What almost wasn't

This is a trip that very nearly did not happen.  And, it might yet end up dry-docked, so to speak.  Rain has been falling for some time in New York state.  The Erie Canal has been able to be opened, although one lock might still be troublesome for our ship.  But, the Finger Lakes are draining at a furious rate and the water is so high on the Oswego Canal (which connects the Eric Canal to Lake Ontario) as to make it unusable.

So, the published itinerary has been altered radically, slowing down our progress in hopes that the magic date of May 27th will actually mark the canal's opening for the season.  At any rate, we are aboard, afloat, cast off, underway!

This our first view of the Grande Mariner from the coach which transported us from the Johnson & Wales Inn in Seekonk MA to the dock in Warren RI.  I'll work at getting a better shot from a dock along the way, a shot without junk in the foreground.

I feel sorry for those who planned and who are leading this historic waterways trip -- for the long-established and now undone schedule, for the last minute scramble they're going to have to handle through the coming 15 days.  While I have a disappointment or two related to stops we'll not longer be able to make, I don't feel particularly sorry for myself or us passengers.  We are off on an adventure!

Nancy Hauswald, program manager for Coastal Discoveries in Belfast ME, the company offering this trip for Road Scholar/Elderhostel, wrote us a letter about the situation in the Oswego Canal which awaited us in our cabins.  She included this quote from "The Wind in the Willows" (Kenneth Grahame):

Boats ... in or out of 'em, it doesn't matter.  Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it.  Whether you get away, or whether you don't, whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular, and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not ... The Mole waggled his toes from sheer happiness ... 'What a day I'm having!' he said.  'Let us start at once.' 

Gratitudes

It didn't have to happen that way.  Any of it.  It could have been different -- and difficult.

After several days of preparation Tal and I left home this morning bound for the Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, beyond that our present location, the Johnson and Wales Inn in Seekonk MA, and ultimately tomorrow The Grande Mariner, a 183' long, 40' wide, three-deck ship, at the Blount Small Ship Adventure Dock in Warren RI.  I have to admit to having been "journey proud," in that I didn't sleep well, fearful that I wouldn't hear the alarm, most anxious about the almost three-hour drive to Charlotte and safely depositing the car once there.

I heard both alarms -- the cell phone at 4:00 and the bedside clock at 4:10.  We were on our way only five minutes past our desired departure time of 5:00.  Our Garmin took us from Edgefield to Saluda to Newberry to Whitmire to Chester to I-77N to I-485N to Wilkinson Boulevard.  No turkeys, no deer, no school buses, no multi-car pileups.  Whew.

After a right turn onto Little Rock Road the very next right was, miraculously, into Long Term Parking #1 where two attendants pointed us into a parking space and the shuttle bus waited for us to gather ourselves and walk-not-run to its open door.  We were in the terminal and had divested ourselves of luggage by 8:00, were through security very shortly after that and ordered our breakfast at 8:23.  I know, I know.  Simply unheard of.

Now, admittedly, the aircraft we were to fly out on didn't arrive until very nearly our scheduled departure time of 10:00 and the runway US Airways was using was handling both incoming as well as outbound aircraft.  We became airborne at 40 minutes late.  But, we were only 10 minutes late arriving in Providence, the baggage appeared on the carousel as if by swift magic and the shuttle from the Johnson and Wales Inn had waited for us.

I could spin a different sort of yarn over the condition of Tal's luggage ...  Fret not, it arrived. 

His bag is considerably larger than mine so he volunteered to transport the small day pack we'll use when we're off the ship and two aluminum bottles which we'll use for water.  Those two suspiciously-shaped items, those metal bottles, must have set off an alarm with the TSA because Tal's bag had been pretty much unpacked and -- sort of -- repacked.  So much for all that ironing I'd done.

And, our pills.  He had counted out 15 days-worth for each of us, all secured in those small snap-top, seven-day cases.  Every little lid had been opened and seemingly every pill dumped into the suitcase loose.  We were, first of all, astonished and, secondly, oh so calm.  We unloaded the contents of the bag, refolded and repacked, making a mound of pills as we went.  And then, we re-snapped them into the pill cases, missing only a few and none of them essential.

I said I could spin a different tale.  But, I won't.  What would it help?  And, I don't want anything at all to negate the hardest part of the trip -- getting from home to the airport.  So very much could have gone wrong.  But, it didn't.  Having a plan unfold like clockwork is something of a rarity for us.  For lots of people. 

I am enormously grateful that the part of the trip over which Tal and I had any control at all wasn't a compete disaster.  The rest is somebody else's doing.  But, there's still control to be had -- control over myself and my own reactions.  And, today I -- and we -- did pretty darn well.

(One photograph at my Flickr page.  More in coming days.)