Day 82, Thursday September 12

Our first morning on the Erie Canal.  It was a very peaceful sleep.  It started to pour in the middle of the night so there was a scramble to close all the portholes  (12) and hatches (7).  Back to sleep until 7:00.  We needed to stock up on some groceries and beer so off we went to the grocers after breakfast.  Walking of course.  First we went north, but not much up there, then we headed southwest and found a much better shopping area.  We got everything we needed, well almost and went back to the boat to stow away the new purchases and have some lunch.  We had a couple new boats docked nearby.  One was a giant Carver that left only about 12 inches in front of us, and the other was a sailboat just docking who also just had their mast stepped.  Donna and Scott have done this before and had sailed down from Duluth.  I am sure we will be meeting them along the way.

Storm coming in as we walk our 15kms.

After lunch we headed to a Walmart to get Sim cards for the Ipad and Blackberry.  It was about a 5 kilometer walk only to find out we had to go directly to the suppliers.   The suppliers was another 5 kms or so south so off we go.  There are no cabs around and no bus service.  After about 5 kms we go into a store to seek some information and find out it is another 2 or 3 kms to the south.  There are bus stops along the way but no bus in sight so we decide to keep walking and sure enough a bus goes by us as we are between stops.  Julie is crestfallen as she is exhausted.  The sky starts getting black and we put on our raincoats.  Soon it is raining lightly so we put some extra skip in our steps and get to the AT&T just before the skies open up.  We go through the whole process of buying a plan only to find out the data on the Blackberry won’t work so they refund us the plan and we go across the road to T-mobile.  The plan there is $25 more per month but who cares as we only need it for 2 months.  We leave with the blackberry  working, however still have to do a bit of juggling to get the Ipad working.  For the Ipad we need an American credit card so the work around is to buy a visa gift card and register the address on it as an American address.  See if that works…. Finally we are in a cab heading back to the boat.  We have happy hour, dinner and Julie collapses in bed as Dawson dukes it out with the AT&T sim card and American visa gift card.  Dawson gets the data plan working and now Julie measures how far we walked.  Turns out it was 15 kilometers plus the 2 kilometer morning excursion for at least 17 kms.  No wonder Julie is exhausted.  Before we crash we need to address Dawson’s nagging back.  Some deep massaging, large stretches and deep breaths, and then some yoga rolls on the back and Dawson thinks his rib has popped back into place.  The back has been bothering him for about 2 months now, so hopefully it is better.  By the way our new cell # is 716-994-5541 if anyone needs to get hold of us.  T-Mobile has terrible reception!

Cheers

Julie and Dawson