Sunday, October 5, 2025
Since we were in no rush, we slept until our normal time and had a leisurely breakfast. Interestingly, when we first got up, there was no fog, and as the morning progressed we watched it slowly and steadily roll in on shore.
Saturday, October 4 — Our plan was to leave as soon as it was light enough to safely navigate. The days were getting shorter, and the sun was rising later, so we didn’t untie until 0650.
It was calm and peaceful on the water, though there was patchy fog here and there. There were also a lot of rowing (crew) boats out on the water that we needed to be wary of.
This week has been fun. On Saturday, we went to cryptography museum. It was quite boring and a super long drive to get there. I learned that the old computers were really really big. For lunch we ate at a Thai restaurant.
Cette semaine était amusante. Samedi nous sommes allés au musée de la cryptographie. C’était très ennuyant et un voyage très long pour y aller. J’ai appris que les anciens ordinateurs étaient très grands. Pour le déjeuner nous avons mange à un restaurant Taiwanese.
continued... Here were some American machines used in World War II. The little machine on the left was a portable unit. 140,000 were built during WWII. They were also utilized in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, as well. The bigger one to the right was the first production model of an Electric Cipher Machine. The Navy called it CSP-889 (later renamed to ECM Mark II) and the Army called it SIGABA.
They also could do voice encryption. We believe this was a model of a SIGSALY machine that produced encoded records. There were two turntables that synchronized the sending and receiving ends. When played on a regular record player, they just sounded like random noise. A matching record at the receiving end could unscramble them. They held about 12-minutes of content. They were in service from 1943 to 1946.
Saturday, Sept 27 — First thing this morning, Eric went to move car. His plan was to move the car out of the lot and then park right back in it. However, the lot was closed – cars could only leave, they couldn’t enter. Since it was so early in the morning, he decided to see if he could find street parking along The Wharf. He found a spot, but the tire popped when he bumped into the curb while parallel parking. Then he noticed the sign said 10-minute parking. Argh!
He changed the tire with the donut in the trunk, then went to the car rental agency at the airport to exchange cars. The staff in the office told him they couldn’t help him until after he called into the customer service line. He was very frustrated about being on hold for 7-minutes while the staff at the counter were twiddling their thumbs. Fortunately, the agency exchanged the car with no issues, though they did charge $100 for the tire. And he’d forgotten to fill the tank up before returning the car, and we are still waiting to find out what they’re going to charge us for the gas.
Meanwhile, on The Wharf, there was a big event. Christi and Keith watched a giant crowd of people congregate on the pier to the west of the marina, with loud music playing. The music stopped and the whole crowd moved to the boardwalk and started walking east. They thought it may have been a fundraiser walk, but weren’t sure. Here was a photo of the pier after the crowd cleared out.
Once Eric had the replacement car, he headed back to The Wharf. He drove around for a solid half-hour and couldn’t find a parking spot anywhere. Much to his frustration, many of the lots and garages were closed on the weekends. He gave up and finally parked at the outrageously expensive Wharf parking garage. We tried to hurry, but since we hadn’t realized there would be a rush to leave, none of us had really gotten going on the day yet. By the time each of us showered, ate breakfast and got everything ready to go out for the day, almost two hours had passed. The parking fee was $24.00.
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