wordsfromanneli

Thoughts, ideas, photos, and stories.

Category Archives: transportation


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Annie and the Honeydew Man

I posted this about five years ago and came across it again. I thought it was a sweet picture and couldn’t resist reposting it.

When my sisters and brother and I were little, we lived in a newly built, but unfinished house on the edge of town. The streets weren’t even put in place yet. Our road was just a track through a field of yellow grass. But it was perfect for us to play cowboys and gallop our pretend horses around the trails and up and down the hills of dirt that were not yet backfilled to the new house. We pretended to be characters from the western movies of the day — Annie Oakley, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Dale Evans.  But Annie was my favourite.  My sister, maybe almost three years old, was really too little to keep up with us as we tore around on the hills of dirt, so she played Annie Oakley with a toy shotgun and guarded the house while the rest of us were out on the range.

I don’t know what is wrapped around her right hand, and I just noticed for the first time in decades that there is a doll peeking out from behind her left shoulder.

Fast forward to more modern times. When the Captain and I were on one of our trips to Baja California, we stopped to do some shopping in Ensenada. I found a puppet-style doll that I couldn’t live without. She was the Mexican version of Annie Oakley.

What made me even happier, was buying the doll that had to be her partner.  He is pictured here.

The store proprietor told me that this doll represents the hen-pecked husband, the Honeydew man (Honey, do this and Honey, do that), but in Spanish they called this fellow a “mandilon,”  because he is ordered about, and, in the original version of the word, probably wore an apron (a mandil). What woman would not want a mandilon to do things for her? I had to have this doll!

*****

In my novel Orion’s Gift,  Sylvia is all alone in the world. It seems that her life has taken a sudden turn and everything has been going wrong for her. Her husband is all about himself, and would not understand the news she just received in a letter.

She is trying to outrun her problems by escaping what she once thought was a perfect life near San Diego. She leaves everything behind to “run away” to Baja California where she plans to live in her VW van.

Baja seems to be a place for runaways. She meets Kevin at one of the campsites, and although there is an immediate attraction, Kevin has problems of his own.

Sylvia really needs moral support, so I gave her a mascot to lend her strength. Below is a short excerpt from Orion’s Gift, telling about how Sylvia came to adopt Annie.

Excerpt:

In one shop, handmade puppets on strings hung from the ceiling. Each doll had a unique character and, like orphans hoping to be adopted, seemed to call, “Take me with you.” I fell in love with a Mexican Annie Oakley. She held a mini six-gun in each hand and radiated confidence and self-reliance. I paid for her and happily carried her home to my van. I rigged up a spot on the curtain rod behind the seat for Annie to watch over me at night. She’d be my mascot, a reminder that I was strong and could take care of myself.

You can read Sylvia’s story in my novel “Orion’s Gift.”  She’s going to need Annie’s strength to face some of the challenges of being a woman travelling alone in Baja.

The e-book version is marked down to only 99 cents on amazon.com for the next few weeks. 


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Dolphins of Baja

Cindy Knoke’s blog post (link to Cindy’s blog at the end of this post) about viewing dolphins reminded me that I had a scene in my novel, “Orion’s Gift,” that was very similar to her adventure.  I wrote that scene after the Captain and I had this very experience in a 12-ft. aluminum skiff many years ago. It is based almost completely on our own dolphin trip from when we were dry camping in Baja and the dolphins came into the Bay of Conception.

The excerpt is a bit long, but I hope you will bear with me and enjoy the ride.

 

In the novel, my character, Sylvia, has run away from her unraveling life in southern California. Without much planning she has bought a camper van and thinks she can escape her problems by dry camping on the beaches of the Baja peninsula on the Mexican side of the border.

She meets Kevin, another runaway from a bad marriage, and the two discover an unexpected attraction to each other.

 

Here is the dolphin scene from “Orion’s Gift.” (Notice the whitecaps in the photo above.)

Moments later, I pointed. “There!” Kevin started the motor and, at a slower, quieter speed, angled the boat towards the school’s probable destination, so that eventually our paths would cross.

Hundreds of sleek bodies broke the surface only to curve and dive down immediately and reappear a few yards farther on. Kevin cut the motor again and we drifted, a mere speck in the middle of the huge Bay of Conception, closer than we had hoped to a huge school of dolphins, all aiming for the head of the bay.

“Listen to them!” I whisper-shouted to Kevin. The mewling, whistling, singing, and crying, as they repeatedly broke the surface of the water, was an eerie choir piece. Hauntingly beautiful, it gave me goosebumps in spite of the warm day. Kevin’s face mirrored my feelings exactly—somewhere between awe and ecstasy. My mind was suddenly in turmoil, balancing this rare and precious moment with the realization that I probably had few of them left. Peaks of happiness and bottomless pits of misery played havoc with my emotions.

My eyes filled with tears. “Thank you for bringing me out here. That was so beautiful.” I lowered my head. Just needed a moment.

“It would have been a shame to have to enjoy this all alone,” he said.

Still trying to come to terms with the amazing spectacle we had just experienced, we sat a moment longer watching the last of the dolphins disappear in the distance.

“Uh-oh!” Kevin pointed towards the open end of the bay. “Whitecaps.” He started the motor and turned the skiff towards home. Within minutes, the breaking waves had moved much closer and the glassy smooth surface changed to ripples that grew into an uncomfortable lump. I’d heard San Diego fishermen talk about the lump in the sea. Now I knew what they were talking about.

“Hang on,” he said. “It could get bumpy. I’ll take us to the nearest point of land and then we’ll work our way home along the beach.”

I gripped the gunwales of the boat where they began to curve towards the bow. We bucked into the choppy whitecaps that had now overtaken us. In no time, the sleeves of my blue cotton shirt were soaked from the spray. Two-foot waves didn’t seem like much but they followed one after the other so briskly that the small skiff took a pounding. My stomach clenched into a knot of fear as we were tossed in every direction. I tightened my grip against the bouncing of the boat. More waves splashed over the bow, soaking the front of my shirt. I was glad the water was warm. It would have been an ordeal to be splashed with icy water every few seconds. The finer spray wet my face so the drops were running off my chin. I glanced at Kevin in the stern of the boat. He was completely dry except for a bit of salt spray in his hair. He looked so good and I could only imagine what I looked like. Drowned rats came to mind.

“We’re almost out of it,” Kevin yelled above the engine noise. He saw that I was bearing the brunt of the beating at the front of the boat. I could only nod as I looked over my shoulder at him.

Closer to the beach, we zigzagged to avoid rocks. Beaching the boat here would be difficult. We continued along the shoreline until we rounded a point and entered the mini bay where our own sheltered beach lay.

“Whew! That’s better,” I said.

We pulled the boat ashore and secured it with a line to a huge rock far above the high tide mark. Immediately, Kevin started apologizing.

I held up my hand. “Don’t. It was wonderful. Worth the beating we took on the way back.”

“Your beautiful hair.…”

My hands flew to my head. “My hair?”

“It’s such a mess!” Kevin pulled me close and hugged me, kissing my wet tangled hair. “I have a sun shower bag you can use.”

“I have one too. But I think, since I’m wet already, I’ll have a swim first and then rinse off with fresh water.”

“Good idea. I’ll join you.”

“Don’t forget to shuffle your feet in case of stingrays.”

“Stingrays!?”

 

 

Orion’s Gift at amazon.com

For e-readers other than Kindle, go to smashwords.com.

Cindy’s dolphin post: https://cindyknoke.com/2023/06/18/off-the-beaten-path-super-pods/

Thanks for reminding me of this wonderful time, Cindy.


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How Orion’s Gift Came to Be

While camping in Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, I noticed a woman sitting alone in a van parked near the beach. I never saw her get out of her vehicle.  For several days, she sat in the driver’s seat most of the time, listening to audio tapes and chain smoking cigarettes.

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The beach was beautiful, the sun shone every day, the water was clear and inviting, the place was a paradise. Why would she not get out and inhale that fresh air, go for a walk or a swim, or enjoy this little bit of heaven? I certainly did.

Anneli 4

It puzzled me and I wondered what her story was. Her plates said San Diego. I mulled over many scenarios. Why was she alone? Why did she never get out of her van? Was she trying to kill herself with her own first and secondhand smoke in the enclosed vehicle?

The seeds  of a novel were germinating in my head. A California girl comes to Baja alone. But why? I would make her health-minded, young, and beautiful. Yes, Sylvia was taking shape in my head.

palapa 2

She would need to find a love interest, but who would be down here on his own and why? Men come to Baja alone, looking for … something ….

Each of the characters had good reasons for being on the run, but would that interfere with them starting a new relationship? What if the attraction were so strong, they couldn’t resist?

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

But what if their past troubles are coming after them? Will the new lovers stick together? Will they panic, split, and run to escape their pursuers? And what about that drug runner looking for revenge for a slight on the road?

sunset at La Perla

Life could be so perfect, if only those nasty people from their past weren’t coming after them.

For a gripping story of love and suspense wrapped up in a Baja adventure, why not download Orion’s Gift from amazon.com or smashwords.com today?

Cover design for Orion’s Gift is by Anita B. Carroll. Thank you, Anita for a great cover image. You can contact Anita at anita@race-point.com

eBOOK_ORIONS_GIFT


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Moving Day

Usually we think of moving day as a marathon of packing up boxes and then calling muscular friends or a moving company to throw all the furniture and other belongings into a truck to take it all to the new house. But what if you found a real bargain of a “fixer-upper” and you had a small piece of land to put it on, but that place was farther up the coast from where you lived? Or maybe you wanted to turn the “fixer-upper” into a house to rent out.

These houses appear for sale now and then, parked on wooden blocks to hold up the house on each corner, on a loading area near our town. The houses are sold and then brought in by tug and barge to be taken away to another location, often another coastal area.

A truck with a long low platform drives under the raised up house which is then lowered onto the lowbed and driven onto a barge to be towed by the tug to its new location. The low bed is unhooked from the tractor and can be reconnected to another one for unloading at the destination. I can barely make out the wheels of the trailer under the house at the front of the barge.

This (above) was the scene looking out from my house one day, but I found an article in the Times-Colonist that showed pictures of other houses being moved by this method. The houses are not necessarily  all “fixer-uppers.” The circumstances could be quite different.

 

So if you like your house, but it’s not in the right location, you can now move the house instead of your belongings.  Or you can find a  house and have it moved up the coast to your property. For that matter, if you’re stranded on a desert island, you can just use your smart phone and order  a house to be brought in.

And maybe, if you have Amazon Prime you might save yourself the shipping charges. Ya think?


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Annie and the Honeydew Man

When my sisters and brother and I were little, we lived in a newly built, but unfinished house on the edge of town. The streets weren’t even put in place yet. Our road was just a track through a field of yellow grass. But it was perfect for us to play cowboys and gallop our pretend horses around the trails and up and down the hills of dirt that were not yet backfilled to the new house. We pretended to be characters from the western movies of the day — Annie Oakley, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Dale Evans.  But Annie was my favourite.  My sister was really too little to keep up with us as we tore around on the hills of dirt, so she played Annie Oakley and guarded the house while the rest of us were out on the range.

I don’t know what is wrapped around her right hand, and I just noticed for the first time in decades that there is a doll peeking out from behind her left shoulder.

Fast forward to more modern times. When the Captain and I were on one of our trips to Baja California, we stopped to do some shopping in Ensenada. I found a puppet-style doll that I couldn’t live without. She was the Mexican version of Annie Oakley. What made me even happier, was buying the doll that had to be her partner.  He is pictured in the photo below Annie.

The store proprietor told me that this doll represents the hen-pecked husband, the Honeydew man (Honey, do this and Honey, do that), but in Spanish they called this fellow a “mandelon,”  because he is ordered about. What woman would not want a mandelon to do things for her? I had to have this doll!

In my novel Orion’s Gift,  Sylvia is all alone in the world. It seems that her life has taken a sudden turn and everything has been going wrong for her.

She has “run away” to Baja California and is living in her VW van.

She really needs someone, so I gave her a mascot to lend her strength. Below is a short excerpt from Orion’s Gift, telling about how Sylvia came to adopt Annie.

Excerpt:

In one shop, handmade puppets on strings hung from the ceiling. Each doll had a unique character and, like orphans hoping to be adopted, seemed to call, “Take me with you.” I fell in love with a Mexican Annie Oakley. She held a mini six-gun in each hand and radiated confidence and self-reliance. I paid for her and happily carried her home to my van. I rigged up a spot on the curtain rod behind the seat for Annie to watch over me at night. She’d be my mascot, a reminder that I was strong and could take care of myself.

You can read Sylvia’s story in my novel “Orion’s Gift.”  She’s going to need Annie’s strength to face some of the challenges of being a woman travelling alone in Baja.

The e-book version is marked down to only 99 cents for the next few weeks.  Just click on the link to  amazon.com or smashwords.com for other e-reader versions.

 

 


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Travel Lift

This travel lift can pick up a boat and take it right out of the water. People work on their boats after they are set on a parking lot. It allows access to all parts of the boat when it is sitting up high and dry.

Here the belts are being lowered into the water and slipped under the boat’s hull. You can see the front belt resting in the water, waiting for the sailboat to float over it.

Now the belts are snugged up, making a cradle to lift the boat out of the water. The travel lift, basically a frame on wheels, rolls along over the water, bringing the boat closer to the parking lot.

As it gets quite close to dry land, the operator of the travel lift must make sure that the boat is sitting securely in the cradle and that it has been lifted high enough so the keel clears the level of the pavement.

The lift operator is standing front of the boat in the photo below, using a remote control gadget to lift or move the boat and the “frame on wheels.” You may notice that there are two belts lying on the pavement. These are spares that are not necessary for a small sailboat. Two belts will be enough to lift it. But when it is time to lift a heavier boat such as the Captain’s troller (which weighs over twice as much as this sailboat), the extra straps will be needed to lift it.

 

A week earlier, the Captain had his commercial troller lifted out and put on the parking lot so he could work on the hull of the boat. Now it is time to lift it up and carry it back to the water.

How powerful must that travel lift be to raise up a 39-ft. troller and roll it across the parking lot back to the water. Notice the extra straps, front and back.

Let’s hope the operator gets the wheels of that lift aligned with the pathways for it on either side of the water. You wouldn’t want to miss. I see floating containment “booms” to keep something scungy away from the boats and the shore. Not sure what that is all about. Probably to catch any oil or fuel that might leak from a boat that is in need of repair.

 

Do you like music? Why not go to Spotify then type in The Birkenna Project in the Search bar.  Spotify – Web Player: Music for everyone

Or go to Amazon’s Music sites and do a search for The Birkenna Project. Look for three songs newly uploaded to the album with three more to come soon.


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Camping

A few days of R and R were in order, so we took our old trailer to a lake that was about three hours’ drive from home, and set up camp.

Once the main chores were done, I sprawled back in my lawn chair and looked up.

This is what I saw.  Although there were people camped next to us, it was quiet because they were out on the lake in their kayaks. The peacefulness of the place was a moment to treasure. On the coming long weekend, it would be much more of a party place, but for now, it was wonderfully quiet. Just the whisper of the leaves high up in those trees.

Later we would try our hand at fishing in the lake, but it was so hard to decide whether to hold the fishing rod or the camera.

Now that I’m home and it’s the weekend, I can’t help but wonder how the party is going. I bet it is noisy and a complete change from the quiet few days we spent there. Timing is everything.