Tag: dailyprompt-2008

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My Inner Child, and Me

The fleet was in! That’s the fleet of one, me. Last week, I was down to the coast three times. Delivering work, consulting, and goofing around. What’s not to like? Then the week before, I was also there on the weekend to take my sweetie to a late lunch at one of our favorite restaurants. The result was one delighted couple.

Travel plans for the rest of the summer? More of the same, as often as possible. I have a job to finish for a friend, and after delivery, I’ll poke around the boatyard to see the progress, walk along the shore walk, and look at all the rich folks’ toys.

I support four maritime museums with annual gifts. I’d love to get to all four this summer, see new programs, do some research for future projects, dig around their books for sale, and peruse the gift shops. Then it would be into town to take in the sights, walk the harbor, and of course, take my sweetie to dinner!

Yes, I am easy to please. Put me by the water and I’m all Okey Dokey, smiling like a fool, chortling, taking photos, and carrying on like a nine-year-old. My inner child is easy to please!

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Cruising

Daily writing prompt
What are your future travel plans?
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Let’s not be theatrical. We aren’t going to Tahiti, Madagascar, or Desolation Island soon. Prince Edward Island, on the other hand, would be pleasant, and I’d love to drop into Halifax. I’d be uncommonly pleased, as a matter of fact, to noodle around any of the Down East coastal towns, make myself a nuisance on the waterfronts, and become a curiosity at the diner where the fisherman eat -eschewing the tourist trap around the corner. OK, I wouldn’t mind Tahiti, but then again, I’d become the wharf rat. Making a nuisance of myself asking the fishermen what was in the nets that day, visiting the local franchisee Blue Anchor Tavern for a catch of the day lunch, and as they informed me of their coast, I’d tell them of mine.

It’s true. I am an obdurate and unrepentant lover of all things coastal. You ask why I am not reading travel magazine articles on western National Parks or exotic locations on Bali with phenomenal food. I guess it’s because I fell in love with cruising coastal Maine while young or going to sea on a March morning and waking the next in the middle of a north-sweeping Gulf Stream. Noodling around coastal islands with wise locals in the fog and being told exactly where each island lay based on a lifetime of pilotage can’t be found in a tourist trap. Nor can timing your passage up a coastal river just so, to get your masts under a low bridge. 

So, given the opportunity to cut my loving wife free from her job for a while, I’d head out for a frolicking detour along the coast of New England and the Canadian Maritimes. Hey? Have you ever heaved a lead line? Did you know there really is such a thing as mark twain on it? You should try it sometime.