Chicago

Like last year Deb and I plan to ride the train to Chicago, stay in a nice hotel, eat some good food, and see some pretty (and way to expensive) boats while being inside, warm and dry. A pretty good alternative to another winter weekend of snow and no sailing. My guess is all of the boats will be monohulls. We hope to be Catamaran people. But there are some good ideas to see on new boats. Since any boat we get will be "pre-owned" (sounds better than "used" or "second hand") you never know when a good idea can be rebuilt into a pre-owned boat.

This will probably be our last low-key, kick-back and enjoy bumming around weekend of the winter. A chance to maybe do a neat family thing brought about the need to put our house on the market this spring. We have a towering "to-do" list on the house and not a lot of weeks "to-do" it in. The main urgency is to get the house list done before the weather breaks. Having house work impinge on weekends spent on Nomad? Ugh.

My last-things-to-do-before-shoving-off list included; sell house, sell Nomad, buy bigger boat, quit jobs, store motorcycles. I always figured whenever we started on any of those things we were about to reach our goal. Now selling the house will have to be taken off that list. We will still have a place to live. (The Family Thing.) And no one knows how long it will take to sell a house in this market. A realtor friend tells us 200 days is about the average. Once it is done though, the last-things-to-do-before-shoving-off list will be one item shorter.