From Grumpy's Garage

Over the last couple of days, I've noted on Facebook and Google+ that we've been having car trouble. We had to make an unscheduled stop in Montana to repair the engine after overheating and blowing head gaskets. Yesterday we checked into the nicest hotel we could find in Miles City while Deluxe Motors tracks down parts and gets the truck ready to travel again. (We chose the nicest hotel because we wanted this to feel like a detour on our vacation, not a prison sentence.) Stephanie and I just got out of the spa 45 minutes ago. While we chatted there, we took stock of our situation. We agreed that we have absolutely nothing to complain about. The radiator overheated in the most benign of places, the small town of Forsyth. While it took a couple of hours to find a repair shop that could work on the truck immediately, then arrange a tow to that shop 45 miles away, we did most of that "fingers doing the walking" from an air conditioned waiting room of a nearby tire shop in...

As my Summer Sabbatical Vacation (yes, in my mind, that's a proper noun) winds down, I cannot help but take stock: did I achieve my goals? What? Achieving goals while on vacation? Vacation is time to relax, to just enjoy the people your are with, the places you visit! You don't need no stinking goals! (Apologies to The Three Amigos.) Ah, but there's the paradox. The goal of a vacation is to have no goals. In fact, you can't even  go  on vacation without goals. 1. Pack the luggage. 2. Load the car. 3. Point the car toward your vacation spot. 4. Don't get a speeding ticket. These all start as goals, as objectives. As you achieve them, they turn into completed tasks. But I digress. Getting back to the goals of my Summer Sabbatical Vacation... I had several goals for this trip that started on July 2, 2015. Among them, to explore some of the smaller islands on the Maine coast, taking Second Wind possibly as far as Vinalhaven Island in Penobscot Bay. I started that cruise...