March 5 to April 15 The Sailboat

Early March. Sunrise on bike ride to work, an abandoned Catholic school catches my eye.	Paintballed abandoned home on 1st Street.	Somebody's not doing thier chores....	Moonscape	One of the many 2-foot poboy sandwiches we purchased from the corner store, each under $8.
Abandoned corner store.			March 10. Sarah works on the 1993 Jeep Cherokee that we purchased from a former coworker for $500.	Due to title complications, I eventually resold the truck for $450.
	Another watermain break.	Another abandoned corner store.	Or maybe it was a bar.	Forgotten alleyway near Galvez and 4th Streets.
Complete with probably stolen, partially chopped Caddy.				City notice on Caddy window.
	Porno in alley.	Just 200 feet away. This part of town seems to be a popular chop location, or more likely just a drop-off point.
Sign at the corner store, "After you purchase beer, liquor, soft drink and you break that, we have no refund at all, and no open to drink beer, soft drink befor you pay. If you do that we will charge you more. Thank You, Manager"	Sarah waits for our poboy at the corner store.	Successful poboy purchase.	What Sarah had been looking at in the previous picture.
Me with huge 2+ pounder at work.	What I believe to be a parrot in a tree outside our apartment.	Yeah, finally found a use for that big hubcap I found downtown several weeks ago....	An oven pan!	Todd the Crawfish, whom we rescued from the boil at work. March 16
Shortly after these photos were taken, Todd was savagely attacked by fireants in the backyard.	The community volunteers show up to clean the lot behind our apartment. March 17.		All the trash the volunteers collected from the lot.	Includes an arsenal of flooded power tools, somebody's livelyhood.
These signs suddenly appeared on abandoned buildings all over town.		hehehe	What a difference a few blocks makes, the "good" part of 1st Street, in the Garden District.	Sarah finally buys a guitar. March 18.
	Sign added to the mound at the base of our stairs.	Those vines that take over everything, they flower in March.
	Roof of New Orleans Archdiocese building. Carrolton Avenue.	Much murder occured at work during the period of Lent. New Orleans is full of Catholics, with the Archdiocese building being not two blocks from the store.	Boiling live crawfish by the hundreds, sometimes maybe a thousand in a single day.	Two more strainers waiting for the water to boil.
Piles more awaiting their hot fate.		My new look.	Sarah's new painting, titled "Sky". SH	Expired passport with 1998 photo, sent off for a replacement.
After the fireant attack, I placed Todd the Crawfish's semi-comotose body in a wet spot by the roadside. Three days later, he finally succumbed.	Abandoned home covered in the yellow flowering vines.		Sarah's notebook. SH	Vine-covered apartment building on St. Claude.
Photo Sarah took of me for a passport(didn't get used).	Employment at Robert's Fresh Market, December 2008 - March 2009. Sarah was fired under suspicious circumstances on the 28th. I quit later that same day. Here, you see her work shirt resting in the lot behind our apartment.	The fireant mound at the base of our stairs has been converted to a fireant castle. They entirely filled the container on the left with dirt.	Mmmmmmm.	Ewwwwwww.
Sarah made a mess, but a tasty one.	The neighbors unintentionally make a profound statement.	My sunglasses. SH.	SH.	Late-night downtown bike ride. March 31
	"That building looks painted onto the sky", Sarah says.	Bulletin board on Decatur Street. SH	SH	SH
No FOOD No SMOKING No CELL PHONES OK Drinks OK	Decatur Street		Bar at Decatur and Esplanade	At bar, after getting caught in rainstorm.
			That creepy old house still stands at Bourbon and Esplanade.
Cresent City Tower. Currently being gutted by construction crews.	April 1st. Passing through Lake Lawn Cemetery on a long bike ride to the lakefront to search for sailboats.	Hundreds of elaborate mausoleums. Mausoleum is a hard word to spell, which is obvious if I misspelled it.	Row after row after row.
	Come on, you're dead, what does it matter?	This one did at least serve 3 entire families instead of just a single self-righteous individual.
So, does this one have a live-in groundskeeper or what?	Death ducks.	If you don't want to go to the trouble of having to build a mausoleum, but still want the luxury of one, then this building is just for you, The All Saints Mausoleum.	Room inside its two levels for some 2000 remains.
	Somebody escaped!	Sarah sits and has a quiet conversation with Jesus, who's really pissed off at her for being such a rebellious woman.
			Pumping station.
Rows of pumping engines.	Looking at sailboats. This one's for sale, but costing $14000.	Finally something in our price range.	Stopping by Lane's property to look at the abandoned church we used to live in. This wall has begun to seperate, collapsing the entire midsection of the roof.	Not long before this building goes. Wall used to lean out just a couple inches, now it's nearly two feet. Keep in mind that this is the view from the second floor. When it does go, it will probably crush Lane's shed beneath.
There have been several squatters to use our old room over the past couple months, each adding their own marks.		Lane has tied in a few supports to slow the collapse.	View from side.	View from front.
Here, you can see the collapsed roof.	Watermarks on an abandoned downtown business, Canal Street.	Behind the building in the previous picture.	The building's parking garage.
	Garage roof.			Second floor of parking garage.
First floor.	First floor.		Back door of building unlocked.	Inside, skylight, showing roof graffiti.
Used to be a medical supply store.	The same doors from the other side.		Once was a nice office space, with floor to ceiling glass walls on the second floor.	Mold now grows on the floors.
		We hung out with Lane for the evening, helping him collect his flock of ducks and geese from the truck yard across the street.	Abandoned watchtower in the truck yard.	Wandering through the trucks looking for Lane's birds.
Sarah really enjoys taking photos of my sunglasses.	Lane in his lot, sitting with Sarah and a rooster.		Sarah in Lane's trailer. The last picture we took in New Orleans.	April 4. Moving on to a new chapter. Sarah sleeping in the lawn of a North Carolina rest area.
We had rented a car the previous evening and left New Orleans, on our way to pick up an Ebay sailboat in Maryland.	New Orleans had one final parting shot, a rock to the windshield at city limits. Rental company did not notice in time to charge, calling about the damage hours after the car was checked in.	April 5th. After about 24-hours driving time, we arrive to the yacht club in the town of Northeast, Maryland, where our boat is located.	Sarah makes an initial inspection of the boat, named Gonzo's Flying Dog.	Gonzo's Flying Dog.
	Gonzo's shoal(swing) keel, which drops down an additional two feet using an electric motor inside the boat.	Gonzo's 15-hp engine.	Sarah boards Gonzo.	We brought our bicycles along, thinging they could be used whenever docking.
	This huge lift is backed around Gonzo.	A team of men attaches straps to her underside, like moving a whale.	Pulling Gonzo to the water.	"It's always cool to watch when it's not your boat", one of the workers tells me.
Gonzo is lowered into the Chesapeake.	Worker watches Gonzo lower into the water.	Here we are with the previous owners, Kim and Jeffery, who spent the entire day, morning till evening, helping us get prepared.	And just before sunset, we are off on our own.	Sarah pilots Gonzo for the first time.
	Anchored in nearby Cara's Cove, Sarah reads her "How to Sail" book.	The cabin.	The berth, which fits us both very comfortably.	Galley on the left, bathroom on the right.
Bathroom, with portable toilet.	Bathroom sink, neither it nor the galley sink currently work, but appear to be easy fixes.	April 6. Sarah tries sailing for the first time, during the few minutes of good weather for the day.		Storm clouds reappear over the Bay.
Weather!	Weather!	Sun sets outside cabin portlight.		Got stuck for two days in bad weather at Cara's Cove, then finally made a run for Charlestown, just across the bay from where Gonzo was purchased. Here, Sarah cleans out a hold while docked at the Charlestown marina.
Scenes from Charlestown.		Charlestown cemetery.		Many tombstones topped with angel statues.
			You would be sad too if the tops of your wings were broken off.
		What does this tombstone say about a person?		George Washington records many visits to Charlestown.
Sarah in the town pavilion.	Me with wild hair, in the boat using my laptop.	April 9. Sailing out of Charlestown in a big red hat, the only sun protection available.	I'm sailing, I'm sailing!	SH. The end of the boom.
SH	SH	SH	SH	SH
Much of the Chesapeake shoreline is lined with luxurious rural homes.	A passing boater exclaims, "Nice hat dude, seriously, I love it."	SH		Reading the "How to Sail" book. The basics are quite easy, but the subtleties are not. SH
SH	Ring around the sun.	Sunset.	Going down...	Down.
Down.	Down.	Down.	Gone.	Reflection.
Stuck again, anchored for two days in terrible wind and waves.	Nearing Annapolis, some kind of navigational aid. April 12.	Approaching the Bay Bridge.
	April 13. Sarah pilots the boat in Annapolis Harbor.	She's running away!	Children, yes they are dangerous.	My Sam's Club purchases, including an inflatable kayak that will serve as our dinghy.
Carry a rotisserie chicken proved to be a challenge, so I stuffed it in this plastic container.	At the city docks, what appears to be a dinghy powered by a huge automobile engine is actually a "push boat".	It's a push boat for this historical oyster trawling boat. The law used to be that oyster trawling could not be done with a motor, so operators built the powerful little push boats.	In New Orleans they arrest people for plugging things into public outlets. In Annapolis they put public outlets everywhere and invite the public to use them.	In the boat, Sarah looks upon a pan of ramen cooked with pickled sausage.
Mmmmm, ramen. More Annapolis pictures next time.....

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