Author Archives: Jerry

Google ’till it hurts

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For those new to my blog, this is a semi-regular feature. When there have been some interesting searches that led people to this site, I like to share them with you. Sometimes I put the search words in pig latin so that future searches will continue to go to the correct entry.

  • duranceengay eargay – came up fifth in a google search and led to the episode about my pants. There might be a business opportunity there.
  • sex words – led to my episode “Sex, Death, and Words “. Someone went through several pages of search results and then chose my blog. I wonder what they were looking for.
  • bachelorette party ideas for the pregnant bride – I came up 13th for that phrase on yahoo. Most of the words matched one of my episodes from the Cannery in Bozeman
  • Great Googly Moogly – linked to another episode like this one
  • weblog sailing
  • “Nick Cave” “Her Long Black Hair”
  • cowboy bar
  • write a novel in a month
  • illionmay ollarday owboycay arbay acksonjay olehay – fourth in Google search (The first two are the bar’s official Web site). My review is probably not too good for their business.

Of course there were also the usual squirrel, x-ray, and Dolce Vida hits. Egg cooking is still a very popular topic, but I can’t tell if my culinary advice has changed anyone’s life.

Thanks!

Tiki Reunion

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That’s not the official name of the night. It’s something like $2 pint night. But I’ve always called it Cheap Bastard Night. Others have tried to rename it Two-for Tuesday or Tightwad Tuesday. Nah. It’s Cheap Bastard Night, because I’m a cheap bastard. I named it after myself.

It was like a reunion at Tiki tonight. Old faces I hadn’t seen in a long time. Some I never expected to see again. The biggest surprise was Connecticut Bill, an incredibly sharp guy whose life is vanishing up his nose. Was vanishing, perhaps, if his time in jail gave him a chance to straighten out. Observers are not optimistic on that score.

I didn’t notice Connecticut Bill right off the bat, so I don’t think he was there when I came in. He’s hard to miss with his energy and his opinions on everything under the sun. He’s also the one who will play Velvet Underground on the jukebox. When I walked in the front door I saw Bevins sitting there and I climbed aboard the stool next to his. After a brief moment of non-recognition (he hadn’t seen me clean-shaven yet) I recieved a warm welcome and unbidden Tiki Dave was pouring me an Anchor Steam. The game was coming on soon and I was in my happy place.

Suddenly on my left appears another old buddy from my days hanging out at Joe’s Place. Tom had selected alcohol as the drug for destroying his life, but for the last few months he has managed to get it back together. Naturally, that means a lot less time in bars for Tom. They’re just not as fun when you’re drinking non-alcoholic brew. Tom is one of the only people in the world to have read The Test, an incomplete work that I set aside when it started to spiral out of control. The story has gotten so big that it will probably end up being a series. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in an author-driven genre, but I feel strongly that even in a series each book should stand on its own. Which means The Test needs an ending, even if it is just volume one. Tom’s commentary on the story was, well, embarrassingly gushing. And protracted. He had read the incomplete work in 16 uninterrupted hours. I promised him I would put an ending on it and get it published. He gave me a dollar to help offset my expenses in the meantime.

Somewhere during that time, Connecticut Bill showed up and there we all were, lined up with our elbows on the bar, watching the home team blow a lead, Billy feeding the jukebox and telling about his time in jail. We talked about this and that, nothing important, favorite comic strips, rehashing some of the old stories that had been dormant too long.

Finally it was time to leave that place. I moved on without ceremony, as if it was just another day at the bar. Things to do, etc. I left, knowing that we might or might never all be there again.

Thanks!

Ocean Beach Bar Hopping

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Most of last night will have to wait until I can disguise it as fiction. Going out on the town with Amy usually works out that way, it seems. I had left a message with her, looking for a place to sleep, and she eventually called back. She was hanging with Rory and Alabama, two of her friends from out of town. They were at South Beach bar in Ocean Beach (A very nice place with a decent beer selection and excellent appetizers. Best fried calamari anywhere. Behind the bar are picture windows looking out over the beach. A good place for sunsets.)

They were just having some shots when I arrived. It didn’t break my heart to miss out on that round, as they looked like some kind of goofy sweet mixed shot instead of good ‘ol straight booze. Why people go to the trouble to get one of those things and then knock it down their gullet so fast they never taste it is beyond me. For that matter, why people pay for top-shelf tequila or scotch and then just throw it down the pie hole is a mystery I may never solve. If you’re not going to taste it, why not just throw some grain alcohol back and wait for the bomb to hit?

I kept my mouth shut about silly shooters, and Amy’s buddies turned out to be pretty cool. I was just finishing my beer when Erica called. She was heading to Sunshine Company and so were we. Sunshine Co. has a good happy hour special and is popular among smokers because the patio (where smoking is legal) is for all intents and purposes indoors.

It’s funny how many smokers I’ve been around since smoking was banned in bars. The sequence goes like this:

  1. Smoking is banned in bars
  2. Jerry starts going to bars more
  3. Jerry hangs out with other bar patrons
  4. Most bar patrons are smokers
  5. Jerry inhales more second-hand smoke

At Sunshine company the pitchers were coming fast and furious but somehow I manage to stay out of their evil grip, nursing two beers the entire time I was there. It was great to see Erica again, bubbly fun sweet and cute, and we talked for quite a while. She’s in love with some boy in Belguim. Our crowd shot some pool, and being the most sober person there I didn’t suck at it. Some girl hit on me – and everyone else in the bar, male and female. It was her birthday and she was looking for a present. She didn’t get far with me, but she didn’t try that hard, either. There were other people in our group she found much more interesting, often several of them at the same time.

Things started to get crazier. A blue-haired butch-looking girl had her hands down Amy’s pants. Amy was trying to use her own sexual wiles to connect Rory and Birthday Girl together. Birthday Girl seemed more interested in Blue-Hair and Amy. Birthday Girl and Blue-Hair were sucking face like a pair of lampreys on spring break. Erica mildly disapproved. Finally it was too much for my poor sober ass. I made Erica promise to come to Prague whenever she went to Belgium, got Amy’s keys and went back to her place.

Amy showed up two hours later with another friend. I made grilled cheese sandwiches (double cheese). The friend would not leave, and It turned into a late night. Finally I curled up on the short sofa and closed my eyes and he took the hint. He’s a nice guy, really; Amy had called him in the middle of the night for a ride home and he had complied. I was just very tired. Making grilled cheese sandwiches can take it out of a guy.

The final image as I turned out the lights was of Amy curled up on the couch, jealously guarding a package of Goldfish even as she slept. I reached out and tugged on the package, open and about to spill, and she snapped down around her precious crackers, contracting like a sea anemone gulping down its prey. I let go of the bag before anyone got hurt.

Thanks!

Lotto-matic

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While sitting in a bar with Lotto the other day I noticed that when no one won a particular prize the dough (or at least some portion of it) rolled over into the next pot. For instance, if no one gets 4 out of 4, then that pot rolls over. I’m assuming that the more people who bet four numbers, the more cashola goes into the next pot. That makes it possible, if the prize rolls over enough and enough people are playing (paying) for that prize, that the expected value of the reward could conceivably exceed the cost to play. In other words, the prize would be larger than the cost of covering all possible outcomes. (The one time I did the math it looked like the return on a dollar bet was in the $.50-$.60 range depending on how many numbers you chose, far worse than almost any bet you’ll find in Vegas.)

Normally when a jackpot gets really large the expected value of an entry decreases because so many people participate that the chances of sharing the prize rise faster than the value of the prize itself does. But with ordinary ho-hum lotto you would have to be extra diligent to notice when the prize had grown to an enticing level. Since there is a new drawing every few minutes, when the prize does get large enough there is no time for a gambler to respond.

So what you need is something that monitors the lotto channel and watches for particular prizes to roll over an extraordinary number of times. (Ideally you would also be able to see how much money rolled over each time.) When enough moolah is on the line, Lotto-matic would enter you in that drawing for all possible permutations. I doubt that would be possible—entries have to go through special machines. Failing that, the system would notify you and you would spend the next ten minutes furiously filling in lotto slips.

Of course, if the system can’t enter you automatically, you have to already be at a location with a lotto machine (say, perhaps, a bar) when the opportunity strikes. The cost of sitting in a bar waiting for the right moment is likely (at least in my case) to dwarf any potential winnings. It might, however, be tax-deductible…

Thanks!

Joe’s Last Stand

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Muddled Ramblings…

I’ve been here for quite a while today, doing some serious deleting. Six chapters: adios. Big chunks of other chapters: ciao. Two characters: beat it, punk. It’s all about purity of essence, so I’ve taken to drinking only rain water and grain alcohol. This is how it’s supposed to be, baby. The synapses are firing with alarming randomness, making pink elephants de rigeur. There is a node in my brain, undocumented, undefined, but up there in my head without a doubt. Its sole purpose is to fuck up the other nodes. It strikes with lightning swiftness and randomness, shutting down the speech center for a few critical seconds when I’m talking to a girl, blasting away my motor control when I try to dance. It is an evil node, or at least a capricious one, bent on making an ass of me.

Like I need its help.

Flashback: months (years?) ago I was here, at this very table, plugged in, writing away. Joe and his band set up on the other side of the bar, and started playing not long after eight o’clock. I listened from my remote spot, pounding with salt and pepper shakers when appropriate. Finally, during a break, I decided it was time for me to go. On my way out I waved to the band, and Dave, the Garfunkel of the group, saw me and said, “Jerry! When did you get here?” The whole bar turned to look at me.

“Uh… two?” I said.

As I was writing the above, Dave came by my spot here, patted me on the shoulder and said, “All is right with the world.” They’re playing on this end of the bar tonight, which probably represents a time limit on my writing tonight. Some geek typing away does not really add to the party atmosphere. Dave’s family is at the table next to mine. Put the condoms on the shakers, we’ll be having some kind of fun tonight. [Note – rather than putting napkins over the salt and pepper shakers so I can use them as musical instruments, this time Leah brought me a pair of mustard bottles.]

Joe is moving to Tennessee, which pretty much puts an end to these parties. Just as well I’m out of here.

I owe these guys a ballad, but it seems kind of late for that now. I’ve got it in my head, a good sad song, an Irish song, but I never got it out on paper. Now they’re all going their ways, and I’ll have to take my ballad somewhere else.

Thanks!

Pitchers

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Location: Pitchers, Rancho Penasquitos, CA (map)
Miles: 8756.8

Turned the dogs back over to Triska and family (“Has it been two days already?”). Just down the hill from their house is a bar called Pitchers, which they had mentioned before. This is my first time here.

It is a sports bar, but when I arrived for a late lunch all the TV’s (except the lotto monitor) were turned off. I settled in to my chair and studied the menu. I knew it would be a disaster, but when I saw sloppy joes on the menu I knew what I had to do. When I saw the Stone Pale Ale tap I the rest of the equation fell into place. e=mc2, baby. The young woman who took my order was also strikingly attractive, even if she did walk like she was in high heels while wearing sneakers. (“Stick up the ass”, we used to call that.) Quibbling aside, she’s awfully good for looking at, and is friendly and attentive as well. (If you’re in the area and looking for a new place to become a regular, also be aware that she just came in to town from Utah and doesn’t know very many people here yet. It wouldn’t be too hard to stand out over the regulars here. Come to think of it, it’s pretty easy to stand out over the regulars at any bar. I’ll try to get her name for you before I leave.)

But I digress. They were out of sloppy joe goop, So I had a BLT instead. It was pretty good, but not exceptional. I hear the pizzas are pretty good here, and the waitress said the subs are good if you’re hungry (I wasn’t). The TVs are on now, showing pool and poker and Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Which leads me to ask: Is Omaha the new Texas Hold ’em?

Just went on a bathroom run (don’t worry—I washed my hands) and on the way I saw that Grolsch is currently two bucks a pint. Not bad. In the mirror I looked at my clean-shaven-long-haired-pale-lower-faced self and all I thought was “glam”. Maybe it’s time for a haircut. On the way back to my table I learned that my server’s name is Jewell. “Oh, like the singer,” I said. Crap. Can there be anything stupider I could possibly have said? Damn I’m an idiot sometimes. She has a firm handshake. I like that in a girl.

Fresh Prince had given way to that Tim Allen sitcom with the tools, and pool has given way to fishing. One of the other TVs has something that may be “wrestling”, but from over here it’s hard to tell. If MTV still had videos, that’s what I would have guessed. Some guy just caught a wee fish. Damn, that’s some good TV. Much better to watch Jewell. I like the way she holds her fork.

Thanks!

Holed up in an undisclosed location

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Triska had her second kid a couple a days ago, so things are pretty crazy over at her house. I thought I would give her a break by finding a dog-friendly place to bring the Spike and Lefty (aka Chico). We got here yesterday evening, and we’ve been holed up here ever since, having a quiet time of it, sharing a bed while all my crap is piled on the other one.

What a large amount of crap it is, too, and how poorly organized. Packing to travel and packing to relocate are very different, and I did a poor job at both. As the tour has gone on, things have deteriorated further. At the start, for instance, I had a suitcase that contained (among other things) the entire contents of my bathroom. When you’re moving it makes sense to pack all that stuff together, but when you’re touring you wind up with a bunch of crap you don’t need. Honestly, almost four months later, I still have no idea what’s in that suitcase. I’m just glad it didn’t cause trouble in customs when I cam back in from Canada. I seem to recall making sure that I didn’t pack any old prescriptions, but I was in a hurry.

I was hoping while here in San Diego to shed Winnebaggo. It’s a pain in the butt. Alas, I’m taking too much electronic hardware across the Atlantic to do without its cavernous proportions. (I assume it is the maximum allowed on an airplane, since all the huge bags are the same size.) I will instead attempt to shed at least one of the lesser bags. I can’t tell you how many shirts I have with me. Dozens, easily. When I thought the tour was going to be shorter and I was going to be shipping a couple of boxes over, I didn’t worry so much about the mix of items I packed. Two pair of long pants, three pairs of shorts, and dozens of shirts, and my whole bathroom. Friggin’ brilliant. I didn’t even use the bathroom stuff when I had a bathroom. (I look at the bottle of cologne – Grey Flannel. Someone told me once she thought I smelled really good while I was wearing that. Most of the bottle is still there, my antifactorysmellintarianism rearing its ugly head.) There was a giant bottle of vitamin tablets in there, and this morning when I dug out the beard trimmer I discovered the lid had come off. I now have 1000 multivitamins bouncing around in my bag.

The pups are oblivious to all this. They just want to chase things and sleep safe and warm under the covers. (The thermostat in this room is, astonishingly, in C. While I applaud this bold move wholeheartedly, it has taken me a while to arrive at a comfortable temperature.) Occasionally we venture out of the room so that the two of us not toilet-trained can urinate in public.

WARNING: The following paragraph falls under the category “I really didn’t need to know that”. If you don’t want to know what you really didn’t need to know, then skip it. You won’t be sorry.

Spike is constipated. The little guy goes into his poop arch for agonizing minutes, staggering around, only dropping a couple of rock-hard nuggets smaller than rabbit pellets for his effort. At least they’re easy to pick up. I think they metamorphosed in his butt.

So you skipped that, right? Believe me, you didn’t miss anything, unless you’re a geologist.

I have repacked now, devoting my backpack to dirty laundry and in the process discovering two more clean socks, which means I don’t have to clean the laundry until tomorrow. Sweet.

Thanks!

New Poll!

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Hunt it down and kill it! In the last two days the beard demise lobby pulled off an upset victory after trailing for the entire poll. Therefore, I will be going to Las Vegas clean-shaven. Just when I was starting to like it, too. Maybe I’ll grow it again in Prague.

The new poll reflects the loss of momentum I’ve had on The Monster Within. I know there are several people looking forward to reading it, and hopefully feedback from you guys will give me the boost I need to finish the thing. On the other hand, it will be a much more enjoyable read (i hope) after I fix some obvious problems. (There are whole chapters that have to go. They have their good points but overall don’t add to the story, and in one case there is a major continuity problem.)

So anyway, for those of you out there interested in giving an unfinished work a read, which would you prefer?

Thanks!

All I want to do is write

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I’m sitting at the library right now. I came in here hoping there would be wireless Internet access, but there isn’t any at this branch. Down in the Pacific Beach branch they do have it, apparently.

I spent a little while deleting some of the pictures I took on the trip; I’m trying to winnow them down so an online album won’t be too tedious.

What I should be doing is taking care of insurance, repacking my crap, dealing with taxes, and a host of other details. What I will be doing is writing. I did a lot of writing yesterday, and while I suspect that what I did toward the end of the day is iffy at best, it still was a good day. I holed up in a hotel room last night–I wasn’t feeling too social–I just wanted to be alone and write some more. I imagined that there in my little hotel room, writing and presiding over my media empire was a lot like my life in Prague will be. That was an encouraging thought, and should motivate me to get off my ass so I can get moving again, but so far it has just made me want to write more.

Anybody want to take care of a bunch of crap for me?

Thanks!

My Pants

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If you’ve ever seen me, you’ve probably seen me in these pants. I’ve been everywhere in them: bars and restaurants, Europe and North America, the beach and jail. I think they’re called cargo pants (at least, that’s what the arresting officer wrote down). They are fairly long for shorts, but fit loosely and work well with boxers. They are covered with pockets, and most of the pockets button shut. They have a drawstring that has allowed the pants to expand even as I have.

Triska bought them for me years ago at a thrift store in Pacific Beach. Two bucks, or something like that. (She’ll remember the exact price she paid for them, even after all these years. She never forgets a bargain.) Sometimes I would be annoyed when she would buy me clothes I didn’t need (my definition of need and hers were very different), but these I took to right away. You can do anything in these pants, from fishing to dancing.

The fact that I have done so much in these pants is also a testament to their durability. Scrambling over rocks, mucking through mud, hauling a halyard on the open sea, or just kicking back on the sofa, these pants have come through with glory. By now a lesser pair would have holes in the pockets where my keys have been driven through the fabric. Other pants would have worn through the seat. Lesser trousers would have lost buttons, but not these. These are the Iron Man of pants, endurance gear harkening back to an era when men were real men, women were real women, and pants were real pants.

Alas, durable and eternal are as different as the Earth and the Universe, and soon it will be time to put these pants out to pasture. The drawstring is frayed; if I’m not careful about how I tie and untie the knot I could find myself having to cut my way out. I’ve already had some pretty close calls in the men’s room. The fabric is getting thin in places and the cuffs are starting to look ragged. While we (my pants and I) were in Catalina things really started to let go. They are still merely scruffy rather than indecent, but it’s only a matter of time now. Hopefully Old Navy still makes this model, and makes them as well as they used to. I like them so much, I’d even buy them new.

Thanks!

Call me Gilligan: The Final Chapter

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I awoke to a quiet Two Harbors morning, trying to judge as I looked out the window directly over my head whether the sky was gray with early dawn or gray with clouds. From the rectangle of sky I could see, squinting through myopia, I could not tell. The rectangle was a uniform color that I could imagine turning to blue, but certainly had not yet. There was no direct light falling on the mast where it punctured the rectangle, soaring over my head. None of the other boats had started their diesels to recharge their batteries, so I knew it was before seven. I closed my eyes again and dozed off.

The next time I opened them the sky had not changed. How much time had passed? It might have been five minutes, it might have been an hour. The sky was unchanged. Overcast, then, most likely. I sat up and prarie-dogged, popping my head up out of the window/hatch to look out over the harbor. The sky was a uniform gray; the air was heavy with moisture. I crawled around and made myself presentable above-decks and made my way aft. On the way I stowed the dishes I had washed the previous evening to make room in the galley for the making of tea, then went topside to turn on the propane.

The deck was wet with dew beneath my bare feet, the water smooth, broken only by the wakes of dinghies ferrying the early risers to shore and to showers. Our dinghy joined the morning rush hour with Carol Anne and Pat aboard, leaving me to enjoy the peace of the morning.

My dish-stowing had awakened Gerald despite my best efforts to keep things quiet. There’s just no stacking plates quietly enough to avoid disturbing someone sleeping in the same room. We each secured tea and bagel and went back up topside to sip and munch and not say much, steam from the tea hovering in a cloud over the rim of my mug, while my pants absorbed the condensation on the seat cushion.

Eventually the harbor patrol (all of whom were very friendly and polite) came by and asked when we were heading out; the mooring was reserved for the next night and the boat could show up any time. Our reverie broken, Gerald and I moved about, stowing things, pulling out the safety equipment, and generally getting ready to sail. The the others returned and it wasn’t long before we were under way.

The trip back across was uneventful; in fact I took a nap for some of the trip. There was some nervousness about docking as that was where Pat had broken his wrist—same boat and same slip. After a bit of trouble at the fuel dock (tidal current and other boats made things tricky), Carol Anne piloted the 38 foot Beneteau into the slip like she had been doing it all her life. A sigh of relief, a nice late lunch, and I was back in the car again, stopping in San Pedro to leave Pat and collect the rest of my luggage from their behemoth and then away, east and south down the coast highway, back to San Diego and the adventure of finding a hotel room, as already documented.

On the way I made a couple of wrong turns, one of which led to a photo op. I used the new camera, which has a slightly less streamlined process for getting the pictures into format for posting here. I’ll try to take care of that this evening, and add pics to the entire Gilligan series.

Thanks!

Programming note

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I’ll be putting up a new poll as soon as I think of one. Last chance to stuff the ballot box! I’m going to a party later today and the hosts have no idea about my beard. Some of them I know are going to hate it. Somehow that makes me happy.

Any suggestions for the new poll? Yeah, I know, it’s Saturday and nobody goes online over the weekend. I’ll try to come up with something.

Thanks!

So very, very tired

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Location: Hampton Inn, Temecula, CA
Miles: 8459.5

What the hell am I doing here? The day seemed so simple. Float back to the mainland. Hop in the car and drive back to San Diego. Crash at Amy’s place. If Amy wasn’t available, find another place. If it got late, get a hotel.

I never hooked up with Amy. It got late, and I didn’t want to call someone to crash at their place after a certain hour. OK, hotel.

Bzzzt! Wrong answer; try again. There are no hotel rooms in San Diego tonight. Comicon is raging, and apparently it’s bigger than ever this year. Escondido has no rooms. At 1:30 a.m. I’m not calling anyone. The only question becomes “how far am I willing to drive and how much will I pay to not sleep in my car?” The answers: A long way and a lot of money.

There’s more, but honestly I’m just too damn tired now. There are other things to write about: Gilligan, the final chapter and ruminations about my pants. Those will have to wait until after my slumber.

I would post this now, but my ethernet cables are all in the car, and that is such a long, long way away.

Thanks!

Call Me Gilligan, Part 4

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Location: Harbor Reef Restaurant, Two Harbors, Catalina (map)

I’m sitting in the only bar in town—if you can call it a town. A wooden lattice casts shade over the wooden deck without blocking the view of the palm trees swaying with the breeze. I put myself back near the building to get better shade so I can see the laptop monitor better. Which means I’m getting less breeze, but that’s a quibble. Good tunes are playing (Nick Cave at the moment). The bar runs along one side of the deck and is reasonably well-stocked. In the harbor nearby, I can see the masts of the boats swaying with the gentle waves.

Niiiice.

The bar has a signature drink, called Buffalo Milk (there are buffalo on the island). The bartender, with a moderate amount of flipping bottles and spinning shakers, puts ice, vodka, creme de cacao, banana booze, and milk into a blender, whipps that up, pours it into a plastic cup, tops with whipped creme, chocolate powder (I think) and dribbles a little Kahlua over the top. I’ll stick to beer.

Note: Since writing the above I have consumed Buffalo Milk, and it’s not bad. The powder in top was nutmeg, not cocoa, but I’m thinking cocoa might be better. Each of the boozes was about a 2-3 second pour, so they are in more or less equal proportions.

Sailor jer The trip over here from Avalon was uneventful, a simple motor over glassy waters with practically no wind. I would have chosen to sail, even if it meant taking a lot longer, but I’m Gilligan, not Skipper, and this isn’t my trip. I’m here out of my host’s kindness, so who am I to complain? I just sat up on my perch and watched the sea, the other boats (none of the others were trying to sail either), and the shoreline of Catalina pass by. It was great. I spent a lot of time thinking about my next novel for November, tentatively titled Worst Enemy. I really should be working harder on The Monster Within, but this trip, the whole tour, in fact, is more suited to the other stories.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned the Flying Fish Cruise yet. Ever since I was a little kid I’ve wanted to see flying fish, and now I have. It was cool! We went bombing down the coast in an 80-year-old open boat filled with benches built for exactly this purpose. It has big spotlights on either side and as we blast along the boat scares the bejesus out of the flyers and away they go. Once those suckers get airborne, they have no control over their course, and at 30 mph they’re relying on good fortune to land them someplace safe. None came in the boat on our trip, but one slammed into the side right near me. While they’re flying, when they are about to splash back down into the water, they can dip their tails in and give themselves another kick, flipping their tail at 50 Hz to launch themselves again.

This picture isn’t from today; it’s actually from the first day out, when we were sailing into San Pedro.

I’m not sure, but I think I sunburned my forehead today. *sigh*

Thanks!

Powerless in Avalon

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Location: Luau Larry’s, Avalon (map)

No Internet here, but there is AC power. Power has been a precious commodity lately, as we discovered that the boat’s alternator was broken. No juice. We would start the motor and the high-tech electrical thingie still said we were still draining the batteries. Cause for only minor alarm, as the engine battery still had plenty of life in it, but the battery for running everything else was getting alarmingly low. That meant no computer recharges, no tunes, and (gasp!) no refrigerator. I didn’t come on this trip to be inconvenienced!

After a few calls back to the company that rented us the boat (good thing I had my phone along), we established that no, in fact we were not just doing something stupid, the system was not working. This morning the boat repair man came out on his boat to our boat and took a look. He determined that the alternator was indeed fried. He didn’t have a matching part. Oh, grand. He had a close-enough matching part, it turned out, but it was just damn expensive. More phone calls to home base to authorize the service. Finally it was approved.

When I used to do home improvement projects, I measured success by how many trips to the hardware store it took. The fewer the trips, the better I was doing. This guy came out by boat to look at the alternator, then went back to the shop to see what he had. He couldn’t reach the rental people, so he came back out to our boat (map) to explain what was going on. While he was there we reached Seabreeze and they authorized the repair. He had not brought the new alternator with him, however, so he went back to his shop to get it. Back out he came for the third time, and got everything installed, except he needed to go back to shore for a nut. Finally everything was cool, the alternator was alternating, and he went on his way. A few minutes later another, younger guy shows up in the boat, chasing us down as we are leaving, because the guy had copied the phone number of Seabreeze wrong. (Of course, he had already called them once.) Total: five trips.

He was a real nice guy, though, and knew his stuff.

Rather than wait for the ship to get it’s juices flowing again, I took off to town to find a bar with an outlet. That’s what led me to Luau Larry’s. It’s not a big place, and it isn’t as busy as it has been the provious times I’ve poked my head in, but to be honest the service really sucks. Granted my table is out of the way, towards the back while most of the customers gravitate toward the front, but I have frankly given up trying to get another beer here. I have tried everything short of being an asshole to get someone’s attention, even when the waitress was just two tables away. I thought it was me but I’ve watched others get crappy service as well.

Luau Larrys: Nice look, nice looking help, but the help isn’t really help at all. I’m leaving here sober.

Post Script: Now I’m back in the marlin club, talking to toothless, bearded people and I’m where I belong.

Thanks!