foomart foomart

I'm back. I actually got home around 10 Sunday morning but slept that day away. I'm catching up now on everything. The trip was a lot of fun, and a lot of driving. I took the bus to the bus to meet my brother in Lambertville, and we drove from there to Philadelphia to pick up my uncle and get cheesesteaks. Then we set off, leaving Philly a little after 5, and drove through the night, through a vicious blizzard, through Maryland and West Virginia and all the way through Kentucky to Grand Rivers. We arrived there a few minutes before 8 AM. The guys switched off driving and sleeping, and I navigated and kept track of the maps, using the light from my iPod to read by. I think I got maybe an hour of sleep, but that was cool because I wasn't driving so I didn't need to be as alert as they did.

The sales guy who'd spoken to my brother came in a little while later and took us to see the boat. It's out of the water in a big hangar. It's huuuuuge.

We climbed all over it, scraped the paint and tapped on it to get an idea of its rustiness, looked at everything we could reach, and then went to a weird restaurant called Patti's. The people were really really really friendly, in a really really really scripted and Stepford-like way. They seemed to be doing it all without any irony, too, which I just couldn't wrap my head around. Anyway, we ate and talked and D waited for us to talk him out of buying the boat. We didn't. Uncle F told him it was harebrained, which I guess buying a boat always is. I told him I wished I knew more about the structural stuff, but the boat, a 1957 Chris-Craft Roamer (it's the green one in that second link, literally the very same boat) has really nice bones, beautiful 1957 details, and is built like a tank. Its hull is made of steel, no joke. It's going to take a huge amount of work, but I think it'll be worth it in the end. So we went back to the marina and he wrote a check.

We were going to explore the area more, but the idea of gaining a day at home was too attractive so we just hit the road. The snow had stopped and the roads were dry, so we made good time and got back to Philly just after 5 AM, and to my brother's in time to have breakfast before I caught the 7:55 bus back to the city and the 10 AM bus back home, at which time I pretty much passed out until later that afternoon.

That's the short version. There's lots in between but this'll do for now.

11:03 AM