For many years, I was a news hound. I'd read the local papers, watch the TV news mornings and evenings, and research issues on the internet. I was very involved in my local community. As a small town businessman, I saw the need for a BID (business improvement district) and waged a successful campaign to get one. When our local YMCA decided to move out of our town and build a palatial building out of reach of local kids, both financially and distance-wise, Pam and I organized a group to form a Boys & Girls Club and served on its board of managers. I also post daily on several message boards debating everything from politics to sailing. That's all changing now.

We stopped working only a week ago, September 2nd. Sure, we're busy working on the boat getting it ready for our cruise, but there's also a lot of down time, like this morning as I write this blog. The TV is off, even though it's September 11th and I'm sure there's many talking heads spouting off that at one time I'd be interested in watching. Not only am I not interested, since we all know what they're going to be saying, but we don't watch TV news hardly at all anymore. Heck, we don't watch TV anymore. We're much more content to sit on the back porch (aft deck) and quietly read until it gets dark (8 PM now) and then just talk.

I'm decompressing. Not that I was working in a high stress job. I wasn't. I worked for Dutchman, the manufacturer of a very cool sail flaking system for sailboats (also a nice boom brake and effective mast track system). But I always felt a need to stay connected, and while I at my lunch at my desk everyday, I'd check the hometown newspaper and CNN websites for news updates. Not so much anymore.

In my working years, vacations were fun but not stress relieving. I knew I'd be headed back to work in a week or two and resume my normal routine. That's not happening now as Pam and I are on an open ended vacation, perhaps a permanent one. I feel like I've crossed the finish line of my last race.

Have any of you loopers and cruisers and retirees experienced the same thing? Kind of a "OK, I've done my bit, now it's time for me"?

Pam is not at my level of relaxation. She's filled with angst about our upcoming nuptuals, about running out of time to get things done. I'm more pragmatic. We were planning on taking Drift Away up the Hudson to the Schenectady Yacht Club but that's not happening. Their docks were destroyed by Hurricane Irene and then Tropical Storm Lee. The Erie Canal is closed too, along with the Waterford Canal Center which was our backup plan. The Troy docks were destroyed so that's out, and the federal lock in Troy is closed until all the boats that went over the dam from the Troy Boat and Canoe Club are raised from the bottom. I contacted the Castelon Boat Club and luckily they survived the storms and floods and we can stay there, so that's the new plan.

So I try to reassure Pam that it will all work out, one way or another, and we will get married on October 1st, and that we will somehow get our '56 Thunderbird, my truck, and her car to the cow barn in upstate NY for winter storage, and we will make it to Annapolis for a party with friends on October 8th, whether we make it in Drift Away or rental car.

Yesterday's boat projects were to clean, toss, and organize, and I think we did a good job of it. Today's project, weather permitting, is to finish priming the deck and to paint the stern. We ordered lettering and it should be coming this week. I think things are coming together nicely. Pam, not so much.