Last week was a pretty discouraging week. Nothing seemed to go right. My sewing machine broke as I was trying to sew the stackpack; Brian's back hurt too much to climb the mast; it was darn hot; we were lonely; our lists seemed to be getting longer, not shorter... etc.
So we decided to get one big item off our list. PRICE MART. This is a CostCo with a different name. I'd been once before and had a specific list with amounts and prices of exactly what I wanted. I convinced Brian to come with me and off we went. We were moping around racking up dollars in the shopping cart realizing the place was full of gringos of retirement age or older. They all had I.D. cards around their necks.
One of these gentlemen, Lee Mooneyhan, made a comment about our abundant supply of goods. I explained that we were stocking up for our crossing of the Pacific in our sailboat. We are buying 6 months of food because prices in French Polynesia are exorbitant (8 dollars for one roll of paper towels, 16 bucks for a cabbage, etc.) Lee got interested and started asking questions. We learned that he is on a similar voyage, except it's in a motorhome caravan from the U.S. They have driven all the way to the Panama Canal and are on their way back home. After a wonderful conversation we parted. Twenty minutes later, Lee came back and found us. He had a gift for our trip he wanted to give us. We arranged to meet him outside at his RV after we checked out.
Turns out Lee is a winemaker and partner of a small vineyard in Tennessee. Now we have safely tucked in our cupboard a 2002 Meadowlark Merlot to open at a special occasion some time between here and New Zealand.
Meeting Lee and his wife, Kathy, was super encouraging. We didn't feel so alone on our venture after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment