About Face

Lock 20
43 08.59 N 075 17.51 W

Victoria decided that two days was enough so she asked her mother to come fetch her. That's OK. Libby and I enjoyed having her for whatever time we could.

Soon thereafter, I got a call from David about our upcoming trip. He's delayed a week or more departing Alaska. Uh Oh. That means a revamp of the travel plans.

I started thinking about how to revamp and pretty soon my head was spinning. In the past, I've written off such lapses as adaptations to the cruising life where we never have to worry about schedules. Everybody knows that sailors and calendars don't coexist easily.

I think though I've been a little too hard on myself. This replanning job is harder than most. In normal circumstances, to make trips A, B and C, one needs only to select departure dates. If however, after trip A the boat leaves on passage X, then that affects both the date and the city for trip B, and eventually C also. In this case, I had to decide whether to continue West on the Erie canal, and if so which city to depart from, or to turn back East and whether to depart from Albany or from Burlington for a flight to meet David. In the meantime, we have to choose a city to depart from for a trip to Potsdam.

After 20 minutes or so, my head stopped spinning enough to choose a plan. We'll cancel the rest of the trip Westward on the Erie Canal. Instead, we'll return East. We'll depart for Potsdam from Amsterdam NY on July 7. After that trip, we'll go up to Lake Champlain and I'll fly out of Burlington to meet David in Fairbanks, or Seattle instead of Flagstaff. Whew! I almost needed a pert chart for that one.

So instead of rushing, we find ourselves with leisure time. We could be in Amsterdam in 2 days, but we have a week. We'll stay here at Lock 20 to watch another free concert Thursday night. (I told you we like this place.) Then, we'll find a place between here and Amsterdam to watch 4th of July fireworks this weekend.