New summer toy

I've been reminded again (maybe the hard way) that I should stay off of Facebook Marketplace and that I'm completely irresponsible. Max likes cars and I was telling him about the BMW Z3. It was a car that I always liked and very nearly purchased back in the late 90's back when Amy and I were engaged and still had single people money. She needed a new car at the time and we both loved the looks of it but eventually decided it was not practical and moved on to a four door sedan that was cheaper and would be better suited to car seats one day. The car stuck with me however and was the background on my desktop for a year or so after making the responsible decision.

Well after showing him the car he quickly started looking at them on Market Place. He found a bunch of them all relatively cheap. I explained that I liked the color of the one from the James Bond movie Golden Eye that the car had been introduced in and that when I had test driven them back in the day I would only consider the 2.8 6 cylinder engine or maybe the M version of the car. Sure enough he found one nearby for sale. I guess he hit me in a weak moment as next thing I knew we were driving out to look at it. When we got there the car was rust free, appeared to have very few of the known issues we had read about online (on the way over to see it), and the owner was telling us all the right things. After a quick test drive it seemed I had purchased a brand new to me 28 year old car. Like any old car it needs some attention. The seats need to be recovered, the stereo system needs to be replaced (I think all the speakers are blown out), and I'm sure all the plastic bits for the cooling system will fail at the most in opportune time. But the body is clean, the top works, and the engine and suspension seem to be in good working order.

It will be interesting to see what this thing ends up costing in the long run. The previous owner seems to have keep up with the maintenance for the most part but I've never owned a classic car before so I'm not really sure what I'm getting into. Can it be worse than an old boat? I guess time will tell. For now I can assure you that for the last three weeks it's been a fun car to enjoy the warm summer days in. I have not owned a vehicle with a manual transmission in about 30 years. Other than the occasional rental car in Europe, Asia, or South Africa I probably have not driven one in about 15 years so it's taking a bit to get proficient with again. The upside is that Max was excited to learn to drive a stick shift and after three lessons is now fairly proficient driving it. The downside is he seems to want to drive my toy around everywhere to show off to his friends.

Its been a busy summer so far - July update

Somehow it seems we have managed to get to the halfway point of summer and I feel like it should just be starting.

This summer Annabelle has been doing an internship at Cedar Point. Her position is of course at the very bottom of the totem pole but is working with the team that is responsible for all the employee events. That might entail helping to setup and run employee ride nights where they open a ride or two after hours just for the employees, movies on the beach, or monthly employee birthday celebrations. It sounds like she is rarely doing the same thing every day and seems to be enjoying the experience this year working in the office and at the events vs the Life Guard position she held there last summer.

Max has kept busy he started the summer with a trip to Colorado with his girlfriend's family. He is also on the summer swim team. It's been fun to see him still enjoying swimming and the new friends he's made there. He's had a few odd jobs this summer from taking care of a couple farms while the families are away to helping his Scout Master flush fire hydrants. The kid is quite good at spotting opportunities and seems to be raking in the cash this summer.

Last weekend we had his graduation party at the house which was a lot of fun. It's always nice to see all the various folks from different friend groups in your life come together in one place. I just wish it didn't feel so rushed. We spent a fair amount of time planning and getting ready for the event then when it happens it goes by too fast. Overall I enjoyed it and he had a number of friends and family friends from various stages of his life stop by to celebrate with him which was nice. As a bonus Mimi way overdid it on making deserts so we have our entire dining room table now covered in them and have been doing our best to "eliminate" them before they go bad. I think she made 15 different deserts just for the event. :)

Unfortunately we have not had the chance to use the boats as much as I would like. One weekend we took the Tug over to Leamington for an event with our boat club. Another time we were able to take it over to Put-in-Bay for a couple of nights. We did finally get the catamaran in the water, got it cleaned up a bit and took it to St Michaels for a couple nights on anchor before bringing it back to Oxford where its been sitting for the last month.

At the moment I'm thinking I'm going to head down to visit it next week for a few days put on the new head sail, work on the out board, and sort out a few other projects. When we launched it our outboard seemed it might be having a cooling problem as it was not spitting water at all. I messed with it a bit before leaving the dock, something happened and it worked one time but has not been spitting water since. It does not seem to be overheating when we used it but I would still like to get that issue sorted before we leave.

Speaking of leaving.. what are our plans? Well it seems to still be a work in progress. At the moment we think we want to leave the Chesapeake area around the first week of August to start bringing it back around to the Great Lakes. Max is planning a guys trip that week and we are thinking Amy and I may fly up clean the boat up get it provisioned then start moving it towards Cape May. At which point we are thinking we will fly Max and his girl friend out for a week and see how far we can move the boat up the coast. At which point we have to be back home for Max's last 4H shoot. We will stay home the week after then drop Max off at college then head back to the boat with just the two of us where ever it ends up to bring it rest the way around Canada and into the Great Lakes during the end of August/beginning of September. If we can get the boat into Long Island we may have a free dock we can leave the boat at during that time but I would really like to get it further north than that. I'm still not sure if our boat will fit under all the bridges it will take to get to our relatives dock but I suppose I can start mapping that out next week.

Other fun things we have been up to.. 

• This week we were in Cape Coral checking on a few of our rental properties. They seem to be doing well but for some reason we have a number of tenants turning over at the same time which is never fun.
• On our way over to MD to use the Catamaran we got detoured and drove by Frank Loyd Wrights Falling Water house. We of course turned right around and went back to check it out. I did not realize it's a World Heritage Site and now a museum. It is pretty remarkable and always quite impressive when an artist has a blank check book and an amazing vision they can execute. The house and the estate are quite impressive and very much worth visiting if one has the chance.
• We took our Trap team to States and Nationals. We ended up placing 4th in the State this year and 20th out of 250 teams represented at Nationals. We also beat two of the teams at Nationals that beat us at States which is fun :). Max shot personal bests at both events which of course is a nice way to wrap up one's high school shooting career. Additionally he decided to shoot Trap with the 4H team this year and placed first in the county. Next up is the State level event in August. This weekend we will be having the awards banquet and I'll officially be passing off the head coach position to another one of the coaches which is a bit exciting and bitter sweet. I have enjoyed working with the new kids and getting them out there and shooting well. I may or may not miss the time commitment it took to run the fund raisers, organize the team, and all the other less fun work that is required to keep a team running this winter. I'm sure the team will be in good hands and look forward to seeing them at the local events in the future.

Well that pretty much sums up our summer so far and the plans we have through September. I was really looking forward to the trip to bring the boat around but unfortunately it now seems that we are going to be in delivery mode to get it back to Lake Michigan. I'm really hoping we can slow down next summer and take some time to see a few things along the way when taking the boat back out to the East Coast next Auguest. We have also talked about keeping the boat in the Great Lakes for a season and pushing the WorldArc back a year. Then there is also the folks at Xquisite taking about doing a world sailing rally over a period of four years that would leave a month ahead of the Arc. It's nice to have options. I look forward to seeing which ones we choose!