carwreck.com: around Boston harbor...
Goings on
Lot's of stuff going on over here Where Ethan is...
I totally forgot to mention a significant event which occurred during my vacation the other week. We stopped to look at the row of Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions which were at the local dealer. Sean related a story to one of the salesmen about some poor treatment at another dealer. We were told that a directive had come down from Mitsu HQ that no one was allowed to test drive an Evo without first having paid a deposit to actually purchase the car but upon some cajoling he agreed to take us for a ride with him at the wheel. He tore out of the lot and had the beast going 100mph within about a 1/4 mile (five people in the car). Then the unexpected happened; he pulled into a parking lot and told me to drive, which I did. The car was awesome. It had a very tight suspension, somewhat twitchy but extremely responsive steering, and gobs and gobs of power. While the torque didn't feel quite like what I got from my old Saab, it was flat across all RPMs and just pulled and pulled. And virtually NO turbo lag! All in all, a very awesome car. Not plush or luxurious by any means, but full of raw power and driving excitement.
I had my last day at Sea Tow which was pretty anti-climatic. I was on the late shift so as everyone else left for the day a few goodbyes where mumbled, some thank yous and that was it. I was left alone for the evening and then closed up the shop. I'll be back, but still, it was the end of a significant period of work.
The very next day I started at the Boston Pilots. I've worked a few days so far and am getting into the swing of learning the ropes and getting acquainted with how they do things. I'll be working a pretty random schedule for the next few weeks as they try to give me the maximum amount of time underway to get familiar with the boats and the procedures so that they can let me loose on my own. An example of the schedule: today I'm going in at 2pm and only working for a few hours, maybe until 6pm. They gave me tomorrow off because there aren't many ship movements in the harbor. Then they want me to come in at 4am on Sunday. Sunday will be a busy day with something like twelve or thirteen ship movements. I'll probably leave the dock at 4am and not return until around noon.
Work continues on the new deck which I guess I've never mentioned here. My brother and our father built a new deck on our house while I was on vacation. They finished about 75% of the work in the time my dad had here in Boston and my brother and I have been working on the rest as time allows. The other day we poured the final concrete footing for the spiral stairs. Today we mounted the center pole, lowered all of the steps onto the pole and bolted the top landing in place. Left on the to-do list is: finish the stairs (probably another week of work), build and install all railings (another week), and install the rest of the decking. Then we barbecue!