CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY THREE: CHANGE IS IN THE SALT AIR

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY THREE: CHANGE IS IN THE SALT AIR

Welcome, March 2016. Super Tuesday has come and gone, with Hillary and Crazy Don raking in most of the delegates for their respective parties. Second Super Tuesday has also come and gone with the same results – Hillary and Crazy Don leading the pack. Hillary finally got a majority in Missouri – unbelievable since that state voted against ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment.

Li’l Marco is gone. Lying Ted has Mitt Romney by his side – with the same results as 2012 (general election), I hope. Not that I’m rooting for Trump, but seriously, have you listened to Lying Ted go on and on about carpet bombing and how Chief Justice Roberts (his former idol) is evil because of his part in the majority decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act? What a whacko! Everyone used to hate him, and that’s understandable since he has an unearned superiority complex and he called Mitch McConnell a liar and closed down the Government. Now his fellow Republicans fear Crazy Don more than they hate Lying Ted. What a choice for my sister’s political party. Boring John Kasich is still hanging on, hoping for a brokered convention, where grownups win the day. Good luck with that.

But enough about the sad state of the Republican Party. And more about the happy state of the Admiral and Ann, as we pack up all our belongings and plan to turn over the ownership of Slow Motion to Joe and Cheryl. Yes, you read it here first. We are selling Slow Motion – got the check yesterday and expect it to clear sometime next week. The Admiral is driving our belongings in a U-Haul truck to Vail, Arizona, and I’m flying there, staying with my sister until he arrives later next week. The Admiral has been his usual fastidious self, making a data base to record all the boxes and their contents, as well as their weight. We have about 50 boxes, 5 tool boxes, a grill and other sundry items (3 CPU’s from olden times). We’re loading the truck tomorrow.

We’re both ready to start a new chapter in our lives – with Zorro, our dog. Last Sunday we took Slow Motion out of the Marina del Mar channel into the Atlantic Ocean for a sea trial with the buyers. It was a glorious day and Slow Motion’s two diesel engines purred. I will miss racing with the porpoises, spotting eagles and ospreys and the occasional alligator. I look forward to hot showers at home, rather than getting off the boat and going to the marina shower facility. I really look forward to hiking in the hills with Zorro. At this point, that is a realistic goal. I am walking without a cane some of the time – trying to get rid of the Trendelenburg gait.  And even if I have to take the cane with me up the trail, still, I’ll be walking without the Rollator, which I used last Thanksgiving. This is progress! Thank you, Loi and Jason of Prosthetic Design and Research in Tampa. They switched me from a pin prosthesis to a vacuum pump prosthesis. This transferred most of my weight on my right leg from the end, where the bone is prominent, to the knee and side area. There is considerably less pain, and voila, I can walk again without wincing.  The Admiral even made a video of me walking unaided to the trash bin about 30 feet from the boat, and the video went viral. I promise I will walk to other places than the garbage can for future videos, Alan and Louisa. I’ll try to have a beautiful background. But the walking it what is really beautiful to me. I’m pretty stoked about it.

As you know, I have been volunteering at the State Attorney’s Office in Key Largo. Yesterday was my last day, the 18^th. On the 17^th the staff threw a big going away party for me, and the State Attorney herself, Catherine Vogel, came to the party to give me a plaque recognizing my service to the office. The staff gave me a huge canister of jelly bellies. I had been wolfing down the jelly bellies in the office since Day One, so they clearly knew my weakness. This was a small office of 4 attorneys, one investigator, one victim/witness coordinator and 4 support staff persons. Additionally, the former State Attorney, Mark Kohl, worked in this office in Tavernier in an administrative role. He was the one who investigated my background and offered me the job. It was great to work with all of these folks – the lead attorney, Demetrios or Dee, was grateful for everything I researched and wrote. All of the responses to motions for post-conviction relief had landed on his desk, and he was able to transfer them to me to prepare the responses. Yes, he will miss me. I just hope I impressed upon him the urgency of preparing the extradition request for the fugitive in Nicaragua who killed his estranged girlfriend in the Keys at Mile Marker 73 in 2008. True, the fugitive was supposedly convicted of aggravated rape sometime after he fled Florida and returned to his native Nicaragua, and he is supposedly serving a sixteen year prison term. But this is exactly the time to reach out to the Nicaragua officials, when that crime is still fresh in their prosecutor’s mind, and ask them to prosecute him in Nicaragua for the 2008 Keys murder. You see, he’s a citizen of Nicaragua, and that Government does not extradite citizens, but on a good day, they might agree to prosecute him for us. I’m going to keep following that case and bug Dee about getting the paperwork submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs.

I know this Blog started out as a travel blog. I can’t wait to reread all the chapters of our adventures on the ICW. I hope to turn this whole Blog into a book. Or into several books. I’m not sure the political rants fit into the overall tenor of the Blog. But that’s what a good editor will help me figure out. It’s been great sharing our nomadic lives with you all over the world, especially my many readers in the Ukraine. Until we get our travel trailer and head north to Alaska, I’m saying “adios” from Key Largo. Thanks for being my one follower all these years, Vivian. And thank the rest of you for taking the time to read the chapters of this Blog. I enjoyed every minute of writing it. I hope you enjoyed reading it just as much.