The nature of north Georgia yacht clubs

Young Harris, GA

We spent last night in Young Harris, Georgia with old friends of Berck’s family, Dave and Beth Brackin. They took us to the Yacht Club for Mexican Night (or, more importantly, the $3 margaritas). I put on my nicest flannel shirt for the affair, but as I discovered, in north Georgia, you don’t have to dress up to go to the local yacht clubs.

The Brackins have a very cool house that overlooks the lake (which is 10 feet low, leaving all the floating docks lying on dry clay). The entire front of the house is a gigantic screened porch. Inside looks like a mountain lodge with rooms branching off in three directions. Every wall and some of the ceilings are covered in stained pine. They’ve done a lot of renovations, transforming the kitchen into a chef’s dream and adding onto the master bath by including a shower worthy of a locker-room. Berck and I tried it out this morning after Dave and Beth had left for the college where they teach Psychology and Music. There’s a huge shower “stall” with a shower-head at each end, each attached to its own hot water heater. The floor is heated, and a room heater keeps the bathroom at a balmy 80 degrees. I want one.

We’re off for Knoxville.

Berck forgot his modem card for his laptop, so we’ll only be able to post journal entries from people’s houses who have the necessary equipment and services (and when we have the spare time) … until we get it sent to us.

The road trip begins

It’s a month into winter, and we’re finally on our way. Our itinerary looks like this:

Atlanta
Young Harris, GA
Knoxville, TN
Memphis, TN
Norman, OK
Irving, TX
Austin, TX
Big Bend, TX
Carlsbad Caverns, NM
That Big Meteor Crater, AZ
Canyon de Chelly, AZ
The Grand Canyon, AZ
Some Petrified Forests
Moab, UT
Zion National Park, UT
Hoover Dam, NV
Lake Arrowhead, CA
Big Sur, CA
San Jose, CA
Yosemite National Park, CA
US Route 101
Portland, OR
Seattle, WA
Vancouver, BC

…or in some similar order. In Atlanta we’re going to visit our favorite pub on this side of the Atlantic, buy Berck some boots, try to find some long underwear for both of us, open a joint bank account, and … I think that’s all.

There hasn’t been much to journal about lately except depressing car repair news. We took apart the Miata, replaced the water pump, put everything back together, and the noise that was the cause of all this ruckus in the first place still remained. It wasn’t all a loss, since the water pump did have a bad bearing and could have used replacing anyhow.

So we ordered the next part that could be the problem (timing belt pulleys) on Friday and have been waiting the weekend for UPS to deliver the package.

Assuming it will arrive later today, we took the car apart yet again and pulled off the pulley on the side of the car that seemed to have been making the most noise. Sure enough, the pulley had something scraping inside. But was it our squeak?

Berck put the sander attachment (minus the sandpaper) on a Dremel tool and put it up against the pulley. When the Dremel tool spun, it spun the pulley, and when Berck turned the it off, the pulley continued to spin … and made our squeak! We feel confidant that we’ve isolated the problem and can leave as soon as we’ve put the car back together.

It’s amazing how much easier it is to take a car apart when you’ve just done it a few days before. Hopefully, the same will prove true for putting it back together again…