MrHyde.Net

Paige and I took the canoe back out this afternoon to do a little crabbing.  The little electric trolling motor again worked out great and we hummed off into the river in search of the elusive Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab.  We only managed to net 2 keepers, though there were a couple of other smaller ones that Paige grabbed off of dock pilings and whatnot.

We ended up letting the two keepers go back into the bay to live another day since we only had caught two of them and that really isn’t enough to make someones belly full.  Naturally my father was very upset that we let those two go because he could have made them for a sandwich or a quick breakfast, but the way I look at it, why should we only bring enough food home for him.

Next time we will zero in on a good spot and bring home many many crabs.

I needed to get out on the water today.  We have a little 17 foot canoe here at the house and I just needed to get out into the marina and take a ride down the river.  Unfortunatly, no one wanted to come with me.  Finally I gave up and said that I would be going by myself.  As I was heading out the door Paige changed her mind and came along.

Together, we put the canoe in the water and attached the little electic trolling motor to the back (really, who wants to paddle?), and headed out, the little motor humming us along at a pretty good speed.  It was a lot of fun.

Eventually it became a crab hunt.  Paige saw a Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab hanging out on a dock piling as we passed and wanted to see more, so we puttered around to all the docks checking out the crabs.  There were so many of them.

After we returned back to the Berrywood Marina I decided to let Paige have a chance at the controls.  She tooks us all around the marina, but not much further than that.  She had a lot of fun driving the boat around and even docked it when we were done.

Tomorrow, I think we are going to head back out with some drops lines and a net and see if we can’t catch ourselves a couple of crabs for Melissa and Dad.  They are both crab eaters, even though I am not.  We are going to have to get some new drop lines and some chicken backs to use as bait, but I think it will be fun if we can get out there and catch some crabs.

Wow, that week is finally over.  Today’s events were easily accomplished due to more rain, but I am really looking forward to this long weekend.

I started today by taking Mario out and we knocked out 3 boats that were not located in the Baltimore Marine Center.  It only took about 4 hours which is really good for only two people on three boats including travel time between them.  After that Mario and I joined the rest of the crews in Baltimore and shuffled through those boats pretty quickly.  It didn’t look good there for a little while when the Marina had to shut down the water supply to the docks due to some leaking valve or something, but we just took lunch and by the time we returned, everything was back to normal.  We finished in Baltimore by 3:30.

I dropped the guys off and headed back to the shop in Annapolis.  I took a hose to the trucks to clean them off and called it a day.  Now I can relax a little and enjoy a three day weekend at home, possibly in the glorious hammock in the back yard.  I know that there is some kind of event the entire family is going to on Monday called Berrywood days.  It involves a BBQ and swimming and just an all around good time with out friends and neighbors in the hood.  It will give us all an opportunity to meet the other people in Berrywood and possibly make some new friends.

Until tomorrow.

Tonight Paige and I invited Alan, our 15 year old next door neighbor, to go to the train club with us.  I think he really enjoyed it.  Unfortunatly we didn’t get stay as long as I would have liked because Paige was very tired and was almost falling alseep at the helm of her coal train running around the track.

Every time we go to the club it makes me more more steadfast in my desire to design and build my own small layout someday.  I am thinking about doing a very small one here.  Possibly with only two tracks and a couple of switches so that two short trains could be run at once.  Building the scenery and doing the electrical work is what really entices me into these things.  Unfortunatly I am notorouis for really wanting to do things, planning them out, but never getting started.  Hopefully this will be diffrent.

Today we had to work in the rain.  The weather man called for a 60% change of precipitation, but by the time we started hitting the boats, it was already pouring.  The nice thing about working in the rain is that we don’t have to dry the boats when we are done washing and rinsing, since it wouldn’t make much sense to dry a boat in the rain.  That cuts about 45 minutes off the time needed to complete each boat, so we rocked through our amazingly long list of floating palaces today in a very short amount of time.

Since we finished the boats pretty quickly, we went ahead and started on tomorrows list.  Tomorrows list of boats to be washed is insanely long.  Even with the ones we knocked off the list today, we still have 15 or so boats left to do.  Even with 2 or 3 crews, thats going to be an all day job, and no one wants an all day job on a Friday before a long weekend.

My lunch got stolen today at work.  I was very upset.  We stopped at MacDonalds and got some stuff to go for the guys and then went on over to the shop to eat.  Now I had a lunchbox lunch that Melissa made me consisting of some ham sandwichs, a couple of sodas and some chips.  I only left them alone in the drivers area of the van for a couple of minutes and when I returned, one of my sandwichs was missing.  I was VERY upset.  I started looking around for it and just couldn’t find what happened to my sandwich.  Then I looked over on the steps near the truck, and the problem was solved.

There was a squirrell, chomping away on what was left of my sandwich.

We, at Dean’s, do a LOT of work at the Baltimore Marine Center, also known as Lighthouse Point.  The center seems to be one of the best marinas in the Baltimore area, and there are a LOT of boats in thier slips.  Unfortunatly the water quality in the area is SO nasty.  There is always junk like buckets, papers, bottles, needles, and just plain sludge floating around in there.  All these things manage to stick themselves to the sides of boats for some reason and it’s my job to make sure that they get off of there.

The following is a little information about the Marine Center from their website at http://www.baltimoremarinecenter.com/

Established in 1994, Lighthouse Point developed into a luxury 16-acre facility that offers apartments, office and retail space on the Baltimore Harbor, as well as 500 wet slips, indoor Boatel storage for 84 performance boats, health club, pool and gated parking.

Situated on the site of the old J.S. Young Licorice Factory, remnants of the old factory buildings still remain. Retail stores and offices are located in this renovated building fronting Boston Street. A smokestack built in 1883, converted into a working lighthouse, serves as a landmark and namesake for Lighthouse Point. Keeping with the turn-of-the-century industrial architecture, newly constructed buildings add to the flavor and charm of this urban oasis.

Home to the Baltimore Marine Center, a one-stop-shop for any boaters’ needs, and to an abundance of shops, convenience retail, offices, restaurants, and residences servicing boaters and locals alike. Gated parking ensures parking is always available to Lighthouse Point patrons. Spectacular views of the Inner Harbor and Fort McHenry please the senses whether you are sitting harbor-side by the pool, working from one of the J.S. Young offices, or returning home to a prestigious Lighthouse Landing Apartment. Lighthouse Point has something for everyone.

I think that hammocks could possibly be the best invention every made by man kind.  Who cares about cures for diseases or sending rockets to the moon when you can lay back and relax in the most comfortable manner ever imagined.  I don’t know how I went so long without the benifit of a hammock, but now that I experienced the true happiness that is sleeping in a tree swing, I don’t think I could go back to not having one even if I needed too.

The hammock at our house here in Severna Park is located inbetween two trees in the back yard.  I’m not sure how much use it got before I moved in, but I know now that it is used at LEAST once a day by this particular person.  Paige, Alyson, and Melissa have also discovered the greatness of the hammock, but I’m not sure if they give it the same credit of glory that I do.  I know that Alyson really likes it, and spends a lot of time swinging back and forth in it with me.

Sometimes it’s the little things that makes places great.

Alyson was so funny today.  She had a little suitcase, which she packed up, and then told us that she was leaving.  When we asked her why, she didn’t know, but she knew that she was walking out of there and heading someplace else.  She didn’t know where she wanted to go or why she wanted to go there, but she was going.  She milled around for a little while, carrying her little pink suitcase everywhere she went and finially she got to the front door.  Melissa went out with her, and off they walked, down the street.

Moments later, they were back.  Unfortuantly, leaving home means walking to the end of the street and crossing Berrywood Dr.  Since Alyson is not allowd to go out on that road without and adult, and Melissa couldn’t move out like Alyson was planning too, Alyson could not bring herself to walk out on Berrywood Dr. without adult supervision.  She returned home and unpacked her little suitcase.

Tonight’s operating session was awesome.  It’s too bad that Paige was still not feeling well enough to come.  Like I mentioined in yesturday’s post, the coal started getting loaded into the hoppers in consists 6 cars long.  From there they are sent to Brunswick station, where yours truely was the yard master.  I take the 6 full cars and assembly them into trains 12 cars long.  From Brunswick they were sent to Fell’s point to be emptied.  Once emptied, the 12 cars return to Brunswick yard to be seperated into 2 six car trains for return to Coalton for reloading.

It wasn’t the same kind of operating sessioin that I remember.  I remembered using waybills, and paperwork and sending trains all over the place.  This new method of operating session was designed to speed up the process and give everyone something to do.  This way there isn’t a long set-up period either.  The cars are used where they lay and picked up and dropped off along the way until things are running as smoothly as they should be.  It was a very good time.

I have been informed that the original form of operating session is still used every now again, but this method is definatly more enjoyable.