Category Archives: Travels with Maria

Blogging from the road.

Returning to Do It Now

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I finally make the long cross-country trip back to my boat.

I booked my flight back in June, using miles to get the best deal and best seats for the Wenatchee to Seattle to Washington DC (Dulles) trip. I got confirmation that yes, for the third time in a row, my pups would be able to fly together in their large kennel in the belly of the plane. They’re sisters and have never been separated and I’m not about to separate them on what would be a 9-hour ordeal through baggage claim.

It’s All Good — Until It Isn’t

My most excellent neighbors, Sandy and Gary, took me to the airport Friday afternoon. I had two medium carryons, one of which holds my entire jewelry inventory, and a little back pack with my laptop, iPad, cables, and snacks. To be checked was my enormous folding wheelie bag and the dog kennel.

The Alaska Air counter staff weighed in that big wheelie bag and I was thrilled to see it was only 49.8 pounds. (Over 50 pounds and they start charging even more than their already outrageous baggage fees.) That was one worrisome detail removed from the stack of them in my mind. I produced the dog health certificate, which I’d gotten (as required for checked dogs) a few days before. But counter staff didn’t touch it. They had a problem with two dogs going into one kennel.

Alaska Air Doesn’t Care

Alaska Air Chat
Here’s the chat with June confirming that my dogs were reserved on the flight, “one kennel with 2 dogs.”

Long story short, the Alaska Air ground crew didn’t care that I had confirmation on my phone in the form of a text message from their Customer Care folks. They didn’t care that I had done this three times before with departures from Seattle, St. Louis, and Dulles. They didn’t care that I only had one kennel and that the dogs had never been separated and that I had car reservations in Dulles for that night. Or that my house sitter had moved in and and I’d have no where to sleep that night. Frankly, they just didn’t care about how their interpretation of a rule was going to — forgive me — totally fuck up the travel plans I’d carefully made way back in June to avoid the kind of surprises they were throwing at me.

Well, that isn’t fair. Two of the women and one of the men working there did care. But the one that looked like a witch and was apparently in charge of saying NO didn’t give a damn at all. Gotta follow those rules. If they were puppies they could ride together in the kennel. But not adult dogs, no matter how much room they had to move around or how well they knew and behaved with each other.

But if I could get a carryon animal carrier and fit both of them in it, well then I could carry them on board with me.

Amazing that Alaska Air cares more about its idiotic and illogical rules than animal welfare.

Although the folks at the counter originally told me that they’d rebook my flight, the witch gave me a slip of paper and told me to call reservations myself. Did I also mention that she threatened to call the “deputy” if I didn’t leave the airport? Seriously. Alaska Air customer service at small airports is apparently run by small minded, power hungry people.

I called reservations and waited for someone to answer. It took a long time. I managed to get my flight booked. It cost me another 10,000 miles. I was assured that the dogs could ride together in the main cabin with me if they fit together in the same carryon.

But I’d also been assured that I could put them together in a larger kennel in the belly of the plane and that hadn’t gone so well.

The New Dog Tote

Fortunately, my neighbor was still in town. Her husband had driven down in their other car so they let me have the truck and told me they’d pick it up later at my house. They had errands to run.

I did, too. I had to go to Petco to see if they had a carryon that both of my dogs would fit into. The one I had at home and had used with Penny the Tiny Dog would definitely not be big enough for my two girls. I actually had doubts that I’d find one they did fit into.

In the end, I found a decent little Sherpa brand bag with enough floor space for the two of them to lie down side by side. The rules said nothing about the dogs being able to move around in their carryon, although my girls could move around a little. All it said was that they had to completely fit with no body parts or fur sticking out and they couldn’t be in obvious distress. They did and they kinda sorta weren’t. But they were definitely not happy about it.

I stopped at Mission Burger in Wenatchee — highly recommended! — and got the new Thai Style Wings — not so recommended, but good enough. (Pro tip: If a place has “burger” in the name, buy the burger.) I took it home. I texted my house sitter to make sure he was still coming that day. He was. That meant I was sleeping on the sofa in my jewelry studio. (Thank heaven for the garage bathroom!) I went home.

I had a late lunch upstairs in my kitchen, cleaned up after myself, and opened a few windows to air the place out — it still smelled from that morning’s deep cleaning. I got online and printed out the pet policy for Alaska Air so I’d have documentation for what their policy was if they tried to say I couldn’t bring the dogs on board. Then I retired downstairs with my pups for the evening.

I needed a plan C. I booked a rental car for a one-way drive from Wenatchee to Chester, MD where my boat is. The price was remarkably good — cheaper than the plane ticket. But the drive would take four full days. I did not want to go there.

My neighbor texted and told me to keep the truck for the ride to the airport in the morning. I could pick her up along the way and she’d drive it home. At 4:15 AM for my 6 AM flight? I asked. Sure, she told me. I’m usually up by then. Wow.

Second Go

My housesitter moved in with the help of a friend. At about 7:30, he texted to invite me to dinner. I was already under the covers on the sofa so I turned him down. I watched some YouTube videos and drifted off to something resembling sleep.

I never realized how loud the cat door is until that night. I had already suspected that my cats liked to hunt at night. Now I knew they did.

I was up from around midnight to 2 AM. Then a little sleep until 3:30. I woke up, got dressed, did my bathroom thing, and fed my pups. I spent a lot of time taking the contents of one of my carryons and stuffing as much as I could into the other. The dogs were my second carryon. The one I’d be taking now weighed a ton and it did not have wheels.

We all went out together through my new back door. The motion sensor lights in front of my garage doors lit up one after the other as we walked past. My girls did their number 1s, but I didn’t have time to coax them to do more. It was already past 4:15. My neighbor’s lights were on. I loaded up and headed up to their house.

Sandy climbed into the passenger seat. I drove us to the airport, nearly giving us whiplash along the way with the brakes that seemed very touchy in the cold morning air. At the airport I walked the girls again, trying to get a number 2 out of each of them. Lily performed, Rosie did not. Rosie is the dog that has to sniff an area for 10 minutes to decide whether it’s worthy of receiving her poo. There was no time for that.

When I got back to the truck, I discovered that Sandy, who had taken my luggage out of the back, was wearing her slippers. She recommended that I put the dogs in the bag before going inside and I was with her on that. I backed the two dogs in. Lily immediately started scratching on the front screen, but I calmed her down. If she appeared to be “in distress” inside, we were sunk and I really didn’t want to drive 2650 miles in a rental car.

Inside, I had to sit on the floor next to the carryon to keep Lily calm while we waited on line. The witch was at the counter but disappeared, perhaps when she saw me. We both knew that the previous day’s fiasco was her fault; she could have just taken the dogs in their big kennel. No one would have gotten into trouble. But things were different now. I’d be making a complaint to DOT about Alaska Air’s policy shift and what it had cost me.

Instead, I stepped up to the counter where one of the helpful women was working. She weighed my bag and, for some reason, it was a pound lighter — I hadn’t changed a thing inside it. Then she confirmed that I had two dogs in the bag, told me they’d probably be better off on the plane with me, and took my credit card for the $100 dog carryon fee. This was a $50 savings over putting them in the belly of the plane. The savings got better since she apparently forgot to take my money for the checked bag.

Pups In A Bag
That’s Lily on the left and Rosie on the right. It sure is tight in there.

We walked to security and the girls had to come out of the bag so I could carry them through the x-ray machine. They examined the contents of my other carryon, which was a mess of jewelry and electronics. I was briefly worried that they’d confiscate the silver and copper sheet I’d textured and added to the bag the night before — it did have some sharp edges, after all — but they didn’t seem interested. I put the girls back into the bag and went into the waiting room to wait. I put them on the seat next to mine; Lily seemed calmer when she could see me.

Wenatchee to Seattle

About people traveling with dogs

Okay, so here’s a tip when you see people traveling with dogs: Leave them alone.

First, they’re probably stressed to the max. Traveling with a pet is crazy stressful. So much could go wrong.

Second, they don’t want to travel with their dog but they have to. Their dog has to be where they’re going and that’s why their dog is with them at the airport.

Third, they’ve got all kinds of worries on their mind. Is the dog handling its confinement okay? Has it done its business or will it stop and squat in the middle of the terminal? Do they have what they need to clean up such a mess? Is their other bag crazy heavy? And is the dog going to stop in its tracks and refuse to move (again) because it’s terrified of the big, clunking wheelie bags zipping by?

Chances are, these people just want to be sitting somewhere, preferably on the plane nearly to the destination. (Or, better yet, at the destination with a nice cold/strong drink in front of them.) They don’t want to stop so your kids can pet the dog. They don’t want to answer questions about the breed and how old the dog is. And they definitely don’t give a shit about your rescue animal or your husband’s cousin’s dog that looks just like yours.

Traveling with my dogs is one of the most difficult, stressful things I do. (Alaska Air sure knows how to make it more stressful.) I have to assume it’s similar or maybe even worse for others.

So when you see someone at the airport with a dog, just hold your tongue and give them space. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it. I know I do.

Wenatchee’s airline service is limited: just two flights a day now and both go to Seattle. We have a little jet; we used to have turboprops. But we also used to have four flights a day in the summertime. (Remember, Alaska Air doesn’t care.)

When we boarded, the flight attendant at the door greeted us warmly and peeked into the bag, making cooing noises. She was clearly expecting us.

Of course there was a woman in my seat when I got to 12D. She offered me her seat in 7D and if I hadn’t already put away my crazy heavy bag over row 10, I would have backtracked and taken it. But she moved and I slid in, sliding the carryon with my pups inside it under the seat in front of me. It fit nicely.

Dog Carryon
Lily and Rosie in their carryon bag under the seat in front of me.

The flight crew did its flight crew stuff. I noted the emergency exits. We taxied down to the end of the runway and took off toward what looked to me like a full moon.

The flight was uneventful, as every good flight is. We climbed to about 12,000 feet to cross the mountains and descended. The airplane made a sweeping turn to the north, giving me a good look at Mount Rainier poking up above a blanket of clouds. Then we descended through the clouds with the woman behind me fretting about how much she hated flying and groaning when the plane hit the runway harder than usual, bounced, and landed again. We were on the ground by 6:40 AM. Sure beats the 4-hour drive.

Mt Ranier at Dawn
When we turned to the north, I got a nice view of Mt. Rainier behind us.

My girls didn’t stir until the airplane started to taxi in and the passengers started getting restless. That’s when Lily started whining. This is a pretty new thing for her — maybe about a year now? She does it in the boat when I’m trying to dock. It’s very annoying.

I got us and my super heavy bag off the plane. At the door, that same flight attendant told me how much better it was that my dogs could fly with me instead of in the cargo area. She’s been briefed on the troublemaker after all.

I had to take a ramp down to the tarmac and then follow a pathway with more ramps up to the terminal. It was a long walk and mostly outside. I put my pups down, zipped open their bag carefully, got them both on short leashes, and started the walk into the terminal.

They were excited to be out of the bag, walking as far ahead of me through the terminal as fast as their little legs could carry them and the short leashes allowed. We’d landed at Gate C10 and I knew there was a “Pet Relief Area” on the far side of Terminal C, so that’s where I headed.

We walked right by the man with the two Bengal kittens on a bench and stopped near a fake fire hydrant and a stinky patch of astro turf. My girls looked at me as if to say, “You expect us to go there? No freaking way.” Rosie looked absolutely forlorn. They thought I was taking them outside or maybe even home. Nope. We were in travel mode and the quicker they caught on, the better off we’d all be.

Without any success on my mission — to get a number 2 out of Rosie — we walked back to the food court. I dumped my crazy heavy bag and their dog carryon at a table near the coffee and bakery booth and got on line. A latte and an apple fritter. I took it back to the table. While I ate, I moved heavy stuff out of one carryon into the dog carryon, lightening it up for the walk to Gate D5.

Seattle to Dulles

I took them to the pet relief area again with no success. The man with the kittens was gone. I’d seen him in the food court wearing the kitten carryon on his chest.

We went to gate D5 to wait another hour for our flight. The girls jumped right up onto the seat next to mine and went to sleep. Or at least Rosie did. Lily is not likely to sleep in strange surroundings.

Dogs in Waiting Room Sleeping Rosie
The girls got comfortable on the chair next to mine. Rosie fell fast asleep.

They eventually started to board us. Of course, I had to offload everything I’d put into the dog carryon bag so I could get the dogs back in there. They seemed to accept the inevitability of the situation. I zipped them in and put the shoulder strap for their bag over my shoulder. One of them started shaking — probably Lily.

I was in boarding group E and I boarded with group C. I was prepared to tell them that I needed more time to seat myself, which was no lie at all. The middle seat person was there already and had to get up so I could get in. I wasted no time settling in. The girls were already relaxed in their bag. I was amazed at how well they’d taken to it — not that an 8-pound dog has much of a choice.

Another flight crew did its flight crew stuff. The plane taxied down to the south end of the runway. By this time — 9:55 AM — it was full daylight on a very cloudy day. We took off into the sky.

Once we’d climbed above the clouds, I enjoyed the breathtaking views of Mt. St. Helens, Mount Rainier, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Hood. Until the woman text to me asked me to lower my blinds because it was so bright and she’d had eye surgery. (Why couldn’t she get a window seat and control her own blinds?)

Mountains from Plane
From left to right: Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood (barely visible in the distance), Mt Rainier, and Mt. St Helens.

Progress
You can use the free limited Internet to track your plane’s position in flight.

The flight was long and boring. I’d forgotten to bring a pair of ear buds so I couldn’t watch a movie — which normally makes these flights go so much faster. I did write this whole blog post — up to here, at least. And I got a chance to stew about Alaska Air’s policies and how I felt kind of screwed over by this episode. Did I mention that I had pre-purchased lunch on the flight I couldn’t get on, thus throwing away another $10 on this fiasco? I had to buy a deli snack pack for this flight, which was high on carbs and salt and low on nutrition. A bloody Mary gave me the veggie serving I needed. And, between glimpses out the window that forced the woman in the seat beside me to shield her eyes, I napped.

We’re about an hour out now — I can follow our progress on the Alaska Air home page that appears with free limited internet. I can only text people with iPhones (via iMessage) and I’ve already bothered enough of them.

An hour left. If only I could stretch my legs out…

On Whiners

Well, I decided I wanted to spent the last half hour of the flight lookig out the window so I opened the shade. The woman next to me immediately started whining about how inconsiderate I was and how it was a medical problem and how I should just close the blinds. So I told her I’d been considerate the entire flight and I paid for a window seat and I wanted to look out the window and if it hurt her eyes, she should just close them. She she got up, bothering the woman on the aisle to do so, to ask the flight attendant if she could change seats. I tried to explain myself to the woman on the aisle but she didn’t care either way and didn’t want to hear it. But the woman behind me said I should have left my blind up for the whole flight because I’d paid for that seat and if I wanted to spend the flight looking out the window I should.

Well, the whiner came back to fetch her things and got a middle seat on the other side of the plane two rows closer to the front. I opened both of my window blinds — did I mention I had two of them? — and spent the remainder of the flight sucking the view through my eyes.

Later, in the terminal, as I was letting my pups out of their carryon, the whiner came up to me to tell me how inconsiderate I was. I told her she was an idiot and if she had eye problems she should have had dark glasses or a night shade and that because she was an idiot I didn’t want to talk to her about it. So she told me the flight attendant had my seat number — I guess we’re back in high school? I’m left thinking that I was seated next to a childish moron for the flight and that if I’d opened the shade earlier I could have gotten rid of her earlier. Lesson learned.

Finishing Up this Tale

I’m not on the plane anymore. Now I’m on my boat in Chester, MD after a long day of cleaning topped off with a martini — with ice I had to bum from a boat that just came in — on the command bridge for sunset. So I’ll make this short.

We found our way to the outdoors where neither of my pups would do their business on pavement — no grass around — but I did manage to find a free luggage cart so I didn’t have to carry that crazy heavy bag anymore. We went to baggage claim and waited. The moron with the surgery eyes was nowhere to be seen, but I was ready to tell her what an idiot she was again if she did show up again. My giant 49.8 pound bag was one of the last off. I put it on the cart and went outside in search of the rental car van.

Of course, the van driver made me put my pups back into their carryon.

I waited about 15 minutes to get my car. Enterprise had two guys at the desk and each time they finished checking someone in, they’d escort them outside to their car. At one point, no one was at the desk. It was idiotic to handle rental cars like this at an airport.

They gave me a boxy little Kia. It’s cute and easy to park. I loaded everything on board, including my pups, and went in search of grass. I found some at the Atlantic Aviation building. Atlantic is an airport FBO — I used to park my helicopter at the one in Deer Valley north of Phoenix. They had lots of grass. I let the girls out and they did some number 1s for me. They we piled back into the little car, I set my phone up with the stereo, and told Google Maps to direct me to the marina where my boat was waiting. It told me the ride would be about an hour and a half.

At the Boat

It was longer because I hit traffic. We got to Chester around 8:30 PM. I stopped at the supermarket to get some food, but mostly milk for my morning coffee. And coffee in case I didn’t have any on the boat. I have priorities.

Then we went to the boat. I found it parked alongside the dock where they stage boats for the TravelLift. That’s the machine that pulls boats out of the water. My boat was probably the last one it had hauled.

Things at the boat didn’t go as smoothly as I thought they might. First of all, I quickly realized that I had no DC power. Most of the boat’s lights are DC and none would go on. The refrigerator is also DC so if I didn’t get the DC power working, my milk (and yogurt and salad, etc.) would go bad. I used the flashlight on the phone to look for a circuit breaker to check. My brain, after 14 straight hours of sometimes very stressful travel, had switched off. I texted a friend in Washington with the same boat. He called. I was just thinking about the thing he told me to check first when I answered. Of course, it was that: the master switch for the House and Engine battery banks had been turned off, probably by the crew who had installed my new Garmin stuff.

I chatted with my friend for a while as I fed my pups. By this time, it was well after 9 PM — of 6 PM Pacific Time. As I hung up, I looked around the now lighted boat. The place was an absolute mess. Had I left it that way? I remembered stowing a lot of stuff inside that had been outside but found it hard to believe I’d left it so bad.

I didn’t care. All I cared about was getting the bed made so I could go to sleep. I took my pups for a walk — finally getting the numbers I wanted out of them — and we all went back to the boat. They settled into their bed on my bed. I settled down with a cup of water and my iPad. I was asleep before 11 PM local time.

And I slept great.

End of May Already?

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Time flies when you’re busy, whether you’re having fun or not.

My last two posts were more than a month ago, in April. I haven’t written a single word — in any of my blogs — since then. I’ve just been too damn busy.

Or tired. Or unmotivated.

The Trip Home

I’m home now from my winter travels. Unlike previous years when I took my RV — most recently, a Lance truck camper — down into Arizona and California for December through March — this year I was on my boat traveling along the Great Loop. I’ve done a total of just over 3000 miles in the boat since I launched it in Chicago in October 2022. Most of that has been solo — just me and my pups. Turns out that my guest accommodations are not satisfactory for friends who have joined me. (Who knew?) Also, I don’t think they got the trip they were expecting. So solo is probably better, at least for now, until I can find a companion who has the right expectations and doesn’t mind sleeping in a cozy cubbyhole.

I’ve been trying to detail my trip in my Great Loop blog, My Great Loop Adventure. Unfortunately, I got behind in my posts and then I got really behind in my posts. As I type this, my most recent post covers my stay in Clearwater Beach, FL in January. It’s now the end of May. I have to hope I can reconstruct the following three months from my notes, travel logs, and photos. That’s one of my main tasks for June. You can help motivate me by reading and commenting on the posts there. That blog will eventually become a book — if I can ever catch up and finish it.

I had the boat hauled out of the water in late April and put “on the hard” at a marina in Chester, MD. The boat’s bottom looked great — no damage at all and very clean after a quick power-washing. It won’t need painting before I launch it again, so that’ll save some money. On the other hand, it appears that a shallow water incident on my first Loop day did indeed do some minor damage to the prop. (That is the only shallow water incident I had where the prop was involved, so it must have been that.) Obviously not enough to affect operation — after all, I did drive it 3000 nautical miles after that — but enough to have the prop pulled and the two tiny blade bends fixed. That might reduce the vibration I feel at certain speeds and, according to the yard owner, it might even help me get an extra knot of speed. I was also very pleased to see that I didn’t have any crap trap line wrapped around my prop; I know I cut one line with the prop on Florida’s west coast but never had any symptoms of a problem.

After cleaning the inside of the boat and packing up, my pups and I headed for Dulles Airport early in the morning of April 27. At 2:30 local time, we were back in Wenatchee, where my friend Bob picked me up and took me home. My house-sitters had vacated just a few days before, leaving the place neat and clean, with clean sheets on the bed. (Thank you John and Allie!) I’m not sure if the cats were glad to see me, but I know the chickens weren’t. I’d been gone so long, they surely had no memory of me.

Good to Be Home?

For the next few weeks, I felt conflicted about being home.

First of all, it was nice to sleep in my big, comfy bed that, amazingly, didn’t rock at all at night, no matter how windy it was outside. It was nice to be able to use a toilet without worrying about how many times I’d flushed, what color the tank light was, and where/when I’d have to dump waste. It was also nice to take a shower with as much hot water and space as I needed without having to walk to a separate building on shore. And I really do appreciate my dishwasher, washer, dryer, and giant refrigerator.

I was home with all the comforts of home. My boat is comfortable, but its space is limited and, like living in an RV, there are special concerns that you just don’t have at home.


Here’s the view from my deck one day not long after my return. How can a person not love looking at this every day?


I changed the Lock Screen on my phone to a shot taken by my Looper friend Kim on her boat Pony as we headed down the Chicago River in October 2022. Now I’m reminded every day where I want to be.

But I did miss being on the boat. Traveling from place to place, meeting new people every day, seeing new things every day. Facing and overcoming challenges. Enjoying the simple joy of a sunrise from up on the command bridge, with a gentle breeze in my hair and waking birds flying about. Motoring to a new destination with very little idea of what I’d find along the way or when I arrived. I’m a traveler — like my grandfather was — I’m happiest when I’m on the road — or water — exploring new places or revisiting favorite old ones.

So the first few weeks home were a bit of a mental challenge, with an internal argument telling me I should be happy to enjoy the comforts of home while also telling me that home was boring and predictable and I needed to get back out on the boat as soon as I could.

The Art Shows

Of course, I had to hit the ground running when I got home. (Or I thought I did.) I had four weekends in a row with art shows and I seriously doubted I’d have enough inventory to do them.

It started a week after my return, with my second appearance at Wenatchee’s annual Apple Blossom Festival. There’s an Arts and Crafts show the second weekend of that event with strict setup rules. That had me setting up my booth on the Thursday before the event. That day, I also (finally) got a haircut and made myself presentable to the world. I spent the next three days in my booth, suffering through the dust or pollen or whatever that stuff was that got on everything. The event was extremely disappointing; I suspect my work was too high-end for the audience. I tried not to be insulted when two different people — guys, of course — came into the booth to ask if I had anything around $10. I don’t.

What followed that were three consecutive weekends at Leavenworth Village Art in the Park. This is a juried show that I’ve been part of for the past three years. It’s held every weekend from May into October and artists are able to choose the weekends they want. Management then picks the artists and tells them which dates they can have. I picked five weekends in May, August, and September, and got four. I always want Mother’s Day weekend — I’m selling jewelry, right? — but this year I didn’t get it. Until about two weeks before I got home. Another jeweler had backed out on that weekend and I was asked if I wanted to take her place. Hell yes. So that’s how I wound up with three weekends in May.


Here’s the current incarnation of my art show booth, set up for Mother’s Day weekend in Leavenworth, WA.

(I should mention here that I don’t do weekends during the summer because that’s cherry season and I’m on standby. I can’t answer calls promptly if I’m sitting in a tent a hour’s drive away. More on that in a moment.)

So I set up for Mother’s Day weekend — three days. Unfortunately since I thought I wasn’t going to do Mother’s Day weekend, I booked a class in Ellensburg — two hours from home — to teach silversmithing on Saturday. I thought that class might get cancelled; it was a relatively expensive four-hour class. But it wasn’t so I had to get a friend to sit in my booth on Saturday while I went to Ellensburg to do that.

Mother’s Day weekend sales were very disappointing.

So was the next weekend. That made three weekends in the row with disappointing sales.

I was beginning to think that it was either the economy or the venue that was bringing my sales numbers down. People are definitely not spending like they were back in 2021. And, at the same time, some of my work was becoming more refined and, yes, more expensive. Was I making a product that wasn’t a good match for the “tourist shows” I was showing at? My friend Janet, who has been doing art shows for about 40 years now, thinks so. I think I’m on a sort of knife’s edge where I could go either way. I can make the lower-end items people seem to be ready to buy but I want to make the higher end items that are more creative and challenging and help develop my skills as a silversmith.

The good part of all this is that although I thought I’d have to spend the month making jewelry to keep my inventory up for shows, I didn’t. I made a handful of new items and then, after that third bad show, took the week off to tend to other things.

I went into the four-day Memorial Day weekend with very low expectations.


This was the first of two “next level” pieces I made during the month of May. Hubei Turquoise in sterling silver.

And I kicked butt. Seriously: I had my second best ever show. (The best was Mother’s Day weekend in Leavenworth back in 2021.) Although I’d told myself I’d stop making the wire-framed pendants that had gotten me started back in 2018, I had to make them while I was at my booth just to keep my displays filled. And beaded earrings and bracelets and necklaces. And I sold them. But best of all, I also sold one of the high-end pieces I’d made earlier in the month — a piece I considered “next level” for me. While I was sad to see it go — sometimes I get a real attachment for my work — I was also thrilled that someone was willing to pay that much money for something I’d made.

So now I’m done with shows for a while, coming down off a high from this past weekend. My next show is at Lake Chelan — yes, another tourist show — but I suspect I’ll do well if the weather is good and folks come out. I have three weeks to stock up and I have some ideas for the kind of next level pieces I want to make.

The Diet

Well, it took about 10 years, but I managed to gain back all of the weight I lost back in 2012, the year I also shed a husband and gained full control of my life. If you’re a regular reader, you may recall that I’d gone on a Medifast diet along with a friend and we both lost about 45 pounds in four months. (I basically followed him down the scale; he was a week ahead of me and we’d started at the same weight. He’s shorter than I am.) I kept most of the weight off for a few years, but little by little my overeating habit returned and the weight came back. For the most part, I eat very well — very little junk food and hardly any fast food — but I tend to like what I eat and eat more than I should. That’s what got me back to where I started in early 2012.

I’d tried cutting back on my eating but was unsuccessful. I needed a program that was easy to stick to, one I knew would work. So I went back on the new version of Medifast, which is called Optavia. Mostly the same food — although definitely sweeter sweets and saltier savories (what’s up with that?) — and the same plan. I started on May 1 and 30 days later, I’m weighing in at about 16 pounds less than I started. I’ll stick with it throughout the summer and have no doubt that I’ll reach my goal weight (again) before I go back to the boat in September.

And this time I’ll keep it off. It’s mostly for my health, but I can’t deny the emotional kick I feel when I look in the mirror and see someone who looks as good as I should.

Cherry Drying

I start my last season drying cherries on June 10. This is a mellower than usual season with less acreage and fewer pilots. It’s also not clear how much flying I’ll do — if you recall, I sold the helicopter to buy my boat last year. Last year, I leased a helicopter for the season, but that ended with problems I didn’t want to blog about — and won’t unless they rear their ugly head again. (Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t blog about everything in my life.) This year, I might be flying one of the helicopters my pilots are bringing up from Texas. Or I might not. It depends on whether it rains. (If my pilots have everything under control and can dispatch themselves, I’ll tell the Leavenworth Village Art in the Park folks to put me on their wait list for other summer weekends.)

This will be my fifteenth season drying cherries. Since I started way back in 2008, I’ve built my business up to the point where, at its peak, I had six guys on my team every summer and was bringing in more revenue than I did during the heydays of my writing career. Things are slowing down now and that’s fine with me. The stress of worrying about a crew of mostly unknown pilots and literally hundreds of acres of client orchards has really taken a toll on me. This is the last season I’ll be involved and I’ve already let most of my clients know.

When I look back at my freelance career, I’ve come to realize that I’ve been working every single summer since 1998. If it wasn’t a Quicken book, it was cherry drying. I’m really looking forward to having a whole summer off for the first time in 25 years and I’ve already made plans for it.

As for the business, I’m hoping this season’s pilots will consider taking over my contracts and giving my current client base the good service they deserve.

Will I miss flying? I already do, a little. But honestly, I’m enjoying the boat so much that I think I can get over it.

Remember: you can’t move forward if you’re looking behind you. Being a helicopter owner/operator is in my rear view mirror and I’m not turning around.

Other Stuff to Keep Me Busy This Summer

My list of Things to Do gets bigger every day.

Gardening
I didn’t properly put my garden to bed last autumn so that meant more work this spring. I finally have most of my 12 beds planted. I still need to weed around them and get things neatened up.

Selling Stuff
My biggest problem at home? I have too much stuff. I’m in the process of selling off a bunch of it. I’ve already sold my helicopter landing platform and tow bar; one of my summer pilots might be buying other helicopter gear I still have. I also need to sell my truck camper and my little boat — yes, I still have that! Future items for sale: my telescope, my cheesemaking gear, a bunch of circa 2000 Apple swag from Macworld Expo shows, my beekeeping equipment, and so much more. Craig’s List has been an absolute gem at moving this stuff out without costing me an arm and a leg.

Garage Bathroom
I still need to finish the bathroom in the garage. That’ll require some assistance on the plumbing from a builder neighbor who I hope to get in here soon. The goal is to have it done — or at least the toilet functioning — by the end of June.

Garage Reorganization
What a mess my garage is! I’m reorganizing it to move all my woodworking and tools out of my jewelry shop area and into the adjacent space. My workbench will become a miter saw bench. Then I’ll expand the jewelry shop to include space for two students, as well as my futon and some other furniture to make it a more comfortable, useful space.

Spring Cleaning in the House
I’ve already done the cleaning part of this. Now I just need to offload a lot of clothes and other household items I simply don’t need in the house. Yes, I’m downsizing! There are a lot of reasons for this, but the main one is that less stuff means less clutter.

Blogging
I really do need to catch up on my Great Loop blog. And not neglect this blog so much.

Working the Jewelry Biz
I need to keep making new jewelry, selling it at shows, and bringing it to established consignment and wholesale accounts. Others are selling my jewelry for me and although they take a hefty fee — as much as 40% — it’s a lot more efficient to let them sell it than to go to shows, especially since I can’t do shows when I’m on the boat. I also want to start teaching small classes out of my shop, using days when I need to make a specific product to teach others to make the same thing. That’s something I need to set up soon since my time home is so limited.

Those are the main things that will keep me busy this summer. I guess I’d better get to it.

It’s April. Here’s What I’m Up To.

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I’m still on board Do It Now, but paused to take care of some business and now prepping to come home.

Here’s what I’ve been up to for the past month or so.

Northbound

Cruising, of course, on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. That’s the mostly sheltered series of rivers, bays, inlets, and canals that runs from Florida all the way up to New Jersey.

When I last blogged here, I was in Georgetown, SC. Since then, I’ve been to Bucksport and North Myrtle Beach, SC, and then Southport, Carolina Beach, Hampstead, Morehead City, and New Bern, NC. I’m now in Oriental, NC, where I’ve been for a while, taking care of some business.


The red dots indicate my stops along the way since my last blog post here in in March.

Although I was ahead of the Looper pack for most of the past three weeks, I’m now part of the leading edge as other Loopers catch up with me. My boat buddy friends are, unfortunately, still quite a way behind me. That’s my fault since I needed to head north at a quicker pace to make a deadline. I’m hoping to make some new friends as I continue north from here in a day or two at a more leisurely pace.

Captain’s Training Done

Today marks another little milestone in my life: I finished a required 56-hour Coast Guard approved training course and took (and passed) the required tests to get my OUPV (Six Pack) Captain’s License.


Here are the study guides I bought and barely used. They are in mint condition and I’d like to sell them for $95. (I paid $150 for them.) Contact me if interested.

This is something I’d been wanting to do for more than a year now — in fact, I purchased some study guides all the way back in November 2021. While I could have done it online, I knew from experience that if I didn’t sit in a classroom every day with an instructor there to check off my name on a list, I’d never get it done. So I looked for and found a classroom course that ran eight consecutive days with the test on the last day. It was a bit tricky. Although there are classes all along the east coast, where I’m currently cruising in Do It Now, timing was an issue. I missed a class in Stuart, FL by two days and wound up with the one that started March 31 in Oriental, NC. That’s why I’m here and have been here for over a week — my longest stop yet.

Sadly, I was not impressed with the quality of training, the study materials they provided, or even the classroom facility. And the instructor, although a very nice man who probably has a lot of great boating stories to tell, could have been a lot less deaf and a lot more animated. So I can’t recommend the training organization. But I also can’t deny that they got results. I’m pretty sure all of the attendees in my class of nine experienced boaters passed their tests. I know I did and I now have the certificate to prove it.

What’s next? I still need two pieces of the puzzle before I can submit all my paperwork to the Coast Guard and actually get my Captain’s License: a physical exam (similar to what I need as a pilot) and a drug test (which I also needed when I ran my own helicopter charter operation).

In case you’re wondering why I decided to chase down this certification, an OUPV Captain’s License will enable me to legally operate charters on my boat for up to six paying passengers at a time. (Ironically, it’s similar to the Part 135 certificate my business, Flying M Air LLC has, but it doesn’t involve the FAA (or Coast Guard, for that matter) breathing down my neck and making unreasonable and often costly demands. I sold Flying M Air last year, so the FAA can breathe down someone else’s neck.) I plan on using it to offer one-on-one training for people who want to learn how single-hand a boat like mine or women who want to learn more about boat handling from someone other than a spouse. The next logical step would be to offer multi-day charters along the Great Loop, but I’m not sure if Do It Now is well-suited for that mission.

Prepping for a Summer at Home

As much as I like to think I’m retired, I’m technically not. I still do cherry drying work.

What’s that, you say? How can I still be flying helicopters when I sold my helicopter and I sold my charter business?

Well, the truth of the matter is that pilots are pretty hard to come by these days and I’ve got access to pilotless helicopters that I can fly for cherry season. Right now, it’s a matter of finding the right match. And whether I personally fly or not, I’m still managing a team of pilots to provide cherry drying services to my clients. This will be my 16th season (!) and I’ll be honest: I hope it’s my last. I really do want to retire. I’m hoping someone on my team will buy me out this year. It sure would be nice spending the summer of 2024 on Do It Now cruising the Canadian canal system.

In addition to that, I still make and sell jewelry. I’ve lined up four consecutive weekends at art shows in Washington in May, before cherry season starts. That means I need to get home to build inventory and do those shows.

To that end, I booked a flight for myself and my pups on Alaska Air on April 27. I’ve already given my house sitter the news so I can sleep in my own bed when I get home.

I hope to get my boat up to the Annapolis area by April 25 and put it on the dry there until I get back. I’ll get the bottom checked (and possibly painted); take a look at the prop, rudder, and other bottom stuff; and possibly have the zincs replaced. I’m also hoping to find an electronics guy to install my new Garmin Black Box 800 for AIS transmission capabilities and a Nebo hard install. And, if the stars align just right, I’m hoping I can find a good canvas company to enclose my entire rear deck in a screen/vinyl/canvas enclosure that’ll really increase my usable living space.

If all goes well this season at home, I’ll do a few more art shows after cherry season and be back on the boat by mid-September.

(I still laugh when I think about the family members who advised me not to buy the boat because I’d “never use it.” Since buying it, I’ve spent more nights sleeping aboard than I have in my own bed at home. Hell, I’ve been onboard nonstop since November 25. My house sitter spends more time in my house than I do.)


Here’s Do It Now under way in South Carolina. A passing Looper took this shot and texted it to me. (I sent them one of their boat, too!)

A Day at a Time

Now that I’m finished with the Captain’s training ordeal — for lack of a better word — and I don’t have to worry about practice questions invading my dreams anymore, I can do what needs to be done to get up to Annapolis and get Do It Now tucked away for its summer vacation. I’ve already planned my next week or so of travel, which will get me to Chesapeake Bay. I’ll be taking them on, one day at a time, until my winter travels end and I’m back home in Malaga.

And as for that other blog — well, I haven’t written a word there in over a week because of my class schedule. I’m farther behind than ever. But I’ll catch up if it takes all summer to do it.