Toby's Log page 114

copper plumbing

in

When I replaced my water heater, I also replaced the piping coming into the house. It had been galvanized steel, which was very rusty at some parts, and I replaced it with copper. Still, the rest of the house had galvinized. This made for constant cloggings of shower heads, faucets, valves, etc. with small bits of rust/mineralization. The water flow to my shower was so low I had trouble maintaining the .75 gallons per minute my water heater needs to stay running. The heat would often turn off when I tried to turn up the cold water to reduce the tempurature, causing it get very cold. When a valve broke and could not be removed with all my might, I had to run a line from the sink piping to the shower to still get my hot water. The water also always seemed dirty, and tasted undesirable, so I never trusted drinking it. I did cook with it though.

I decided a while back I wanted to replace all the pipe at some point. Since I intended to redo the belly of my house before winter (fast approaching) I decided to take care of it at the same time. A few weeks ago (I believe) I started, with the help of my dad. It was very slow going then, since I could only get him out once a week. I’m the only one who could go under the house, so I had to do most of the work for the bathroom fixtures. The other stuff simply was along the side. My dad actually ended up doing most of the work for this. The underneath part was very rough though. It is not tall enough to sit up under there, though luckily much more roomy than under a car. It’s very dirty and there is stuff impeding movement all over the place. Just to get in, I must manuever myself over an electrical conduit and under a sanitary pipe and then a steel beam. The belly board has been ripped out by previous owners and by me during this project, leaving fiberglass insulation all over. Movement in certain areas will knock fiberglass into the air, making for a very itchy and coughy experience. I had to shower after every time working on it. I got a plastic rain suit to keep fiberglass off me, but it got on my neck and wrists with no problem, and the pants eventually were torn to shreds from moving around down there. The project was very slow going, and almost every time I got much less done than expected.

We first rerouted the pipe coming into the house to make most of it within the belly (at least it will be once we replace the belly). We got that working quickly and easily. Then we planned to do the hot lines only, to leave cold water available as long as possible. Some of the line, notably to the kitchen, we would go an entirely different route than the old line. The bathroom lines took a more simplified route, but it still ran into the old line a lot. I had to cut out the old line, as I had no luck getting it out by wrench and had no reason to try very hard with that anyway. I used an angle grinder. Sparks flew like crazy down in that small inclosed space, and I couldn’t help but getting hit by some of them. They also caused a few small short-lived flames in the insulation and bellyboard. With most of the cuts, water would come out when I broke throught the wall, sometimes lots of it. I’d let it drain and then continue. It was a very wet job. I could’t cut all the way through the pipe, as the wheel wasn’t wide enough, but I came pretty close. There was perhaps half the top wall left, and I was able to flex it until it broke. Unfortunately, the old pipes running to the bathroom sink and toilet were too tightly packed amongst themselves, a sanitary line, and a wooden beam to be able to be cut out, so I had to move the lines slightly over. Because of the location of beams and sanitary lines, this led me to need to drill holes through some beams as well as the new holes through the floor. The holes through the beams were difficult, and one required us to get a smaller drill to fit in between nearby obstacles, as well as cut out more old pipe. The hot water was at a lower elevation than the cold so they could cross over going over to the kitchen, so I had to cut a partial hole in the bottom of a beam rather than through it. The first one was done with a chisel, which took forever and a lot of energy. That tired me out, and it was a very tight fit even after that. Later we got a rasp bit for the drill to do the job much much faster and easily. The rasp also helped widen holes to allow for the proper positioning of pipes. This was especially important for one hole that was drilled at an angle because the drill would not fit any other way.

At one point, I wanted to cut part of the hot line to get it out of the way to run a line to the shower. It was right next to the cold line. I realized very quickly, when lots of water started spraying on me, that I had cut the wrong line. Luckily my dad was outside and turned off the water. I was now without any running water and changed plans of which line I would complete first. I intended to complete the line just to the bathroom sink and toilet (they came up through the floor with the same line anyway) so that my house could at least be liveable, but that didn’t happen for a while. I slept at my parents house then, in addition to showering there, which gave me more incentive to complete the cold water line. I had a bucket of water that allowed me to flush the toilet only thrice. I had diarea the one day, making this hard to do.

Soldering is very difficult in tight quarters. There was the plastic vapar barriers above and below the insulation, the subfloor, the wood beams, and the insulation that for whatever reason would burn somewhat even though it was fiberglass. We started off using heat sheilds, but I eventually gave up on them. It was too hard to keep them in place, especially when working by myself, and the heat would often just transfer through anyway. I found that if I carefully shot the flame at a certain angle so that it mostly curved around the pipe, I could minimize or eliminate the burning. In tight spots, though, it was impossible to eliminate the burning, and my house would get somewhat smokey after each of these. Fires of the wood would mostly got out once the flame was removed. They’d still smoke a bit and sometimes would glow, so I sprayed them thoroughly with a spray bottle. The plastic vapor barriers, however, wouldn’t always stop burning. I tried to cut them out of the way, but sometimes they still caught. If they were hot enough, the fire would somewhat quickly spread as it burned a hole in the barrier, dropping droplets of flaming plastic along the way.

Every time I worked I ran into some noticeable problem. I often ran into routing problems. The most noteable (or at least most memorable currently) of these was running the hot water line to the bathroom. I ran the long length to the sink (it seems much longer down there than inside the house) down through the same channel the old pipes were ran in, so it was very easy. Getting over to this run and allowing the shower to be hooked up as well, however, was not easy. The height the line was at was just above a sanitary line, touching it as it ran to the sink. I had chiseled a half hole throught a beam before to allow it to pass that. The sanitary line coming fromt the shower to the main run, unfortunately, was tilted, so I could not go over it. I ended up making two other partial holes through the beam to find a place I could come through with enough room between everything, and I even had some of the pieces for each of the routes.

Later on, I ran into problems with bad solder joints. I’d have to drain the lines and then unsolder, clean really well, then try to get the stuff back together and solder again. This became a crazy, long two night problem for the hot water line. This last Sunday, I had gotten the cold line to the kitchen working during the day with the help of my dad, and had also gotten the hot line cut and nearly ready to solder. I was thus done with the cold line and nearly done with the hot. I figured I could get it done that night in a few hours. I had to cut a few more pieces and then I prepared the whole thing and got it all in place to solder all at once. Most of the joints soldered very well, but I was a little worried about the one under the sink. It was the most surrounded by flamable material, as the one part of the elbow was actually resting on a wooden beam when the pipe was pulled down by gravity. I tried to solder it holding the pipe up with one hand and the torch in the other, then quickly taking the solder and trying to get it up there to sweat. It was very hard to manuever around to see both sides, and ended up being a sloppy job. I was a little worried about it but figured it was worth a try. I turned on the hot water, hoping it would work. Unfortunately, the union just below the heater was leaking like a sieve. I spent perhaps 40 minutes messing around with it, taping it with lots of teflon tape (and wasting a lot of tape in the process) to come to the conclusion that something must be wrong with it. Also, to my chagrin, the elbow beneath the sink started leaking. By that time it was rather late and I had to work the next morning, so I just went to my parents house to take a shower and sleep. Tuesday, I came back to the project, again at night. I was determined to finish. I bought a new union (8 bloody dollars) and installed that to replace the seemingly malfunctioning one. I drained the water from the lower union I had put in for that purpose, but unfortunately the pipes were at such angles as to not allow all the water to drain out. I put lots of heat into the elbow only to find it not getting hot enough to unsolder. I was getting rather angry and hitting the pipes rather hard to try to get the sweats apart. This of course dented the pipes fairly well, but luckily didn’t knock the important parts out of round or rupture the lines. I went into the bathroom, put my lips on the top of the valve there, and blew out the water. I spent quite a while doing this to make sure the water got out, and sure enough, I was able to unsweat the elbow. I made the mistake of only unsweating the one side of the elbow that had been leaking. I cleaned it up as best as I could in place and resweat it. It seemed much better. The pipe in the other sweat had been twisted during my removal attempts, and so had obviously been somewhat unsweat, but there was still solder in it. I figured that it should be fine and applied a bit more solder to be sure (perhaps that was a mistake). I ran the water. My union was mostly fine, though the connection to the water heater was leaking a bit. Unfortunately, the other sweat of that elbow was leaking a lot. I drained the water, blew through the pipes again, and tried to unsweat the elbow again. This time I hadn’t blew out enough water, so I had to go back, twice I believe. I finally got enough out to be able to unsweat, and more water that was rather hot came out of the pipe. This time I took the whole elbow off and cleaned it very well. The sweat looked good, and in testing held up. Through this whole procedure, I had burned the subfloor and other stuff pretty good, making my house visibly smoky. I went back in and retightened the connection to the water heater, then turned the water on. The union and connection at the heater seemed fine, but there was a noticable stream of water flowing through the hole in the floor beneath them. It was actually shooting up from beneath: the elbow there couldn’t take the pressure. I once again drained the water. Luckily, it was much easier with this one, as a union was pretty close by. Still, the floor was soaked with water from the leaks before, and it was dripping down. There was also a drip coming inside the pipe from the water heater. This made the unsweating and sweating process take noticably longer, though it still worked just fine. By this time I had determined that it was a bad idea to try to un and then re sweat only the broken side, so I took the elbow off, cleaned everything real good, and put it back together. It sweat nicely as well. When I turned the water on again, there was no real leak, though perhaps a slight drip from the union. Finally, after countless hours, I had my plumbing all done. It was of course, at this point, 0230 and I had to work that morning. I took a long hot shower and was in bed by 0430. I was rather tired the next day.

set wages

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everyone (that means everyone) makes similar wages, perhaps $10 – 20 an hour base.

-This base pay is determined by the desirability of the job to society: higher pay provides greater incentive to work the jobs. It may also be higher for more dangerous or damaging jobs, to provide for the possible medical bills or funeral expenses. Starting workers and easy no skill workers would get the lower end pay.

-This base may be modified on a person to person basis by up plus or minus 50% based on the worker’s productivity at their job. This would provide a maximum of $30 an hour in my example range for very productive workers doing those jobs most desireable to society. It may need to be watched or held to a curve of some sort to ensure companies aren’t giving the positive or negative bonuses as if they were the base pay.

-Number of hours are chosen by the worker exactly, with no overtime available. Workers so decide how much free time they have and how much money they make.

-Workers should generally be working two or more jobs. They’d work in both a low and a high profit industry (or what would currently be low and high wage jobs) and the companies would split the cost put toward the wages based on their profitability. This would ensure that companies that don’t bring in much money could still afford their labor, while highly profitable companies bringing in lots would not be raking in excessive money. For employees, this would provide a more diversified work-life and the chance to get some excersise from work even if their primary job provides none.

-The job splitting and setting-up could all be handled by a government agency to handle the splitting of hours worked by the employee and wages payed by the employers. It would be made easy to change jobs.

Two more trips

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Went on two more trips after over a month of no boating. This was a while back, in August probably, so I don’t remember it perfectly now.

One trip contained me, Paul, and Jamie. There were a ton of sailboats out there, so much that it seemed to me, who was steering, to be like an obstacle course. Most were out a ways from shore. We headed out to them, and when we got near the big array of them, the wind died down a lot, so much that we could hardly move until occasional gusts came along. We saw boats back near shore moving along just fine, so we headed back there. Indeed, there was a much stronger wind. It got rather strong at some points, and we were really able to move along. We saw a windsurfer well out from shore. I’ve never seen one near that far out before. At one point he fell over. He was very hard to see from afar, so we went over by him. He was struggling to get back up, but after several attempts, finally made it. We soon went back in, as Jamie needed to go I believe.

That was Sunday. The Thursday following that, me, Paul, Beth (Paul’s girlfriend), and Ally all went out. It was mighty chilly and windy. I was very glad I brought my windbreaker, but everyone else hadn’t, I believe. They were quite layered though. Beth and Ally both went inside the cabin for a while as we were heading back in. It was a short trip, as we went out late and it got dark quick. We did get to watch the sun set. A racing group went out just ahead of us as we went out. There was a lot of them, and they all went around doing various things. Most of them had spinnakers up at one point. We ran pretty close accross ones path when it was heading back in. As I sayed, it was rather windy, and we were really cruising and healing with both sails up. At one point while I was at the helm, a gust combined with a slight turn sent us tilting quite far over. Beth said the rail was in the water. I quickly let out my sail and Paul scrambled to release the jib. We then lowered it down. This reduced our speed a ton and removed almost all the heel. The way back in was rather dark, which always makes it hard.

Capitalocracy

in

A list of all potential budget items is made. Individuals then choose what percantage of their income taxes goes into each listed program. Referendums and elected officials choose what programs are on the list. Low funding marks programs for removal, either by elected officials or a vote. The list is filed annually with the tax return. A change form could be used midyear.

Several different versions of each program could possibly be used, allowing voters to choose the one more accurately affecting their desires for the program. This would also allow programs that do not meet their goals to be repremanded by voters by having their budget reduced, but would split the divide money and effort towards a common or similar goal.

Advantages
This would link the resources held by each program to the voters desires for them to succeed.

Voters put their money where they want it. They see and have a better understanding of where this money is going. Confidence in the budget should increase, hopefully with less feelings of government waste.

Programs known to be wasting money will be repremanded by the public through reducal of budgets.

Disadvantages
Voters may not be good with budgeting, and will likely do a poor job of reasonably spreading funds through all programs. They will likely give certain favored programs all the money while giving others none. This may even out somewhat throughout the entire voting populace, but likely not enough, especially when certain programs are hot for debate while others are not. Alternatively, voters may vote to increase or decrease funding for different programs by varying amounts. This could become rather complex, especially if the voters must adhere to a given funding level. If they don’t, then their changes could increase or decrease taxes, giving voters direct control over this. To simplify things, ratings for each program might be done like the NPAT system, going from greatly increase to greatly decrease, perhaps numbered in counting +3 to -3. A composite of all these would then be taken and the average vote would be taken. Guidelines would need to be established for what each choice means in execution.

Some programs would likely be subject to a lot of negative feedback in the media, which wouldn’t neccisarily be well deserved. Programs doing well to achieve their goals may lose major budgeting or even be killed because of a bad incident or string of incidents that gets the public angry with them. Without the system like above with multiple options available, an entire area of government may be killed, with nothing to replace it. If, for instance, the military was seen poorly in the public eye because of a war or series of other incidents, the country may end up with no military all of a sudden. This would be alleviated somewhat by the funding modification system of above.

Programs would want to spend a lot of money on advertising, to raise public awareness in their favor, especially when a negative story is run on them in the media. If there are competing programs, a lot of mudslinging might occur. This may have to be strictly limited, or perhaps even all adverstising funding eliminated, by legislation. There could be a governemnt program, even a seperate branch of government, created to independantly inform voter about all programs.

multiple votes

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allow voters to vote for multiple candidates in each race. Each vote would be counted and added to the tally of each candidate as it is now. Percentages would likely be drawn from the total number of tallies, but could potentially still be considered by percentage of population.

One could then vote for an independant party that closely matches their interests while still being able to put a vote in for the candidate of the major party they would prefer to win, allowing them to not “throw their vote away”. This would give the other parties much greater success, and perhaps eventually give them some power.

seperate issues from candidates

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voters take something like the NPAT test, a test covering all the major issues up for current debate. The results will all be added together to get an NPAT for the entire nation, and seperately for each subdivision of the nation that is having an election. Each item would be shown as a percentage of the population in agreement with that item. These results would be compared to each the NPAT of each candidate from each division, and the candidate statistically closer to the division NPAT would be elected.

Some Advantages:
This would allow (theoretically) the most appropriate candidate to be chosen by each citizen without each citizen having to wade through the mud slung by each candidate at the other.

One would simultaneously be voting for every candidate close to their personal opinion set, while voting against every candidate opposing their opinion set. In such a way, the problem of limited selection from a two party system would be eliminated, as one could vote third party as well as for their major party at the same time, and even for multiple candidates from their party at the same time.

Some problems:
As politicians already can and do lie about their positions on given issues, it would be unreasonable to expect them to stop now. Especially when their vote is much more directly tied to those positions.

There will be no mechanism to punish candidates for failing to follow through on their declarations made in the NPAT, making the above problem very bad. Some system for this would be needed. Perhaps they could be challenged by a large group of citizens if they fail to meet these positions, and have an independant panel of judges decide if they indeed failed. The group size would have to be set large enough that this wouldn’t be happening constantly, particularly by those who voted opposite the officer. Or perhaps an independant body would repeatedly, perhaps monthly, rate the officer based on their performance on each issue, and the officer would be removed from office or a new race would be ran if a certain threshold is passed in difference between performance and original declaration. This body could potentially be a randomly chosen selection of citizenry, or even the entire nation. This would perhaps create problems if major events change the environment the officer is acting in.

new server

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I’ve been wanting to get myself a new server for a while now. I’ve been wanting to get some sort of mini-itx size, low power consuming computer. My cousin Paul had gotten a Via board, and I’ve been thinking of that. Since Apple released the Mac Mini, I’ve also been considering that. Both options look pretty good.

However, my mom stopped me from needing to get one of those. She bought me an eMac that she got some good deal on. It’s 700mhz g4 with 1gb of RAM and a 40 GB hard drive. That’s more RAM than my old server had, and the hard drive will be way more than large enough for only storing server files. It’ll have plenty of room to store backup files as well. It seems plenty speedy. I imagine, though, that it uses a lot more power than the ibook. Definately when the CRT is running. I think it uses as much as 90 watts with that. It also has a fan constantly running (which will seem somewhat silly when my house gets down to 45°F this winter), a larger hard drive, and other such desktop power consuming items. And it doesn’t have the built in battery backup of the ibook, which could be an issue with the occasional power losses I get. Thus, I plan to eventually replace it with either a mini-itx type computer or some cheap laptop.

Still, it is rather nice to have. I now no longer have to worry a lick about taking my computer elsewhere or shutting it down or the like for fear of taking the server off the air. It will be very nice to be able to take it with me when visiting friends or what not, as it is a portable computer. It frees up plenty of memory and a little cpu time. And it just seems much nicer and more organized on both my server and my non-server. It gives me a little more training for setting up servers in more normal situation.

Because of this, I also have much reduced memory consumption on my ibook. Normally, my memory swells quickly and then pushes into swap files until I have four or five. They stay even with only the Finder open. Now though, I have free memory and fewer swap files, while the server is approaching it’s 1 GB limit with just the finder and Terminal running.

Socialisms: Balance Want with Need

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people want/have preferences for certain things
government could be used to attempt to provide these wants
as in communism goods, jobs, and property are owned by all and managed by government, and these are important areas where people have personal preferences, they could be doled out to those who want them
jobs: person educated generally at first, makes choices as education progresses that narrows them closer and closer to a field they are interested in. they may change directions if they don’t like where they are going, and work towards multiple areas of interest. government, through good planning, knows what jobs are generally needed, and decides how many openings there are in a given field. after education, person either takes opening in chosen field, or is put on wait for opening and works in another area of interest until an opening occurs to their liking. supply affected by demand to some degree: government changes number of positions toward fields people want, or provide other incentives in unwanted fields. person tires of job, can take opening or wait for another field.
homes: people have many ideas of ideal home and location to live. government creates homes where people want to live. can only create so many homes in given place. if can’t get desired location, can be put in closest (based on desirable criteria rather than geographical proximity) available accomodations, put on waiting list till home becomes available. various styles of living accomodations will be made in each area based on demand for each type. all homes will still be designed pragmatically, with items such as energy efficiency and usage efficiency being important considerations. all houses upgraded as technology becomes available, considering benifits for the costs involved.
solitary versus group, quiet versus noise filled, rural vs urban

Vacation 06: Maine

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Last week I went to Maine. I went with Jamie and his girlfriend Chelsie. This was supposed to be our annual cousin kids trip. Unfortunately, Ally had taken off too much time from work for other engagements. Paul has no control over his work schedule. Neither were able to go. So it really wasn’t a cousin kids trip.

We went to the cabin of my cousin Kristen. We don’t see her much, since she lives in Maine. Last year, at Mimi’s funeral, she invited us up.

I packed Saturday and finished Sunday morning. I took all my stuff with me and left some at the parents house while I went to work. I worked pizzas from noon to 9 or 9:30. When I got off, I picked up my stuff from the parents, then went over Jamies. I sewed some pants and ate a bit of food while Jamie and Chelsie got ready. We stuffed all the stuff in Jamie’s little Civic hatchback. We put most of the stuff in the feet area of the back seat and then folded the seat-back down to make a large bed area. Jamie drove first. I was in the back. It was quite uncomfortable to sit up back there. We went to Macedonia to get gas. We then headed to 271. Unfortunately Jamie got on 271 South. We had to go all the way to the next exit to turn around. Then we were off.

I couldn’t get to sleep too well. Chelsie had some Dramamine, so she fell asleep easily. I talked to Jamie or tried to sleep while we drove up 271, then got on 90. We saw a vehicle with a brightly lit license plate; Jamie thought it might be a police car, so he slowed down. We were behind it for quite some time. We slowly gained on it. As we got closer and closer, it became more and more apparent that it wasn’t a police car. It was in fact a mini-van with a wheel-barrow strapped to the top, and a bunch of junk in the back to boot. We then sped up and passed him. Somewhere in Pennsylvania, I fell asleep. I woke up in New York. I probably was asleep for a half hour.

Jamie drove until we needed gas. Mine was the next shift driving. I found it rather difficult to drive for a while. I was a bit tired and every mile seemed to take a while. Jamie and Chelsie were both asleep. Dawn came though, and at about 100 miles into my drive, the sun was up and I could see my surroundings. This helped the drive immensely, and the miles seemed to go by with ease. I got to see the sunrise, then trees and farms and plenty of other good stuff.

To be appended

Gray Area July 16th

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I took Mr Dwight out on the boat today. It took him a while to get over my house. We then took my car up to the dock. He didn’t like having to sit in the back, as I didn’t want him to have to crawl through, or to displace Mr Pink. Paul took out Linda, one of our neighbors, as she had never been on a sailboat either. When Dwight and I arrived, they were still out. I showed him our dock, but there was no boat. We walked to the end of the dock to see if we could see the boat. There were several sailboats coming in and out, as well as out on the lake. None of the nearby ones were it, and we couldn’t see the disntant ones well. We sat out on the dock for a bit. We discussed calling Paul on his cell phone, but neither of us had such devices (with service anyway), nor did I know Paul’s number. I had planned to write the number down before I left, but forgot. Two dudes came up and talked to us briefly. We contemplated asking them to use their cell phone. We finally decided to. The guy seemed a little reluctant, and made the call himself. We called Uncle Al. Unfortunately, no one was there. We let the guy go. After a bit longer, we decided to try to call Ally using a payphone to get Paul’s number, or to have her call Paul. We went to the car, but I had only one quarter. We then went to the marina, and got the last four quarters from the shop there. There was no visible payphone at the marina, so we went to one that was out at D dock. I checked our dock first, but still no Paul. Dwight handled the calling. After much trouble with trying quarters, he discovered that one could not call long distance with quarters at that payphone. He considered using a credit card, but it would have been quite expensive. At this point, he just wanted to leave. He was somewhat mad, and it was rather hot out. We went back to the car, but I had to leave Paul a note at least. I wrote a simple note that we had left, and we headed back to the dock.

To our luck, Paul had finally made it back in. The boat was all set up and all, but he wasn’t ready to go back out just yet. He suggested we go get some ice and snacks and by then he’d be ready. We went out and bought some rather sweet iced tea, some ice, and Dwight also got some swimming trunks, as by this point he really just wanted to swim rather than boat. We came back, and Paul drove by on his motorcycle. When we got to the dock, Linda told us Paul had gone to McDonald’s for a bite. She invited us to sit next to her under her umbrella. We talked for a bit, and finally Paul arrived. He had bags of food from McDonalds. He started eating and talking to Linda and me. He offered me and Dwight a double cheeseburger. I told Dwight he could have it, but he declined because of his lactose intolerance. I ate it instead. I don’t like ketchup, but it was barely tasteable. Dwight, who had wanted to be home early, really wanted to get going. We went over to the boat and set it up. Finally, Paul made it along to the boat and we headed off.

The winds had been low for Paul earlier, but they weren’t too bad at that point. The sails were both ready to fly up, so we took them up. We sailed out for a bit. As Dwight wanted to get home, we planned a rather short trip. He had originally wanted to get back by 7, but that was pushed back to 8, then 9. Paul told him he really needed a whole day devoted to sailing. We sailed out a bit, then the wind started dying down. At this point, Dwight started feeling a bit sick.

We turned around, and planned to go by the beach area near the docks. Dwight steered for a little bit as Paul told him a bit about sailing. By the time we got near the breaker wall, Dwight just wanted to go in. So we did. We sailed with both sails into the breaker wall area, then ran just the jib into the dock area. This was our first sailing into the dock area. We dropped the jib as we got close and ran just by motor. Paul was at the tiller. As we came in, we seemed to be coming at a rather sharp angle to the dock. The wind was giving Paul a hard time it seemed. As we approached the wooden dock to the side at a 45 or so degree angle, Paul steered to straighten out. This pointed us right at the cement peir part of the dock our dock was attached to. I quickly moved to the very front of the boat to kick off as we approached. I kicked off and one of our neighbors grabbed on from the dock and pushed, but we had enough force that we still ran into the peir and the electrical box just on it. The side of the peir was wood, and when surveying the damage, we had made a small indentation. The electrical box had flexed back a bit, but was quite fine. A small bit of paint was chipped off the bow.

As Dwight had to go and I drove him, Paul took care of closing down the boat. We went off with Dwight still feeling fairly sick. He really wanted to sit in shot gun, as he felt the back seat would make him feel more sick. We moved pinky and he climbed on in. As we took the hour and 15 minute drive home, he urged me to go faster. I tried to draft semis and other vehicles, as I usually do, but they never seem to like it. We made it back to my house at around 8:45, giving him 15 minutes to make the 30 minute drive back to his house. He said he never wanted to go sailing again.
</toby>