If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what is a 12-minute video worth?

This one is priceless. It documents the road trip I took with my special needs brother, Hank, and his thoughts on the experience. His happiness and joy are infectious — you are guaranteed to laugh!

A special trip with my Special brother from Margaret Meps Schulte on Vimeo.

Yesterday, the season still felt very much like summer. During the day I was hearing an orchestra of cicadas singing for me. That brings me back to my childhood summers, since Seattle doesn’t seem to have that orchestra. The evening chorus of frogs seems to fit a wider range of seasons, but it still felt like summer.

Today it isn’t any cooler, but it was overcast, drizzled a little, and now that it is evening it is really starting to rain. But a warm, hard, summer rain still.

Yesterday I started working on another item on my ever-present list, but didn’t get make a whole lot of progress–I spent more time visiting with people in the boatyard and speaking to friends thousands of miles away more than working.

Today I slept in (talking to people in other time zones isn’t helping this night-owl get on local time), and did a little more work on the same project…but once again, I didn’t make much progress on that todo list with 92 items.

I’ve been thinking more about other things. You see, I’ve realized that when Meps decided to take her road trip so she could have some time to write and be on her own, having her own adventures, she just gave me the most amazing gift. Something I didn’t even realize that I hadn’t had in the last twenty years. In fact, I may never have had it, since the last summer I had no obligations, I was still living with my parents, and thus had a few rules and a little structure imposed on me.

For this month, I am my own master. I do not have a job to report to. I do not have somebody living with me to discuss things with, or negotiate things with, decide things with, or do things with. There isn’t somebody to do things for, and nobody will do things for me either. I can eat when I’m hungry, or just be hungry. I can cook whatever I like with anything I have aboard. I could go out to a restaurant. If I leave my shoes in the the middle of the floor, nobody else will trip over them. If I don’t decide to do anything, nobody will point it out to me. I’m not really alone–there are lots of people in the boatyard, and I am enjoying their company, but I have no commitments with them.

So I came here thinking that the todo list was my master. But it isn’t. I am my own master, and I choose whether to look at the list or not. And I pick my own item from the list to work on. Or maybe I will pick two or three and bounce around them. Instead….or in addition….or whatever, I spoke with Nancy at Bahia Street and asked what I could do to make their website better. I have a whole world of choices here, and they are all mine.

And I’ve worked on things not because they were the top of the list critical items we need to complete before we launch. Instead I picked a couple things that just bugged me. The fact that they were smaller items I could finish soon helped, but mainly I was tired of having them hanging over me as something I meant to do but hadn’t got to yet. Perhaps I’ll knock a lot of things I’ve been “meaning to do” out this month. Or perhaps I’ll decide that I was really “meaning NOT to do” some of them instead?

Tonight I took a look at the weather radar and saw a rainy evening coming. Now I’m battened down in my cozy little boat, writing for the web, and cooking bacon and eggs and some sort of hash for dinner at 8pm. Actually I think it will be bacon, hash and a extra sharp cheddar omelet. And it probably won’t be ready ’till 8:40 or so. In fact, I’m already eating at 8:35, and I made too much hash, and put too much ground chipotle pepper into it. It is all wonderful, and I did eat it all. But then I didn’t eat much else today.

If it doesn’t rain too much tomorrow, I might get the new section of teak toe-rail installed with the newly polished bronze chocks. I will soon cross something off that big list. I may start back on one of the bigger projects like re-finishing the masts. But not tonight.

Now the season is becoming clear to me. This is a season for me to think. And it is a season for me to feel. I suspect the second is even more important. It absolutely is time for this season.

A decade ago, when we were living in our not-so-upscale house in the upscale Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, we had a neighbor with chickens. Like us, she had a not-so-upscale house and a devil-may-care attitude about what the neighbors might think.

During a period of a couple months, I discovered that roosters don’t necessarily crow only in the morning, they crow all day. I thought it was charming. Other neighbors — the upscale ones — didn’t find it charming. They complained, and the flock was made compliant with Seattle law: Three hens, max, and zero roosters.

After that, the chickens were very quiet in their little coop, tucked behind some bushes and against the house in the front yard.

Given this experience, when we were invited to chicken-sit four chickens at a different friend’s house in Seattle, I was puzzled. “How can you have four?” “It’s OK. One of them is not a chicken,” was my friend’s response. This friend will remain nameless, because I’m afraid that the one that is not a chicken acts so much like a chicken, there might be a slight compliance issue. At the risk of being an accessory to the crime, I will not publish any names.

Except for the chickens’ names. First names only.

We arrived at the house for our chicken-sit instructions, and indeed, there were four creatures that looked like chickens. Two brown, two black-and-white. Mango, Frango, and Lucky are chickens. But Clam is simply the most chicken-like clam you’ll ever meet. There is no compliance issue. “This house has three chickens and a clam, Officer.”

Like the other girls, Clam bursts out of the coop with a rush of flapping, flying energy when you open the door. Then she runs around the yard, clucking and looking for bugs. She digs up the dirt in the side yard, which may explain why the cucumbers are stunted. She hates being cooped up and wants to be top in the pecking order. She runs over and attempts to eat anything you toss on the ground, whether it’s a cucumber peel or a frisbee. She has been seen drinking from the infamous avian-nipple watering system. She produces award-winning volumes of chicken shit.

But lately I’ve noticed that Clam’s behavior is a little different from the others. Yesterday, she came over to me as I was standing on the patio. I thought she might be suffering from insecurity, being the outsider, so she was going to be more affectionate. “OW!” That was not affection, it was aggression! After she pecked me on the big toe, I punished the whole lot of them by vanquishing them from the backyard. And decided it was no longer a good idea to stand barefoot on the patio.

Today, I went out in the yard wearing clogs. Picking green beans, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my heel. Clam had found the only exposed flesh on my foot and pecked it. Back she went, along with the others, into the Chicken Prison Exercise Yard. Barry seemed relieved.

Right now, the chicken-sit is pretty easy; the chickens are too young to lay eggs. But what will happen when they start laying? Will Clam lay eggs, too? Or will she lay clams? She just might be the juvenile delinquent of the chicken yard, in which case, I hope she’ll straighten up and fly right. Otherwise, she’ll be out of here, and her owners — no, I still won’t tell you their names — probably won’t give a cluck.

“Your cat is cute.”
“She’s not my cat.”

“What’s wrong with your cat’s leg?”
“She’s not my cat.”

“You’re flying to Seattle? What are you going to do with your cat?”
“SHE’S NOT MY CAT!”

To other people, fostering a cat family looks a lot like having cats. We had a cat door, food and water bowls, and a playful, frisky kitty named Buttercup who followed us around the boatyard and frolicked under our boat. All of which explains the number of times in two weeks that we had to protest, “SHE’S NOT MY CAT!”

Aboard our boat, her two kittens spent all their time sleeping and nursing. When their mother climbed into the berth with them, they would make tiny, cute squeaking sounds, and she would respond with chirps. Then they’d find a teat, suckling quietly, and she would purr.

One night, just after I went to bed, I heard agitated squeaking. Buttercup was responding with more than the usual meeowing, purring, and chirping. When I went to see what was up, there was a soggy kitten on the galley floor. Buttercup’s water bowl was a small Tupperware cup, just big enough for one kitten — and one kitten had fallen in!

That night, she decided the quarterberth was not a safe place. She moved the kittens under the stove, where we had to get on our hands and knees to see them. They hardly noticed us, since their eyes remained closed. We tried not to spill popcorn or sauteed onions behind the stove.

Less than a week before our departure, we got a very welcome call. Donna of PAWS had found a foster home for the three with a retired couple who are dedicated to cats. Imagine a large house in the country, surrounded by miniature houses, each with carpet, windows, and air conditioning. Our single mother and her babies were going to live in a real cathouse!

So we dropped them off at a vet for the transfer. Even after just three weeks, it was hard to say goodbye. We drove back from the vet wearing PAWS bracelets that say, “I saved a pet.” And in our email box was a timely message from our cat rescue mentors, Blaine and Suzy: “hero merit badges earned!”

But the boat was quiet and empty. The feral cats we feed sat at the bottom of our ladder, puzzled. “Where’d that girl kitty go? We didn’t mean to chase her away!” they seemed to say. We threw ourselves into finishing the masts and packing for our trip, as if working 19-hour days would distract us from missing the friendly cream-colored cat.

We’re in the Pacific Northwest now, with even more distractions. Still, I find myself looking at the photos of Buttercup Not-My-Cat — of which we have way too many — and thinking, “Yes. For a short time, you were my cat. Thank you.”

I was rooting around in the boat the other day, wearing my new summer uniform: Embarrassingly short, frayed cutoffs and a bikini top. I found this weird fuzzy thing in the hanging locker, and I asked Barry, “What’s this?”

It was a fleece jacket.

That’s when we decided we’ve been away from home for too long. I sat down at the computer, sweat rolling off my nose onto the keyboard, and bought airline tickets to Seattle. We arrive at midnight on July 8th.

Don’t get me wrong — I love it here in Beaufort. We are surrounded by wonderful people, and it’s beautiful here on the water. But with the thermometer hovering around 100 degrees, we find ourselves spending too much time sitting around, panting, and not enough time working. Sure, we could rush and get the boat in the water, just in time for the worst of hurricane season. It’s not worth it.

There have been a number of other clues that we’ve been away too long, too. I was down below on Dick’s boat last week, up at the marina in New Bern, and a wake caused the boat to rock. Dick and Barry laughed at the startled look on my face, but I was mortified. I’ve been on the hard too long — it’s time to get on some boats that are floating.

Then there are the cats. Five little kitties, becoming more attached to us each day — it’s like growing feline roots. Time to go and let others take care of them!

So I let my mind wander, and I came up with ten more reasons why we need to come home:

1. Mom and Dad have some Big Birthdays to celebrate.
2. We heard Dave is having some trouble with the Atomic 4 on Whisper. He’s been forced to sail in and out of Shilshole all this time. (kidding!)
3. Ben needs a new F.E.
4. Nancy needs someone to chicken-sit. Don’t you love that term? Chicken-sit!
5. Leilani is incarcerated in the hospital and needs to be sprung.
6. Bill says we only painted half of his house in 2007 and need to paint the rest. He’s willing to pay us in Killer Oatmeal and Coffee Herbies.
7. I need to hear my favorite chiropractor say, “What the heck have you been doing to your body?”
8. I’m dying for some dim sum. And Sichuanese green beans. And a bubble tea! Chinatown, here I come.
9. Two people in Wallingford owe me money. Maybe this should be reason number one?
10. I’m at risk of going native here: Ah seem t’be acquirin’ a Suthin’ accent and a SUNTAN!

The 2009 Meps’n'Barry Pacific Northwest Tour runs from July 8th to mid-September, with a trip to Burning Man the first week of September. We plan to stay with Barry’s folks on Camano Island part of the time, and we’ll be doing two chicken-sits in Seattle, too.

The biggest question right now is where to go from the airport and how to get there. Our tiny east coast brains will think it’s 3 am, so we’re likely to be pretty weird and interesting. Are there any night owls out there who might rescue us from SeaTac and let us surf their couch for a night?

And if you can think of any other reasons why we need to go home, please share them on the blog as comments!

It took us a day and a half just to pack the van. Barry had bolted additional 2-by-4′s onto the roof rack, and while I sorted and packed clothes and food and toys and cmping gear, he was strapping a room-sized piece of carpet, our mizzen sail, and a collection of conduit and PVC on the top.

Then we carefully went through the boat, stowing our fiberglass tools and boatyard-skanky clothes and our dorm-sized refrigerator inside. We removed all loose items from the deck and the area around our jackstands, set off a bug bomb inside to eradicate the palmetto bugs, and locked the companionway. The last thing we did was take down the ladder.

And then I turned the key, and the Squid Wagon did not start.

How is it that an inanimate object, a simple dumb non-sentient vehicle, can know that we are about to ask it to drive 6000 miles? Whoever heard of a lazy van?

But Squidley knew that we were about to head on a cross-country road trip, and instead of a giant diesel-sized roar, there was just a tiny whimper.

Luckily, Kenny Bock keeps a portable charger for such emergencies, which probably occur every few days around boats. We got the van started, I got hugs from all my favorite guys in the yard (that’s Randy, Larry, and Dale) and we headed west.

In truth, we’d simply run the batteries down with the dome lights while doing all that packing. Once Squidley realized that we really were heading all the way to Nevada with a deconstructed port-a-potty strapped on top, he decided to cooperate.

As I write this, we’re driving across Utah on I-80. The sunshine on the Great Salt Lake is achingly beautiful, and there are many sailboats out there.

The sails don’t tempt us at all. We continue on, away from the water and toward the Nevada desert.

Our first encounter with other pilgrims was in the middle of Nebraska, in a Cabela’s parking lot. When we came out, we found a note on our windshield: “We shall see you at the gates of heaven.” It was in response to one we’d left on a New York van on our way into the store: “See you at home!” We never actually saw them, only their vehicle, which featured mountain bikes and (the dead giveaway) a large Burning Man logo.

Our next encounter was on I-80, somewhere in Wyoming. At the Squid Wagon’s usual 60 mph, we rarely pass anyone, but some Burners travel even slower, laden with art and gas cans and misshapen trailers of curious gear. Last night, we honked and waved as we slowly passed a converted shool bus with dozens of hula-hoops strapped to the back.

We’re all excited and happy to be going to Black Rock City, that amazing temporary city of 50,000 people, where Burning Man is held. We come from all over the world, from Australia and Scotland and New York and San Francisco and Seattle and, of course, North Carolina. We bring art and costumes and food and drink to share, and we bring a spirit of freedom and generosity not found anywhere else in the world.

As usual, our voyage across the country to this amazing event included a lot of stops along the way. We started with my brother in North Carolina, then detoured to Ohio to see a whole passel of friends, siblings, in-laws, and nephews. This was followed by a stop with my aunts, where we stayed in a convent crammed into a twin bed (there’s no reason for a double bed in a convent, evidently).

Best of all was the shopping, which started during a rendezvous with Margaret’s Dad in South Carolina and ended during a rendezvous with Barry’s Mom and Dad in Nevada. The list included Lucite platform shoes, pink knee-high boots, inflatable aliens, and 8 packages of tofu. We’ll have to write more about that — and the port-a-potty on our roof, and the original Tin Roof Sundae, and the tag-team oil change — later, when we emerge from our week-long communications blackout.

Through it all, Squidley has started each day with a giant roar and that diesel rumble that sounds like a UPS truck. I think that van has a sense of humor, and has been laughing at us all the way across the country.

Years before we counted many liveaboards as friends, I was very reluctant to buy a boat large enough to live aboard. Thus we chose the 25 foot Northern Crow, which was obviously too small for two people to live on. This was my insurance against being begged, nagged or pushed into moving aboard before I was ready.

We have lived aboard for several-month periods before, but never on our own boat. The longest period was seven months, with Brian on Cayenne, and shorter times on Vger, Complexity, and Indigo. We even lived on Flutterby briefly while we did insurance company-required repairs and transported it from South Carolina to North Carolina. But we always had our “home” elsewhere, or if not an entire “home,” we had something like 75% of our stuff in storage.

This time, it is different. We don’t have anything but a few boxes of photographs, wedding china, and other irreplaceable memories–we have all the things we need right here with us, either on the boat or packed up inside the Squid Wagon. And this time, moving aboard took us by surprise–we thought we knew what living aboard is all about, but life always smacks you in the face with a lesson pretty quick.

Before we arrived in the boatyard, I had been thinking of all the projects we had to do to make Flutterby ready to cruise, starting with re-finishing the bottom and fixing leaking hardware in the deck, along with any damage it had done. It has now been four full days and the only project we have completed is plumbing the icebox drain so it gets pumped overboard instead of draining into the bilge.

What have we been doing? Trying to carry our stuff up the ladder from Squidley into the boat, and find a place for it inside.

It didn’t take us three days to succumb. In fact, we would have done it in two and a half, if our cellphone had better signal in the boatyard. We are now the proud renters of a storage unit. I hope that when we are ready to sail we can fit everything aboard, but for now, this is the cheapest way to protect our sanity that I can think of.

Letter to a Gullible Friend

Dear Gullible Friend,

Yesterday, I talked with a friend who was reading about the “I Love Lucy” show on the Internet. Why she was searching for “I Love Lucy,” I don’t know, but it might be related to the fact that, like yours truly, this friend is currently unencumbered by the employment process.

She found an article on Wikipedia that answered her Lucy questions, but it also left her puzzled and confused. According to Wikipedia, there was a pornographic version of the “I Love Lucy” show, called “I Love Lucy All Over.” My friend asked, “Isn’t that amazing? But don’t you think we would have heard of it, if it’s really true?”

When she found the page, she bookmarked it, so she could show it to her husband when he returned home that evening.

You can imagine what happened. The page came up, with no reference to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s pornographic films. And her husband thought she was crazy.

My friend isn’t crazy. The problem is with Wikipedia.

A Wiki is a web page that can be edited, at any time, by any person. As Barry says, “Any idiot could write an article for Wikipedia.” It’s very susceptible to vandalism.

A couple of years ago, a friend of my father’s, John Seigenthaler, discovered a biography of himself on Wikipedia that he says amounted to “Internet character assassination.” The article said, “John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960′s. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven.”

For this close friend of Bobby Kennedy, such an accusation was sick, false, and malicious.

Seigenthaler discovered that he had little recourse. Wikipedia removed the entry, but other sites, such as Answers.com and Reference.com had already copied the spurious entry and were touting it as fact. Wikipedia and BellSouth, whose anonymous user had posted the entry, were immune to a libel suit over the matter.

Being a moderately famous retired newspaper editor, Seigenthaler raised a hue and cry in USA Today. Wikipedia and BellSouth didn’t lift a finger to help, but an internet activist named Daniel Brandt, who takes on outfits like Wikipedia and Google, used the IP address to trace the article to its source. The guy who wrote the false article admitted that it was a joke, saying that he didn’t think people took Wikipedia seriously. He apologized, and he lost his job.

The lesson here is not to wish Wikipedia was more reliable. The lesson, my gullible friend, is to take Wikipedia — and the web in general — at face value:

• It’s entertainment.
• Some of it is true.
• Some of it is not true.
• It publishes information that gets picked up by other sites, who think it’s all true.

Luckily for my friend, Barry showed us where old versions of Wikipedia can be found in the history section of the site. The entry on “I Love Lucy All Over” is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=I_Love_Lucy&oldid=163671874

As Barry said, “You weren’t crazy — you really did read it. You were gullible, however if you believed it And if you went looking to buy the DVD on Amazon afterwards, you were REALLY gullible!

“Have fun, and don’t believe everything you read on the internet!”

---

This article was not reviewed or edited by anyone other than Meps and Barry. Reliable sources included USA Today, the New York Times, and the BBC.

Unreliable sources included Wikipedia.

Entertainment provided by the Uncyclopedia, the Content-Free Encyclopedia.

That’s what everyone says when they call us on the phone or send us an e-mail. Shoot, which trip were they referring to?

• In May, we took Amtrak from Seattle to Los Angeles for our friend Will’s 50th birthday celebration. We had a first-class sleeper on the train, and Michael took us to Disneyland TWICE!
• Then we did a couple of weekend sailing trips aboard Complexity and Panta Rhei.
• I had a crazy pirate-themed 40th birthday party for Barry, literally on top of Interstate 90 (there’s a park there). One little boy came up to us, staring at our pirate costumes, and asked, “Where are the kids?” Check out the photos.
• Then a weekend in Moclips, with a bonfire on the beach. Lots of phooning with Will and Tina.
• That’s around the time we got involved with the Funder’s Choice website and met Michael Kaminski — thanks to Jacqui for introducing us to such a cool guy!
• In July, we went to the Oregon Country Fair with Daisy and the gang. A picture is worth a thousand words, so I just posted the pictures.
• Then we raced up to Camano Island to rendezvous with Barry’s sister’s family. Barry’s nephews are 4 and 7, and they are fun, fun, fun!
• In August, we sailed on Sparrow (formerly known as Nereid) for a week in the San Juans, including the Around Shaw race with Jacqui and friends. Check out the photo album!
• And now (drumroll, please!), we are heading for Burning Man with Stuart and Linda! I don’t even know how to describe this event, so just go to their website and read up. It’s going to be a temporary city of 40,000 people in the Nevada desert, with tons of art and performance. You won’t believe the costumes we’re taking…

There just aren’t enough hours in the day to do all this stuff and write about it, too. I promise to catch up when the rainy season starts again. I need to tell you all about the crazy LA trip, and post the pictures and video from Around Shaw, and share more stories, adventures, and just plain fun.

I’m only three days into the twelve days of Christmas, and it’s almost April. Maybe I should have set a hard-and-fast deadline for myself, rather than waiting for the Muse to simply arrive? The problem with this sort of writing is that before I’ve written about the last adventure, I start having the next one. Sometimes, I feel like a cat chasing her tail. “Wait, wait, I haven’t made it all the way around the circle yet!”

Eventually, I will write more about Portugal. I have New Year’s Eve stories about Carlos’ amazing multicultural gathering. I want to tell you about getting lost in the medieval alleys of Porto one night, with fog so thick you couldn’t see across the street. And about the towering aqueduct in Vouzela, and the “Janieros” (Christmas carols) … and the tour Nelson gave us of the third-oldest university in Europe, and the library with the bats, and the book we touched from the 16th century.

I don’t meant to tease my readers (both of you), but I’m not here to write about Portugal this time. This piece is to give you an update on the news ’round here.

Barry was doing some contract work, and it ended about a month ago. Suddenly, he’s retired again.

Two and a half weeks ago, he was on his way to an optometrist appointment on his new bike, and he had a accident. Something about not making the turn at the bottom of a steep hill. He got up, shook himself, and then rode another mile to the optometrist, favoring a sore shoulder.

About a half hour later, while he was picking out his glasses, he started bleeding on the desk. The folks at Pearle Vision freaked out. They went into optometry because they couldn’t stand the sight of blood.

About then, Barry called me for a ride home. He was having trouble using his arm.

No wonder. He broke his humerus. Along with one of his fingers. And he poked a big hole in his elbow, blacked his eye, bruised both legs, and made a general mess of his lovely (my opinion) body.

In the three weeks since then, I’ve had to dress him, bathe him, change his dressings, give him physical therapy, and drive him to one or two doctor’s appointments every single day. On top of this, I’ve had to do all the cooking, dishes, laundry, and shopping. I have to peel his oranges.

And I’ve had to take over those tasks that Barry traditionally does: Taking out the trash. Seasoning the cast-iron skillets. Charging up the batteries on the Squid Wagon.

This litany explains why married men live longer than single men. I can’t imagine what a single person in Barry’s predicament would have done. The alternatives to having a wife-nurse are expensive and not nearly as pleasant.

He’s healing now, and we’re getting into that risky period where he could easily overdo it and hurt himself again. Having given him all my attention for the last three weeks, I’m not going to repeat this ordeal. I told Barry that if he does, I’m going to toss him into a nursing home and go on vacation without him.

In the meantime, as long as he is careful, I’m taking him on vacation with me. We’re heading out tonight and going sailing in Florida and the Bahamas for the next couple of weeks.

I think we can handle all the broken bones and wound care while traveling. And we both deserve a reward. I deserve one for being the on-call 24-7 nurse. And Barry deserves one, too, for not killing himself in that bike accident.