Back in San Francisco

Arnold and I travelled from his home in Kingston WA to Pachuca here in Richmond CA yesterday without a hitch. Sandra was a big help in driving us to the airport (via the Kingston ferry) through the steady rain and we had our luggage checked in and at the boarding gate area with about 45 minutes to spare. The plane took off from SeaTac at 12.50 PM and landed at Oakland airport at 2.55 PM. From there we to the AirBART shuttle to the Bart station and arrived at Richmond just before dark at about 4.45 PM. A short cab ride to the marina completed our journey. On the way in Arnold and I had a clear view of the Marina and I could see Pachuca in her pen though could not make out any distinctive features. I had had a similar view on my flight to Seattle.

Airport security was visibly tighter - I had my legs patted down and the box containing the spear guns was inspected probably because we had ticked the "guns/firearms" box regarding its contents. But like everybody else we were docile and compliant as sheep and got through it OK.

We found Pachuca to be in amazingly good condition when we arrived. Even though the boat had been closed up the interior was neither damp nor moldy. A light bulb that had switched on when I had left for Seattle was still on, and this may have helped keep the boat dry.

We each had two beers in celebration (any excuse will do) and for dinner we had rice with sauce, an onion, garlic, and canned corned beef. For desert we had the yummy and healthy "Aussie" sweet biscuits that Jean had given to me during their visit to us at Kingston. We prepared the two cabin seats for sleep. I left the boat at about 8.30 PM for a short walk and when I returned to the boat at 9 PM I was amazed to find Arnold sound asleep. I wasn't far behind and we did not get out of bed until 8AM this morning. We left the fan heater on all night and had all the warmth we needed, with a blanket to spare.

For me the the three-week stay with Arnold and Sandra was a wonderful vacation within a vacation. The company of Arnold, Sandra, and Denver (the cats don't count), the space, warmth, secure internet, and cable TV were a real contrast to my solitary stay in San Francisco.

Then there were the bonuses. Driving Arnold's RX7 I was able to make an overnight visit to Port Townsend to catch up with some of the friends that I had left there was great.

A very important thing that I was able to do during my visit was to rebuild the software on my Toshiba laptop. Since Hawaii the system had been running very sluggishly, reported system errors at random times, and was not able to do Microsoft security updates, no matter how hard we tried to rectify things. I was able to source a CD with the XP OS from Toshiba and did a complete rebuild, including a reformat of the disc. Once I had the fresh OS in place I restored my data from Arnold's external disc drive and began the process of reinstalling all of the application software that I required. The effort took two days but was well worth it. The system is fast and error free. I figure that the visit to Kingston represented my last chance to rebuild the system before my return to Australia.

This morning I installed the new navigation software on my Acer netbook, the computer that I use for navigation and Sailmail.