completed teaching the spring term at McDaniel College. I emailed him an invitation, and he emailed me back right away with an acceptance. We spoke over the phone a couple of days later to work out a strategy for meeting at the boat, driving two cars down to Solomons, and leaving one there for the return trip. Kevin agreed to bring his toolkit, just in case, and I agreed to provision for the short trip and cover his expenses.

Kevin and I met at the boat on Sunday morning, May 23. We hauled our stuff aboard, and I gave him a quick tour. He liked what he saw, except for all the bird poop on the deck. We took the time to wash down the deck so it would be clean and dry when we returned, and then we got into our respective cars for the drive down to Solomons.

A couple of hours later, we met up again at the Spring Cove Marina's parking lot. We wandered around to get a feel for the place and its facilities and then walked into the office and asked to see Trevor. He came down from his office, and we spent a few minutes getting acquainted through our mutual connection to John Kretschmer. I ended the conversation by telling him we were headed back up to Baltimore to sail my boat down to the marina and that we would be back by early the next afternoon. He wished us well, and we left in my rental car to drive back up to the boat.

Tony was home when we returned, asleep in the hammock that overlooks his dock. He roused as we were preparing to depart and came down to talk with us. It's a good thing that he did, or we might have left the boat's meager fenders and dock lines behind. He assured us that they went with the boat. We thanked him, fired up the engine, and shoved off. There was only one problem: no water was coming out with the exhaust. I tried frantically to remember what Ray had said about where the water coolant seacock was located, but I had no idea. There had just been too many details during the orientation. I also forgot the way out of Rock Creek, because we found ourselves going up a dead-end tributary. It was time to call Ray. Fortunately, he answered--maybe he was expecting my call. He calmly told me to turn off the engine before it overheated and then directed me to look under the seat in the aft cabin for the seacock. I sent Kevin below to find it so I wouldn't lose the call, and he reported that as soon as he turned it, he could see water flowing through the associated filter's clear top. We fired up the engine again and looked over the side to see water coming out with the exhaust. The engine's temperature fell to about 110 degrees and stayed there. One disaster was averted. But we still didn't know where we were going. I still had Ray on the phone, so I tried to explain the landmarks around us. He didn't recognize anything but told me to follow the starboard-side shore until I could see the White Rocks Marina, which I should recognize from our sea trial sail. From there, I should know where to go. I thanked him and told him I would call later to let him know how we were doing.

Kevin and I could have cheered when we reached the open water of Chesapeake Bay, but we noticed that the water was extremely shallow--no more than fifteen feet deep--even at White Rocks, a small formation of bird poop-covered rocks (thus the name), about a half-mile offshore, and we were concerned about running aground. After we passed the rocks, we rounded up into the wind, put up the sails, and bore off to the south for Annapolis, our destination for the day, all the while keeping an eye on the depth meter.

There was enough wind to just sail, and we were in no great hurry, so we cut the engine and trimmed the sails. The GPS showed us at six-plus knots, with occasional bursts over seven, not bad for the blustery, unsettled weather conditions. Kevin and I took turns at the helm since neither the windvane or electronic autopilots were working. Before long, we had passed under the William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge, which was our cue to turn west toward Annapolis. We started the engine and doused the sails as we passed the Naval Academy and sighted the public docks, where we picked up a mooring for the night. We settled up with the harbormaster who came out to greet us and then hailed a water taxi using the VHF radio. The taxi driver suggested the Middleton Tavern for dinner, so we gave it a try. Good steaks and atmosphere.

We were up by 5:00 the next morning to get an early start on the remaining sixty miles. I tried to boil water for instant coffee, but I couldn't figure out how to get the stove lit--guess I should have covered that in the orientation with Ray. We made due with juice and muffins as we motored out of Annapolis harbor and headed south for Solomons. Spring Cove Marina normally stops hauling boats out at about 2:00, so we motorsailed all the way to make good time in the hopes of meeting that deadline.

We arrived at a little after 1:00 and were directed to tie up at the end of a T-shaped dock. Kevin wasn't feeling well and went to find a bathroom. I went off to find Trevor, who informed me that the haul-out bay was busy and that they wouldn't be able to haul my boat out for a day or two. Oh, well. At least we were there safely, even if we hadn't needed to leave Annapolis quite so early. Trevor introduced me to his wife Liz, who is John Kretschmer's sister, and we chatted for a few minutes, mostly about John and his escapades. The family resemblance was easy to see. Liz excused herself, and Trevor and I walked over to the haul-out bay, where I met Trevor's brother Alan, who was stepping a mast. We walked up to the shop and met Don, the boatyard manager, who was painting a mast. Don would be the person coordinating the work on Little Walk, so we set up a meeting for the next morning. To give him an advance idea of what was involved, I told him I would leave a copy of the boat survey on his desk.

Kevin and I hauled our stuff off the boat, readjusted the dock lines, and drove to a nearby hotel. After showers, we went off in search of a cold beer, which we found at the famous Tiki Bar, and then dinner at a waterfront restaurant. It had been a long day. After dinner, we returned to the hotel and called it an early night.

Kevin and I had compiled a short list of items the boat needed, so after breakfast the next morning, we went to the local West Marine store to see if we could find it all. We did. Those places are amazing, like boating toy stores. We returned to the boat to drop off the new goodies before my meeting with Don. When he showed up, Kevin wandered off to look at boats and said he would meet me at his car when I was ready to go. Don and I walked around on the deck, looking at the mast and rigging, and then went below to look at the chainplates and engine. He was pretty matter-of-fact about things, saying that a thirty-year-old boat should be expected to need the types of repairs we were considering. I mentioned that I wanted to get the ratty cushions reupholstered. He said I should pitch them, that the foam was old and disintegrating, and get new ones, plus a real mattress for the aft berth. He also suggested replacing the manual windlass with an electric one. I hadn't thought of any of these things, but he was right. All it would take is money, of course. Don said I should probably expect to pay almost what I had paid for the boat to get it into top condition, more if it needed a new engine. I nodded knowingly, but I was thinking, "Whoa! That's a lot more than I was expecting!" The first order of business was to pull the mast. Don thought they would have that done within a couple of weeks. We agreed to stay in touch about the work as it progressed, and I went off to find Kevin for the drive back to Baltimore and the flight home.

Thank you for all your help, Kevin!