The title of this post is actually a comment I got yesterday regarding my last Blog Post. A New York dude runs some kind of Sports Betting Website made the apt appraisal. “Your information is very interesting, but nothing sensible.”

If you’re still reading, Friend, and you’re willing to read another one of my posts, have at it.

I’m real good at saying nothing sensible.

Actually, I think my life makes perfect sense

I’m the Gloomy Boomer. I am master of my own Blog. I write about my life.

The life of a seventy year old Dude living on an old boat.

Boat’s named Scruffy. It’s a Scruffy old boat…

That makes sense.

Often I sit at my salon table and stare out my window.

A large bird stares back in at me.

Makes sense. He’s waiting. He’ll wait until the cows come home…

Pick another window.

Another bird.

Waiting.

A third window. Yet another bird.

One bird for each window. What’s not sensible about that?

It would make perfect sense in a Twilight Zone Episode.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting here, thinking some strange shit.

Sometimes other objects appear out my window

Like, for instance, this Crane Barge. Yesterday it pulled right in. Planted itself at the end of my dock. Began yanking up all the wooden pilons. Just for the hell of it. Nobody alerted me. The Gulls don’t care. They can work around the crane…

Some Other Sensible People

I should say, other Boat People.

Like the Character that lived on this boat.

Ten years I watched him come and go. I never caught his name. You think I would introduce myself at some point or other. Any normal person would. But he lived across the channel from me. In a whole different marina. A fifty foot wide body of water restricted our communication. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

Thirty years he lived on this boat. Never once did he bother to clean it. No scrubba dub dubs for him. One day he died. Now his boat sits, like one of my gulls, waiting. Not abandoned. Waiting. Waiting to be hauled to the crusher. Where they’ll use a similar crane as the one outside my window to smash it to smithereens. I guess that makes perfect sense. No point in fixing it up.

Then there’s Mary, my neighbor.

No body of water separated us. She lived barely ten feet from me. I’d see her almost every day, stepping on and off her boat. Ten years I watched her come and go. Along the way she slid into old age. Lately, I’d watch her for fear she’d slip. She always managed. I helped her a couple times. She’d smile at me. Once or twice I tried to make conversation with her. I’m a gregarious dude. But for some reason I never struck up a friendship with her. It was as if some kind of inchoate force of incompatibility existed between us. Nothing I caused. She kept to herself. Now I’m thinking about it, this is a trait of Boat People. Not all Boat People. Certainly not me. Still, there are those that come and go in a kind of blissful self-imposed solitude. Mary was one of those…

Last November she fell and broke her hip. The accident marked the end of her liveaboard life. They moved her to a rest home. She got better. Then, surprise, her daughter found her a nice two bedroom apartment in San Rafael. A Section 8 deal, which makes it affordable. A real nice apartment.

She has a NORMAL place now. A normal life among normal people.

She’s no longer a Boat Person.

Living aboard this squalid carver. A boat with no toilet. No running water. No refrigeration. No space except maybe enough to turn around and scratch your own ass. A real hoarder’s nest.

I say to hell with being a Boat Person. If I was her, I’d be happy as hell to have a two bedroom apartment in San Rafael for 400 bucks a month. That’s about a tenth what the rent would normally run.

Here’s the rub. I hear she’s not happy in a nice two bedroom apartment. Among normal people. She would rather be back down here, under these gray skies and blue tarps. Living the squalid boat life aboard her squalid Carver.

Doesn’t that make perfect sense?

Maybe the New York dude is right

Could be nothing I write about makes sense. Interesting but not sensible. Especially the people I’m drawn to. How about this young woman. Debbie’s her name. Pleasant looking young woman.

I introduced myself recently. She lives in this RV.

She lives in there with her three cats. She parks on this little side street behind Molly Stone’s. Just up the road a piece from my Marina. I introduced myself because I was curious how she’s getting away with parking on this short little street. Been a month or more since she first appeared. She parks right beside the sign that says, NO PARKING BETWEEN 2AM AND 6AM, a sign that effectively bars one from camping overnight. Sausalito has many of these signs located around town. I asked her if she’d been ticketed.

“Oh, every night,” she says. “Every night they write me a ticket.”

I suggest she move and find a better spot.

“I can’t move right now. The drive shaft fell off. This RV was a gift.”

A dubious gift.

Her boyfriend is helping her to get the RV running again. He observes me with suspicion, until I explain myself. I tell him I plan to become a van lifer. A van lifer is a dude, in my case, an old dude, who lives in his van.

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” the boyfriend says. He doesn’t live with Debbie in her van. He lives in a house with his mother. Helping Debbie straighten out her RV life has soured him. Possibly Debbie could give up her RV life and go live with her boyfriend. His mother might allow her to stay for a while. But not the three cats.

The cats are a non-starter.

They’re nice young people, both of them. I don’t tell Debbie how naïve she is to think she could live in this gargantuan tub on the streets of Sausalito. She’s already learned from experience.

“I can’t park anywhere around here. They tell me I’ll get arrested. They say they’ll call the police. I don’t know where I can go. I may need to leave town.”

I know a street where she can park. A street here in town I’ve picked out for myself. Where I intend to park my own van with impunity once I become a Van Lifer. A street where NO PARKING BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 2AM AND 6AM SIGNS are conspicuously absent. I’ve observed other stealth vans use this street…discreetly…anonymously…in vehicles that offer no indication of vagrancy. Vans like this one.

Once Debbie get’s her RV running again she might park on my secret street. I didn’t share the info with her. Not because I’m a selfish Bastard. Though maybe I am a little bit. I didn’t tell her because I know she’ll park on this camper’s jewel of a street and within a day or two she’ll be targeted by the local police. Why? Because she’s not discreet. I’m sure she knows this by now. Just about everything in life has a learning curve, including the Van Life.

What makes no sense to me is why she hasn’t been towed. Well, but that’s a job. Towing a thirty foot RV would be a real chore. So for now she’s still parked on that little street, collecting tickets….

Her and her long suffering boyfriend.

I’m a Minimalist

This is a respectable title. It gives me an aura of respectability. I’m not a Bum. Living like a bum is rather a choice I make based on superior intelligence. The crazy thing is, a rational person can actually make this argument. And do it convincingly. We’ve gone crazy with our consumption. Overheating the planet so we can own two thousand square feet of roof and three cars. What the fuck are we thinking? The argument I can make for minimalism is compelling.

It’s also bullshit. I like to live like a bum (or a minimalist) because I’m lazy. I’ve been lazy all my life. Add to this my nonconformist nature. I have this lurid fascination with people who live like real bums. Whenever I feel down in the dumps, living aboard Scruffy, I make a visit to Normal Guy’s marina, where the major league Boat Bums reside.

Nice Tarp!

Maybe not so nice Tarp.

Normal Guy’s dock. Everybody’s under a tarp.

Could be these folks have company for dinner.

More tarps…

A nice young couple paid fifteen grand for this boat. It’s actually nice inside. And plenty large enough for two minimalists to coexist in relative comfort. The only problem, they bought a boat with a concrete hull. No Boat Person with any experience owns a cement boat. This nice couple learned the hard way. Like Debbie in her RV…

Except Debbie’s RV was a gift.

I’m trying to make sense of this nonsense

But what’s the point? I got this far and now I’ll just give up. Give up trying to make an argument for why I make any sense in what I choose to write. I write what I write because I’m the Gloomy Boomer. This is my life. I’m your standard selfish-bastard Boomer retro-dude from Santa Cruz. My only regret…well, I got all kinds of regrets. Blogging helps me feel less unkind toward myself.

Santa Cruz produced a lot of people like me.

People who like to relax. People who balk at making sense.