Focus, determination, results. Quantum leap

Focus, determination, results. Quantum leap. Yes, Yeah For US!!! The engine is running. Crew is here, tunes are playing aboard and the Cassiopeia side of my project is in a triumphant moment!

So this report is late but I was not to allow a machine to stymy me any longer.

Project

Yeah I received a few more transfers to keep the books in the black and indeed a few more pledges as well! Thanks for the transfers and I stil have no easier way than the direct bank transfer or Western union options. If you need me to send the info again please email me. We now have 64 who have committed to helping fund the recovery of Cassiopeia and are shareholders in what is going to be a very different book. I am still working to complete the revamp of the presentation and initiate the new marketing program for the overall project. The past period however has been focused on Cassiopeia with major gains the result.

Cassiopeia

Yeah the engine is running! Tenacity, perseverance, persistence, and the sheer refusal to believe that I could not fix it, along with the fact that I simply had to, all combined to bring back to life the worlds best diesel engine. There are things that your friends say and sometimes you have heard them say it too many times, but since they are your friend you just listen and smile. I say “It is a machine. Man makes machines. I am a man. I can make this machine work.” About the fifth time I had the starter out in pieces and Mitch heard me say that again I recognized his polite smile.

But it goes!!!!!!! Aaarrrgh no machine gonna beat me!

A few more tanks of air and more tubes of underwater epoxy and the leaks are slowing.

Ben and Ben arrived today. Electrician and friend keen to help me fix her. Yeah, this is going to be a quantum leap. They are here for two weeks and I expect we will have her underway before they leave! Today we revived a few power tools and installed the stereo they brought. Tunes wahhhooo makes her feel alive again!

I am thinking her bottom could be a two phased event with a careening soon and then a full on haul out later in the year.

Book

Inspired by winning the only writing competition I have ever entered, when I received a notice of another in my inbox where I could win 1000 pounds. (British booty, sweet) I blasted out a piece of “Flash fiction”. It has to be under 250 words. How to create lots of images with few words. It is a great exercise and hopefully It will be good enough to make the six pound entry fee a worthy risk.

I had some input as I described some of the chapters and stories, and how they lead to other stories,

that I should be thinking about more than one book. Too many stories, imagine!

I have gone back over some of the work I have already done as it is good to let a piece “rest” and then look at it again. It does get better with each pass.

Someone suggested I have a coffe table version with lots of pictures.......uuummmm

OK snippet...........................

Every book has parts when it trundels along. There simply cant be torpedoes in every scene.

So here is a spot when a little fill seemed appropriate. The paragraphs just before had action and inuendo and foresahdowing and lust...............

We stayed flirting and oggeling for a couple more rounds but some more cutomers arrived and we were deprived of her undivided attention. Marianne and Todd and I toasted to our sucessful arrival and remenisced about aspects of the trip like the mosquitos from Arkansas, some of whom were still trapped in the van. We had opened the sliding door to to a swarm of the largest mosquitos I have ever seen and everything is bigger in Texas, or so they say. I have seen really big ones in Houston. But these were monster mosquitos, genetically empowered somehow, and they were coming at us from a scene out of the famous Burt Reynolds movie Deliverance about canoeing down an Arkansas river.

The guy who pumped the gas had on oversized blue jean coveralls showing his hairy shoulders and his hands were the size of bear paws. His eyes did not quite look at the same place and despite being over six feet tall he walked with a hunched over sort of beaten little kid shuffle. And there was a skinny old guy, like in the movie, wearing a straw hat sitting in a rocking chair chewing on the end of a long piece of grass and silently watching us as though he was remembering every detail and had lots of secrets. In a too tight, stained undershirt, the potbellied, grease covered mechanic had stepped out of the garage and was grinning at Marianne, fully displaying that he had no top teeth. She jumped back in the Van slamming the slidng door only to realise there were probably a thousand mosquitos inside.

Todd and I bought some orange juice to mix with the tequilla, paid for the gas and both accpted a fervent hand shake from bear paws before getting in the van to be attacked mercilessly by the bloodsucking hoarde that had invaded our otherwise cozy home on wheels. We hit the highway fast and rolled down all the windows to blow them out and even opened the sliding door. Clever creatures insects. When they felt the wind they all flew under the bunk and behind the curtains and hid from the possibility of being blasted outside. We suffered with them for thousands of miles.

America is a wonderfully diverse place and cetain regions have reputations. Like attracts like I suppose. Hillbillys like hillbillys so Arkansas filled up with them. Things on television and in the movies are often not far from real. Road trips like the one we had just done give you a quick overview of the cultural melting pot that is the USA......................................

Still rough and could well get the editors knife but it was a severly cultural few moments for us!

Thanks again for those of you who managed transfers and two goals have been stated for Ben and Ben”s stay. We are to get her underway and have a party before they leave. Quantum leaps in store.

YEAH FOR US !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!