Election day!!!

Election day!!!

It is cool and overcast in Apollo Beach as election day dawns. Bean has left and with him the vehicle. We are in a cul de sac with no transportation to coffee and no alcohol in our stove (plenty for me though, I can’t believe I am not drunk yet) to make coffee.

Not a great start. I am beginning to feel like Eyeore. The saving grace is a good nights sleep, after getting back to the boat at midnight,compared to the night before and “bilge pump watch”. Now that we are not worried about her sinking we are back to being infatuated with the peace of sleeping on water.

The only real contact with the outside world we have is a crank radio. It is Apollo Beach so the only news radio we can find is right wing. It is election day so we suck it up. Bill o’fuckme Riley. Seriously. But hey! Turn that frown upside down because we are going to win this one. We get to listen to the frustration in their voices and the beginnings of the suck up fest. “Obama is a smart guy” etc.

JW expressing himself on election day.

My awesome "Grateful for Obama" pin that a really nice kid gave me at a festival. While his friends were partying he was working the campaign. It is kids like him that gave us such a great outcome this election! Thank you young Democrat from Minnesota, good work!!!

We don our election apparel and noodle around the boat waiting for the Marina to open so we can get some answers to the other big questions in our life.

“Who will be president?”,

“Will we go completely broke having our boat trucked down the interstate?”,

“Will our prop EVER come off?”,

“Where will our boat wind up?”,

“Will JW survive a day with me without coffee?”

Here comes the sun!

JW made the phone calls and people went to the polls. Today was to be a day of change all around! JW will fill you in on the details but the first good thing that happened was that our faith in the kind of people who work with cruisers and boat people was once again reinforced. With their patience and kindness our dream was restored. We couldn't do anything on election day because the Captain that agreed to tow "Eye Quit" had a sick child that day and couldn't tow us until the next morning. But we were no longer on the edge of financial ruin and our boat had a temporary home.

So with a game plan forged we settled in to listen to election results in Florida. I am very much a politico, i read Huffpo every day and had watched Oberman and Maddow like they were prognosticators of doom or triumph.

JW woke me up every morning for a month with news of the state-by-state battles from several online political maps. After the fiasco of 2000 and the heartbreak of 2004 we could not fathom another Republican victory. One of the reasons a boat was so compelling to me was the idea that if we had to we could sail out of the US on a moments notice.

Pretty drastic you might think but I had blood in the game as they say after 2000. My wonderful but rebellious son joined the Army early in 2004. How do you rebel against a hippy mom? Go to war. By the end of 2004 he knew he had placed himself in the middle of a war which was unjust. He knew that he had been lied to by his government. He helped me canvass for Kerry.

He was also deployed to Afghanistan twice and Iraq and awarded two bronze stars and a purple heart for his valor and effort.

This is Dylan before the Army with JW:

This is Dylan in Iraq:

We finally got him back. Not necessarily as good as new but we are trying.

Dylan and Bean

Camping the Keithley way.

Our version of a family reunion.

So this election was very important to us. We thought we were going to be at sea on our boat with our good friend Bean. Instead we were sitting in our boat still tied to the dock. The wind was chilly and the day was cloudy but the sun was coming. We listened to the local Republican commentators on our crank radio. They were outraged that there were problems at the polls. Ain’t Karma a bitch?

That evening we trekked two miles to the Circle Bar and Grill with the laptop to view the election results and have dinner and cocktails for me!

The place closed at Nine but by then it was pretty clear what was going to happen. I think Apollo Beach was shocked that Florida went for Obama but they were ecstatic i am sure to find that prop two had passed. I am still scratching my head as to why the government should get involved in this. The only reason I have ever heard is religious and we know the government isn’t supposed to act on that. Hmmmmmm…..right.

We had a delicious meal and a good walk to and from and we were exhausted. The night had turned balmy and clear. We crawled into the V berth with our crank radio and fell asleep. I awoke a couple of hours later and heard Obama giving his victory speech. I was cuddled up on the water with JW and Obama was our president elect. Content and relieved about so many things, I fell back to sleep.