SailingKnitter

Terry falls in with the wrong crowd

Many of you don't know this but Jonesy and I met at an Indy car race in 1975. No, I wasn't a car racing fan. I was only there to help my brother-in-law sell programs as a fundraiser for the local JayCees organization.

Jonesy was working on the Vel's Parnelli Jones team for drivers Al Unser and Mario Andretti. After selling the programs to the cars entering the track, I was free to wander around with my too-tall and leggy, model-beautiful friends who I met up with there. Jonesy approached me (I'm shorter than my friends and they were both taller than Jonesy) and the rest is history.

Pine Needle and Pottery Basket #4

So, here we are 40 years later and I'm again with Jonesy at the races. Only this time we took our Dodge Caravan camping set-up and headed to Road Atlanta in upstate Georgia for the Le Petit Le Mans races. And this time, Jonesy got to be a fulltime spectator.

That dang Hurricane Joaquin caused some terribly wet weather where it rained constantly. Actually, we were not bummed as we were well prepared and met some very nice people at the track. Also, thankfully, these types of race cars do run in the rain so Jonesy got to see all the warm-up laps, qualifying laps, and the races. I got to sit under the pop-up tent (which eventually blew down on the last night), watch the dogwood tree leaves change color over the 4 days and knit or weave pine needle baskets.

Well, I did sneak off and wander around the track a bit and it looks like (from the photo above) that I fell in with the wrong crowd again. Once a fence-hanger race groupie, I guess you're always a fence-hanger race groupie. The racing in-crowd calls the girls who hang outside of the fences, fingers in the mesh, making googley eyes at the drivers and mechanics "fence-hangers".

Later, I was lured into working on the race cars again. (Truth: green screen and photoshop for this pic and yes, I did help Jonesy with the race cars in the early days.)

 As we were off having fun at the races, our new forward head (lavatory) sink and fixtures were being shipped to us at the marina. New sink? Well, yes. Seeing as Jonesy had to uninstall (as in rip out) the old sink and fixtures for the hose repair it just made sense to put in fresh new fixtures as long as we had it all apart. They will be much nicer for the next owners and help us to sell the boat. Now, we just ordered some more little plumbing parts plus a new shower nozzle for that project. Once they arrive Jonesy will be able to complete this major retrofit! One repair and an upgrade checked off of our list!

SOCK  KNITTING
Knitting activities have resumed here on the boat (and of course anywhere else I happen to be). Here's a pic of 3 little pairs of the smallest child sized socks I knit last month. They are all made with yarn that was donated to me to knit for the orphanages in Kazakhstan. Thank you everyone!

Pine Needle and Pottery Basket #2

Life is good.