Too much TV

It was 7 nights on the run, staying in 4 different hotels, before we were back onboard Kintala. For all practical purposes Florence never made an appearance in Beaufort. A day or so of rain and wind, less than usually comes with a batch of thunderstorms, was about it. As for all of the work prepping the boats, and the expense of being on the road for a week, we have not a single complaint. The best anyone can do is make decisions based on what is known at that moment. We came through a close brush with a hurricane without a scratch…again. No matter what the storm might have done, we were never in a position where it could threaten anything but the boats. And boats can be replaced.

Even the boat mascot, Bean had his bag packed

Florence, in fact, jostled me out of a bit of a funk when it came to keeping up with Kintala’s maintenance needs. When sitting like this it takes some discipline to keep things ship shape and ready for action. Putting things back together after the storm has gotten me back in the swing of spending part of every day just keeping up. Deb did a bunch of repair work on the dodger before it went up. I cleaned places that have long been hidden, chased petty corrosion back into its corners, worked on some minor modifications, and addressed shoddy looking lines. There is always something that needs done on a boat. Setting aside a few hours every day to keep up seems reasonable.Ten to two, most days…we’ll see.

Once the boats are prepped and the rental car loaded, there isn’t much to do when running from a hurricane. Drive a few hours, carry some bags up to a room, and wait. Hotels with pools are good when there are little ones around. Unfortunately about half the group, including Deb, is now struggling with ear infections. Food is always an issue. The best description I can find for most restaurant food is “mundane” and “expensive.” We tend to eat sandwiches in the room for dinner, scarfing whatever is edible at the hotel breakfast in the morning. It being hard to concentrate on serious reading or writing when a hurricane lurks nearby, TV becomes a major distraction to help get through the day, particularly when one doesn’t watch TV in normal life.

The roads were pretty empty because we left early this time.

It was a weird week for watching TV. I don’t think most news is “fake,” but it is getting surreal. The hurricane hysterics of TWC were entertaining.  I was running from the storm with, for a while, everything I own at risk. I wasn’t near as cranked up about it as was Jim and crew. All they really had to say was “A big assed hurricane is coming. If you can, get the hell out of the way. If you can’t, good luck.”

That would have covered about 99% of the “reporting.” The rest was put out there just to keep people tuned in to watch the commercials. Though I did enjoy the bit of flying through the storm on a Hurricane Hunter…the first time I saw it. After a while we switched away from TWC and found the storm overage on other news channels to be just as good, and not quite as cartoonish.

Which is how we became privy to the big political news of the week. All they really had to say was, “Paul Manafort, onetime Campaign Chair for the Trump organization, pled guilty to multiple federal and state crimes. Here is the list. He has agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department in the hopes of not spending the rest of his life in jail. What happens next is anyone’s guess. When it happens, we’ll let you know.”

But, of course, they couldn't let it rest at that. Hours were filled with expert lawyers, the opinions of the various talking heads, and "panels" debating what would happen next. It was just like TWC's hurricane "news," put out there to keep me watching the commercials. Since I didn’t have much else to do, except watch the hurricane and swim with the kids, that actually worked. I hung around to see what they had to say. But watching the fill didn’t teach me anything about Mr. Trump and his administration I didn't already know.

Speaking of commercials, late one night I was watching a movie. A few scenes would be played, followed by 20 commercials (yes, I counted). A few more scenes, than 20 more commercials, mostly the same as before but in a slightly different order. The movie wasn’t that interesting, so I turned it off. Whatever the advertisers were paying to air those commercials was wasted money on me. I don’t remember a word of it or a single item being pitched. And I saw the commercials twice.

Back to the boats, both completely unharmed.

Fortunately just one week of TV was all that was needed to wait out the storm and get back to living on the mooring. I'm really not sure why people still watch TV, but it is still a free country and they can do what they like. The good news is I have a lot to do to keep me busy. The bad news is the National Hurricane Center is already watching another system, and early indications are that it could well be heading this way. I don't need to be THAT busy.