Catch Up Time

We are finally in San Diego, and are spending our first week here staying in our daughter's guest room.  Her house has always felt like home to me, having spent many weekends here when the grandsons were small, as well as quite a few holidays.

As we all know, RV plans are never firm. We had planned on starting our California time with a few days up in Fontana getting a couple of minor repairs taken care of. We WERE then going to spend a couple of relaxing days in Desert Hot Springs at Catalina RV Spa and Resort, enjoying some soak time in their wonderful hot spring pools, before spending a month or so at an RV park near our daughter in San Diego.

Well, I waited too long to make a month rate reservation at the Mission Bay RV resort we have been to before, and have settled on two 2 week stays at other less desirable places.  But then, where we park is not important. This is family month!

Our Hot Springs days were cancelled when upon inspection, it was recommended we have all of the side seals reworked. Given that failure of the seals can cause very expensive delamination and/or blistering of the fiberglass, we decided to get it done. But that meant the Alfa had to stay up in Fontana for most of a week.  In the long run it's a very good time to do this because, as I said in my opening, our daughter has a nice guest room for us to stay in.

It is really nice to see her, her husband, and our two exceptional grandsons. I know, every grandparent thinks theirs are the smartest, best looking, nicest grandchildren in the world.  Well, mine truly ARE!

So, thats all for now.  It's family time.

Well Done!

From Merikay:

We had a good day as far as repairs go.  We stayed overnight at a small mobile home park Tuesday night. The place we were having our leveling jack replaced at, was quite near. That work was finished in a couple of hours and we went over to the Sacramento Truck Center for the replacement of our bell crank and the front brake drums, plus installation of SuperSteer motion control units which go in front of the air bags.  Big $$$.

STC has a comfortable driver's lounge with a nice TV and we were able to watch the last America's Cup race. Craig writes about that below.

They didn't finish the work on the Alfa this afternoon, so we're staying overnight in their parking lot.  It's OK because we  have an electrical hook up. We will be heading down to Zion as soon as they finish.  A good three day drive.

The rig is starting to smell wonderful because I'm baking a homemade chicken pot pie.   Looking forward to a yummy dinner!

From Craig:
Yes it was possible for a sports team to win a "first to 9" event after being down 8-1, and in fact Oracle Team USA did it! We watched the cup-presentation ceremony and everything, and the Kiwis were as gracious as runners-up as they have been throughout the regatta. Several speakers including the SF mayor murdered Spithill's name. We hope that both New Zealand and Oracle retain their interest in contending for the America's Cup in the future, and that future boats end up more like those used this year than like the smaller, slower, and less expensive AC45's.

We hope that Dean Barker recovers from this experience and continues to play a role in the international sailing community, as many AC guys have done as they've gotten older.

We would have been more neutral between Oracle and ETNZ if not for the sports-court decision to ban Oracle's sail-trimmer and penalize Oracle 2 races.  We heard both sides argued on public transit in our first weekend (SF is great for such things :-), and by our understanding the penalty exceeded the offense.

AC72s (while sailing) are among the most beautiful expressions of mankind's urge to engineer and design things. We sincerely hope that the reactionaries in the US, NZ, and elsewhere who call for "a return to proper single-hulled sailboats" will not prevail. They remind us of the Texas politicians who passed a bill/resolution to ban the teaching of critical thinking in their schools.

When we were young there was a saying that we've not heard much of recently: "American ingenuity". When was the last time you heard this phrase? Oracle's design team, who "worked all night every night" according to James Spithill, seem to embody these obsolete words. We assume the design team included a higher percentage of Americans than the sailing team.

We're drinking Skyy Vodka (one of ETNZ's sponsors) in tribute to both teams.