Hi!
We spent the summer at our home in Laguna Beach, CA. It's been 2 years since we were there! Really appreciated what I think is the most perfect climate in the world, the smiling liberals, swimming in the clean ocean, hiking right out the back door, so many sunsets, and fast internet. Ah, an easy life for awhile! We also went to San Francisco and did a few hikes in the Sierras.
I'm wary of the stock market's relentless rise and invested a few hundred hours learning about selling options. If you're geeky like me, this is truly fascinating stuff: calculable probabilities versus opinion, faith and luck. I surveyed this topic decades ago and technology has finally caught up to make it easy. I no longer feel like I'm guessing and at the mercy of the markets. For me personally, that's a good thing!
I got a drone (it folds up!) and an electric unicycle (50 miles on one charge!). Those two toys fit perfectly on the boat and are fun to learn. :-)
We took a month to drive from home to the boat in St. Mary's GA, camping and hiking along the way. The Escalante wilds, Telluride, Ouray, Great Sand Dunes, Pagosa, Taos, Espanola ('where cultures unite'), Santa Fe and then a dash to the Atlantic. I've never really experienced the area around Escalante and love it! If you're into geology like me, it's a paradise. A rift valley! Time is totally in your face there. It is remote and empty with the darkest skies in the lower 48. It is beautifully humbling. I love it!
The boat is in a boatyard, near trees. Again the hurricanes ran by us. (This was our fourth one.) Again we were unscathed, but only two miles away docks are destroyed and dozens of boats were lost. Many of our boatie friends were hit (Puerto Rico, Marathon, Big Pine, St. Petersburg, Tampa, Pensacola, St. Mary's...) and most are okay. The stress, helplessness and potential loss is a lot to bear. We're thinking of keeping the boat someplace like Baltimore!
It is finally cool enough to be in FL/GA... timed it about right. We have a long list of boat projects and the determination to tackle them. Git 'er done! This time we're not living on the boat and working on it at the same time. Instead we've rented a quiet studio and 'drive to the office'. It is so nice to leave the boat and boatyard at the end of a gritty work day! We had planned to repair the boat and head to the Caribbean this winter, but the extensive hurricane damage there has nixed that plan. Instead we'll work on the boat for a few months, spend two months in Queensland, Australia in a home exchange, then back to the US and take the boat north in the springtime. We'll explore the Chesapeake, NYC, MA, maybe as far as Maine.
That's the latest from us. Leigh does Facebook, link below, if you're into that. I prefer letters like this. Either way, we'd love to hear from you! And if this email is junk mail to you, please let me know and I'll remove you from the list with no offence at all.
Brian & Leigh Jacobs