Patrick Schulte's Blog, page 114

Portland Life

Probably the single biggest reason that we like Portland over our hometown in Minnesota so much, is the neighborhoods. Sidewalks, unique homes, tons of flowers, one-off restaurants, antique vehicles, cars that stop and wait for you to arrive at crosswalks, parks all over the place, towering trees, local pubs, and the list goes on. North-East Portland, where my mom lives, is five minutes from the center of downtown yet feels like a small-town neighborhood. It’s always a great place to unwind after a year in Mexico.

Today we went down to the Hollywood Saturday Market where we were able to replenish the kids supply of fruit (they eat pounds of berries a day—like bear cubs) as well as score two of Ouest’s favorite things in the world—pork tamales and a cold glass of horchada. We’re finding as much authentic Mexican food and drink here as we do back home.

We usually pick out Ouest’s main outfit for the day, but the accoutrements are all hers and are largely pulled out of the dress-up bin. Lately she’s been wearing an apron over her clothes, as well as a tiara and even these dangly clip-on earrings. And she doesn’t go anywhere any more without that pink purse full of treasures. She spends all day “keeping her eyes peeled” for treasure, and it’s surprising how often she finds coins on the ground.

Royal Baby?

Sometimes I get the impression that people don’t believe just how out of touch we are with television and celebrity and sports and pretty much everything that is unrelated to our own small bubble that surrounds our boat. Then this happens while my mom watches her morning talk show and Ali is making the kids’ breakfast:

Today Show: “And coming up, more on the upcoming birth of the Royal baby.” Or something along those lines.

Ali: “What royal baby?”

Mom: “Seriously?”

Ali: “What?”

Mom: Explains to Ali all of this royal baby business.

Ali: Turns to me and asks, “Did you know about this?”

———-

The first words out of Ouest’s mouth today were, “I miss Aunt Katy.” Sorry Aunt Toni, but she did explain to me later on in the day that you had to go home to take care of Lea.

———-

For Fourth of July family fun we drove out to the suburbs. Just twenty minutes away is a place called—of all the obnoxious suburbia names—Happy Valley. Go ahead and throw up a little, I did, especially after seeing all the locals with their GET MORE HAPPY t-shirts. But then I got off my high-horse and soaked it in. It was a happy place. Perhaps even happy enough to warrant the name. Happy kids slid down the big inflatable slide, Ouest and Lowe got to climb around in a firetruck with a happy fireman, a happy lady painted a butterfly on Ouest’s cheek (it didn’t even compare to this butterfly though), happy performance artists crafted balloon animals, a Greek girl happily took my gyro order, a happy Mexican served me a cold glass of horchada, Lowe happily ran around and around the baseball diamond leaving a trail of dust in his wake, and then both kids happily splashed around in the water fountain park. I’ll be damned if we weren’t happy—and in a valley.

 

Adiós Tías

It was great having Ali’s sisters out for a few days. The kids don’t see them enough, but when they do they can’t get enough of them. Ali and I will be hearing about their visit for days to come.

Beat the Heat

Portland, Oregon is feeling like San Carlos, Mexico at the moment, getting swept up in the heat wave rockin’ its way through the West. Instead of hibernating with the air-conditioner cranking we spent most of the day at a couple of different parks around town. Mexico needs more of these fountain parks—the kids have a blast, and it takes a lot less commitment (compared to taking the kids swimming) on the part of the parent.

Oh, Hey Papa

My bus eventually rolled in to Tucson at 3:30 in the morning. I got to the airport and found out right off the bat that my flight was delayed. Then delayed again, and again. I was supposed to have a three-hour layover in San Francisco, but it was now looking as if I wouldn’t have time to make my connection at all.

The flight eventually took off and I tried to get some sleep. There was a lady behind me with a 3 year-old and a 1 year-old—rather serendipitously I suppose. I couldn’t sleep for some reason and eventually gave up. That’s when the flight attendant snuck this note onto my tray. I thought it was a rather nice gesture—something I haven’t experienced a lot of on flights these days. She thought it was the kids who were keeping me from sleep and wanted to let me know I could move, but didn’t want to make the mother behind me feel bad.

Our flight landed fifteen minutes before my flight to Portland was scheduled to take off. Full on O.J. style I raced through SFO, and to the sounds of “Last call,” I slipped between the closing doors. Had I not made it I was looking at a six-hour wait.

I arrived in Portland 22 hours after leaving the boat. I’m not entirely sure the savings was worth it. It probably took me about twelve hours longer to go this route than if I had flown out of Hermosillo. Twelve hours, to save about $350, comes out to roughly thirty bucks an hour. Fair enough I guess, considering I was alone, but I sure wouldn’t be making that run with the kids.

I’d like to say the kids were over the moon to see their Papa stroll through the door, but the truth is that their Aunt Katy and Aunt Toni were there already, as was Grammy, and the dog, and new toys, and books, and what? who? “Oh, hi papa.”

Ali’s sisters flew out from Minnesota for a visit with the kids. And did I mention it’s ninety-seven degrees here? The hell? It was only ninety-five in San Carlos. It’s still only something like forty-five in Minnesota though I think, so they’re happy to be here.

 

Midnight Border Run

The other day I asked the owner of this café if his son would be interested in watching Mango the fish—we’d pay him of course. The kid said he would but then realized he was going to the States in a couple of weeks and it wouldn’t work out. That’s when friendly Karina here said she’d do it.

“I have three kids. I know how it is,” she said.

And so it came to be that a complete stranger to us is watching Mango for a month. How kind. Mango lives.

So later on in the afternoon I boarded a bus bound for Estados Unidos. I decided to save about $400 on my flight to Portland by hopping a $40 bus to Tucson and flying from there. The bus was uneventful overall. Pretty uncomfortable as buses tend to be, but made up for it with the fastest wifi I’ve experienced in all of Mexico.

The bus, I was told, would take seven hours to reach Tucson. After seven and a half we finally reached the border where I, along with the rest of my Mexican compadres, were greeted warmly by America’s finest—the border patrol agent.

“Whachoogot?” he asked while stealthily flexing his ridiculous biceps.

“What do I got?”

“Yeah.”

I packed one t-shirt, my camera, and my computer, but concluded that this wasn’t what he was asking so I said, “Nothing.”

“Okay.”

As we all stood around the front of the bus waiting for everyone to disembark and get past Officer Whachoogot I took out my camera and snapped a picture. I took it knowing they’d probably get in a huff, but figured I’d give it a try anyway. It was a pretty good one too, a little old lady holding out her Mexican passport and Officer Whachoogot about to take it from her hand. Not a prize winner, but certainly blog worthy.

About two minutes later I see four officers storming towards me.

“You speak English?” I was starting to wonder if any of these guys did.

“Si.” It always takes me a few days to snap out of Spanish.

“You can’t take pictures. You need to delete the pictures you took.” Obviously the eye in the sky had spotted me and called in the troops.

“I’m not sure I need to delete the picture, but I will. You should get a sign.”

I deleted the pic and the gang dispersed. Somehow I knew right when we pulled up to the border that I’d end up in some kind of trouble. I really have a problem with authority types—always have. Especially border patrol agents. They always have to act like such hard-asses. I get it sort of—it’s part of their job to intimidate people, to trip them up. But what if we ended this ridiculous war on drugs? Then what? Suddenly these guys would have no reason to act like hard-asses any more. Their jobs would consist of nothing more than checking to make sure the person standing in front of them had a valid visa. The job could be done by little old ladies. Wouldn’t that be nicer for all involved?

“Oh, well now, welcome back to the U.S. of A. Pat Schulte. You don’t mind if I call you Pat do you? Say, you aren’t related to a Sally Schulte in Des Moines are you. I graduated from high school with Sally—class of ’52. No? Well welcome back anyway. Enjoy your visit with your mother.”

Yeah, that’s how I envision border crossings after the potheads get their way.

Work, Work, Work.

Warning: This post contains entirely too much boat work talk. Here is the e-mail conversation Ali and I just had (that’s right, e-mail conversation, because we don’t know how to text or IM or whatever the hell it is):

Ali: No blog posts. Have you been taking pictures?

Me: Haven’t taken many pics. Boat stuff is so boring to me, and pictures of it even more so.

Ali: People like boat work posts and pics! Just because you are in a funk doesn’t mean you should blog like it is your job.

Me: If I blog about boat work then I am blogging like it is a job!

And so, here it is, a boat work blog post. Because it’s my job.

All right, so Ali and the kids are gone, which means a number of things:

I can leave my tools right out in the open and nobody touches them.
I can leave the engine compartment wide open and nobody will fall in it.
I can leave my dirty clothes in a heap.
I can start and finish a project without a ninety-minute time limit.
I can survive on liquids only.

 

Looking at that list I’m not so sure that life on a boat without Ali and the kids is so great. None of that is probably making any men out there envious.

All right, so what have I been working on?

I jumped into the engine compartment and got to work in there. First a simple oil change. I can’t stress enough how easy it is to change the oil on this boat. If I think about it I’d say the fact that I can slip a big bucket underneath the engine is my favorite feature on the entire boat.

This time I even changed the oil filter. I really should do that more often. It’s not that difficult. It’s just that they locate the stupid thing upside down and with a bunch of hoses around it so that it is impossible to put a bag underneath it to catch the spilled oil. Though with all the oil drained it really doesn’t spill much, and at like eight bucks for a filter it’s pretty silly not to change it.

After the engine I decided to change the oil in the fuel injection pump. I’ve done this before, but not nearly on the 50 hour schedule the manual calls for. Anyway, since I replaced our water pump with a new one the access to the fuel injection pump drain hole became very tight. To the point that I could only get a wrench and a finger in there. I just had to put a bucket on the floor underneath and hope it would catch most of the drainage.

So that went okay. The oil was mostly diesel, but that’s actually how these things work apparently. After it drained out I grabbed the bolt and started feeling around underneath for the hole. I found it and started to screw it in but something felt different. I got out a mirror and flashlight and took a closer look underneath and discovered that there were two bolt holes—one of which was missing it’s bolt and one of which I was holding the bolt to. Some googling gave me no answers, and from what I could see in the manual diagram there is only one. So I have no idea. I’ll call the American Diesel guys on Monday to ask. I left that oil-free for now.

Next I checked the coolant and found it pretty low, which is a little disturbing because I just checked it in Santa Rosalia and topped off a low tank there as well. Could be a cracked cylinder head or block, or a leaky had gasket, or what, I don’t know? None of that sounds all that great.

Then I decided to pop the cover on the raw water intake filter. Inside is a metal strainer/filter thing which when pulled out promptly fell apart in my hands. Need to order a new one of those now. Then when I tried to close the cover again I found that it wouldn’t seal. The gasket was hard as a rock. Add that to the list too.

All right, so now that I’ve incapacitated my engine I can move on to other things.

Bilge pumps. There’s something I’ve never had to fix before. Well except for EVERY SINGLE TIME I’m going to leave the boat. Someone really has to come up with a bilge pump that works. Even back in the catamaran days our pumps would never work. On this boat they always work, but never want to shut off. I fix them and a month later the float thing is sticking again. When we’re on the boat it’s easy enough to just flick the switch and shut them off manually when this happens, but off the boat I don’t want them running for weeks on end. Anyway, I cleaned them up, got them working good again, and will hope for the best. The sound of a bilge pump running is always the first thing I listen for when returning to the boat.

Cockpit lockers. I emptied them and cleaned them. Then I rearranged the rear locker where our two propane tanks reside. They’ve got nice glassed-in bases to hold them, but the problem with that is they take up the entire locker space that way. If I lay them down up against the side I’ve got a ton of empty storage space, and we can always use more cockpit locker space for kids’ toys. I’ve still got to put a couple of eye bolts in so I can securely tie them down.

When the lockers were empty I decided to remove the last two winches that still need to be cleaned. I know, three years and I’ve still got two winches that have never been serviced. Now I remember why. I took the first one apart and found nothing but grease that had turned into some sort of solid paste. This stuff is brutal. The last time I did this I bathed the winches in gasoline and scrubbed away with a wire brush to slowly remove the grease. Eventually I realized how stupid I was to be doing that—I mean I do have an aversion to gas explosions in my face—so this time I tried carburetor cleaner. It worked, sort of, but still not a great solution. I shelved that project when I realized it would take me ten hours per winch.

What else? What else? I changed the toilet hoses. Fun. I washed the boat, the lines, the stainless, and anything else I could find to clean. I removed and resealed another one of those skylight things we have on the deck. Those things are forever a pain in my ass. This time I drilled the screw holes out bigger, scraped out any loose wood, epoxied everything, then drilled new screw holes, and very carefully caulked it all back up again. It seems to have worked on the last one I did this way, so hopefully this will be the last of the leaks for this one as well.

Oh, here’s one. For a while our water tanks have been making big banging sounds whenever we fill them or when we’re showering. I knew what the problem was but didn’t get around to remedying it until now. The problem was the breather hose had water in it. I didn’t track the line (I should now that I think about it), but I assume there is a low spot in it and somehow water got in there, essentially blocking off the hose. When a water tank is being drained it needs to be able to suck air in to keep it from vacuuming itself. If that makes any sense. Anyway, that’s done and I haven’t heard a single boom since.

There’s more little projects, but this has gone on long enough already.

Here’s a cruiser tip for you. Today I went to the Banjercito office in Guaymas. I brought along my boat’s TIP (Temporary Import Permit) which also has a form where you list everything that is on your boat. Engines, electronic equipment, tools, dinghy, etc.. I went in today because I plan on buying a bunch of expensive stuff in the States this month and then hauling it back down here. That may or may not cause a problem at the border depending on whether I get the green or the red light. If I get the red light and I haven’t declared all this expensive stuff I could be in trouble.

But no longer, because today I went into that office, spoke with an extremely friendly, possibly flirtatious, rotund woman (I only throw the adjective rotund in there because if ever someone embraced being a big woman it was this lady), who took my list and my passport, disappeared for a minute, and returned with a brand new form with an official stamp and signature on it, but completely blank for me to fill out before I return to Mexico. Basically I can now go to the States, buy anything I want, write it on that list, and bring it into the country duty free. And legal! I never do anything the legal way, and I’m so excited by the prospect.

Tonight I walked up to OXXO to pick up a few things. I walked out with an ice-cold Tecate Light (because it was the only thing in the cooler and all I really wanted was something cold). I cracked it open out on the sidewalk and as I lifted it to my mouth I caught a whiff of it and was instantly transported back to my seventeen-year-old self. It smelled and tasted exactly like a Busch Light Draft on a Friday night at Afton Park as me and my buddies waited for the girls to show up. For a split-second I was transported right there into that parking lot and had to smile at the memory. My friends and I had a lot of good times there.

I feel like I’ve been having a lot of these moments lately. Flashbacks. Reminiscences. Whatever they’re called. I like them—enjoy them the same way I do a good dream. They remind me in a unique way of what an enjoyable life I’ve lived.

Gone Baby Gone

We woke up early today, loaded into the car and headed for Hermosillo—the nearest place to catch a flight to the States—ninety minutes away. By the time we got there Ouest already had two blisters on her heels due to her horrible parents putting shoes on her instead of sandals. We all suffer when putting on normal shoes, so I’m not sure what we expected to happen with Ouest today.

Anyway, we checked Ali and the kids in (because yes, I’m staying behind for three days to pound out boat projects) but found out right away that we had an issue—we had no tourist visas for the kids. We reasoned that they are Mexican citizens and therefore not tourists. Unfortunately we don’t have current Mexican passports for them, so they’d be flying on their U.S. passports, and thus, would be considered tourists. Fortunately Ali had the foresight to bring along their birth certificates, and once the ticketing agent saw those she said we just needed to go to the immigration office.

Now, how that little visit went I have no idea. The office was after the security checkpoint where I was left behind. I waited in the car for a while and they never came out so I’m hoping for the best. Hoping, because it is now 10:30 at night, their flight landed three hours ago, and I’ve not heard a peep. Not that I’m worried. Ali’s a champ.

And as I type that she e-mails with the news that they are at Grammy’s house in Portland, there were no tears until the final minutes when Ouest pinched her finger in the seat buckle (I smell lawsuit), Lowe fell asleep within minutes of arriving, and Grammy read Ouest to sleep. A good full day.

My day was filled with cleaning mostly. Cleaned the boat, emptied and cleaned the lockers, cleaned the awnings, cleaned the bilge, and knocked off a few other small projects. Exciting stuff.

 

Flair

We rented a car today, which made San Carlos a much better place. Not enough to make me like it, but enough to hate it less. Ali and the kids fly out tomorrow. I’m four days behind them after hopefully knocking off a fair bit of the boat’s to-do list.

This is a small portion of Marina Seca (seca means dry in Spanish). A fine place for simply hauling and leaving a boat for the summer I guess.

We went to a bar/restaurant for lunch today. Ali and Ouest went in ahead of me and Lowe because he was busy trying out all the buttons in the car. They came back out a minute later having been told they had to leave. No kids allowed. I’m fine with that concept, but for it to happen in Mexico really surprised me. Mexicans bring their kids everywhere—at all hours. It was also weird because the restaurant’s logo was a giant cartoon turtle, and because it was just a casual open-air type place, not some dingy bar. Anyway, it all worked out for the best as we stumbled across this place next. We pulled around back to the parking lot and found this awaiting us.

Lowe does absolutely everything Ouest does. Everything. She’s pretty good about it right now, but I can just imagine how she’s going to feel after a couple more years of looking over her shoulder to see his beseeching eyes. When I say everything, I really do mean everything. If Ouest says she has to go pee he immediately starts pointing to his crotch to let us know he needs to too. If Ouest whispers something in my ear he follows right in behind her and mumbles in my ear too. If she throws a handful of flowers in the water, he throws flowers in the water. It goes on and on all day long.

This is his latest thing—dragging his feet through the sand to make dust. He does it everywhere. There is a row of trees along the sidewalk by the boat and under each tree he’ll walk in circles for five minutes just dragging his toes through the dirt. He leaves the sidewalks for dirt parking lots and walks in circles kicking up Linus sized clouds behind him. He requires rinsing before boarding the boat every time.

Count ‘em—thirty-seven pieces of flair.

Derelict

Something that really irks me is the sight of a bunch of crappy old sailboats left abandoned in a bay. At some point the owners of these things must have come to terms with the fact that they would never sail them again—that they had no desire to go back and tackle the job of getting them seaworthy again—so why not do something about it? What? I don’t know. But I do know I’d feel like a first class POS if I just left a boat swinging on a mooring with no intention of ever stepping foot on it again. Who is going to remove that thing? Nobody.

There are a couple dozen of these floating around out here—obviously untouched for at least a couple of years. Engine probably seized up, diesel fuel turned to gel, running rigging dry and brittle, barnacles two inches deep. I’m sort of surprised some local fisherman doesn’t go out one breezy night and just slice the mooring lines on these derelicts (as opposed to waiting for mother nature to do it) that make his home bay look like a junk yard.

Not much shaking around here. Headed to Portland in a couple of days to visit Grammy. Not a long trip but we’ve got a problem that Ali and I managed to avoid having throughout our entire adult lives up until now—finding a pet-sitter. Can a fish live six hours in a three ounce shampoo bottle?