Sep 11 - safe in the south

We left Blowing Rock at 7am and arrived in New Smyrna Beach at 4:45 -- an easy trip albeit a little rainy at times. The route was semi-interesting, taking 321 from BR almost down to Charlotte. 321 is one of those almost-interstates except for the traffic lights through small towns ... you know what I mean. The first section was a long descent from the Ridge -- which would have been quite scenic except for ... you guessed it ... the fog.

Anyway, a closing thought on yesterday's ride -- at least for tonight -- would I ride it again if I knew what I was in for ? -- yes. Would I do anything differently ? -- not sure -- there was no real way of staying dry and if I had any more clothes it would have made the ride tougher -- it's not an obvious call.

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It's morning again and I've done the usual after-arriving chores -- restored my Quicken and Outlook databases, plowed through mail that would have been stacked about 3 feet high had it been in one pile, opened the various delivery boxes that had arrived just before ... and in the case of UPS ... withing 1/2 hour of us and now I've had my coffee and my breakfast.

Everything grows quickly here. I had to trim trees to get the boat into the side yard and Sandy will have some trimming of shrubbery. The impatiens that she planted almost a year ago are still flowering, thanks to our water bill which doesn't decrease when we're not here ... oh, and before we did anything else I had to run back up SR44 to Home Depot (should have done this one the way in) to pick up water-softener salt. I knew that it would be depleted. The next time that we are away for this long I'll either put the softener in bypass or leave salt for Lisa to top up. It will hold about 4 months' worth but we were gone 5 months.

The other thing that I should probably do is run a pre-softener-filter water line for outside watering which would not care about hard chlorinated water. Oh joy, a plumbing project, just what I was looking for. In Radnor we had a separate line going outside for the in-ground sprinkler and I already had a pre-softener-filter line to the outside faucet. The installers added a meter to the sprinkler line and every year we would supply the reading to the utility commission who would then subtract those gallons from our sewer bill. Here in NSB the sewer portion of the bill is actually larger than the water portion but I don't know whether such a meter is possible. It does make sense since none of this water would need to be processed by the sewer system.

Today -- empty boat which still has stuff in it, clean bike, get haircut, go to boat store to look at trailer lights and pick up some shorts (they have a great clothing selection), do grocery shopping, and just generally get squared away.

Last night we ate out -- you guessed it, the local Sushi place. It's a ritual now -- first night and almost last night and if we're here for a long time, perhaps once per month in between. Tonight we'll be having whatever the Ocean's Seafood has fresh but I'd bet on tuna.

There were a bunch of UPS/FEDEX/USPS packages here when we arrived (or shortly thereafter) --

-- new batteries for both our cell phones
-- 3 or so boxes of Aaron's bike orders
-- 1 box of my bike order -- mostly tools that will go up north so that I don't have to carry tools back and forth
-- a larger CompactFlash card for my camera (8gb)
-- film/paper developing chemicals
-- water filters for here and up north

It sounds like a lot but it's not bulky and it's basically my shopping list from the last six months. I ordered stuff just before we came down.

The other thing that will be delivered in the next day or so is the new dehumidifier for up north. It is bulky, weighing in at 100 pounds -- there was an email from FEDEX that arrived yesterday asking to schedule delivery. When something is that large and bulky they don't try and deliver it with no-one here.

So that's it. I'm going to clean out the boat now.