Blog Posts

Seven Seas Mysteries

12/15/2014

I’ve told you that I am privileged to work with six other best-selling authors putting together a boxed set of nautical mysteries. I can’t believe a group of seven creative people can work together so fast and effectively.

Today, I’m announcing the cover for our box set. It should be available on Amazon.com this week. We will have an initial “Friends and Family” price of 99 cents. The proceeds from this project will be donated to the Veterans’’ Writing Project.

I can’t express how excited I am to be included with this group of writers. Here is the list of books and authors in this set:



                    A Dangerous Harbor                      RP Dahlke

                    Bluewater Killers                               CLR Dougherty

                    Fallen Out                                           Wayne Stinnett

                    The Inside Passage                          Pendelton C. Wallace

                    Trawler Trash                                    Ed Robinson

                    Troubled Sea                                      Jinx Schwartz

                    Wood’s Relic                                      Steven Becker

The box set will be available as an eBook on Amazon.com. You can download it for your own enjoyment, or you can send it as a gift to a friend. In this holiday season, don’t forget that books make great gifts.

These are really good authors. If you enjoy my books, you’re going to love this box set. I’ll announce as soon as it is available for purchase, but I’m so excited I just had to let you know about it now.

Happy whatever holiday you celebrate this season to all.

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Merry Christmas

12/9/2014

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The holiday season is upon us.

If you haven't read my Christmas satire, Christmas Inc. yet, this is your chance. Click here to get your copy.

We started the season out with a trip to Westminster to have Thanksgiving with my cousins.

Carmen, Brenda, Yollanda, Suzi and Renee were our closest cousins and best friends when we lived in California. My sister, Quita, and I often walked to their house or they came to ours to hang out and play.

We lived in a little house at 2000 Anaheim Street in Costa Mesa. The Pantojas lived a couple blocks away. In those days there were still empty lots, so we could make a direct trip between our houses. Finding an empty lot in Southern California today is like looking for an honest man at a used-car salesman’s convention.

We moved to Oregon in 1961. In the intervening fifty-three years, we have not had much contact. Four years ago, when Libby and I flew to San Diego to buy the Victory, I looked my cousins up. Libby and I drove up to Santa Ana to have dinner with them at Yollanda’s house.

Penn and Dawn with the cousins

It was an amazing experience. Here we were, a bunch of old people, reliving our childhood memories. It was interesting that as I recalled an experience, they filled in pieces that I didn’t remember and vice versa.

Now it’s Thanksgiving and Dawn and I are hungry for family for the holiday. I got in touch with Suzi and kind of invited ourselves to their feast. Of course, they were very gracious. When I hinted at not having any place to spend Thanksgiving, they immediately asked us to come up there.

It’s normally a ninety minute drive from San Diego to Santa Ana. It took three hours. We were supposed to be there by noon to help with the cooking. We got there at a quarter after one to help with the eating.

Carmen graciously left the gravy making and turkey slicing for me. She wanted everyone to participate in the preparation of the feast.

We had a wonderful time. There were about twenty-five people there. Children and their spouses and grandchildren. Can you believe it? My cousins have grandchildren? We were just kids ourselves yesterday.

I want to extend a hearty thank you to my cousins, Carmen, Brenda, Yollanda and Suzi, for the great time. They apparently are horrible judges of character. They invited us back for Christmas.

They do an American Thanksgiving and a Mexican Christmas. I was surprised and appalled that no one knows how to make tamales. I’ll go up early on Christmas Eve and make tamales for the fiesta. More on that later.

Why, you ask, is Suzi holding a pomegranate in the picture? You’ll have to read Blue Water & Me to get the whole story. Or ask me the next time you see me.

Writing News

Things have been moving so fast that I can’t keep up.

Of course, you know that I published The Mexican Connection, the third book in the Ted Higuera Series, the week after Bouchercon. I am pleased with the sales so far. If you’re one of the hundreds of people who took advantage of the “Friends and Family” promotion, I would appreciate it if you would post a review on Amazon.com as soon as possible.

I want to run a promotion for The Mexican Connection in January and I must have at least twenty reviews for them to consider it.

Next, and this is really big, I am working with a group of well established authors on a Nautical Mystery Box Set. We will have seven novels in the set by bestselling authors Wayne Stinnett, RP Dalhke, CLR Dougherty, Steven Becker, Ed Robinson, Jinx Schwatrz and myself. I will include The Inside Passage in the collection.

It will be called Seven Seas Mysteries and should be out in time for Christmas. It will sell for 99 cents to introduce new readers to our novels.

I can’t tell you how jazzed I am to be included with a group of such distinguished authors. I’m learning lots and we’ve built a nice camaraderie as we work on this project. I know that I will be in touch with these new friends for the rest of my life.

The third big piece of news I have for you is that I have been invited to make two presentations at the San Diego State University Writers Conference in January. I will hold a workshop on Critique Groups and give a presentation called "Marketing 101" recounting what I have learned about marketing your books. I hope some of you will be attending the conference and we get the chance to meet.

A Cessna 152 like 3690J

I found another benefit from my writing career. I have been hearing from people with whom I lost touch long ago.

First of all, I heard from Charlie Sablan, a friend that Connie and I worked with at VIP’s Restaurants back about thirty-five years ago. It was great to catch up.

Then I got an email from Tom Reavley, who I have never met, but who had information that I asked for in the preface of Hacker for Hire. I soloed in a little Cessna 152 when I was working on my pilot’s license more than forty years ago. Tom wrote to tell me that 3690J is registered in Shakope, MN. I hope she’s still flying.

Now, here’s the biggest surprise of all. My late sister, Quita’s best friend, Terry Clark (now Theresa Aitchinson) contacted me. She Googled my name and found my web site. She used the “Contact Penn” form to send me a message. She read the first chapters from Blue Water & Me and was transported back to the Costa Mesa and Newport Beach of the Sixties. She wants me to sign copies for her grandchildren.

We are going to meet on Friday to catch up. After all, it has been more than fifty years since we’ve seen each other.

Wow! What gifts. It is a little scary, putting your writing (and heart) out there for the world to see and judge, but man, what benefits.

Now, before I sign off, Merry Christmas to all of you. I know that it is politically correct to say “Happy Holidays,” but I celebrate Christmas. I want to wish all of you that celebrate Christmas a great holiday. And if you don’t celebrate Christmas, I wish you a joy filled season as well.

And don't forget to get your copy of Christmas Inc.

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Bouchercon 2014

11/26/2014

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It rained the night before last. The rain brought San Diego to its knees. When the power went out last night, Dawn was sure that it was because the power lines got wet. When we heard about the Buffalo NFL game being moved to Detroit because Buffalo got eight feet of snow, she was sure the San Diego game would be moved to Phoenix because of the .01 inch of rain we got.

Needless to say, San Diegans are not equipped to deal with rain. Being from the Northwest, we laugh.

I promised I would keep you updated on my South Beach Diet progress. I lost three pounds the first three days, then in the next week I lost nothing. I’m discouraged.

Of course, Bouchercon was mixed in there too.

What, you ask, is Bouchercon?

Bouchercon is the World Mystery Writers and Readers convention. This year it was held in Long Beach, CA. I found out about it two weeks in advance when a friend announced on Facebook that she was going. I checked it out and signed up.

I really did try to stick to my diet, despite living in a hotel room for three days and eating all my meals out. I had breakfast at the hotel buffet. Admittedly I took bacon off of the buffet line, but I also had scrambled eggs, lots of fruit and steel ground oatmeal, all things within my diet.

For lunch one day I had a chicken Caesar salad from Starbucks. I see no reason to ever order that again. The next day I had a BBQ pork sandwich, but didn’t eat the bread and had a salad instead of the French Fries. The third day I had a hamburger without the bun and again had salad for the fries.

I really tried to be good. However, on two different occasions, groups of large burly women held me down and forced cookies down my gullet.

I guess I should be grateful that I came out of the conference even. It could have been much worse.

Michael Connely being interviewed

Now for a quick rundown on Bouchercon.

It was great. I haven’t been to a writers conference in three years. I went to lots of workshops and seminars and attended several panel discussions.

The best seminars were two given by Cara Brookins and R.P. Dahlke on marketing your books on social media. I learned a bunch that I’m already starting to put into effect.

The highlight of the conference for me was seeing Michael Connelly. I love his books and characters. I got to sit and listen to him talk about his writing experiences for an hour. And the big bonus: he is working on a TV series starring Harry Bosch, his hard-bitten LA homicide detective.

The second big bonus: I got to see some of my writing friends from Seattle. It was great. We all had dinner together on Friday night and I bumped into them from time to time throughout the weekend. The conference was so busy that I didn’t have time to catch up as much as I would have liked, but it was great to see them.

As you know, I published The Mexican Connection this week. I’m already doing research for the next Ted and Chris adventure, tentatively titled Bikini Baristas. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any bikini barista stands in San Diego at which to do my research.

If you’re a trial lawyer and have an extra hour, drop me a line at contact me. I could use a little expertise in this field to flush out the story line.

After Bikini Baristas, I’m thinking about giving Ted and Chris a break. I want to write a book about Dawn’s dog, Odin. He has to be one of the most traveled and most photographed dogs in the world. He has lived an interesting life and I want to record it while I still have him here to ask about it. Naturally, I expect that he will want to write part of the book, as he did in my “Great Dane on Board” series on my web page.

Have a happy Thanksgiving everybody. It’s my favorite holiday. Dawn and I will drive up to Santa Ana to spend it with my cousins. I hope you all surround yourselves with family and have great time.

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The Amazing Shrinking Man

11/7/2014

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A trimmed down, svelte Penn

I was not born a fat person. As a matter of fact, for all of my early life, I was very athletic. Then I hurt my back.

On New Year’s Day, 1997 I fell off the roof and broke my back. What, you ask, was I doing on the roof on New Year’s Day?

Seattle had a very unusual ice storm. Boat houses in the marinas sank due to the weight of the ice on them. Power lines snapped and everyone was suffering from the cold.

Then it began to thaw out. Our basement flooded. That must be, I surmised, because our gutters were full and water was running down the side of the house and not the downspouts.

I put on my woolies and climbed up on the roof to check the gutters.

We had a metal roof on the house. It was frozen over. I lost my footing, slipped down the roof and went over the side.

I landed in a sitting position on our deck, some eight feet below. I broke three vertebrae in my lower back. When I was on my feet again, I examined the deck. I had driven it three or four inches down the side of the house with the force of the impact.

As a result of my injuries, I was confined to bed for several months. My wife, Connie, was very solicitous. She cooked me all of my favorite foods and left me with chocolate cakes or chocolate chip cookies to get me through the day.

Eating all of those calories and getting no exercise had the expected results. I put on fifty pounds.

I have spent the last seventeen years fighting those pounds.

In December of 2003 I finally had gastric bypass surgery and got back down to an acceptable weight. This is not a pleasant way to lose weight. For the first two weeks after surgery, I didn’t eat anything that hadn’t been processed in a blender first. This was about as appetizing as a glass of swamp water.

Anyone who thinks that gastric bypass surgery is the easy way out has another think coming.

After Connie died, I bought an old boat and spent two and a half years rebuilding it, then sailed it to Mexico from Seattle. Let me tell you, that kind of work will take the weight off like nobody’s business. I was down to my best weight since high school.

Penn's weight balloons up

Then, in May of 2013, I hurt my shoulder. We had taken a charter party out on the Victory and I was on the foredeck raising the stays’l. The boom came flying across the deck and hit me in the right shoulder.

I felt instant pain and my right arm was useless. The impact tore a tendon in my shoulder. I spent a couple of months in physical therapy and resting per the doctor’s orders, then in August, had surgery to repair the shoulder. In the meantime, I became inactive. I couldn’t do anything with a bum wing.

About the time I healed from the shoulder, I hurt my knee. We had guests visiting us from Seattle and I took them out sailing in La Paz Bay. Climbing unto the boat, I felt something tear in my knee. It was the last of my meniscus.

I had surgery to remove the torn meniscus in January 2014. Now, I have bone rubbing on bone in my knee. The doctor in Mexico suggested that I needed knee replacement surgery.

In the meantime, I can hardly walk. I hobble around, but every step hurts and I can’t sleep at night because of the pain.

My solution? Eat more, exercise less. A perfect recipe for getting fatter.

So here I am, a year and a half after being at my best weight and most healthy I had been since high school, way over weight and sitting around the house all day.

If my injuries have negatively impacted my sailing and adventuring, they’ve been great for my writing career. I haven’t been able to get out and about, so I have lots of time to sit at my computer and write.

After moving to San Diego from Mexico and getting on Obamacare, my doctors advised me that if I want the knee replacement surgery to go well, I need to lose weight. Last night I went to a writers dinner and had to put on real clothes for the first time.

I’ve been wearing shorts and T-shirts for two years now. I don’t remember the last time I dressed up.

I dragged some slacks and a Hawaiian shirt out of my closet and was mortified at how tight they were. I need to change my life.

So, according to my doctor’s instructions, I started on the South Beach Diet this week.

In the next few weeks, I’ll chronicle how the diet is going and what progress I’m making. I’m hoping that by baring my soul to the public, I will be forced to keep on plan and show progress.

I got off to a good start. I had to see the doctor yesterday and, to my surprise, I’ve already lost three pounds. That’s positive reinforcement.

We don’t have a scale in the house and the plan recommends against weighing yourself daily. I have such regular doctor’s appointments scheduled that I’ll get weighed every couple of weeks anyway. The real proof will be in how my clothes fit. I have another dinner to go to next month. I fully expect to be able to get into my dress clothes without a shoe horn.

Don’t get the idea that I’m doing this to look good. I am totally committed to getting my knee fixed and being able to get back on the boat. The Victory is waiting for me. We have lots of places to see and adventures to have yet. We’re thinking about the Caribbean for our next adventure.

Stay tuned to this Bat Channel, I’ll keep you apprised as to my progress. For now, it’s time for me to go have my egg substitute omelet for breakfast.

Writing News

My life as a writer is extremely busy. I am almost done proof-reading The Mexican Connection. My next job is to format it for the Kindle. The Mexican Connection is the third book in the Ted Higuera series.

In this book, Ted and Chris get lured to Mexico by an old nemisis and end up smack dab in the middle of Mexico’s drug wars.

I’m really excited about this book and it should be released by the middle of the month.

What’s next? Ted and Chris are going to get involved in another case back in Seattle. This time, they’ll be looking for the missing owner of a chain of bikini barista stands. My working title for this book is Bikini Baristas, but we’ll see how it all works out.

Dawn and I are also beginning to put together the outline for a story about Odin’s life. Odin is her one hundred and seventy pound Great Dane. My “Great Dane on Board” series on my blog (click here to go to it) was so popular that we want to write a whole book about Odin’s life. I’ll let you know how that’s going as time goes by.

Finally, I just finished a promotion for Hacker for Hire. At the end of the four-day promotion, Hacker for Hire was #2 on Amazon.com’s best seller list. It was #1 on the mystery and Hispanic literature lists as well. Thank you all for your support.

Now, I would like to ask the tens of thousands of you who downloaded a free copy for a favor. If you liked the book, please write a review on Amazon.com, GoodReads or where ever you go to find your books. If you didn’t like the book, you can ignore this paragraph.

That’s it for now. I’ll be back next week with an update on The Amazing Shrinking Man.

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A Curmudgeon Goes to the Dreaded Dog Beach

10/26/2014

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A quiet day at the beach

I can honestly say that the only thing in my life that I’ve ever feared is dogs. I have been in several life-threatening situations and not felt fear, but let a Chihuahua sneak up behind me and bark and I’ll wet my pants.

It’s not a rational fear. When I was three years old, I was attacked by two German Sheppards and have been afraid of dogs ever since.

My late wife, Connie, loved dogs. She begged me for seventeen years to get a dog. I always put it to her simply, “The day a dog moves in, I move out.” For all of those years, she put my welfare above those of dogs.

Then one day, as we were driving back from visiting our friends in Spokane, she got me. Gary and Kay had a big old Australian Sheppard named Katie. Katie was just about as nice and mellow a dog as you could ever wish to meet. On our long drive home Connie asked ,”Wouldn’t you love to have a dog just like Katie?”

“No,“ I responded. “I don’t ever want to have a dog.”

“But if you had to have a dog, wouldn’t you like a dog like Kate?”

Digging a fox hole on the beach

They say you should never show fear. If a dog senses fear, they will be on you like ugly on a Husky. (Sorry, I just had to get that University of Washington reference in there since my Ducks smashed them this weekend on the grid iron.)

Well, I had a moment of weakness. “I supposed if I had to have a dog, I’d want a dog like Katie.”

The next day we had a chocolate Labrador retriever puppy which Connie and the girls named Phoebe.

Connie and Phoebe are both gone now, but I tell you this to explain my relationship with dogs. Or should I say, lack of relationship?

Let’s fast forward a couple of decades to when I met Dawn. You can read the whole story in my “Great Dane on Board” series on my Web site. Suffice it to say she had two Great Danes when we first met.

Somehow or other, we managed to build a relationship in spite of the two huge beasts that lived with her.

Odin, the big male, followed us down the coast from Seattle to Mexico and lived with us on board the Victory in Mexico for two years.

Now we’re in San Diego and safely ensconced in a nice apartment in Normal Heights.

The Fifth Level of Hell

Dawn likes to take Odin to the dog parks. Odie enjoys living with his people. Nothing makes him happier than curling up at Dawn’s feet in the evening while we watch TV. But he loves other dogs.

Going to an off-leash dog park with lots of other dogs to play with is his idea of heaven.

It’s my idea of hell.

Connie used to like to watch The Dog Whisperer on TV. When Caesar Milan entered his compound with twenty or thirty dogs, I had to get up and leave the room. I broke out in a cold sweat and my heart ran wild, just watching him with all those dogs on television.

I think that when you die and go to hell, you are inundated in whatever you feared the most in life. My idea of hell is being in a room or yard with a pack of dogs.

You get the picture? Dawn and Odin like to go to the dog parks; I would pay good money not to have to go with them.

But it was a nice day and we had been working our little (or not so little, in my case) tushies off moving into our new apartment. The construction crew had moved into our bedroom and the office and torn the walls open. The demolition crew upstairs had power tools running all day, tearing the burned out drywall from the studs. We were going nuts. We needed a break.

“Odin and I are going to the dog beach,” Dawn announced. “I have to get out of here.”

I had another instance of momentary insanity. “I’ll go with you. I can take my book and read while you guys play.”

San Diego is a dog friendly town. There are many off-leash dog parks. The elementary school a couple of blocks from our apartment has an unofficial off-leash area where neighborhood dog owners congregate. Balboa Park, a mile or so south of us, has a huge dog park. Ocean Beach, a ten minute drive down I-8 has a big off-leash area in the park just south of Sea World, but Odin and Dawn’s favorite dog park is Ocean Beach.

From the life guard stand north to the jetty is about a half-mile of beach that is reserved for dogs and their owners. All sizes and shapes of mutts, from Chihuahuas to Great Danes, play off leash in the surf and sand to their hearts delight. There is a steel cage filled with tennis balls that owners can use to throw for their pets. Several disposal stations have plastic bags for dog lovers to pick up their doggie poop with and deposit them in the conveniently provided waste receptacles. There are water fountains, with the handle and spout at human level, but with a built in bowl on the ground at dog level. What more could a dog owner ask for?

A pretty blonde and her Great Dane

We arrived at the beach on a sunny Thursday afternoon. I ensconced myself on a rock beneath the life guard tower, safely out of the off-leash area. Dawn and Odin bravely invaded the doggie domain.

There must have been at least a hundred owners and their pets. Some people brought lawn chairs and lounged on the beach while Fido ran and cavorted with the other dogs. Other people felt the need to play with their pets and threw balls and Frisbees or chased their dogs along the beach and into the surf.

What I didn’t understand were the surfers. Several people came down to the beach and left their pile of clothes in the sand while they strapped on their surf boards and paddled out to sea. Why did they come to the dog beach? They could just as easily leave their stuff on the south side of the life guard tower and not have to brave stepping in a pile of doggie doo. And the beach to the south was much less crowded.

I watched the dogs and the people with a clinical eye. Being the story teller that I am, I make up stories for people I am observing.

A very pretty little girl comes to play in the rocks beneath me. No, she’s not pretty, she’s beautiful. She’s going to grow up to be a movie star. She’s all alone. Where are here parents?

After a few minutes, an attractive, but not as beautiful as her daughter, woman comes up the beach and calls to her. I can’t hear what they’re talking about, but after a couple of minutes, the girl goes back to playing. Mom watches for a little while, then walks back down to the beach.

She puts her bag down and strips off her T-shirt. She is built like a swimmer with broad, powerful shoulders and trim hips. She sashays over to the water, then wades out. When the water is about knee deep, she dives over a wave and disappears in the froth.

She surfaces twenty or thirty feet further out to sea and swims with powerful strokes. She has played this game before.

It’s not a hot day, I’d say in the mid-seventies. The weatherman on TV last night said that the water was sixty-nine degrees on the surf report. (That’s right, for those of you who don’t live in Southern California, the weather report always includes a surf watch.) If I fell overboard, I’d swim in that water, but I wouldn’t choose to go in of my own volition.

Our mermaid swims far out, then turns around and comes back in.

All the while, her daughter plays by herself on the beach. No one pays her any attention.

When mom is back ashore, she towels off, pulls her shirt back on and gathers up her daughter. They walk back to the parking lot hand-in-hand. Was this outing for the girl or the mom?

Dogs being Dogs in the Surf

An old couple limps down to the beach with their little mutt, unpacks their lawn chairs and sit and read. Their dog runs wild with the rest of the pack. He has short little legs and has to take two or three steps for each step the larger dogs take. It is comical watching him try to keep up with the big dogs as they play some sort of doggie game up and down the surf line.

Then there is the tall, thin woman, very nice looking I might say, who showed up with her little white Chihuahua. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and waded out into the water, throwing a little black ball for her pouch to fetch. The little dog ran after the ball, grabbed the ball, and took off like demons were chasing him, until he finally made his way back to his owner and deposited the ball at her feet.

The woman threw the ball as the waves receded, letting her tiny dog chase after his ball on the wet beach, but out of the water. One time she threw the ball a little too far out. The dog went after it and grabbed the ball, but the waves were surging back in. Understand that this dog probably stood eight inches tall. The water was up to the woman’s ankles, but the dog was in for a bad time.

She flew up the beach and grabbed the dog by the scruff of his neck and lifted him out of the water just as the wave was about to inundate him.

Then there was the chocolate lab. I’ve already mentioned that Phoebe was a chocolate lab, so I have a soft spot in my heart for these beautiful animals. Keep in mind that any admiration for the breed is from a distance. I don’t need to get close and have them slobber all over my legs.

This was a big, young male. He took charge of the beach like he owned it. He immediately teamed up with a Doberman pincher and they ran for miles up and down the beach, usually with a half dozen or so smaller dogs in their wake. I don’t know what their game was, but they burned off massive amounts of doggie energy.

Labs, of course, are water dogs. The big chocolate would bound out into the waves, with the other dogs following his lead. When the water got too deep for him to run, he started swimming. The other dogs stopped and watched for a second, then headed back to shore.

Like all labs, he was a magnificent swimmer. His strong strokes carried him far out into the bay, then he’d turn and head in. As he reached the depth where he could touch bottom, he came bounding out of the water, leaping the waves as they crashed ashore.

Immediately, the other dogs in the pack rejoined him and they charged up and down the beach for a few minutes, then he’d head out to sea again and leave them behind.

This was a display of the exuberance of being a dog. These dogs ran and barked and smelled each other’s butts and did all the normal dog stuff. They were overcome with the sheer joy of being alive.

A good game of Sea Monster

Into this mix, we now inject Odin, the one hundred and seventy pound Great Dane. The big dogs on the beach, the lab, the dobbie and several others, came up to Odin’s shoulders. I could pick him out anywhere he was on the beach because of his sheer size.

Odie is an old boy. Great Danes typically live from seven to nine years. Odin is ten and a half. He has arthritis and experiences a lot of pain is his hips. After a walk around the block with Dawn, he snuggles down on his bed in the living room and naps for an hour or so, it exhausts him so.

On the dog beach, however, the years melt away. He goes into puppy mode and runs with the other dogs. He is the undisputed king of the beach. None of the other dogs challenge him. He joins the pack for a while and blows off what little energy he has stored up. Then he settles down and watches. None of the dogs bother him.

He and Dawn have regular games that they play. Odin loves finding long strands of kelp on the beach. He grabs one end and snaps it around like a whip. Dawn grabs the other end and a tug-of-war ensues.

“Grr,” Dawn growls. “Sea monster.”

You try taking a piece of kelp from a hundred and seventy pound dog with a head the size of a rhinoceros and jaws like the jabberwocky. It ain’t easy.

Odin learned the game of sea monster in Ensenada. You don’t get this kind of kelp on the beaches in the Northwest. He loves to shred the kelp in his sharp teeth. The sea monster doesn’t stand a chance.

Dawn has to outsmart Odin. She feigns disinterest until he finally drops the kelp, then she quickly snatches it and tosses it up the beach. Odin runs after it, grabs it to show her it’s his, and brings it back to within her reach to taunt her. She makes several attempts to grab it, but he pulls it out of her reach. She finally manages to get her hands on it. Then the tug-of-war begins again.

Wash, rinse, repeat. They do this over and over.

Odin plays Frisbee

Then there’s Odin’s Frisbee. Dawn bought him a bright red Frisbee to chase. It is permeated with punctures from his big canines. She flips it out into the water and Odin plunges in after it. As soon as the other dogs see the Frisbee flying, they are on it.

When most of the dog owners throw a ball or flip a Frisbee, it’s anyone’s guess as to which dog will retrieve it.

When Dawn throws Odin’s Frisbee, the other dogs all chase after it, but only Odin touches it. He isn’t a bully, but the other dogs all recognize that it’s his Frisbee and let him retrieve it.

Odin goes after the Frisbee in the water and plucks it out. Then a big wave washes over him, jerking the Frisbee from his jaws. He looks around confused. Where did it go?

I can’t see it from my vantage point, but Dawn gets a bead on it. She wades out into the water and retrieves it, tossing it for Odin again and he takes off after it.

Odin would play until he drops, but Dawn is a good dog-mom. She recognizes when he’s getting tired and reins him in. They gather their toys and come over to me on my rock.

“It’s time to go home,” Dawn shouts up to me.

So ends my afternoon at the dog beach. I’ve read several pages in my book, but I’ve also had a great time watching people and dogs as they frolic on the beach.

What’s wrong with me? I must be getting old. In my past life, I would never have wasted an afternoon watching people play with dogs.

Now for a brief afterward: I went to the beach and wrote this story, but didn't take a camera. Needing pictures for this blog, we went back to the dog beach yesterday to get these photos.

I am told that the definition of courage is being afraid of something but going ahead and doing it anyway. You will never know what it cost me to suck up my fears and venture down onto the dog beach, armed only with a camera, to get these pictures for you. I hope you enjoy them.

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Fire on Hawley Boulevard

10/17/2014

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Our new San Diego home

OK, so I promised to tell you about the fire.

I woke up about 5 am in a Motel 6 in Santa Nella, a wide spot in the road about an hour south of Stockton in California’s Sacramento Valley. I was dead tired, but had many miles to put behind me to make it home.

I drug myself from bed, got dressed, checked out and walked across the street to Denny’s for a bite before I headed out. I was on the road by 6 am.

I climbed the Grapevine, slid down the mountains into the Los Angeles Basin and stopped in Tustin to pick up a new holding tank for the boat.

Sometime around 6 pm I pulled into the driveway at our new home. I was dead.

Dawn and our friend Ken waited for me. Dawn and Odin had been living on boat cushions on the floor in our apartment for a week while I flew up to Seattle, packed up and drove south. She was ready for a real bed and maybe even a chair or two.

All I wanted to do was collapse somewhere.

Things rarely go as we want them. I decided that we should at least unpack the bed from the truck before I totally ran out of energy.

Ken, Dawn and I began the ant work of carrying boxes and furniture from the big truck into our apartment. I had thought ahead. The bed was in the back of the truck, but my computer desk and the dining room table, chairs and a bunch of boxes were in front of it.

We had to dig our way back to the bed. I don’t know how I kept going, but eventually we got Dawn’s big bed into the bedroom. Then we discovered that the screws necessary to put the bed frame together were missing. I knew that we packed them away somewhere safe so that we would have them when we put the bed back together. Two years ago.

Who knew where they were now?

Enough is enough. I made the decision that we would put the mattress and box springs together on the floor and sleep there. We couldn’t find any king-sized bedding, so Dawn spread queen-sized sheets and a blanket from the boat on the mattress and I collapsed.

Now we get to the good part,

Naturally, we didn’t have time to unpack any of the boxes. I went to bed without my superhero cape and leotard.

Around three in the morning, Odin woke me up. I got up to use the bathroom and take a pain pill. It takes about an hour for the pain pills to take effect, so I fired up the computer and played FreeCell while I waited. In the meantime, Dawn decided to take a shower since they were shutting off our water in the morning.

I heard the beeping, but in my sleep deprived state, I thought nothing of it.

Dawn asked “What’s that noise?”

I didn’t know and didn’t care, but she was insistent. She was afraid that our 24-foot U-Haul was being towed away since I parked in someone else's spot.

“Is that coming from your computer?”

“No,” I replied and reluctantly got up to satisfy her curiosity. I stepped out into the courtyard and heard the beeping coming from the apartment directly over ours.

I stumbled up the stairs and was shocked to see bright yellow flames licking at the ceiling of the apartment. I moved to the sliding glass door and saw that the big recliner was on fire. The blinds were melting against the windows.

In an instant, the apartment filled with smoke and flames. I began banging on the door to wake anyone within. I didn’t dare open the door for fear that the influx of fresh oxygen would cause the fire to explode. Smoke and flame dribbled down the other side of the glass.

Shonna's living room

I banged and banged on the door.

“Is there anyone in there?” I shouted.

The sliding bedroom window opened fifteen feet to my left and a cloud of heavy black smoke blew out.

“HELP!” a female voice shouted.

I dashed down the stairs to get a better look at the situation. I ran into our apartment and grabbed my cell phone.

“What’s going on?” Dawn was standing, dripping wet and naked but for a bath towel, in the hallway.

“FIRE, get out.”

I ran back outside (I can’t get cell phone reception in the house) and dialed 911.

“San Diego 911, what is your emergency?”

“Fire. There’s a fire in my apartment.”

“Hold please while I connect you to the fire department.”

It was only seconds before another voice came on the line, but it seemed like a lifetime.

The woman in the apartment was trapped in her bedroom. Her living room was engulfed in smoke and flames. I could see the flames flickering from down stairs. I was more than a little worried.

“Where is the fire?” the voice on the phone asked.

I told her.

“Stay on the line. I have help on the way.”

“I’m putting the phone down,” I shouted at her. “There’s a woman trapped in the apartment. I have to get her out.”

“Sir, stay back. Help will be there in two minutes.”

I set the phone down on the stairs and ran into our apartment.

Odin was smarter than the rest of us. At the first scent of smoke, he cleared out. His bed lay empty on the living room floor.

I grabbed his bedding and yelled to Dawn that I needed help.

I ran back out to the window where our upstairs neighbor was leaning out and shouting in panic.

“Don’t worry, help’s on the way,” I yelled up to her. “We’re going to get you out of there. Hold on.”

“I can’t,” she shouted down to me. “My bedroom’s on fire.”

By this time, Dawn appeared on the scene.

“Grab the other side of the blanket,” I yelled. “We’re going to catch her.”

Dawn ran into the center of the courtyard to see what was happening.

“Get over here,” I yelled.

“Wait,” she yelled and dashed back inside.

She emerged a moment later with one of the large cushions from the boat that she had been using as a bed.

“This will give her a soft place to land.”

I spread the cushion on the bushes under the window.

“Jump ,” I screamed.

The woman (I later learned her name was Shonna) climbed out the window. I don’t know how she did it, but there is a 3/4” thick trim around our bedroom window directly below her. She managed to balance on that thin ledge and hold onto her own window sill.

She was covered from head to foot in black soot. I later learned that she has blonde hair, but you couldn’t tell it. She was barely dressed. A tank top and a thong didn’t leave much to the imagination, but her modestly was everyone’s last concern.

“MY CAT!” she yelled. She tried to climb back into the window.

“Don’t,” I cried back. “Don’t go back in there.”

It didn’t matter. She couldn’t pull herself up to the window.

“Jump!” I yelled.

She froze.

Two police officers ran into the courtyard.

“Help’s here,” I shouted up to Shonna.

“Fire’s only a minute behind us” one officer said.

“Get a ladder,” a loud voice shouted.

I turned to see a fireman, decked out in his firefighting gear, shout back to the engine crew.

She was saved.

I was standing in the courtyard in my bare feet and jammies. I decided that I needed to get dressed and save my computer.

Why, you ask, was I worried about my lap top?

Because my new book is on the hard drive. I didn’t want to lose all of the months of work I put into that baby.

By the time I ran inside, got dressed, put my lap top in my computer bag and returned to the courtyard, the woman was off the ledge and gone. Fire fighters swarmed the area. Four fire engines, an aid car and two command vehicles flashed lights in front of our building. News trucks began setting up across the street.

“ODIN!” Dawn shouted. “Where’s Odin? Is he still inside?”

“No,” I yelled to her over the commotion. “I saw him leave by the back gate.”

Dawn took off down the alley shouting “ODIN!”

I headed up the alley in the other direction, precious computer bag on my shoulder. “ODIN! Come here, boy.” I shouted.

I looked up the alley and around the block. No sign of him. I’m telling you, a one hundred and seventy pound Great Dane is hard to lose, but I couldn’t find him.

As I came around the block to the front of the building, I found Dawn, with Odin in tow, talking to another building tenant. She found Odin a couple of blocks away, hiding in a bush.

We were all safe.

The ceiling after the fire

“Where’s the woman from the apartment?” I asked.

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen her,” Dawn said.

An attractive woman with a microphone in her hand and a camera man over her shoulder came running up.

When we saw the news trucks pull up, We agreed that we didn’t want to comment on camera because we didn’t know if Shonna was okay.

“Hi, I’m with Channel 7 news. Can I interview for our live coverage?” the reporter asked.

“No,” I said. “The federal marshals don’t like us to go on TV.”

“Are you a federal marshal,” she asked?

“No,” I quipped. She had taken the bait. “We’re in the witness protection program.”

Dawn groaned and slugged me in the arm.

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” she told the reporter.

The reporter mumbled something and wandered off.

It didn’t take long for the firemen to douse the fire.

They entered our apartment and cleared what little furniture we had in the living room and put down a plastic sheet to protect the floor from any dripping water from above.

The fire had been contained to the one apartment. Fortunately for us, the building is built out of concrete and there is a layer of concrete between the floors. The fire couldn’t burn down to our level.

If this had been in Seattle, the building probably would have been built of wood and our apartment would be toast.

I decided to go looking for Shonna and see if she was all right. I couldn’t find her. Apparently, she had been put in an aid car and whisked to the hospital.

Eventually, the fire crews rolled up their equipment and headed home. The crowds dissipated and our neighbors went back to their apartments.

I’m told that the story dominated the TV news the next day, but we didn’t have cable yet, so we couldn’t see any of the coverage.

Even though no water made its way into our apartment, I was grateful that we hadn’t unloaded the truck yet. What if we had moved everything into the apartment only to have it burn down that night?

The next day, we unloaded and started the process of moving into our new digs.

Later that evening there was a knock at our door. I opened it and an attractive blonde woman threw herself into my arms.

“Thank you, thank you,” she cried. I could feel her tears on my shoulder. “You saved my life.”

“It’s okay I said.”

She clung to me like her life depended on it.

“I didn’t hear the alarm,” she said. “I wouldn’t have wakened up except for your banging on the door.”

I have a new best friend.

We learned the whole story from Shonna.

She and a friend had been out when a guy approached them in a bar. He apparently followed her home and broke into her apartment. She threw him out, but later, after she was asleep, he returned and set her recliner on fire.

A few minutes later, he broke into her friend’s apartment and set her place on fire too. A couple of days later, we heard the rest of the story. The weirdo stole a bicycle and tried to rob a bank. He was apprehended and is now a guest of the state.

Shonna and her boyfriend stayed and talked with us for a while, then left in search of her cat. Tiger had disappeared during the fire.

Much to everyone’s relief, Tiger showed up the next evening. I spotted him on the stairs and Dawn went up and got him. Tiger reeked of smoke. He was obviously in the apartment during the fire. We’re not sure how he got out because the firemen boarded up the apartment when they left.

We held him in our bed room while Shonna came over to pick him up.

The apartment over our heads is a total loss. The walls and ceiling are charred and the whole complex smells of smoke. Today, work crews are working above us demolishing the remains of the apartment. They’ll strip it to the bare walls and rebuilt it.

In the meantime, the building maintenance supervisor discovered a water leak in our building. The pipes are under the concrete slab that is our floor. Rather than break up the concrete and dig up the pipes, he decided to re-pipe the building.

For almost two weeks now, we’ve had work crews in our apartment every day, shutting off the water at 9 am and turning it back on at 5. Our belongings are shuffled from room to room as they tear apart the walls and install new pipe.

I’m sure it will be really nice when they’re done, but it’s a pain in the sitter downer to be living in the middle of a construction project.

So that’s life in the big city. Now we need to settle into our new home, get to know our neighborhood and I need to get going on my knee replacement surgery.

I have an appointment with the surgeon on Monday, so we’ll see where we go from there.

Before I sign off, I want to take a moment to thank the real heroes of this story. The San Diego police and fire department responded within minutes of my call. The fire station is about five blocks away. They were here within two minutes. The police were even faster.

They were fearless and professional in their response to the crisis. They swiftly put out the fire, searched the apartment for Tiger and made sure that we didn’t suffer from any water damage.

Thank you guys, you’re the best.

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Moving to San Diego

10/10/2014

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Our new San Diego Home

I know I said that now that we’ve moved ashore, nothing exciting was going to happen.

Ever again.

I put my super hero cape and leotards away and prepared to settle into a mundane existence for a year or two.

It didn’t take long for me to need the leotards again.

But first things first.

I told you about our apartment. As I said, there is an application process that we had to go through to get the property management company to consider us. Whatever happened to Grandpa Joe renting to you because he thought you were a nice young couple?

We filled out the application and they said we didn’t have enough income. Duh! We haven’t gotten jobs yet. Of course, they aren’t going to rent to us on the prospect that we might get jobs. They want cash, now.

So I sent them a bank statement. It showed the deposit from the sale of my house. That should do it, right?

Well, no. Of course not. They average out the bank statements for the last two months and last month the well was pretty dry. They needed more.

Now I have to contact my broker, who is in Las Vegas at a convention, to get statements for my brokerage accounts to convince these Bozos that I’m solvent. His lovely assistant, Jennifer, came to my rescue. She provided the necessary documentation and soon the property management company was calling me “Mr. Wallace” again.

The whole process was, as you can tell, very irritating. I can’t tell you how stressed out Dawn was about the whole thing. She desperately wanted to get off the boat, for Odin’s sake, and was sure they would find fault with us.

I, on the other hand, didn’t give a rat’s ass what they thought of us. My money is as green as anyone else’s. But be that as it may, we are now ensconced in a nice apartment for the next eight months. After that, who knows?

Anyway, that brings on the next big phase in this adventure, moving my stuff from Seattle to San Diego. I told you that I stored all of the stuff from my house in Lynnwood in a storage locker for the last two years. Now that we are ashore again, we need furniture, sheets, towels, china etc. Where better to look that in my locker? Besides, they’ve been gouging me for two hundred dollars a month to store my stuff.

Moving chaos

But how to get it to San Diego? I initially thought I would fly up to Seattle, rent a U-Haul and drive it back. Then I saw the cost of the U-Haul. After I added in gas, a couple of night’s stay in motels, meals, etc. it didn’t seem like such a bargain. That’s not to mention the wear and tear on this tired old body.

I found a couple of bargain movers on the Internet who offered to move my stuff for a reasonable price. Why not use them?

Then I talked to Libby. She had some stuff in my locker. I sent her an email telling her she needed to remove it before I took my stuff south. She called and we talked it over. After talking to her, I knew that I needed to fly up to Seattle.

Damn the cost and the trouble, I wanted to see my kids.

So, I bought a ticket to Seattle and reserved a truck. Man oh man, was I asking for trouble.

I flew up on Saturday morning and Susie and Steve picked me up. Originally, Libby was supposed to pick me up, but she was sick. Susie and Steve graciously let me stay at their new house for a couple of days while I visited with my girls.

You know about best laid plans. Katie was out of town and Libby was sick. I spent Saturday watching the Mariners fight for the playoffs and catching up on lost sleep. On Sunday, Susie cooked a family dinner and Katie came up to visit. Libby was still sick and opted to stay at home in bed.

Then came Monday. Moving day. Argh!!!!

Susie took me up to Everett to rent the truck from Budget Rent a Truck. She dropped me off, then headed down to my storage locker. She had selected herself as Libby’s surrogate since Libby was too sick to look after her own interests.

I stopped by Home Depot and picked up a couple of guys to help me load the truck.

Moving is not fun under the best of circumstances. I opened the door on the storage locker and almost wept. There was so much crap in the locker I didn’t know how I would ever get it in the little apartment.

Susie was a trooper. She pulled stuff aside for Libby and valiantly offered to store it at her house. I was embarrassed at how much stuff I dumped off on them, but could easily have doubled it. I certainly didn’t need it in San Diego. As things are, I will probably give most of it to Willy-Willy (Goodwill).

We had a large house in Lynnwood and our furniture reflects that. I don’t know how I’m going to fit a king-sized bed, a huge armoire and china cabinet into our apartment. But, I have confidence in Dawn’s ability to decorate.

And the stuff weighed a ton. It takes three men and a boy to move the armoire. Dawn’s bed frame must weigh roughly as much as a Buick. My helpers did an admirable job lugging this stuff and Susie and I worked ourselves into the ground. I should have stopped at a drug store and bought Susie a bottle of Tylenol to compensate her for her efforts.

When we got the truck loaded, I swang by Susie and Steve’s house to drop off Libby’s stuff. Then, after a tearful good bye, I was on the road.

Somewhere under this mess is my office

This truck, which I named Bessie, was a monster. I have driven large motor homes before, but somehow this twenty-four foot van seemed huger. You can’t see behind you. The side mirrors are good for seeing who’s in the next lane, but you have no idea of what’s behind you. And it drove like a truck.

After spending the morning loading the truck, I drove to Portland for the night. I wanted to stop and spend an evening with Mama before heading south.

It was a relatively easy drive to Portland. I arrived around six pm. I parked the truck at the end of Dave’s (Mama’s new husband) cul-de-sac and went in to say “hi.” Mama thought that the truck would be in someone’s way, so she asked me to move it in front of their house.

I pulled forward, then, because the cul-de-sac is curved, backed up to get out of the street.

Remember what I said about not being able to see behind me? Well, there was this big tree that stuck out over the road. Notice that I used past tense? Yep, you got it. I backed into the tree and tore down the huge branch that hung over the street.

I couldn’t believe the extent of the damage when I didn’t even feel the impact. When I got out of the truck, I was stunned that I had done it.

“We just paid $275 to have a tree taken down in the back yard and $350 to take down a tree next to the house,” Mama said.

“Well, you got this one taken down for free,” I replied.

I moved the truck forward and pulled the downed tree off of the sidewalk.

“That will give Dave something to do,” Mama whispered to me.

Jon and his family and Jim (my brothers) came over for dinner. Mama made a big pot of chile colorado and frijoles. Jim brought rice. Jon and Jennifer brought guacamole and queso fundido. We had a grand family meal.

After dinner I went to see Jon’s new bar. The lease ran out on his old place and Jon, in his best diplomatic way, insulted the land lord. The land lord refused to renew their lease. They had to move somewhere.

So they found a new spot, and with Mama and Jim’s help, have the new place up and running. I hadn’t seen it yet, so I dropped by to check it out.

We had a drink and I got the tour, then headed back to Mama’s for a night’s rest before heading back out on the road.

Have I mentioned how tired I was yet? I didn’t sleep well the night before flying north, then spent a day loading the truck and driving south. I was beat.

The next morning Mama made strawberry waffles (“That’s what the angels in heaven eat for breakfast,” she told me.) for breakfast. We had a pleasant meal, then I was on my way.

On the road again. I planned to stay around Reading or Red Bluff in Northern California for the first night. I didn’t make it that far. By the time I made it to Medford I was so beat I had to stop.

Trying to drive around on city streets to find a motel or a restaurant is an interesting challenge when you are driving a twenty-four foot truck. I found a place easily accessible from the freeway with an Elmer’s Pancake House across the street.

You know how much trouble I have walking. It was easier for me to hobble across the street than to try to drive Old Bessie around the block a couple of times to get there.

The next morning, I filled up the fuel tank and got on the road early. Como friegas! Do you have any idea how much fuel a big truck like that burns? Suffice it to say that Bessie was one hungry girl. I paid $3.89 for Diesel in Medford, which seemed reasonable enough for me. At my next fuel stop, I paid $4.19 a gallon and out in the wilds of California’s Central Valley I paid $4.39 a gallon, a full fifty cents more than in civilization. They really gouge you when they’re the only gas station in town. Back in San Diego, the cost dropped to a more reasonable $3.99 a gallon.

As I drove the 1200 miles from Seattle to San Diego, I tuned the truck’s radio to NPR. Every couple of hours, I ran out of the signal area for the local station and had to search the radio dial until I picked up the next station. It was comforting to have the same old familiar voices keep me company as I drove mile after mile.

Climbing the mountains between Roseburg and Medford, Oregon, I learned how long a trip this would be. Climbing the steep grades, Old Bessie slowed down to 35 to 40 miles an hour. We crawled up the hills and I knew that I wasn’t going to average 60 miles an hour on this trip.

The next morning was one of the most challenging of the trip. We had to climb the Siskiyou Mountains between Southern Oregon and Northern California. We crawled up the slopes, cars flying past us in the fast lane. The road slogs up the hills, around curves and through little whistle-stop towns.

I was stunned and depressed when I drove over Lake Shasta. It isn’t there anymore. The water level is so low that in some places, all that’s left is a trickle of water in the river that feeds the lake. The last time I was there, marinas on the shore were high and dry, with their docks a couple hundred feet from the water level. This time, they had moved the docks down the slope to the meager shoreline.

What’s going on with our planet? Where has all the water gone? I just read a story about one of the world’s great lakes in Russia somewhere disappearing. Did this happen to the dinosaurs before they went extinct? What’s going to happen to us?

The bedroom starts to come together

My plan for night two was to stay in Bakersfield. I didn’t make it. Once again, I was so tired and couldn’t stay awake at the wheel. I pulled over at rest stops a couple of times to close my eyes for a few minutes, but I knew it wasn’t safe to keep going. I finally found a Motel 6 in a tiny wide spot in the road called something like Santa Nella.

The room was not luxurious, the bed felt like it was made out of concrete, but it was clean and there was a Denny’s across the street. Once again, I limped over for a quick meal, then headed back and died in the bed.

I had a whole different adventure the next day. As I drove south, I was visited by the tourista. Out in the middle of the Central Valley, with no towns or businesses, I had to watch for rest stops very carefully and made use of all of them. This slowed my progress immensely.

At the last rest stop, there were warnings and instructions for climbing the Grapevine. Oh God! I had forgotten about the Grapevine. It is one of the most treacherous patches of road in the country’s Interstate Highway System. As a matter of fact, I think I heard somewhere that it had the steepest grades of any interstate highway in the country.

And I had to coax Old Bessie up that mountain.

I gulped a deep breath, climbed back into the truck and started out. When I was a kid, there was a country song called "The Highwayman" by Curtis Leach. Itwas about a truck driver going over the Grapevine. He was in an 18-wheeler with a flat bed loaded with “twenty tons of building stones.” His brakes failed and he rode the rocket sled down the hairpin curves and switchbacks. I loved the song. Now I didn’t want to repeat it.

We inched and crawled and fought for every inch up that hill. Old Bessie fought and clawed, I gave her all the support and help I could. It was a long, torturous climb, but we finally crested the summit. Then we had to head back down.

There are turn offs for trucks to stop and check their brakes before they head down the hill. I had no idea what to check, so just kept on going.

I dropped her into third gear and rode the brakes. I kept her under 65 miles per hour most of the time, sometimes having to slow down 40 or 50 for curves.

The good news is that we made it. By noon we were gliding down the slopes and into the Los Angeles Basin.

Traffic through Los Angles was a dream. We flew on through with hardly touching the brakes. I had to stop in Tustin, near Newport Beach, to pick up a new holding tank for the boat. I rented a GPS just for this side trip. Finding Ronco Plastics was no problem.

We loaded up the tank and headed out for the final stretch home. I can’t tell you how glad I was that this trip was almost over.

Then we hit San Diego rush hour traffic. Actually, there was an accident on I-805 that turned it into a parking lot. The last sixty miles took me almost two hours.

I pulled into our apartment tired and dirty and beyond caring.

Dawn was waiting for me with our friend Ken, who was going to help us unload. The last thing I wanted to do was unload the truck. But Dawn had been sleeping on a mat on the floor for a week. We needed to at least get the bed out of the truck.

So I opened up the truck and we went to work. I honestly don’t know how I did it. One foot in front of the other. We unloaded boxes and tables and pieces of my desk that were in front of the bed. Finally, we dug down deep enough to get the bed out.

Then we couldn’t find the screws to put it back together. Damn it! I was too tired to go on. We set the mattress and box springs on the floor, Dawn found some queen-sized sheets that didn’t really fit and we decided to just bunk down for the night.

The next morning Ken showed up ready to go back to work. God bless him. He had energy and strength and got us moving. I was so tired and hurt so badly, I would have just stayed in bed. He drove my truck up to the Home Depot and hired a couple of guys to help unload the truck. He stayed in the truck and supervised the unloading. I was in the apartment, deciding where to put stuff. By early afternoon the truck was unloaded and I could return it to Budget.

I was never so glad to get rid of something in my life. I couldn’t find a service station that sold diesel on the way to the Budget lot and was so tired I just let them worry about filling it. I would rather pay the thirty dollar filling charge than take another step.

Ken and I stopped for lunch on the way home, then we put the bed together. He left and I collapsed into the bed. There weren’t enough pain killers in the world to ease my pain.

Now we have an apartment filled with boxes of stuff and furniture that needs to be re-assembled. The china cabinet is easy. My dining room table somehow broke its legs in the storage locker. I need to put it back together. Then there’s my desk. I’m setting up an office in the second bedroom. My desk is roughly the size of the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. I disassembled it when we put it in storage. Now I have to try to remember how it goes back together.

So, you can see, we have a week or so of fun left for us.

Oh yes, and I didn’t have room to tell you about the fire. I did need my super hero outfit again, but I’ll have to tell you that story next time.

2 Comments

Life Goes On in San Diego - 9/23/2014

9/23/2014

5 Comments

Dawn at Ocean Shores

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last update and, I’m sorry to say, we don’t have any great new adventures to report. Life in the States is settling down to what appears to me to be normal.

We’ve made some progress in the last two weeks. We are now officially California residents. We both got California drivers licenses so that we could sign up for Covered California, California’s answer to Obamacare.

The process was remarkably easy and we now have health insurance for the first time in a couple of years. It won’t kick in until October, but I feel better about having it. We were able to sign up because we just moved to California. The law gives us 60 days to enroll. This also saves us from paying the fine on our income taxes for not having health insurance.

We’re still looking for jobs. Dawn is doing better than I. She has had several interviews and has good prospects. I still haven’t gotten a call.

I did talk with a couple of recruiters who were not interested in representing me. They said that in the tech industry, a two year gap in employment would not fly. Technology changes so fast that employers want current experience.

Naturally, this was discouraging, but it made me stop and think. Maybe I need to look elsewhere for employment. I have many skills and writing code is not all I can do. I have applied for a couple of writing jobs and for an editor position for a local magazine. We’ll see how that goes.

I’ve sold my house in Lynnwood. It was remarkably easy. I have to thank Marcia Furfiord, a friend I met at the Seattle Singles Yacht Club, of Champion Real Estate in Lynnwood for such a good job. She worked hard and overcame the challenges of selling a property with the owner out of the state. If you’re considering buying or selling a home in the north end, I recommend you give her a call.

Now what to do with the proceeds of the sale? I considered buying a place in San Diego to reinvest the money, and still may, but for the time being, I decided to hold off on that. I want to get to know the area a little better before investing. And we may not settle down here anyway. We still both have itchy feet.

Penn with the Dear Old Surprise

We are moving ashore though. We put in an application for a two bedroom apartment in Normal Heights, just east of downtown San Diego. In the crazy, topsy-turvy world in which we live, you have to fill out an application and pay a fee to be considered for an apartment.

I haven’t rented a place to live in for over forty years, so all of this is new to me. In my day, there was no such thing as credit and background checks. Now the land lords have a myriad of tools at their disposal to select you out of the process.

My brother Jim has rental property in Portland, Oregon. He says that he puts an ad on Craig’s List and gets sixty or seventy calls that day. He then goes through the process of screening people out so that he can get to the few to whom he is interested in renting.

Dawn is a professional worrier. She tossed and turned all night, worried that the rental company would not accept our application. I, on the other hand, am always supremely confident. What’s not to like? How could they possibly turn us down? They should be honored that we bothered filling out their stupid application.

Normal Heights is a lot like Queen Anne in Seattle. It’s an older neighborhood on the hills above the city with lots of cozy little houses built after World War II. Adams Street is the main commercial street. It is lined with little mom and pop businesses. There are no Wal-Marts, McDonalds’ or Olive Gardens. There are places like Papa Giuseppe’s Pizza or Tina’s Nail Salon. I love locally owned businesses. They will get my patronage rather than driving to some chain store.

We are in an older two-story building with sixteen units. It is built around a courtyard with some good sized trees in the middle. The Spanish Colonial style building is about the same age as the neighborhood, post WWII; however, the apartment has been remodeled.

There are all new wood floors, new paint, new counter tops and all new appliances. Dawn is really excited because she’s never lived in a new place before. The building may be old, but the apartment is totally up to date.

Now comes the hard part, furnishing our new home. When I moved out of my house in Lynnwood, I sold a lot of the furniture. I saved some stuff because I wanted the girls to have it someday. I have a full bedroom set, dining room table and chairs, hutch, all of my office furniture and some other nice pieces. I don’t have living room furniture or a television. We will have to find dishes etc. because I don’t want to strip the boat. I plan to still use the boat and don’t want to have to carry our cooking utensils back and forth every time we go out for a few days.

I think it will take a few weeks to get settled in. Dawn is looking forward to it. She’s all geared up for a giant scavenger hunt. I have every confidence that she will find whatever we need at bargain prices at some thrift shop or garage sale. For her, this is a grand adventure.

The second bedroom will double as an office. I’m kind of excited about having an office again. I can’t wait to get myself set up so that I can really churn out my stories.

Once we get settled in a little, I’ll take some pictures to show you our new digs. Stay tuned . . .

Possible cover shot for The Mexican Connection

WRITING UPDATE:

As I told you last time, I finished the first draft of The Mexican Connection. This time, Ted and Chris get lured to Mexico into the middle of the drug wars.

I’m in the editing process. Seven lovely people have volunteered to be beta readers for me. I expect to begin receiving their feedback next week. I already have the first one in. He said he couldn’t put the book down and read it in two days.

I’ve also hired a professional editor to go through the book. Jordin lives in Australia, of all places. In our modern connected world, I have someone on another continent editing the book I wrote in another country.

I’m also trying to insinuate myself into the writing community here in San Diego. There are lots of writers and writers’ organizations here. I have found one other kindred soul for a writers critique group. We had a second person, but she dropped out due to health reasons. I need to find a couple more people to make this really work, but I’m confident that we can do it.

I’ve also sent proposals to a couple of SoCal writers conferences to teach classes. We’ll see how that goes. It’s all good marketing.

I’m in the process of trying to set up readings and appearances for December. I want to spend the month of December marketing my book, Christmas Inc. If I can’t sell it in December, I’ll never be able to sell it.

I’ve saved the biggest news for last. The Inside Passage will be featured on BookBub.com on September 24th. This is the biggest site on the Internet featuring book promotions. BookBub will send out over 1.3 milliion emails promoting The Inside Passage.

What's that you say? You haven't read The Inside Passage yet? And you call yourself my friend? Well, here's your chance to redeem yourself. It will be available for a free download from Amazon.com.

My friend Jynx Schwartz put me on to BookBub. It has increased her sales into the tens of thousands of books. It isn’t easy to get in. I tried to get them to feature Hacker for Hire, but they turned me down. I’m hoping to get good results from this promotion. You can be sure that when The Inside Passage soars up the best seller list, I’ll let you know.

Well, that’s the news from sunny Southern California. As things unfold, I’ll keep you informed.

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San Diego Update - 9/10/2014

9/10/2014

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The Crew of the Victory

I haven’t updated you in a couple of weeks because I’ve been heads-down working on the Mexican Connection.

I completed the first draft last night, so I can get back to my blog for a while.

Things are moving forward in San Diego. Last weekend I helped sail the Bill of Rights up to San Diego for the Festival of Sail at the San Diego Maritime Museum. It was so much better organized than the Los Angeles Tall Ships Festival. It was pure pleasure participating.

On Sunday, Dawn, Odin and I acted as docents on the tall ship, giving tours and answering guests’ questions. It was really fun. Odin was the center of attraction. He had his picture taken hundreds of times. I think we talked more about Great Danes than we did about sailing ships.

This weekend the Bill of Rights sailed up to Dana Point for their tall ships festival. Alas, she sailed without me. I am too tied up looking for work to give up another week sailing.

Odin bunks down for the night

You heard me right. Looking for work.

Dawn and I are both looking for jobs. We’ve signed up for Obamacare and need the income to offset the cost of medical coverage. We also want to move ashore for a while.

Odin is quite old and not doing too well. His hips are really hurting him and he’s having trouble walking. It is a loooong walk from the boat to the shore and he can’t jump up onto the boat anymore. We have to lift him.

We have had some cool nights, so Dawn brought him down to the cabin. Once again, he can’t go up and down the ladder, so we have to lift him. And remember, he’s a one hundred and seventy pound dog.

So, the bottom line is that we will look for a house or apartment close to wherever we find work. We’ll probably move closer to my job since it will be the primary job. I’m looking for a position as a project manager or software engineer.

So far, I haven’t had much luck. There seems to be a vigorous job market here in San Diego, but I’ve put out nearly 50 resumes and haven’t had one call back yet.

What I’m doing is obviously not working, so I went to a seminar on resume writing at the local employment office. The instructor said that what works in other cities doesn’t necessarily work in San Diego. I took his advice and re-wrote my resume. We’ll see how well this one works.

In the meantime, Dawn is way ahead of me. She has three interviews set up for this week. There is a new steak house opening on Coronado Island and she’s meeting with the manager there on Thursday. Break a leg Dawn!

It looks like summer is over and fall is fast approaching. I hope you’re ready for a fun fall season. I’m already getting into football and thinking ahead to Thanksgiving.

I’ll keep you updated on our adventures in San Diego. For the time being, this short piece will have to do.

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Sailing on the Tall Ship Bill of Rights

8/29/2014

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The Schooner Bill of Rights

She was schooner rigged and rakish with a long and lithesome hull

And we flew the pretty colours of the crossbones and the skull. (John Masefield).

Well, not quite. She was schooner rigged and rakish, but she was a fishing schooner, not a Tarry Buccaneer. The Bill of Rights is a replica of an 1850’s Gran Banks schooner that was built in 1971.

The Grand Banks schooners were built in the era of iron men and wooden ships. These sturdy vessels sailed from ports like Glouster, Massachusetts to the Grand Banks, off of Canada’s Nova Scotia. They were built to withstand the worst that the North Atlantic could throw at them, but they still needed a turn of speed.

They sailed to their fishing grounds with a deck load of dories, then put the dories into the water with a crew of two men each. The men rowed off and fished with baited lines for the cod that swarmed the Banks. When the dories were full, the men rowed back to the mother ship, unloaded and went out again until the schooner could hold no more.

Then came the need for speed. Each captain put the pedal to the metal to be the first back with his catch. The first one in got the best price.

There were epic schooner races in the Nineteenth Century between these stalwart fishermen. The return of the fleet was cause for major celebration in their home ports.

This is the legacy of the Bill of Rights. She is one hundred and thirty-seven feet long and her masts soar one hundred and ten feet into the blue Pacific sky. She was built in Maine as a private yacht, an exact replica of her 1850 predecessor. She was so accurate that she was built without an engine. A two hundred and ten Caterpillar diesel was added years later.

Unfortunately, her owners sold her during a bitter divorce. Her yacht interior was ripped out and she was refitted as a sail training vessel. The forward cabin was turned into a dormitory with sixteen berths. Her main saloon was repurposed as a class room.

She sailed the coast of Maine and New England for years as a sail training vessel, taking youngsters to sea to teach them the virtues of seamanship and marine biology. In 1998 she was sold to the Los Angeles Maritime Institute (LAMI) and sailed through the Panama Canal to the West Coast. She served for many years in LA as a sail training vessel, floating classroom and good will ambassador.

LAMI built two new barkentines (big sailing ships) and the Bill was considered surplus and leased to another organization, who shall remain nameless. This organization didn’t do well by her and she fell into disrepair. Finally, in 2013, she was put into the yard for repairs and the owners couldn’t pay the bill. They defaulted on their lease and LAMI came back into possession of the deteriorating ship.

A group of tall ship lovers in Chula Vista came to the rescue. They formed the South Bay Sailing Association, a non-profit organization, and purchased the ship from LAMI for the yard bill and took over the mortgage. After almost a year of volunteers working on her, she is back in sailing shape and once again fulfilling her mission out of the port of Chula Vista.

Crew Quarters

Captain Tom asked me to help crew her as she sailed from San Diego to Los Angeles for the Tall Ships Festival LA. How could I refuse? I’ve dreamed about sailing such a ship since I was knee high to a jelly fish.

Dawn delivered me to the Bill of Rights on Monday night. She was such a cute mother hen. I had my bed roll, sea bag and, of course, my computer bag. I thought she was going to pin a note on my chest that read “My name is Penn. If lost please call (425) 877-3081.”

It was about 11 pm when I came aboard and the rest of the crew already had the lights out. We had been to the boat earlier in the day to make up my bunk, so I knew where I was sleeping.

I pulled out my trusty pocket flash light and made my way to my bunk. In a moment, I was undressed and snuggled down, surrounded by a cacaphone of snoring.

Muster was at five am. I rolled out of bed in the dark and turned on a light. The rest of the crew was stirring. In all, there were twelve hearty souls making the passage.

By six am, we had the boarding ladder hoisted aboard, the engine fired up and were ready to cast off. A couple of other volunteers came to help us depart. We dropped our moorings, backed out of the marina slip, and headed up the bay as the sun broke the horizon.

It is along, torturous trip up a narrow channel to get to the deep water of the North Bay. After we crossed under the Coronado Bridge, the water deepens and I felt more at ease. It took two and a half hours for us to make it to the mid-channel marker off of Point Loma and the open ocean.

I had never sailed on this ship before. I barely knew the captain. Yet, when the watch list was posted, I was listed as second mate. That meant I was in charge of the second watch. As Swannie, the bos’un, said, “The captain’s in charge of the ship, you’re in charge of the watch.” That meant I had to assign jobs, follow up to see that they were done and be the liaison between the captain and the crew.

I watched the first watch and learned fast. Remembering how Papa would do it, I took charge and assigned duties. Since I seemed to be in charge, the crew acceded to my wishes and everything went well. I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing, but it all seemed to work out.

Once in the open ocean, we hoisted the sails. This was much different than raising the sails on the Victory or any other modern boat. It was all done by hand.

First we raised the stays’l, which the crew called “the jumbo.” No one knew why it was called that, it just was. Maybe it’s just because it’s a big sail. The jumbo, which is on a boom of its own, is the sail immediately in front of the foremast. The stays’l runs up the fore stay, or the heavy wire, that holds up the mast.

Now, I was taught that you raised the furthest aft sail first, then worked your way forward. We were raising a sail forward of the main mast first. Oh well, watch and learn . . .

On Deck

To raise the sail, three men took hold of the halyard, another took the downhaul and two more stood by to handle the sheets. I was assigned to the preventer, a line which gets attached to the boom to keep it from crashing over to the other side of the boat if the helmsman gets sloppy.

“Heave,” the first mate called. The men on the halyard pulled on their line and the sail crawled up the stay. Then it got stuck.

“We need a cowboy,” Don (the first mate) bellowed. (Actually, he didn’t really bellow. He is very soft spoken, it just sounds better when I say “bellowed.”) Don looks the part of a first mate. He is tall and thin, with gray mutton chop side burns. He’d be perfectly at home on a Nineteenth Century windjammer. (Oops! I guess he is.)

Matt, one of the younger crew members (we were a geriatric boat, the average age being 63) donned his safety gear, hooked his lifeline to the whisker stays and climbed out on the boom to free the jammed sail. Standing with one foot on each stay (two inch thick wire ropes), astraddle the boom ten feet above the water and about twenty feet in front of the boat, Matt wrangled the sail free and it flew up the stay.

The crew on the sheets sheeted it in and I rigged the preventer. Not a fast operation, but it went well.

Raising the fores’l and main were no easy tasks either.

The Bill is a gaff rigged schooner. That means that there is a boom both above and below the sail. The gaff boom is a tree that has been cut to the proper dimension. We had to haul this tree to the top of the mast with a huge, heavy sail hanging below it. All without the benefit of winches.

The halyard is a heavy line that runs through a block on the deck. The “primary,” or lead man on the halyard, pulls the line down and the three or four men on the other side of the block take up the slack. As the gaff works its way up the mast, it becomes harder to haul in the halyard. More and more sail weight and, finally, the weight of the boom, is added to the equation.

The primary must grab the line and lean back with all of his body weight (that’s why they eventually made me primary, I have plenty of body weight.) yelling “Heave.” The line gives a foot or two and, as the primary bounces back up to a standing position, the rest of the halyardmen heave in the slack. In this manner, the gaff inches its way up the mast.

The mate stands behind the sail and watches the progress. Sometimes the peak (or outside end) of the gaff gets ahead of the throat or visa versa. At these times he yells “belay hauling the peak” and we stop heaving. When the throat has caught up, he yells for us to haul again.

It took about forty-five minutes to get the sails on her. Then we motor sailed northwest up the coast. Beating into the wind and current we only made about four or five knots. We were in no hurry. It’s about a twenty hour run up the coast. We didn’t want to arrive in LA’s harbor, San Pedro, in the dark.

My watch came on deck at 11am. I assigned jobs and made my way aft to the quarter deck to watch the boat sail. Each hour we changed bow watches so that they deck hands didn’t get too tired.

A Revolutionary War Privateer Replica

All went smoothly and we sailed on through the day. I caught a nap after our watch because I knew the night would be interrupted. We were “watch and watch.” That means each watch was on duty for four hours, then off duty for four hours. You only had four hours to get some sleep during the night watches, then you were called back on deck.

I have written before about how I hate night watches. It was better on the Bill because you had six other watch keepers up with you, but it still sucks. The boredom of the night was broken by conversation with my fellow sailors and rotating lookouts, etc, but it was still a long night.

We were called to the deck at 3 am for our second night watch. When I came on deck, we were off of Long Beach. Several oil rigs were lit up like Christmas trees. The shore was ablaze with lights.

We had to work our way into the channel in the dark. The channel is marked by buoys with red and green lights. The red is on our starboard, or right, side as we approach the harbor from the sea. The problem was, that it was all but impossible to make out the buoy lights against the bright city lights behind them.

We were also way ahead of schedule. We had struck the sails before dark, but motored along on slow speed. When my watch came on deck, the captain decided to slow the engine down to idle. We slugged along with just enough speed to maintain steerage way.

The hours passed slowly and there was an air of tension on deck. Other vessels appeared and disappeared in the dark. This is the busiest port on the West Coast, traffic was constant, even in the dark of night.

The night was warm. I put on jeans and a sweat shirt and wore my heavy coat, but I never zipped it up. This was a far cry from the cold night watches we had coming down the coast from Seattle in the Victory.

Finally, the sun crept over the horizon and we were free to enter the harbor.

In the light of day, we could see the buoys and light towers that eluded us in the dark. We motored into the harbor and followed the channel to the cruise ship terminal, where we would be docking.

At this point, I’m going to put in a disclaimer. The Tall Ship Festival was not well organized. I’m not going to complain or blame anyone, it just didn’t come off as promised.

That being said, when we got to the dock, the promised berth was not ready for us. There were supposed to be people on the dock waiting to receive our lines. There weren’t.

We put two men ashore with the dinghy and tied to a barge that was attached to the dock. A “small” schooner (she was eighty-five feet long) rafted up to us and we invited their crew to breakfast.

After breakfast, I headed to the forward cabin for another nap only to be awakened a couple of hours later with the call “All idle hands to unmoor ship.”

It was time for the Tall Ships parade. What a gas!

The Rubber Ducky

Did I mention the rubber ducky? They had a forty foot tall rubber ducky leading the parade. The ducky is such a silly thing that it was an attraction all in itself. Thousands of people who probably weren’t that interested in tall ships flocked to the water front to have their picture taken with the giant ducky.

We dropped our mooring lines and headed back out to sea. Outside the break water, we waited around as fourteen other tall ships gathered and sorted themselves into parade order. We were ship number five.

What a sight to see. A flotilla of tall ships dodging and weaving in and out, sails raised, putting themselves in line. Then we proceeded into the harbor and sailed through the port to a big bridge that marked the end of the parade route.

In the turning basin under the bridge, we doused the sails and prepared to moor the ship. The only problem was that the schooner American Pride got to our berth before us. After a couple of cell phone conversations, it was decided that we would raft up with the slightly larger schooner.

The festivals disorganization impacted us. We were supposed to take two loads of passengers a day sailing. We never left the dock. We were supposed to allow the public to board the ship and do tours but the festival couldn’t arrange gang planks that met Coast Guard approval.

We got to LA on Tuesday. On Friday they finally got a berth for us where we could put our boarding steps on a barge to allow passengers to board.

Since we weren’t taking the boat out all week they didn’t need me to help handle the ship. I had a sale on my house pending and we couldn’t get an Internet connection on the dock, I decided to go home.

I called Dawn and asked her to drive to LA to pick me up. She dropped everything and drove the two hour drive in four hours. Traffic was horrible and we didn’t know how to get her from the freeway to the docks. Finally she persevered and made it to the harbor.

Bob and Glen bummed a ride home with us. Dawn picked us all up on Harbor Boulevard. It was a long walk from the docks to the street carrying my heavy sea bag and computer bag. I was wiped out.

I hadn’t had a shower since I left Chula Vista. The showers were a two mile walk down the road and I can’t walk with my bum knee. There was supposed to be a trolley, but when I went out and waited at the stop, it never came.

After a shower on board the Victory, we drove up to Point Loma to pick Odin up from our friend Tina’s house. We stopped at an Outback Steak House along the way for dinner, then headed home for a blissful night’s sleep in my own cozy bunk.

Would I do it again? You betch! As a matter of fact, I’m helping take the boat up to San Diego this week for San Diego’s Festival of Sail. Then they have another gig in Dana Point in September. I may sign on for that too.

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Bouchercon 2014

The Amazing Shrinking Man

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A Curmudgeon Goes to the Dreaded Dog Beach

Fire on Hawley Boulevard

Moving to San Diego

Life Goes On in San Diego - 9/23/2014

San Diego Update - 9/10/2014

Sailing on the Tall Ship Bill of Rights

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