Transmission is in.

The transmission is in and we are getting ready to head out.

We have been here ten days and it is time to move on.  I can’t say it was a bad stay, just not what we had planned for this trip.  We did get a lot of projects done, saw a lot of the city and spent more money than we had planned.  We didn’t do much of the typical tourist stuff although we did make a trip downtown, checked out the straw market, toured the rum distillery and crossed over to Paradise Island to see the changes.  Twenty-five years ago Cori and I were here for a vacation and stayed at a little place on Paradise Island.  It is no longer there since the Atlantis complex took over.  We did check out some of what Atlantis has to offer: the marina, shopping, aquarium and casino (did not play).  We were looking for a place to watch the Daytona 500 but the only venue we found was at Margaritaville.  We opted for a bar closer to the marina and watched from there.

Seeing the city consisted of walking downtown, checking out the cruise ships, remembering why we do not like places like the straw market and riding the number 19 bus around several times.  The number 19 bus stops in front of the marina and makes a long wide circle ending up downtown then back to the marina.  We rode it one day just to see where it went, another day to go to the hardware store and two trips to the mall.  It is educational  and entertainment all for $1.25 a ride.  These are small buses like you find in a shuttle service, not the big monsters you see in cities in the US.  First thing we learned is that you pay the driver when you get off.  When you want to get off you just yell “bus stop” and he pulls over.  You do not need to be at a bus stop to catch a ride or get off; just wave and they will pull over.  On one ride the driver stopped the bus, got out and walked behind a small building.  When done with his business he got back on and away we went.  Last time we were here we rented a scooter and saw the sights, no way would I do that now, it’s bad enough being a pedestrian or riding the bus.  Another interesting thing is that when people get on the bus they greet you: good morning, good afternoon, good day, etc.  Another driver needed fuel so he pulled into a station and used his fare money to pay.  There were several corners where instead of coming to a stop and making a left turn they just cut through the gas station.  Remember, they drive on the left side here.

Projects, we kicked out a lot of them.  Cori did a lot of sewing working on her bags, repairing our sail cover and repairing a torn sail for our neighbors one day.  We got a free meal at a very good restaurant for that one.  She made several trips to the grocery store stocking up again.  I had made a list of things to try to get done.  I needed to find out and fix what had gone wrong with my email service, I could not send emails, just receive.  Once that was working I had some emails that I needed to follow up on.  When we plugged into the dockside power and turned on the water heater it would leak, I changed the thermostat setting and replaced the emergency valve.  We needed to contact Verizon to find out why we were still getting billed even though the phones had been suspended.  We got a refund once it was straightened out. Our windlass had quit working so I took it apart and brought the motor down to the mechanics shop to have it checked out.  The windlass works now but don’t know why it quit.  I needed to service the watermaker since we would not be using it for a while and one of the trips to the mall was to find batteries for the water tester.  Being plugged into shorepower gave me a chance to equalize and service the batteries.  Hopefully they will hold their charge better now.  Those are the big ones; there are always small things that need taking care of when you have something torn apart.

Thursday the transmission arrived; we had been given a heads up that it was shipped sooner than expected but had not heard that it had arrived.  The mechanic showed up and proceeded to install it.  Once it was in we slipped the lines and went out for a test ride.  Everything is working properly and we were back at the dock by 12:00.  Docking is so much simpler when you have neutral and reverse.  The only thing left is to make a run to the phone company to put more money on our accounts, pay the repair shop, do a little laundry and check out in the morning.

We had to bypass a number of stops and didn’t make it as far down the Exuma chain as we had hoped so we are heading back that way.  Maybe we will catch up with our friends, if not we will just make new ones.

OK, funny story on Dale.  With whatever I did to my hip I have been taking a couple of Ibuprofen in the morning.  I emptied the container and mentioned it to Cori that we need to dig out some more.  In the meantime I noticed a container of Acetaminophen and was taking those.  For several days I was complaining of being tired, so tired that one day a nap at 10:00 am sounded good.  About that time Cori got out the Ibuprofen and showed me the Acetaminophen container saying “here take these if you can’t get to sleep.”  I had been napping so much that I couldn’t sleep at night.  She showed me the container; I had read “Acetaminophen” and had not noticed that they were “Acetaminophen PM”.  I had been taking a sleep aid first thing in the morning, no wonder I was tired.