Megan’s First Visit

Thursday, December 14th, 2017

Today is much like yesterday with lots of activity in the morning and an afternoon bike ride.   Jinhee seems to have been working the entire day and is still on the phone now.  No complaints on my part, her working keeps paying for the docking fees!   🙂

This is my favourite picture for the week!   I bought an air compressor this morning, and blew the fuzz off of the cooling grille.   There is now clearly air coming through the cooling fins and hopefully it will dramatically reduce the run time of the compressor and improve my sleep!

To get that compressor I had to walk a long way.  Part of the problem is not speaking the language, and part is that this part of the town is mostly consumer goods; clothing, jewelry, etc.   Tools are further afield, closer to the commercial port.

As I walked I ran into a demonstration.   I don’t know what the people were so upset about, but if you follow world politics and macro economics, it is probably the austerity here in Greece.   Someday I will write a long post on that!

The other interesting bit was that down in this area, the commercial port saw a wide variety of vendors selling their wares, in a more traditional fashion.  That is to say, without the machinations of modern commerce bumping up the prices.   While there were many and varied suppliers of things, I did take a photo of the fish market, because who doesn’t love a fish market!    It is worth noting that I was looking for four screws as well, and they were somewhat difficult to find, but find them I did.   At Home Depot in Toronto, they would likely be 15-20c apiece.  Here, I purchased all for for 20c (Euro), so a bit harder to locate, but about half the price . . . that is the price of convenience!

When I returned to the boat I completed my refrigerator maintenance and went for a bike ride.   Today’s route was to the West, taking me back up that huge climb again, but then I kept going West . . . that road dumped me on a major highway again with a modest shoulder and I have to say, these roads are not my favourite.   I followed the highway for a while, then exited, poked my way through some local side streets which all seemed to go nowhere, until I found myself on a regional highway which was less busy.

In the end I completed 65km and about 900m of climbing, so it was a good day, if not a great day on the bike.   With Megan’s arrival tomorrow, and our upcoming trip (will be discussed another day), my riding is likely to be constrained soon.  Hopefully I will get one long day in over the next week!  The weather was near perfect again today, with about 18C temps, clear skies, although the winds were quite strong today.   I am liking winter riding here.

Megan has just texted that she is finished her Exams and will be heading to the airport in an hour or so.  She is on her way to Athens for tomorrow afternoon and will see the boat for the first time.   We are looking forward to having her here for Christmas.  Andrew has chosen to stay in Toronto to be close to his girlfriend, and he will be missed, but we will endeavour to have a good time with Megan and really enjoy the season.