House, what house?

Usually I don't like leaving the island even to go home. Do not get me wrong, I can't wait to get back to San Francisco when I know I'm going but I also know it is a break in momentum. While it is primarily psychological the truth is I rapidly fall out of "work" shape no matter how much hiking etc I do at home. Sixty will do that to you especially when combined with concrete and form work. It is a brutal three weeks when I return to get back in shape.


San Francisco was wonderful as usual. Who would not like returning to your wife, Pacific Heights on Broadway and a Lexus coupe in the garage? I mean really folks, food, museums, movies, a bathroom, hot water, friends, and countless other distractions to help forget the clusterf'k that was the last few months on St John. All this and more concluded with a trip to Texas to visit my mother and other family.

Proving once again the old maxim that you take your head wherever you go there was a Chihuly glass exhibit/installations at the DeYoung and Legion museums when I arrived. Who knows what he named it but it looked like a reef in glass. St John on my brain.

Summer in San Francisco

In a blink San Francisco was over and we flew to Texas. Once there we decided to take my mother on an African safari. Only in Texas! This place was a trip. It turns out it is very close to Granbury where my mother lives.

Fossils going to see fossils!

She is why I don't eat meat. :~)

We were warned Zebras bite.

Ostriches are a whole lot bigger than you think. Once they get their head inside the car you are in deep trouble. Very nasty and fast. They will get any food.

Emu, a lot nicer than the ostriches.

The weeks went by in a blur. I returned to St John after July 4th, missing the Carnival.

To get back in shape I started removing the remaining forms from the retaining walls. At best I can work a four/five hour day to start. The heat exhaustion just knocks me down. The biggest hurdle is mental. Just getting up to start work knowing what I face is the hardest part.

These forms have to stay up now because of the voids. Another wonderful pour job with hot concrete. (These are the same pics from a prior post.)

With the forms done, I then arranged for all my steel to be trucked up from Elvis's where it had been stored since November 2006. I put it up by the water tanks. That will save $200 month. From the top of the driveway I'll be able to drag it down piece by piece as I need it. It was well worth keeping it at Elvis's. It is much drier down in the valley. The steel showed no real rust despite sitting open nearly two years in the tropics.

Heavy rains, a constant random threat, caused another small mud slide in the septic covering the rebar. Digging mud again! Yikes. The game here is every break in work has a potential downside. Until every project is completed the elements can cause trouble. Working alone or with another person has added inherent risk because projects take longer.

Bad news from home. Denise got laid off. Not good. It is one thing for me to be away for months at a time but at least Denise had work to keep her mind off my absence. Weekends were already tough. Now it will be seven days a week. With this as backdrop I start digging out the septic yet again. It is at this point Denise is very sympathetic to my digging in the mud--I'm being set up.

Usually it's, "that's the choice you made now get it done"!

For several years we have had an open invitation to sail Turkey and the Greek isles with our friends Dave and Patricia. They keep their 44' Beneteau in Turkey, spending summer's sailing in the Mediterranean. Denise gets it in her head that now is the time. I resist as usual. This house is never getting built!

To make a long story short I spend the next ten days trying to get tickets to Istanbul using mileage on United, which at the time is imploding with the stock market decline and rising crude oil prices. Truth is, I thought they were headed for their second bankruptcy along with our miles. Between us, we have several hundred thousand miles.

As anyone who has tried to put a trip together with miles knows, one leg is always easy with the other being near impossible. I spent the ten days mentioned calling from St John at midnight California, Chicago, London and Istanbul time looking for cancellations. My dates were open, any class of service. Why midnight? I was told by different United reps that each of those cities was the control point for the trip I was trying to organize and that cancellations would be posted midnight their time. Too funny, but I kept calling anyway.

Finally after several cancelled 72 hour bookings someone cancelled on the Istanbul-Frankfurt leg in business class. When could we return? In five weeks! That is why our trip was over five weeks. Business class round trip, upstairs on a 747. The last time I was upstairs on a 747 in the 70's, it was a bar and smoking lounge, I had hair down to my ass, all the while up to no good.

Hoo rah! Going sailing again!

Building a house, what house?

I got home, burnt about 50 cd's for the boat, scored a new digital movie camera and pumped up the ipod. Ordered everything on Amazon to be delivered to SF when I arrived. It was a hectic three weeks, SF-St John-SF-Istanbul. The pics link is on the blog home page. The seven hours of film will be a editing project on Denise's Mac Pro using i-movie, later to be burnt to dvd.

Istanbul.......