Yes, I am back on board. It was a long drive. After the coffee and a little bit of repacking of the storage unit, including the generous dropping of moth balls, I got on the road just before 8 o’clock. On the Atchafalaya bridge I started panicking, wondering where the binder with all the money and paperwork was, I had not seen it in few days. Once across the bridge I took the first exit, and found it in my bag (duh). That is just one more sign of getting older, you start worrying about the things you might have forgotten to pack. While leaving town for bike races I would bend backwards to rumble through my bag in the rear seat, confirming that my helmet and shoes were in there.
The drive was mostly uneventful, one truck that had gone onto the median and one almost accident right in front of me. Traffic was not too busy except for west of Mobile. I did not have a way of hooking up my MP3 player, so had to find radio stations to listen to. There really aren’t that many stations in the panhandle of Florida. Was at the boat about 6:30, had to do a little guessing to find my way to the marina. I did not have a road map in the car (is on board the boat) and I only vaguely familiar with all the roads through Jacksonville. Luckily I had remembered that the road nearby the marina is US highway 17. And I was pretty sure it was inside the loop (I295). And, I was happy to see and exit off I10 to US17. Then it was pretty simple. One more noteworthy thing: the new Escambia bay bridge (near Pensacola) is already in use. I had talked to Kevin about it just Friday, how they had 19 cranes (most of them on a barge) working on that new bridge when I passed over the old and repaired one in September. This bridge had been taken out by Ivan, over 2 years ago, when I drove to West Palm Beach for the NRC crits that year, it was within 2 weeks of the hurricane, and I had to make a large loop around the Escambia Bay since the bridge was out. Quite impressive how quick they got that done, it would be interesting to see how fast they can do the I10 bridge to Slidell.
When I got the marina off course I went straight to the boat. It was not half underwater, all lines where still there, it had not been rubbing against the dock, thus, none of the things you were about when away from the boat had happened. No water inside at all, bilge was completely dry, the bilge pump had never run. Before I had finished all the repairs, the bilge pump would run after one night! Brought some stuff on the boat, but I am going to do the rest of the unloading today. Felt that I had deserved some good food, I had unintentionally skipped lunch while driving, so went to look for a place to eat. I ventured to the south, but that is probably not the best direction for food, while driving west I ran into I295, and around there I was really lucky, found a Thai restaurant. It looked a little upscale, but I am ok walking into any place, if you live on a boat you are automatically excused for not dressing up (when I went to the funeral, I realized that 2 days before I had brought all my slacks and sports jackets to Goodwill). They even had something on the menu that I was not familiar with: Pra-Ram (I think that is what it was), a curry with peanut souce, with tofu, spinach and brocoli. Very good. Got back on board around 9 o’clock, read a little bit (I had not read a book since I went by Greyhound) and fell asleep soon.
Now I had to get ready to the sounds here, the train track a few hundred meters away seemed to be very busy this night. And a few boats came by creating way more wake than they were supposed to. It was funny to have to do the long walk to the bathroom again, but the good coffee was a lot closer than the last week. Today I am going to take it easy, not going to start any major projects. Unload the car, do laundry, and make sure I go to the grocery store before it gets jammed by people doing their last minute shopping. No plans for tomorrow either, was thinking about taking the bike for a little spin, have not seen a weather forecast (did not pack warm cycling clothes, from now on I am going to be a nice weather rider).
Apologies for those I missed on my last few days in Lafayette, but I had been doing a good bye tour for a while, and it was busy doing the final things with the house and the storage. Off course it was not good planning to do this on the craziest shopping days of the year, but that is something I had completely overlooked. Though, I was wanting to be back on the boat before Christmas, otherwise I would have little time to get the boat ready in Jacksonville.