Most cruising boats have sailed for warmer waters and here we sit, still in Back Creek sleeping under a pile of blankets. What’s up with that, you ask? Well, it’s another challenge of our stateless roving existence. Jack’s driver’s license expires next month. We plan to change our official residence to Florida once we get there, but Jack will need a valid license in order to get a Florida license. Pennsylvania’s renewal process is three steps. First you pay the money; then you wait for the department of transportation to process the renewal and snail-mail a “camera card” which you then take to a PennDoT photo center to get your picture taken and receive the new license. As always, it’s the processing and waiting for the snail-mail that’s holding us up because the mail will go to our temporary Pennsylvania address then be forwarded either to where we are — if we can find an address to use — or to my sister. We have no idea how long this will take.
Once we have the camera card we’ll rent a car and drive to the nearest photo center which is only an hour and a half from Annapolis. If we move south the drive gets longer and towns large enough to have rental cars are less frequent. If the camera card is forwarded to my sister she and Dave offered to meet us in Pennsylvania and we’ll get to spend the day together.
As always, whenever we’re stuck somewhere I get antsy and anxious to move on so the challenge for me is to enjoy the time we have here despite the chill. We’re also tryng to motivate ourselves to do some boat work. One of the things we started on is refinishing the teak trim which is in various stages of wear throughout the boat. The worst is in our bathroom so that’s where we started. It’s a messy job involving scraping and sanding, and since we’re at anchor, not at a dock, we don’t have unlimited water and power so cleanup is a little more difficult. This project will be ongoing and will probably take years, but it’s nice to at least make a dent.
The autumn weather awakened the soup making gene and we’ve had some warming meals aboard Escape Velocity. Yesterday we picked up some kale at the grocery store and I made Portuguese Potato Kale Soup with (soy) chorizo, accompanied by homemade bread. Baking warms up the cabin nicely!
I think even Izzy is longing for warmer weather.
