Things Change

Chesapeake Bay, MD
38 44.83 N 076 25.17 W

We cut our visit to Solomons short. We're heading for Kent Narrows to anchor for the night. There is a front with thunderstorms supposed to pass about 1 hour before we get to anchor. Hope we don't have too much trouble.

One of the reasons why we cut short our Solomons visit was that the laundromat Libby was used to using went out of business. In Libby's words, "That makes Solomons a much less attractive stop for cruisers like us." True.

Recently in Elizabeth City we also had a conversation about changes. The Carolina Theater, the hardware store, and the health club all closed in the past few years, and our favorite host, Fred Fearing passed away. Elizabeth City isn't what it used to be.

Now it occurs to me how much I've changed in past few years. Libby is fond of saying that it took me years to unlearn being a project manager, always looking at the time and the date. True, but there's also a more profound change. My entire career was largely based on embracing and promoting change; mostly technological change. While others shunned change or feared it, I welcomed it and thrived on it. Now, I'm in a mode where I expect everything to be the same year after year. I also used to thrive on stress, but not any more.

Resisting change could simply be one of the many symptoms of getting old, but I think there's more to it. I think that living the cruising life is changing me in ways I haven't fully appreciated. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I can't regret the changes; the past 5 years have been among the happiest in our lives.

Speaking of change. I'm considering a technological change that's very close to the core of my identity. We have Sprint cell phones. Sprint's coverage in the areas we frequent is poor. "Do you hear me now?" "No."
Our contract is done and I want to switch to Verizon. One option is to keep our old phones and have no contract with Verizon, but they make that hard to do. Therefore, I've been studying phones and phone plans. I'm 80% convinced that I ought to get a modern smartphone such as the Droid. (I don't want anything to do with Iphone because I seriously dislike Apple's ways of doing business.) If I do that, daily use of my PC is likely to fade away. I could do all my blogs, and emails and surfing on the phone. The laptop could be needed only to watch the occasional movie on hulu.

Wow: weaning me off my PC could be almost as profound a change as getting used to my PC. I started with a Commodore Pet in 1979. In 1981 I used to carry an Apple II with me on business trips to Europe. It was barely lugable. I've never been without a PC ever since. I started with the Internet in 1989. using email, gopher and Usenet. I had a personal web page in 1994; a time when there were only tens of thousands of web pages in existence.

Six years ago I had a Blackberry and I loved it. Two years ago I tried a smart phone for 24 hours. It was terrible. My fingers were too fat for the small buttons and my eyes were too poor for the tiny fonts. Now, with the Droid, I think that the text and the on-screen keyboard keys are bigger. Here's hoping.

By the way, even with a smart phone I don't plan to tweet or to Facebook. I think that this blog is plenty and that it is better suited to my style of writing than Twitter or Facebook. Do you think I should reconsider?