8/30/08 Another windy day here at Winchester Bay. Crabbing off the dock, we got 7 more crabs which we shared tonight with Jeanne Taylor and Rodger Lyman, Park Sierra friends. They arrived yesterday while we were spending the day driving to Eugene and Florence for an excursion. It is great to have them here and we hope they are enjoying the fresh crab!
Do you remember the lines from a Beatles song in the '60's that said, "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?" Well, those lines ran through my mind yesterday when I achieved that age. I'm glad to report that Elaine still needs me and occasionally feeds me, as she did yesterday when we had my birthday lunch at a Chinese restaurant in Eugene. We had driven over there to pick up our wedding rings at Kohl's. We had bought them in Albany about a month ago and had to have them resized. For those of you who don't know, we will be getting married in the Park Sierra clubhouse at 3 PM on October 25. Since we have been together for 29 years, it seems appropriate to take this step now that the California supreme court has made it legal. After we did some other shopping, we drove back to Winchester Bay through Florence, where we stopped at the casino for a short stay and won enough money to pay for some ice cream. Then we shared it with Jeanne and Rodger when we got back to the marina.

Thursday Ron Gibson came over in his boat and picked us up for a day of crabbing out on the Umpqua River. This is the river which is right outside the little harbor area where we are parked.

It was a beautiful sunny day when we got out there and we were even sorry that we had not worn tee shirts because it was so warm. That lasted only a short while because then the wind picked up, as usual, and we had to don sweatshirts and eventually jackets.

We worked our 3 crab traps and 3 of Ron's for about 5 hours and got 22 keepers.

This was so much better than last year! The bad part was that Ron ran over one of his traps and inadvertently cut the rope with the propeller and lost his trap. The good part was that Ron's boat is large and comfortable so it was much easier to be out in it in all that wind than if it was a smaller boat.