Days 9-12 Resting in Nawlins...

     We are taking a planned break in New Orleans, and I will be taking a welcome break from the blogging. Don't get me wrong. I love the blog, and as I said before, we find it useful as a reference/reminder for who, what, where and when. However, it does take me several hours per day, and this is often at the end of a long and busy day. Plus, I have the invaluable help from my chief editor Lucky...

   I am at best a poor typist, but my typing is not any faster/better with all of this "help" from Lucky.

     Significant events during our "rest" include:

- We took the marina shuttle to the French Quarter (on Day 9, Sunday) where we met Marne and Mark and walked around viewing several Zydeco bands and various sidewalk art exhibits as part of the last day of a big festival. We then had a marvelous dinner (broiled shrimp for me) before they kindly drove us back to the Marina. They are friends from our times at Texas A&M University at Qatar, and she now works at Tulane University here in NOLA.




- Terry rode about 4 miles on her (electric) bike to a Winn-Dixie grocery store. She came back loaded down with fresh meat and vegetables (organic, of course). We are continuing to follow the Whole 30 food plan fairly closely. We have done this plan since last June 1, and after one month of strict adherence, you are allowed to re-introduce some items as fits the plan. Thus, we have been able to continue to follow the plan so far on our Loop.

- We have done lots of "little" jobs on Lucky Us. In particular, Terry has continued to organize our "stuff". Some of her jobs were not so small, including adding molding around the color printer to keep it in place during rough seas. She also screwed a L-bracket onto a bookcase to hold it up against the wall (again a rough seas precaution). Added grommets and snaps here and there...

-We rented a car from Enterprise for 24 hours, which enabled some additional shopping as well as going to two different movie theaters. We also shopped at Target, Ace Hardware and West Marine.  We were able to use accumulated points for the rental car so it only cost us $7 in fuel.  This was a bonus!  Regarding the movies, we saw "The Boss" with Melissa McCarthy (funny but crass), and "Hello, My Name is Doris" with Sally Fields (funny and kind of whimsical).

-We have finally diagnosed issues related to our two primary bilge pumps, and at West Marine we bought a new bilge pump (1500 gallons/hour) and a new float switch. Larger bilge pumps typically are installed with a separate external float (on/off) switch. This lowers the cost over all-in-one units, but it also makes the wiring more complicated. As luck would have it, on one bilge pump the switch was bad and on the other it was the pump... I also took the opportunity to clean the bilge a bit. There are always accumulated small items down there, such as small pieces of wire, wood, and assorted screws, nuts and bolts. This is part of the due diligence since these items could potentially jam a pump. For accumulated oil and diesel fuel, we use a liquid bilge cleaner. This is a seemingly never ending but important project...

-the never ending process of fuel transfer and polishing with about 4 hours of pump/filter time today.

-And of course, Terry didn't want me to forget to mention the continued process of laundry, cooking, and cleaning.

- One interesting sight was this 7 foot long alligator swimming in the central lagoon of the marina. I don't think that Lucky saw him, but he definitely edged closer when she was standing on the edge of the seawall. Hmmmmm lunch...












-Lucky Girl has enjoyed this stop too with lots of long walks including visiting a dog park area where she can run around unleashed and visit/play with other dogs.  We are not really sure she knows how to really play with other dogs but she tries. As a side benefit, my Fit Bit has been busy as I have been doing just over 5 miles walking per day during our break and well over half of that has been with Lucky. She has also been a major reason why my active minutes have been over 50 per day. She seems to be enjoying her extended stay at the dock, but she still growls and snaps at me when I try to take her on that one final (very short) walk just before bed??? 

Note: An earlier version of this blog had this listed as Days 9-11, but a band of heavy rain and thunderstorms came through, and we wisely decided to sit that one out for an extra day (i.e. Day). The forecast for tomorrow is "iffy" at the moment, but we will continue to monitor several weather sources...