I tell you, you gotta love the weekends.  Here it is 8:53 in the morning.  I slept in a tad due to being up with our sick dog, Skye, who needed to visit the outsides numerous times during the night to take care of business.  She is feeling better this morning, ate some dogie chow and played with her Red Rubber Ball.  She seems rested, but I seem a tad tired, nothing like getting up at 5:30 to make the 7:35 boat over to Friday Harbor from Orcas day in and day out.  Now, that is tired.

Anyway, this Saturday is sunny and warm with clear skys, if I still owned a boat today would have been a great day to get up early, get the boat out and venture over to Canada or up around Stuart Island or just hang out in Parks Bay.  So many options, not enough boat.

I sold SloPoke, my boat for close to six years, last February.  A former military lifeboat, SloPoke was a great boat to be out on the water on and she lived up to her name - slow.  If I was lucky I did 6 knots.  My rational for slowness was that the water was no place to go fast on, except if I was on another, much faster, boat and then it was just plan fun.

  This is SloPoke.  Twenty-four feet of great boat.

One October, a few years ago, I left Friday Harbor at 6:00 am, still in the dark, and took SloPoke over to Victoria for the weekend.  The distance over there was about 24 nautical miles and I arrived around 10:30, about four and half hours.  My good buddy, Mike, was able to sleep in and leave about 10:00 am in his SeaSport and arrived about 11:00.  See how beneficial a fast boat can be.

That weekend where Mike and I was in Victoria was more like an eating festival.  Our goal was to eat Indian, then Sushi, then, Chinese and end at an Irish pub.  We started at the Indian Restaurant, then moved to a Sushi Bar, eating our self to fullness then off to that Irish pub.  We just couldn't do Chinese.  After we enjoyed the non-Irish music we headed over to Soprano's, a karaoke bar.  Now, at the time of night going to a karaoke bar seemed like a good idea.  All I am going to say, is this:  that the experience was one I had never had, nor have had since.  In fact it was so bizarre that readers of this blog would accuse me of making it all up.

Back to this Saturday.  Our move is complete.  Now our chore is to un-pack all the boxes and find places for our stuff.  Jen's room looks as though a herd of elephants had been dancing in there for a week.  Sarah's room is looking pretty good, but she is moving out for Bellingham on Tuesday the 5th.  Skye's room is ok as well.  Samantha and mine, well we need some work in there as well.

In a few minutes or after another cup of Joe, I will be heading out for an hour long run.  Not sure if I will run the Turn Point Loop or head over and run my trail by the airport.  So many routes, so little time.

PABS