Dan Eling, Yachtsman

I got some great news this week. Tyson Scofield called, saying he finally got word from the Coast Guard detailer about his next billet. Though he put in for a number of engineering positions aboard the 378' and 270' cutters out of Alameda and Boston, he was offered a choice between an MLC spot or EO of the USCGC Alex Haley. She's an unusual ship for the Coast Guard, a converted Navy salvage vessel. But he and his family will be moving to Kodiak this summer to begin his tour aboard her. I'm excited for them - my Air Force friend Aaron Rivers was recently on temporarily assigned duty (TAD) in Alaska, and described it as "like Vermont, but more so." Sounds great to me, and I'm sure the Scofields will do well there.

The great news is, Tyson has offered to give me his old sailboat, a Luger Leeward 16. She's named Pegasus, which is a great name for a small sailboat. The only question now is how to get her from Swampscott to here in Alexandria. Either I'll have to go up to Boston to get her (Stella has a trailer hitch), or perhaps my folks can trailer her down and visit. Either way, it's great to think that I could soon have my own boat again. We're just waiting until Tyson gets his orders confirmed, so I hope this doesn't jinx anything.

Otherwise, it's been very quiet the last week or so. Now that Jane is gone, I don't have a lot of conversations at work - I'm all business. I miss talking about cyborg monkeys. And I don't have time to do much on weeknights after exercising and doing chores, and most folks are busy on the weekends (Steph has an insane amount of training to do, Jane & Ian go out to Manassas and have dinners with their friends and families, Mike is going overseas, etc). So it's been pretty uneventful. On the other hand, it's less than a month until Opening Day, so maybe I can see some baseball games soon. And once Pegasus is here, I can hit the water and get way from it all. As Tyson would say, sweet.