Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

 Have you ever been married to someone, gone through a divorce, and then found yourself attracted to the same person later, having forgotten the "down side" of the relationship? We had been living up in the hills for three years after leaving our first home on the Meramec River after the flood of 1982 did us in, when I ran into my dad at his house on the river which had been setting empty since my parents left it too, after the '82 flood. Our attempt at purchasing their place in the spring of 1983 didn't go so well, so I was surprised when my dad announced to me that he was getting ready to sell the place to a complete stranger for what I had offered to buy it for three years earlier. Not only that, we had sunk a good chunk of money and labor into our new place and didn't have much hope of recouping our expenses in such a short time. However, the prospect of ditching a 12% mortgage on our High Ridge home and paying cash for my parents home appealed to us, and once my dad realized he could sell the place and still have access to the river and the property as he desired, a deal was struck, albeit at a loss to us on the sale of our place in the hills of High Ridge, MO.
 Round two of our life on the banks of the Meramec began then, in the spring of 1986. The river house at 92 Opps Lane had stood clean, but unimproved, since sustaining the flood damage of 1982, but we stuck a few bucks into it and made it our own. River life was idyllic for several years for us. After our initial move back to the river we bought a tournament ski boat, then another cuddy cabin boat, and were on our third tournament ski boat in July of 1993 when the "big one" came.
 When you live on a tributary to a larger body of water, floods come in a couple different forms. When the water shed of the river you live on experiences an abnormal amount of rain, you have floods which consist of "head water". If the river that the river you live on empties into has a flood, the water in the river you live on "backs up", as it cannot escape and you have a back water flood. If the two happen at the same time, you are in a world of trouble. But in the July of '93, we were in "backwater" conditions. The Meramec was backed up due to high water on the Mississippi, the sediment had dropped out as the current was non-existent, and the boating was as good as it ever gets on the Meramec. We were water skiing late in the day one weekend when the Missouri Water Patrol stopped us and informed us that the river was to be closed to all boating traffic due to the river level. The Mississippi River had been rising rapidly and was fore casted to reach record levels.

 Backwaters rise rather slowly, so we had plenty of time to prepare. Typically, river dwellers incrementally keep moving their belongings to higher ground, either outside of the house, or inside, as the river rises. Once you commit to leaving your furniture inside, you are stuck with your decision, as then the only way out with your belongings is by boat, as we had done with some or our furniture in 1982. The picture above shows our Jon boat, our method of transportation to and from our home for what was to be for over 45 days. The extension ladder next to the deck had to be climbed to get inside. I remember having to carry Rosie up the ladder fireman style, after she had to have some planned minor surgery. What is surprising was not in my ability to carry her in the first place, but in the fact that she was not dropped into the drink due to the amount of laughing during the process.

The River Wins a Round

 The flood waters receded slowly during that December of 1982. We were left with 2 inches of mud in our entire living area and everything that we had was ruined with the exception of what we were able to ferry out by boat. We had gone to stay at Rosie's parents house, but as soon as the river was back in it's banks, I took our van conversion/motor home and parked it in the spot where our garage used to be and took up residence in it. We had turned over the accommodations of the second floor of our house to our 85 pound Alaskan Malamute, Minga, as we had no where to take him. His only sanctuary from the mud was our king size mattress where he slept. The house was just a mess.
 I lived in the little motor home and spent time between work and getting a handle on cleanup, and dealt with insurance adjusters. The propane heater kept the motor home relatively comfortable as far as temperature went, but it wasn't until years later that I learned how close to death I had come during that time. I was using an upper bunk to sleep in while there, and I remember times when I woke in a grog, not really wanting to stir at all, lost between a conscious and semi-unconscious state. Had I been sleeping in the lower part of the motor home, I don't think it's a dramatic assumption that the carbon monoxide that gathered in the lower part of the motor home would have killed me. Once again I came out on the winning side of providence.

Our First Home Purchase on the Meramec River

 After what I thought was throwing away money on rent for a while, I bought our first home in 1978, just a few lots down from my parent's summer clubhouse, at 86 Opps Lane in Fenton, Missouri. Calling it a "fixer upper" is an understatement, but with payments at $125 per month, it fit my income of a whopping $3.75 per hour at my truck driving job at the time.
 My parent's clubhouse, (with additions, was becoming larger every year), got about 4 feet of water in the first floor during a flood in '73. My dad carried the brunt of clean up from that flood, and since it was a minor flood, he swore then, and maintains to this day, that he never needed to buy "any damn flood insurance". With a mortgage being held by a local bank, flood insurance was mandatory for us, and in the spring of '79, we found out just how beneficial national flood insurance could be.

 Here's Rosie, making dinner on the grill, probably hot dogs or something else "affordable", along with our first dog Gus, as I come home via the Jon boat after my day at work. One advantage about any of the homes on Opps Lane, we were only yards from high ground where Gravois Road snaked through old town Fenton and spanned the Meramec by way of the "new bridge".

 Our home suffered minimal damage, but with a modest flood insurance payout for cleanup, and my much improved income from my new job at the brewery, we commenced with home improvements in a big way.

Life in a River House

 The purpose of this blog is to tell our story about our life aboard Swing Set, but it's January here in St. Louis, the boat is shuttered up snug in its slip, and there is no work scheduled for her until the weather warms up in a couple of months...and I want to keep my minimal writing skills as sharp as I can so I'll steer off course here a bit.
 As related earlier in the posts about our boating history, we have spent a considerable chunk of our home owning lives taking up residence along the banks of the Meramec River. I thought I would take this slack time to relate some of our history of being River Rats, and why we would much rather live in a home that floats, as opposed to one that regularly finds itself at least partially below the waterline. What follows is some of the more "unglamorous" aspects of living in a river house. The really, really, good parts will be omitted at this time, but may be included in bits and pieces in later posts.

 This is the river house at 92 Opps Lane in Fenton, MO on the Meramec River in 1970, shortly after my dad bought it for use as a summer home. This "clubhouse" as they were called, is typical of the style in which they were built, many of them during the 1930s, as this one was.

Living On the Boat and Getting the Mail

 One question we get on a regular basis is, "What are you going to do about getting your mail?" It's one thing I've read up on, and our solution is to use a mail forwarding service. Mailboxes Etc., is one company that forwards your mail and is one we may use if we keep our Missouri residency, but I'm leaning toward establishing residency in the state of Florida, and there is an outfit down there called St. Brendans Isle that a lot of full time cruisers use. St. Brendans, for a monthly fee, will provide you with a regular street address where your mail will be delivered to. Mailboxes, Etc. provides more like a P.O. Box, and some things will not be delivered to a  post office box. St. Brendans Isle will forward our mail along to us when we get to a place where we may be staying for more that a day or two, via FedEx or UPS. They will also scan and send along documents via email, and they will identify mail to you so you can choose to have it sent or scanned, or just discarded. St. Brendans will also assist new residents in registering their vessels in Florida, help get driver's license's and help negotiate other governmental bureaucracy.
 Since we have been formulating our plan for some time now, we have already begun reducing or eliminating our snail mail. We don't renew magazine prescriptions, even the free ones. Anything that can be set up electronically in regard to banking or bill paying, we have done that too. Stock reports from our portfolio have been a sticky issue. Every fund wants to send a monthly, or quarterly report. We got that resolved, and then the annual reports started coming recently. Our financial planner, where the investments are made that generate these reports, has been helpful on getting everything sent to us via email instead. It's a work in progress.
 We hope this was the last year for Christmas cards. Need I say more?
 Whether or not we keep our condo will play a part in how much we can reduce our mail, and we aren't completely confident that we can eliminate it entirely, but as each new piece of mail arrives at our home presently, we try to determine how to eliminate it on a case by case basis, in the hopes of being ready when the time comes. "One less thing," as Forrest Gump would say.

Settled In For the Cold Winter

 I can see the towboats traversing the Mississippi River from the window of our condo in downtown St. Louis, MO and I honestly don't long to be out there on the water at the moment. Although the sun is out, it's a brisk 18 degrees outside, a sharp contrast to the comparatively warm 60 degree temperatures we had last week. On New Year's Day, the annual polar bear water skiing took place on the St. Louis riverfront and up in Alton Illinois. There were polar bear plunges in Fenton, MO and I'm sure there were various others around our area. I have a tradition of nursing an annual hangover on New Year's Day, and rarely leave home, spending the day in pajamas and lounging on the couch and watching the tube. Some friends decided to go wake boarding yesterday, the winds were approaching 45 M.P.H. and the temperature  might have reached 29 degrees at best. We watched the video on Facebook. No thanks.
 After cooping ourselves up in the condo all day on Sunday, we decided on Monday to take the 40 minute drive up to the Duck Club Yacht Club where we keep Swing Set. This was a momentous occasion for two reasons: It was the first car ride for our new puppy since bringing her home, and it would be the first time for her to visit Swing Set, which would become her permanent home, hopefully, for years to come.
 It was an uneventful drive to the Duck Club, although the wind was buffeting our Ford Explorer around quite a bit. The extent of the cold and wind hit us as we stepped from the warm confines of the truck to the boat dock. There were a few other cars around as there are a few live aboards at the Duck Club, but it was very quiet, the only sound was that of all the ice eaters bubbling away. We did encounter a new tenant as we stepped onto the dock.

 It may be hard to discern, but that ball of fur in that trap is a raccoon.

"So When Are You Starting the Loop?"

 We get the question on a regular basis as to when we are going to start out on "The Loop". For those who don't know it, "The Great Loop" is an approximately 6000 mile cruise of the Eastern United States, usually done in a counter-clockwise direction, that starts anywhere on the route and ends again at the starting point, months or years later, depending on how fast you want to do it. The route takes you down the Illinois River to the Mississippi River, up the Ohio River to the Tennessee River to the Tombigbee Waterway to Mobile Bay. Either by hugging the Florida coast, or crossing the Gulf of Mexico, you make your way around the state and head up the east coast and into the Great Lakes and back over to the Illinois River again. There are variations, but some parts of the trip are not optional. More information can be found on The America's Great Loop Cruisers' Association (also known as the AGLCA) website.
 I want to be very clear on one thing; We have never said that we were going to do the Great Loop, and we never said we wouldn't. Yes, we do belong to the AGLCA, and we do fly the AGLCA burgee on the bow of Swing Set, but that is a far as we have committed to the "Loop". We have a good reason to fly the burgee, however, as the following will reveal.