A Pirate Looks At 30

Well, welcome back...I guess. That last post did not go in my favor. My faithful readers turned on me and voted with Mrs. Yak. She won. No Jeep. I'm really going to have to break down and buy a car, though. Do you realize how long it has been since I have been kayaking? September. TWO months! $300 for a roof rack for our car, and I've used it once!

I Need Your Help! did prove a few things, though. Number 1: My Grandmother will ALWAYS vote in my favor. If I were to title a post, "Should I kill Everybody Who Voted Against Me?" I would be able to count on her to vote, "Yes, do you need to borrow a rifle?"

Number 2: Uncle Pink and my brother have come to the conclusion that I am a "Tree huggin' Hippie." I believe that was their words. Sheesh. I'm no Tree Hugger! Granola, maybe. To prove I'm not a "Tree Huggin' Hippie," my wife shaves her legs. So, there!

To rub salt in an open wound, my uncle told me about his Jeep Cherokee after voting against me getting a Wrangler. Yeah, well...Your name is Uncle PINK!! (In my Uncles defense, this is a really cool nickname because he happens to share a surname with Pink Floyd. To show his excellent taste in music, he and I share a fascination of Pink Floyd.) And, yes, I know Pink Floyd is the name of a band, not a person.

Have you noticed my profile mentions something about talking my wife into getting a bigger boat? Since everybody but me seems to think it's a bad idea to get a Jeep, I have begun negotiations with her about getting a boat. Surprisingly enough, a nice boat can be had for $5000-my intended down payment for a Jeep. Click on "Buy Me A Boat" in the links and do your own search for sailboats with a max price of $5000. Most of the boats will come up in the range of 25 to 30 feet long. That's a nice chunk of real estate for getting me to my dream destination-the Caribbean!

The negotiations began tonight. It went like this:
Me: Instead of getting a Jeep, can we get a boat?
Wife: Blank stare.
Me: I was planning on putting $5000 down on a Jeep. I was figuring I could use that money to buy a boat.
Wife: Where are we going to keep it?
Me: In the water at a marina.
Wife: How much will that cost?
Me: I looked into it last summer, but I don't really remember.
Wife: Well, we need to see how much insurance and slip fees will be.
End of negotiation.

That is what I have been researching tonight. Insurance will remain unknown until I pick out a boat. Evidently, insurance companies won't give a quote unless you have the specifics on a boat. So I moved on to slip fees. I found a really fancy marina in the Chesapeake Bay and decided to check it out. For $230 a month, you get a slip with electricity, water, and cable T.V. Electricity is metered at the dock and paid by the boat owner monthly. The same for water and T.V., but I wouldn't need either of those. The catch, 230 times 12 equals $2760. That has to be paid upfront.

Those prices are for a 30' boat. Marinas charge by the foot. There are some smaller marinas on the Chesapeake that don't charge nearly as much. I'm pretty sure I can find a marina that will charge less than $5 a foot per month. All I need is something to tie to and electricity to keep the batteries charged. I don't care if they have a pool.

I came across a few interesting things tonight while searching for boats and marinas. When I saw this one, I laughed so hard I thought I might wake up the day-walkers upstairs. The tag for that website is "Really Cool Amphibious Vehicles." Really cool is NOT what I was thinking while laughing at them.

On the other hand, this is really cool. A luxury submarine! To hell with sailboats, I'm getting one of these! It's 213' long with four decks. Notice, though, there aren't any photos of their submarines. That's a dead ringer they have never built one. I don't know if I trust a company that can't afford to build a prototype, or even a model, of their product that purportedly dives to 1000' for days at a time. I'll wait until Richard Branson gets one. Maybe his will go on the market at a reasonable price a few years later.

I also found a cruising boat that resembled the Enterprise. The bow was a huge bubble mostly encapsulated with a large, darkly tinted window. Nestled inside the bubble was an extremely Trekie bridge. I didn't bother bookmarking that one, it was so ridiculous. At least they had working models to take pictures of in action.

I'm having another birthday this week. This will be the 28th since that ominous Thanksgiving day in 1978. Thursday will mark my 4th Thanksgiving birthday, counting the actual day of birth. As I was typing that, I think I figured out why my grandfather sometimes calls me "turkey."

If this quarter century goes as quickly as the previous, I'll be done with this world in what seems like a couple of weeks. I've enjoyed my twenties and I'm not looking forward to my thirties. But then again, I enjoyed my teens. My twenties blew that teenie bopper crap right out of the water! I don't know if I'll be able to hold on tight enough if my thirties blast my twenties.

In my teens, I went to a fairly cool high school. I was fortunate enough to get out of school every now and then to travel all over the place. In what turned out to be a one sided deal, I fell in love for the first time. I took my first flying lessons, then blew all my flying lesson money on my first love. As hard as I tried not to, I graduated high school, got dumped by my first love, got drunk for the first time, ran out of money for flying lessons, then started college without any direction on what I wanted to do with my life. So I followed the direction of my elders, turned twenty, and decided to do something other than go to college. I could always go back later, right?

I farted around for a year, turned twenty one, got drunk for the second time, then joined the Coast Guard. Graduated bootcamp on Thanksgiving day, my birthday. 21 to 25 was lived year to year with my eye on that "End of Enlistment" date. I got to do some really cool stuff, but I made it fly by looking too far ahead. I do know what it's like to live in Alaska. Few people know the joys of driving an old Jeep across the country for a girl. None of my friends know what salt water being sprayed from an HH-60 feels like on your face, or how to perform a J-turn at 45 knots without being thrown off the boat. I have done CPR, both successfully and not, pulled people from a boat while it was sinking, and felt the pleasant sting of O.C. Pepper spray in my eyes. I played toss with a seal 25 feet under water, saw starfish clinging to the edge of a wall, and know what it's like to lose a power tool to Davey Jones.

Before 25, I met the first girl I loved that loved me back and figured I'd better hold on to that and tight! So I got married. At that point I started living more in the moment and things began slowing down. Except the years still flew by in a flash.

I sit here a few days shy of 28. I have been married for four mostly happy years: I found out I'm hard to live with, I needed more diversity in my wardrobe, and the food I was eating wasn't good for me. Giving up Ramen Noodles was the hardest part of getting married. I haven't gone back to college, although a date is set, and I know what I want to do. I haven't finished flying lessons, but I could if I wanted to. What does thirty have in store for me? A bigger boat?



Fair winds and following seas...

I Need Your Help!

I'm trying to convince Mrs. Yak to let me replace JeepYak. This should work:


I don't know what her problem is with it. Ok, sure it averages 17.5 mpg, and as with JeepYak1, I am going to spend a ton of money on it to make it look more like this:

The above photo is supposed to be watermarked with the photographers website. For some reason, the mark went away. That picture was borrowed, with permission from www.project-jk.com. Visit his site to learn a ton of information about the new Jeep and see pictures of it.

I'm not worried about MPG, though. JeepYak1 was a 2003 with 28k miles when I sold it. My commute to work is only 3 miles, and I still have the 75+ MPG Vespa. Honestly, the Jeep would rarely be driven. You may be asking yourself, "Why does he need this Jeep, then?"

There is a perfectly simple and logical answer to that question. I need a stylish way to get to and fro the river with my kayak. This Jeep is the only way I have found to be able to do that. My kayak would not be happy on top of any other vehicle.

Of course, there are many other reasons why I need a 4 door Jeep with 4" of lift and 35" tires. There are after market manufacturers that offer a roof rack for the hardtop. I could easily carry several kayaks on top and the associated number of paddlers inside along with all the required gear in the back. When trippin' alone, I can carry my kayak and bike on the roof, camping and other gear in the back, and still have room to pick up a hitch hiker or two.

The rear seat doesn't come out, as it did in JeepYak1. Instead, it folds down flat, much like most cars. With the addition of an air mattress, I can sleep back there. This would greatly decrease my expenditures on hotel bills while traveling to those epic paddling sites. Cost saving benefits!

The new Jeep also has available power windows and door locks. For $800. I thought I had my mind made up not to get the power options because I could not find window controls for the back seat drivers. And it costs $800. I was worried that if anybody were to fart back there, they would not be able to discreetly roll down the window to ventilate. Instead, they would have to embarrass themselves by asking a front seat occupant to crack the window. But, it has been brought to my attention that back seat passengers do indeed have control of the windows. The switch is located on the back of the console.

The driver has the ability to lock the windows. That is very useful in the art of "Dutch Ovens," where the driver farts and locks the windows so nobody can get fresh air. That feature alone makes it worth 800 bucks.

"But why do you need my help?" you may be asking. I need your help to convince Mrs. Yak that this Jeep is a good idea and a smart purchase. The benefit of being able to sleep in it will save about $65 a year on hotel bills alone! She doesn't seem to understand that the one or two times a year I stay in hotels costs a lot of money.

Also, it will make me more attractive to the ladies--- by this, I mean her since she is a lady. This thing could save our marriage if she ever decides I'm not attractive enough for her anymore!

She has deduced that the monthly payments, not counting insurance, will be more than we pay for housing. I need you to convince her that it's not that big of a deal. So what if we have a vehicle that's worth more than our house? Revert back to the hotel savings.

Sully, our dog, misses JeepYak. I think he would like having his own door, that's why I want the 4 door instead of the 2. How can she deny this for the dog?

As badly as I want one of these new Jeeps, my driveway is going to have to wait a while before being graced by its presence. We are still paying for the Vespa and Sully's surgery. Hopefully, by the time we have those paid off Mrs. Yak will be convinced that a new Jeep is in order. I don't think I can do this without your help, though.

Consider this post a petition. If you think it's a good idea, reply to the post with a YAY and send money. If you think Mrs. Yak is correct and we don't need anymore Jeepyaks, reply with a NAY and send money. If for some reason you can't send money, it's OK, your vote is still important. It would help me to get a Jeep if you would buy a t-shirt, though!------->

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Fair Winds and Following Seas...