By Jamie Lauren Keiles. I learned my geography by that wooden map of the United States � the jigsaw puzzle of the lower 48 with the inset Hawaii and Alaska to the. The puzzle-piece states were the places to go, and everything else was just negative space. You could not visit the compass rose in the corner, nor the unvarnished pine off the coast of Oahu.
In a nation transfixed by the dream of the road trip, a river is just a reason for a tunnel or a bridge. But if you let your eyes go blurry, you might imagine the inverse � the young woman hidden in the profile of the old hag.
By this reverse image, the eastern half of the United States is cheap boat rides 6000 island, circumnavigable by water across the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi and into the Cheap boat rides 6000 of Mexico, then back up north along the shores of the Atlantic. Insome boaters circled the length of this so-called Great Loop � setting sail from any point along the way and crossing their own wakes about 6, miles later.
These Loopers, as they call themselves, are mostly retirees traveling as couples, on boats named things like Living Life and Last Chance. The culture coalesces around the A. I emailed the A. The Bartels, sight unseen, said they would let me ride along as they knocked off the Central Florida leg of their Loop.
I had never traveled the United States by water. Tim and Karen are in their mids and wear Crocs and a lot of boat-themed shirts. They began in Ohio on Sept. Lake Michigan carried them into Chicago. From there, they passed through a chute of cheap boat rides 6000 waters: the Calumet, the Illinois, the Mississippi.
At Kimmswick, Mo. Their progress from there was a series of detours � up the Cumberland, onto the Tennessee, to the Tenn-Tom � leading them eventually into the Cheap boat rides 6000 of Mexico near Mobile, Ala.
Along the shores of the gulf, there is a fork in the Loop where a boat cheap boat rides 6000 either circle the Florida Peninsula or cut across the state by the Okeechobee Waterway. Each route is preceded by the same open-water crossing: miles from a small town on the panhandle called Apalachicola, through the gulf into Clearwater harbor. Tim and Karen crossed the gulf with another boat called Shell Bell, piloted by two Loopers who had done this leg.
They ran Let It Ride for 25 hours straight, taking turns napping in the cabin. Tim woke as the lip of a thick fog unfurled, and together they followed the radar to port. From Clearwater, they floated down to the start of the Okeechobee canal in Fort Myers. When I arrived at the marina in Fort Myers on Feb.
Opened to traffic inthe Okeechobee canal is a shortcut through Florida, more efficient than sailing down and around the Keys. Arguably the line between South and Central Florida, it follows a stretch of the Caloosahatchee River, widening cheap boat rides 6000 into Lake Okeechobee before narrowing again at the south fork of the St.
End to end � Fort Myers to the Atlantic � this leg of the Loop spans miles. Tim planned to finish it cheap boat rides 6000 three or four days, depending, he said, on his mood and our pace. Florida springs fertile with retirees at play. Easy winter weather and cheap boat rides 6000 lack of state income tax draw the fixed-income set to the Sunshine State to wallow.
The cohort self-divides like any high school cafeteria � golfers, fishers, mah-jongg players � each with its own distinct leisure disposition. My great-grandmother from the other side, who retired near Miami and smoked two packs a day until she died, played dozens of cards at bingo every night. Different strokes for different old folks, and the same can be said for the largely retired Loopers.
American boaters, on the whole, are middle class; the pastime is most popular in the inland Midwest. But even within the hobby, Loopers are a subset. Think of them, perhaps, as R. Life on the Loop is an improbable equation by which the complex variables of boating and aging combine to produce something much simpler.
We set out from Fort Myers in the afternoon, with all the informality of a morning commute. Without any Champagne toast or five-gun salute, Tim steered Let It Ride from the protected marina into the mile-wide span of the Caloosahatchee.
Trawlers and yachts passed in the westbound direction as Tim steered up top at the big silver wheel. Cheap boat rides 6000 scenery ahead was a test of proportions � a giant block of sky atop a hangnail of land. Though Florida may be low and flat, the water level on Lake Okeechobee is still higher than anywhere in the gulf or the Atlantic.
Boats in both directions must ascend via lock, then descend once again after crossing the lake. Imagine the locks like escalators in a mall, moving passing boats across a multilevel concourse.
The Okeechobee canal has five locks in total. Our first was the W. Franklin Lock and Dam, about miles from the Atlantic. I buckled myself into the foam of my life vest. The W. Franklin was a concrete chute with a solid gate at either end � a cheap boat rides 6000 enclosed, refillable bathtub, sunken in the larger bathtub of the canal.
It was as large a contraption as I had ever cheap boat rides 6000. Our three boats entered through the open gate at one end, lining up starboard with our hulls along the wall. A cormorant ripped through the air inside the chute, then swooped up and over the control hut. The lockmaster emerged in a pink sweat-proof shirt, her iPhone secure on a matching pink belt clip.
She squatted atop the wall to cheap boat rides 6000 with Karen below, before returning to her hut, where she signaled for the gate behind us to close. I sensed that we were sitting on the cusp of a climax � a terrible whoosh, an impressive rise in tide.
Instead, the gate at the other end inched open, admitting brown water like a spill of diet cola. We bobbed as the stains on the wall disappeared, the water level rising a scant 36 inches. A little bit taller, we followed Dana A and the Conch upriver. Cheap boat rides 6000 left the upper deck and descended into the cabin.
A big part of boating is aggressive cartoon cheap boat rides 6000 � sprawling on the couch with a hat over your face, nodding in and out on the lilt of the tide. I woke to unstick my bare leg from the leather and again sometime later to a smell like barbecued cake; farmers nearby were burning sugar cane.
I turned over on my stomach, then snoozed a little. When I rose around 4, the sky looked like rain. It took 10 minutes to pass through the Ortona Lock. Out its eastbound gate, Tim hung a sharp left, and we docked for the night at the River Forest Yachting Center.
Marinas run the gamut from city-run favors to sprawling resorts with five-star amenities. River Forest was the former, a sparse disappointment � nothing nearby, no courtesy car � just hookups for the boat and cheap boat rides 6000 bathroom with showers. We were 70 miles from the Atlantic as the crow flies and a mile drive from nearby LaBelle, so we ate on the cheap boat rides 6000 at the kitchen dinette.
Karen made a salad with honey mustard and poached chicken. Tim, who had a toothache, ate a bowl of instant pudding, followed by a can of cream soda with Crown Royal. When dinner was over, we all lounged around the cabin. Tim browsed posts on the A. He showed me a post from an aspiring Looper who was seeking donations to underwrite his trip. She felt miffed, she said, by their eagerness to leave the conversation.
At night, I did more of that intermittent snoozing, watching the light of the moon off the water dance baconesque on the cheap boat rides 6000 of the cabin. I woke early, took a shower, then fell back into sleep, dreaming of hermit crabs crawling through my suitcase. When I got out of bed for good around 11, I found Karen hunched over a hatch in the carpet, vacuuming water from the space beneath the floor.
It was normal, apparently, to carry water down there, but, cheap boat rides 6000 explained, she had to clear it out for the mechanic. Until he arrived, we would be stranded at the marina. Tim sat at the table, clutching his jaw and smoking.
His toothache had apparently worsened in the night, and now his whole posture seemed to pulsate with pain. He sat back down, and the scene repeated on loop. I offered to do useless tasks like make sandwiches and pass bottled water from two feet away. I walked on eggshells, anticipating conflict, but the couple argued less on their broken-down boat than I argue with myself while out in the open of the world.
Karen had never been on a boat, save for a school-sponsored trip to Lake Erie. Tim bought his first sailboat at 13, from a neighbor who won it in a radio contest. The couple married at Fairport Harbor Yacht Club, which grew into the center of their social life together, and eventually the start and end point for their Loop.
Though Karen was eager to share in his dream, she was an exception; the hesitant wife is a common Looper trope. The forums are rife with gear discussions, but there are just as many tips for persuading the ball and chain.
This gender dynamic is fast fading from our culture, along with the idea of retiring still married to your first spouse, and even the idea of retiring at all. As I sat on the deck awaiting the mechanic, I felt stricken by the thought that my peers and I might work until we die � perhaps blogging from our deathbeds for the AARP.
I silenced these thoughts by snacking. I was waxing poetic on the depths of human kindness when Karen said she thought such generosity was normal. Maybe it was � cheap boat rides 6000 the Loop, or for baby boomers. It would take another day to get us back out in motion.
Back on the water, the wind was too strong to write by hand, and the sun was too bright to type notes on a screen, so I found myself forced into a retirement of my .
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