Daily Archives: November 10, 2010
Boats and Bentley . . .
First off, you’re probably reading this on Veteran’s Day, Nov. 11th, even though this post is dated Nov. 10th.
So I wanted to thank all veterans, and especially my friend Nick Russell for his service to our country.
Thanks, Nick!
Today, the 10th, is another anniversary as well. 35 years ago the ore freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald broke in two and sunk about 17 miles off Whitehorse Bay in Lake Superior. All 29 men aboard were lost and no bodies were ever recovered.
Over 700 feet long, the Fitzgerald was merely another one of almost 6000 wrecks and 25,000 casualties on the Great Lakes since 1878. In fact the SS Carl D. Bradley went down in November 1958 with the loss of 33 men, 4 more than the Fitzgerald. At 639 feet long the Bradley, like the Fitzgerald, was the biggest ship on the lake at the time of the sinking.
The difference was that Gordon Lightfoot didn’t write a hit song about the SS Carl Bradley. Released in 1976, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, written, composed, and sung by Lightfoot, engrained the story of the Fitzgerald’s sinking in the American consciousness. This song, with its haunting melody and lyrics, is hard to forget, but in case you have, you can listen again here.
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
We woke up this morning to heavy rain, that except for brief periods of a little sun, continued pretty much all day.
Unfortunately this meant we still have some water coming in around the slide, since I haven’t been able to look at the problem since it rained heavily a couple of days ago.
But, despite the leak, it was nice to just sit around the rig, listening to the rain on the roof and drinking a mug of hot coffee.
About 1 pm during a break in the rain I went out to dump the tanks. A couple of days ago the black tank was getting full, so I closed off the grey tank to be sure I’d have plenty of dump water to flush.
But it was not to be, at least at first. When I pulled the black tank valve I got a mini fountain of poo water about halfway down the length of sewer hose. I quickly slammed the valve closed and took a look.
My hose had cracked between the coils in about 6 places. It was fine about 10 days ago, the last time I dumped. My first thought is that the yard people got it with their string trimmers, but I don’t know.
Luckily I had another length of hose so I could still finish the dump. The only thing I could do about the spill, since it was in deep grass, was to squirt Dawn over the area and then hose it down good.
About 2 pm we headed up to Seabrook to have a late lunch at Hooter’s. After we had ordered our wings, we noticed they have a new hotter sauce called “XXX”, so we asked for a small bowl to try it out.
We had ordered our wings with “Bentley” sauce which is the hottest one on the menu. They have another one, “Elvis” that’s off the menu, but available if you know to ask for it.
We both like the “XXX”, which is supposed to be even hotter than “Elvis”, and we’ll probably get our wings that way next time.
While we were at Hooter’s, one of my clients called with a printer problem. Their UPS printer had stopped printing out the reports, though it still would print shipping labels. I told him I’d be by after lunch and got back to my hot wings.
After Hooter’s, and fixing the client’s problem, we headed over to Wal-Mart for some shopping, including a new length of sewer hose.
It was clear when we went in Wal-Mart, but it was pouring down rain when we came out. Thus we decided to skip our next stop at Kroger’s and just head on home.
That’s about it for today.
So more tomorrow…
Thought for the Day:
sfgd
