Voyages

It's been several days and I was reminiscing about great drives. In particular, memorable drives in the Black Pearl.

Waking up before the sun to set forth rubber to blacktop for the next several hours always seems to end with great amounts of memories.

This particular being the greatest of life's adventures.

The key was turn as the belly of the beast roared to life, the sun still lingered on the east side of the Cascade mountains. A sunrise hear on a partially cloudy day is difficult to put into words, moving can only begin to describe it.

We where headed southwest for the next two hundred and thirty miles. The Pearl hadn't been on a voyage longer then thirty miles, blind faith and sheer determination where to keep the wind at her back and her sails full.

Settling into plush bath towel and duct tape covered seat, the tape player blaring a tinny tone of "hit the lights!" from the doors. It was going to be a long hot day.

Mother nature looked favorable on the old ships cooling system, unfortunately that's the only system she gave a break to.

Forty minutes in and the heavens open up and gave forth all amounts of moisture contained. Sixty years of wiper technology wouldn't have made much difference. If you focused on one spot long enough, you could almost see the rains bouncing up as fast as they where falling down. My blades banging back and forth in a frantic pace near in tune with the music. 

At one point I thought all hope was lost and I was going to have to abandon ship.
The rains where seemingly overwelming my original wiper motor, no matter how hard they went, it just never seemed to clear.

Finally leaning into the glass for viability, breathing hard in an ever increasing heart rate. Vowing to myself that if it came to it, I was going down with the ship, like any good captain.

Breath fogging in a growing cloud, a single lone droplet of water ran down just past my nose. Eyelids batting at the clarity appearing in it's tail.

The lions share of standing water was resting in the comforts of the cabin right along with me.

Not long after the clouds gave and we sailed on into a life of happiness.