High-Fives in the Cockpit

and a fair amount of rum, and Jimmy Buffett playing "Christmas in the Caribbean." We've made it through all the bridges and the tides and the currents and the ports ... we're anchored in Virginia Key, the first of the Florida Keys, just off Miami with the city skyline off the cockpit ... we're here! Weather permitting, on Monday we cross the Gulf Stream and enter the Bahamas!

We probably will not have internet! It could be several weeks between opportunities to post and get in touch with you all, please don't worry! We'll be traveling in company with another boat and always in radio contact. What an adventure we're having!!!

We're On Our Way!!

We left yesterday afternoon, after a string of errands and goodbyes, and sailed 1/2 day to tie up in the marina at Knapps Narrows again - lovely spot, interesting to watch the watermen going up and down the channel, and the drawbridge. Had quite a challenge anchoring in the current, which I wrote about in Life Afloat. Today we sailed a perfect day, warm and sunny and winds from the north, comfortably behind us, to anchor at Solomons, MD. Tomorrow is a long day, down to the next good all-weather anchorage. Thursday is expected cold and windy and rainy, and we'll hole up there and wait for better weather. Stow the provisions we are still passing back and forth daily from V-berth to salon and back again so they wont clutter the place we're living in at the moment, and hope to catch up on some writing.

Everything's Falling Into Place

Finally! The weather's moderated, a hint of fall - dry and clear and crisp after the hazy, hot, humid days of August, and all the details of getting ready to cruise are also "falling" into place. The canoe and the Walker Bay and the car all listed on Craigslist; the first two magically transformed into wads of cash in our pockets. Dan spent a good deal of this morning detailing the car, we've got some eager buyers who want to look at it tomorrow.

We've emptied the storage shed we had here at the marina, got rid of a lot of stuff and are storing the rest for less than half the previous price in a self-storage in town. The new autopilot compass is installed, sea-trialed and ready to go. My office is empty (the boxes of my career packed back home to be stored in the new self-storage). We have a likely tenant for the townhouse. We've been through the rounds of our doctors and all are satisfied we're ready to go; Dr Gordon gave us a stack of prescriptions for drugs to ward off many of our most likely emergencies, from sea sickness to insect stings. The most challenging thing remaining on my calendar right now, is having time to say goodbye to all the friends we've made here.

OMG! We're leaving NEXT WEEK!

After years of having a vague dream in the mists of the future, it's here! My Facebook status is "Bittersweet - wrapping up a 34-year science career and beginning Act II."

It Could Be a Headline in the Washington Post

So today I continued sorting my stuff, throwing lots away. Weird, much of what was in my file cabinet was reference copies of old journal articles - don't need these, everything is on the Web now. Heck, I even pitched author copies of my own reports - again, they're all on the Web. Science moves on anyway. There's something philosopical about publishing science in a fluid medium like the Web instead of a static medium like paper, something that reinforces that you need to continually go back and recheck, rethink, revalidate, refine your theory. And I deleted hundreds of old emails and shredded documents like 10-year-old travel vouchers and statements from my gov't credit card. AND pushed the "send" button on my 9-090 (the electronic exit paperwork).

I can see the headline in the Washington Post: Scandal at USGS! Employee Shreds Hundreds of Documents, Days Before Leaving Job! What Was She Hiding?

Whoever used the shredder before me had shredded cds (the machine is meant to be able to do this) and they fractured into tiny pieces. Every time I fluffed the shredder bag it sprayed rainbow holographic glitter all over me.

The Only Present I Want Is Your Presence

I don't like surprise gifts, because I hate asking anyone to read my mind. Its like setting them up for failure - an expected surprise is an oxymoron - and the best they can do is meet expectations, by definition its impossible to exceed expectations. Therefore, Dan is relieved not to try to get a gift for me and hope it works. Instead he asked me what I wanted for my birthday yesterday.

I told him what I really wanted was not to have to start the day by saying goodbye to him. So, he came to Washington with me! He had absolutely nothing to do there, he brought a goofy novel, hung out at a park bench, read, peoplewatched while I was in a meeting, met me for lunch. Then I went back to my meeting and he went back to hanging out. After work, he was there, sitting in the car with the top down, to whisk me away to meet Karen and go to Jaleo for happy hour tapas.

What an unbelieveably rich full perfect day - and what an incredible I love you gift - he spent the whole day doing nothing .... except making me feel like the most special important person in his world!

environmental depression (the other kind)

I've been interviewing candidates to replace me ... its a very creepy feeling. This is a person who will be doing my job - their way - starting next month. And interacting with my colleagues - their way. I'm visualizing this person sitting at my desk, sending notes to my secretary.

After I provide a brief period of training, I'm out of the country and out of touch and it won't matter to me how my successor does his/her job, gets along with the others, or anything else. That's another part of the creepiness. People shouldn't be allowed to make decisions about things where they have no stake in the outcome.

environmental depression?

There's been a lot of news recently about how beneficial it is to get out and interact with the natural environment, such as this one on LiveScience. I saw this article on Yahoo News today, about "eco-therapy" for environmental depression. Here's an excerpt:

Eco-therapists point out that human beings have evolved in synchrony with nature
for millions of years and that we are hard-wired to interact with our
environment - with the air, water, plants, other animals. But in the
past two centuries, beginning with the Industrial Revolution, people have
been steadily removed from the natural world, our lives regulated not by the sun
or moon but instead by the factory clock. Recently it's gotten worse, with the
rise of the Internet and other technologies, like iPhones and BlackBerrys, that
dominate our lives, pushing us even further from any appreciation of our natural
surroundings.
"We began to get the impression that we were somehow above and
separate from nature," says Craig Chalquist, an instructor at John F. Kennedy
University in San Francisco and co-editor with Buzzell-Saltzman of the new book
Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind.
Today, more than half of the
world's population lives in cities, and many people barely ever get a glimpse of
green. At the same time, human beings appear to be doing their best to destroy
what remains of the earth by contributing to climate change - a problem that in
itself causes some people deep anxiety. But what the average person feels as
stress or depression, eco-therapists suggest, is a longing for our natural home.
"People were embedded in nature once," says Buzzell-Saltzman. "We've lost that,
and we're paying the price."

So what does that have to do with living on a boat? The article goes on to say that many Americans can spend as little as 15-30 minutes per day outdoors (walking to their car, no doubt). Living aboard both enables and forces us to spend lots of great time connected to nature in ways we never were when we lived in a house. There's sitting in the sunny cockpit with morning coffee watching the day begin, or sleeping in the V-berth under an open hatch watching the stars and moon. For the rest, even when we're tied up in the slip we're made aware of nature and its cycles. We know the rise and fall of the tide, as the boat moves. We know the strength of the wind and whether it's calm or rough on the water - in extreme cases things slide off countertops and tables. The patter of rain is loud with only a thin shell of fiberglass between us and it. I don't know how strong a force "eco-depression" is if one is isolated from nature ... but I know that the alternative, living on a boat, in touch with nature, makes me very happy!