Friday, July 23, 1993

When I started out this morning, nothing could have been farther from my mind than spending a thousand dollars, but that's what I ended up doing.
First, we walked over to the lock to look it over and get an idea of what we'll be doing when we go through it. It's a very simple lock, vastly different from the ones in the Panama Canal. The water level only goes up or down about one foot! The main purpose of the lock is to separate the salt water in the southern part of the channel from the fresh water in the northern part. Boats go through under their own power at 3 knots. There's nothing to it; it's a cinch. There's a pleasant park and playground next to the lock. There's even a little grandstand where you can sit and watch boats go through the lock. There was just one cabin cruiser going through, so we watched it.
A few weeks ago, the VHF speaker in the main cabin went out, so we wanted to buy a new one. We found out there was a Radio Shack "about a mile" down the road. We know from long experience that when we're told how far something is, the distance is given in terms of driving. A mile driving is at least two miles walking and five miles carrying a heavy load. Anyway, we set out walking and eventually came to Radio Shack. While Roy looked for a speaker, I browsed around. Suddenly I stopped in astonishment. There was a really good notebook computer with a full keyboard and 20 meg hard disk for only $700! I'd been wishing I had a notebook computer to take on the boat, but all the ones I'd seen advertised were around $2500, and a lot of them had dinky little keyboards. This one was regularly $1000, but they had it on sale this month for $699. It weighs less than 6 1/2 pounds and is about 2 inches thick, yet it has a hard drive and a full-size keyboard. I couldn't believe my eyes. When hard drives first came out, they were huge. This price also included a bunch of software, such as word-processing and spreadsheet. It's PC compatible and runs under MS-DOS. How could I resist a bargain like that? I couldn't. They also had a tiny printer for $200, so I bought them both. I figure I'll soon save the cost by not having to go to copy centers to run off the log; I’ll enter it all with the computer and print it out.
Roy found his speaker, so we left the store with our precious boxes. We wanted to take the bus back but couldn't find the stop. Roy finally asked a man who not only knew where the stop was but what time it ran. It's lucky he did; the stop was around on a side street where we never would have found it. The bus ran on schedule, and soon we were back on the boat.
Roy installed the new speaker, we ate lunch, and then we took the dirty clothes to a laundromat. In the evening, we ate supper at KFC again. Then I set up my new toy and played with it. It worked perfectly.

(Note: This is the computer that Mom wrote all her logs on.)