Memorial Day Weekend

On Wednesday C played his first concert as a member of JW Wakeman's concert band. There were 2 songs and we couldn't see him because of his position on stage but I did hear the trumpets.

Chris has had stomach problems the whole week; nausea & constipation. He seems better now.

He went for evaluation at The Winston School on Friday. Among other things he sat in on a math class and was given a page of exercises that he drew a blank on. K says it was material he had last year. When you want your kid to strut to strut his stuff it seldom works out. I hope they got the idea that he was motivated and well behaved. We'll see.

I got a call from Ken T on Wednesday saying that they needed a pin out for the DB-9 connector on the heading sensor so I called Nobeltec and they recommended that I use their serial to USB adapter. With that being shipped I asked Ken to just leave the heading sensor disconnected as the radar should work fine without it.

When K rented the car from Budget they told her that the right rear tire had a "slow leak" and that if she saw it getting flat to just add some air. So, on the way to LBI, she passes a woman who is anxiously pointing to her tire. She pulls over to find it very flat, drives to the next rest area and inflates it. Later when I met her at the marina it is flat again.

Thought we would spend the night on the boat but first stop by the Millville house to get the air compressor for dealing with the flat. By the time we had dragged stuff in and repacked the car we decided that it would be too much to try and load the boat that night.

We got up at 4:00 on Saturday to hit Spring Garden around day break. When we got to the marina the first thing I tried to do was connect the laptop to the radar but I couldn't get any of the inverters to work. Turns out that the cigarette lighter just doesn't provide a sufficient connection anymore. We had a new inverter in the car that had a supply cord with alligator clips. So I clipped it into the electrical block above fridge and that solved the problem.

As soon as the laptop was fired up it was evident that nothing had been tested. I turned on the radar and the antenna didn't rotate :( I told Ken that it didn't seem like anything had been tested and he said that they just stopped when they couldn't hook up the heading sensor. Great. By this time I'd determined that I'd need a software upgrade before I could get the interface working so decided to leave it alone until I could test the interface.

Because of goofing with the radar, etc. we left Spring Garden at 9:30 for a completely uneventful ride up to LBI. We hit Morrison's around 2:30 and were surprised to find gas $.04 cheaper there than at Spring Garden. I think a lot of operators are cutting margins on fuel in order to support boating.

Talked to Rick Quelch at Watersports and he told me to put the ski on a pad and call him to let him know where it was. In return I left a check for $900 at the desk.

Went to Surf City Marina Sunday morning half expecting to ride the Seadoo away but the woman there sold us a Spring prep job and said that it would be ready the next weekend.

Went back to Millville on Monday to collect bird, etc. K had tried to start the lawn mower with no success so I checked the oil and put gas in it. We had left a little gas in it over the winter and could have collected some water. I've read that's common with the ethanol mix we're using in NJ. I shot some starter fluid into the cylinder and it fired up. Finished both the front and back yard before the sun went down.