Florence, South Carolina
Yesterday I had a great training session on the rowing machine in the well-appointed gym at Woodberry Forest School and then hit the road again. I am now in South Carolina on my way to Tampa, Florida.
Tomorrow I will be reunited with my boat at the Museum of Science and Industry, who have also arranged for me to do a number of media interviews (including Channel 10) and presentations. Driving south has been like putting the arrival of spring on fast forward – the trees are now a bright spring green and the weather is getting rapidly warmer.
Good news arrived yesterday – a very nice man called George (a friend of a friend of a brother of a friend) spent his whole day fixing my trailer up so a) it is now roadworthy and b) it holds Sedna securely in place so she won’t shift in transit between Tampa and San Francisco. (See my earlier blog on this.)
I had to arrange some repairs of my own yesterday. Quackers’ air conditioning stopped working. It was 81F in Virginia and I was wilting in the heat, so facing Florida, Louisiana and Texas without aircon was out of the question. Aircon may not be environmentally friendly (it increases fuel consumption as well as involving unfriendly chemicals) but I’ll make up for it by spending the summer in my very UN-air-conditioned boat.