chapter2

Chapter 2 - Barge Shopping - March 2000

Not all who wander are lost.

-Anonymous

I sighed. “Three down, four to go.”

With seven barges on our to-view list, we were back in Europe shopping for our own boat. In France, we’d found one barge under contract and another a rusty ruin. A third barge advertised “a bathroom” which consisted of a urinal. Period.

Paul maneuvered our rental Peugeot along the asphalt streets of Nijmegan in the Netherlands. Unlike the small French towns where we’d been looking at boats for the last two days, this outsized city bustled. The cacophony of car horns plus the sulphuric emissions of cars assailed our senses. I longed for peaceful French villages where rock-solid Romanesque churches hovered over stucco cottages like bishops giving benedictions. I missed men in wool suit coats, baggy trousers and berets who chatted in front of boulangeries and stabbed the air with baguettes as if they were jousting sticks.

Employed until the end of March, I used all of my remaining vacation time for this trip. In Holland we expected to find the most promising three barges ranked by our criteria of price, technical specifics, layout, size and looks. My stomach churned when I realized we were three days into our journey. Our self-imposed budget demanded we find a boat in a week.

As I stared out the window at umber brick facades reflected in the canals that crisscrossed the city, I reflected on the six busy months that had followed my first experience of piloting a 60-ton barge into a lock. Our tight timeline had us cruising the summer of 2000. We’d put our house on the market in January and in just a few weeks it was under contract with a closing scheduled for April. I’d jokingly suggested to Paul our barge’s name should be “Our home equity”. We’d started to sell or donate most of the things we’d accumulated during our lives and especially the last fifteen years of marriage.

What we needed now was a barge.

Just three days before, we’d been in sleek, modern Boulder, Colorado. After our 12-hour flight landed in Paris, an immaculate taxi perfumed with pine air deodorizer deposited us at the Gare de Lyon. There a bullet train whisked us to Dijon at 180 miles an hour, so fast that peering out the windows reminded me of the thrill of spinning on the Tilt-A-Whirl at Riverview in my hometown of Chicago. While jet lag interrupted my body rhythms and made me sluggish, the ticking clock troubled me even more. A minute is a minute whether on a European bell tower or the digital alarm clock on our nightstand in Boulder.

Having quickly rejected those three French barges, we found ourselves motoring through the loden green forests of the French Ardennes, past the limestone cliffs of Belgium and the well-tended fields of Holland. With a handful of maps, handwritten directions, and guidebooks, I navigated us to Nijmegan on the Waal River near the German border.

Although this was described in our guidebook as “the oldest city in Holland,” we’d found a modern skyscraper of a hotel in the middle of the big city like a bull’s eye. The stoop-shouldered clerk behind the desk fought back a grin when I asked, “How do you say the name of this city anyway?”

We flinched at the sound he made as if he were trying to clear his throat to spit. The closest we could mimic was “Nī-mā-gen,” minus all the guttural nuances.

The next day, we drove to our appointment to view our third-ranked candidate moored in Nijmegan Harbor. As we crossed an arched stone bridge spanning a grass-lined canal,

Paul said, “Where’s the harbor from here?”

I juggled two maps, Fodor’s and Rick Steves’ guidebooks, and Paul’s Book – a three-ring binder with Internet printouts of pictures and statistics about barges for sale. I shuffled my maps and mumbled, “Umm, umm..” Shaking his head, Paul squealed into an abrupt left turn saying, “I’m going to follow the water.” I squirmed. Since I was directionally challenged, we often joked that the right way to get somewhere was to reverse whatever way I suggested.

We rounded the corner and spied the ochre Waal River, wide as Lake Geneva. I gaped as mammoth commercial barges lumbered past, throwing bow waves the size of Malibu surf. In France, I’d been intimidated by the commercial barges, péniches. These behemoths were at least four times the size of their Gallic cousins, a city block on water, complete with full-sized cars and cranes to lift them on and off. If we bought a barge here, we’d have to travel on the same waterways as these big boys. I watched as they barreled downstream and wondered if they gave a thought to us, their smaller and more humble relatives.

Chemical smoke belched from the modern factories ringing the harbor and hung in the cool spring air. Not my kind of location, I thought. Too much like Franklin Park where I grew up, an industrial town next to O’Hare Airport, with busy railroad tracks in our backyard. I much preferred tiny St. Symphorien set among the Burgundy farm fields of winter wheat, rapeseed and white Charolais cattle the size of Renault panel trucks. We’d decided to moor our barge over the winter at the harbor there – a homeport. Assuming, that is, we ever found a barge to buy.

Ahead, we spotted a cluster of barges tied to the concrete-walled bank. One electric blue barge glowed like a neon sign against the gray sky and leaden water. We parked; I jumped out of the car.

“That’s ‘Blue Boat,’” I said. On closer look, it reminded me of a sapphire set in platinum. The barge’s name was Pallieter, but when we’d seen its picture on the Internet, we’d nicknamed it for its noticeable color scheme.

While I posed, grinning, next to the bow, Paul snapped a photo with our digital camera. I looked at the boat and compared it to the picture we'd downloaded from the Internet. Almost a match, but something was different. Then Paul pointed to a large blue plywood box on the deck. “That wasn’t in the picture, was it?” he asked. We scrutinized the slightly blurry photograph from the web site and agreed it was a new addition.

We paced up and down the concrete wall studying Blue Boat’s 80-foot exterior. She rode low in the water and swooped up gracefully in the bow and stern. A Reubenesque craft, she was twenty feet longer and ten tons heavier than our training barge. But her bow looked different from other barges.

“Ah ha!” I said. “She’s actually busty, isn’t she? No wonder they call boats ‘she.’”

“You’re right. She curves out more in the front than most klippers.”

I liked her elegant lines, but the entire exterior needed painting. Someone had started the job but left it unfinished so the side decks were an artist’s palette of rusty red and various shades of blue. We climbed aboard and knocked on the pilothouse. A young Dutch woman answered and introduced herself as Desirée, the owner. The name fit the tall, slim woman, with her stylishly cut hair and high-voltage smile.

“How do you say the name of the boat?” I asked after we introduced ourselves.

She pronounced it “pal-ē-ā’-tor.” “It is Dutch for ‘wanderer.’”

I liked the notion, but after growing up with the surname Amelianovich, easy appellations that don’t need to be spelled out for everyone appeal to me. I made a mental note to find out if boats are commonly renamed in Europe.

Inside the pilothouse, I could imagine a Navy jet coming in for a landing on the deck. I tried to picture shoehorning this barge into one of the French locks. I could envision this barge banging from side to side with only a few inches of roiling water separating us from algae-covered granite walls.

“Will this fit?” I whispered to Paul.

“Oh sure.” Right. I wish I were half as confident.

Down a few steps, we checked out the rear stateroom. I gave Paul a look of alarm as we stood in the dark, dingy room. Half of the cabin contained a bathtub, a sink, a toilet and a washing machine. The remaining section was a grubby storage area where some laundry hung from a gray rope. This might become our cabin and bath. I tried hard to see past the grime and weird toilet sitting high on a pedestal like a throne.

“This,” Desirée said, “I would like to keep this.”

She pointed at a common wooden toilet seat. I raised my eyebrows, shrugged and said, “Sure.” Why would I want to separate a woman from her favorite toilet seat?

We returned to the pilothouse and then backed down a steep set of seven steps, more ladder than stairway. Seriously considering whether I could handle this contorted climb on a regular basis, I spun around and viewed the kitchen and huge salon.

I stopped breathing. I’d fallen in love.

Desirée’s gigantic dragon plants blocked the view, but peeking through the jungle, I spied a wide-planked, honey pine floor. Soft light filtered through two large skylights, bright even on this cloudy spring day. The kitchen had tall wooden cabinets painted in pea green and indigo. An orange counter topped them as if custom-built for my 5’7” frame. I stared around and edited out the clown figures, abstract paintings reminiscent of internal organs, bongo drums, and gigantic stereo speakers topped with more plants. I clicked the camera from different angles.

Two staterooms nestled inside the voluptuous bow with enough room to add two bathrooms – our ideal layout. We could set up these cabins as guest rooms. The owners used the starboard cabin, painted orange and marine blue, as the master bedroom. A painting resembling a badly infected small intestine dominated the room.

The port cabin, a studio, brimmed with brushes, acrylics and canvases. A blue and green painting of a fanciful artichoke decorated the wall, and candles perched on radiators and shelves. Christmas lights draped over greenery, ceiling hooks, and windows. The décor reminded me of my sixties Hippie period. I was younger than Paul; he rolled his eyes from time to time at me. He’d been into Folk music. I’d been a Jimi Hendrix fan.

The teakettle whistled and Desirée offered us freshly brewed coffee. We sipped the dark roast at an oak table. Overhead, kudzu-like ivy wrapped around the wrought iron chandelier of votive candles.

“I see you are an artist,” I said, automatically eliminating contractions as I'd been taught whenever speaking to someone for whom English was a second language.

“Yes. I paint pictures. Those are not included with the boat, of course.”

“Of course not.” Thank God.

“ I also paint faces at fairs.”

“And your husband?”

“He is an actor, no…” she struggled for the word. Then she pantomimed for me.

“A mime?”

“Yes, that is how you say it in English, a mime.”

She led Paul on a tour of the engine room and the utility room. I stood under the skylight and dreamed. The cook top was a perfect place to cook a coq au vin, or bœuf Bourgogne, while our guests sipped a velvety Burgundy wine, like a Savigny les Beaune. Paul liked to sauté the meat course. Perhaps he’d make an escalope de veau. I’d steam tiny green beans and fingerling potatoes. I envisioned the ceiling in wood instead of the acoustic tiles. Leather sofas and chairs would line the walls. I’d sip wine in those chairs and read. In my mind, brass replaced the plastic, cabinets and walls were repainted, and my books - Colette’s Cheri and My Mother’s House, Mayle’s A Year in Provence, Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking - lined the shelves.

I took a few more photographs.

I wanted this barge.

“Oh my God,” I said as I crawled into the tiny rental car. I twisted as much as I could, grabbed both of Paul’s hands, and looked into his eyes. “I’m in love. Of course I’m in love with you, too, but I love it, love it, LOVE it.”

“I think you’ve fallen in love with two skylights and a floor.” He shot me a smile and squeezed my knee, squashed against the dash.

“Maybe so, but you have to admit that part of the boat is gorgeous.” I cast him a pleading look.

He nodded, but frowned. “But the engine’s old – remember, it’s a 1959 Volvo. It might need to go right away.”

“Yeah, it’s old. But we’re older. We still work.” I squeezed his hand.

Paul’s cheeks dimpled, and I felt like I was beginning to make progress.

The mysterious blue box on the deck, a recent addition by the owners, concealed a big, cheap, noisy generator that would have to be replaced. Without one, a microwave, hairdryer, washer or dryer wouldn’t run unless we were connected to shore power. And without these conveniences, I wouldn’t consider life on any kind of boat, even Pallieter.

“I’d have to start that crummy generator like a lawnmower. It’s a broken arm waiting to happen.”

“You’re the engineer. You know I trust your judgment on systems. Well, how much do you think it would it cost to replace the engine and generator?”

“A new generator would probably be anywhere between five and nine thousand dollars installed. The engine - a rebuilt one, not a new one mind you- maybe ten to twenty thousand.”

I flinched. “Whoa. There goes half of our remodeling budget.”

He nodded. “And the aft cabin bathroom needs work.”

“’Needs work’ - that’s an understatement. It’s a nightmare. And I’m definitely not going to crawl eighty feet in the middle of the night to use the toilet.”

He cast a glance over his glasses. “And all this costs money, lots of money, maybe more than we have.”

“What about the mood in there? Didn’t you feel it?” I asked. I could still see the light filtering in from above, steam on the windows while the kettle on the stove sang, the soft amber patina of the worn pine floor.

He raised his eyebrows, scratched his cheek. “I admit it’s as close as we’ve seen to our ideal. But, please, please try to keep an open mind about the rest of the boats we’re going to see.”

I said, “Yeah, yeah, I promise I’ll keep an open mind,” all the while thinking, No way. My mind was made up. Long ago, I’d learned to trust my first impressions.

We drove an hour east to Geertruidenberg. As we zoomed in and out of traffic on bustling highways, I thought about the money we would need if we were to buy Pallieter. I reexamined the spreadsheet printouts from his scenarios neatly organized in Paul’s Book.

“Figures lie and liars figure,” he’d said. “But here’re the spreadsheets anyway. The first one shows much money we’d have if the Dow and Nasdaq stay at their current growth rate.”

All of our money was in our 401Ks and IRAs, the majority in the stock market.

“Wow. That’s fantastic. We won’t ever need to work again if this continues.” The Dow was at 10000, the Nasdaq at 5000. MSNBC showed stock tickers with charts a mountain climber could scale, especially technology and the latest “dot coms.”

We’d studied Paul’s other spreadsheets, including a conservative 10 percent growth scenario where chartering covered most expenses. Then, a “Doomsday scenario” with a stock market crash and no charter income where we’d be better off financially living in France full time. I’d hoped it wouldn't come to that. I needed my friends and family in the States.

“Let’s get a barge big enough to charter just in case. It doesn’t have to cost that much more and it’d be good insurance.”

I’d nodded. I was all for “just in case.” Although the bulls ruled the stock market in March 2000, who knew what the future held?

The next barge on our candidate list was a floating three-bedroom ranch house similar to the one in which I grew up; beige sculpted-wall-to-wall carpeting, three bedrooms jammed together, one dated bathroom and a tired kitchen done in earth tones off by itself. It would require as much work as Pallieter and had an asking price $40,000 higher.

We stood outside with Mr. De Hahn, the broker for this boat and Pallieter. Like most Dutch men, he was blonde and leggy. “This barge isn’t for us,” Paul said nodding at the boat tied to the bank. “But, we thought your other barge listing, Pallieter, was perhaps a potential.”

Perhaps? I thought. When Mr. De Hahn looked at me, I nodded, trying to look marginally interested. It’s difficult to negotiate when a salesman knows you’re “gut-hooked.”

I looked into his Nordic blue eyes. They gave away nothing.

He said, “A German also liked Pallieter and is coming back for a second visit. You may wish to make an offer quickly.” He reached down and brushed an invisible piece of lint off his immaculate khaki jacket.

My ‘coolness’ evaporated and panic wrenched my stomach. Paul and I exchanged glances. One of the oldest buyer manipulations is the Mysterious Other Party who may come along and snatch something you want away from you. There’s a reason “As seen on TV” ads command you to “Act NOW!” Did the Dutch barge brokers use the same trick? I didn’t know, but it planted a doubt in my mind. So now, in addition to our self-imposed deadline, we started to worry that “the German” would steal Pallieter from us.

Our final appointment was with a broker in the east of Holland near Rotterdam, in Vlaardingen. On our short drive from Geertruidenberg, I tried to count the windmills, old ones made of brick and wood and modern ones like tall white metal fans, but there were too many, I lost track. I caught a scent of salt from the North Sea. Too early for the famous tulips, we drove past fields patchworked with early spring bulbs – hyacinth, jonquils and crocus – ranging from deepest royal purple, through lighter lavender, bright yellow, cream and finally white. I tried to enjoy the scenery, but couldn’t stop wondering about what we’d find next. Could other boats possibly compare to Pallieter?

We arrived at our appointment with another boat broker, Mr. Doeve. A couple had lived aboard the barge he had for sale for seventeen years. Now, in their eighties, they’d decided to buy a house ashore.

Mr. Doeve’s son took us over to the barge. When he threw open the door to the only head, we stared. Just a small sink and toilet. I searched for a bathtub, a shower, even a hand-held shower nozzle, a hose, anything.

Nothing.

“They lived aboard for seventeen years with no tub or shower?” I whispered to Paul. “What is with these people? First the urinal-only room, then Pallieter with its only bathroom eighty feet away, Desirée’s attachment to her toilet seat, and now this.” I took a picture of the head, a difficult task with hands shaking from a bad case of the giggles.

To be courteous, we spent time looking the whole thing over, but it wasn’t ever really a candidate. Pallieter looked better and better.

We'd started barge shopping on Monday. On Friday morning, we drove to meet with Mr. De Hahn in his office two hours north in Harlingen. Along the North Sea the gray water merged with the sky. Traveling for miles along one immense dyke, I realized how much water this small country bordered. No wonder barges and boats were an integral part of Dutch life. I hoped the grim gray weather wasn’t an omen of things to come.

Mr. De Hahn shook our hands and had his secretary brew up some coffee. As cool as the blustery weather outside, he described the purchasing procedure, which was not unlike purchasing a house or boat in the United States. The entire contract was in Dutch. Mr. De Hahn explained each paragraph to us, and promised us a translated version in just a few days. My hand shook when I held the pen. I looked at Paul’s signature scrawled at the bottom of the completely indecipherable document.

Once I signed my name, our house would have to close in order to pay for this boat. We’d have no other source of income. I’d turned down a promotion and would be out of a job in two weeks. I thought of my career suicide and realized that it would be tricky to find another software job. All my adult life, I’d been able to support myself and had done so through two marriages and two divorces. My third marriage of fifteen years was a record for me, but I prided myself on our full partnership, including financially.

We were risking more than our careers. Our marriage would have to stand this test. Would Paul and I be able to handle being together everyday, all day, without a nearby support system of friends? We thought we had a good foundation - we’d met at work, respected each other and were good friends. But it still was an unknown as to whether or not we could stand the isolation and the stress of doing something this challenging.

I thought about Paul’s two kids, Paul III and Suzanne, who were in their thirties. We’d spent their teen years and twenties nearby and seen them through college. Suzanne had just married a great guy, Jeff, and their lives were going well. The kids and their friends were taking bets as to what we might try next. Although barging was a new idea for them, they seemed to take our announcement with aplomb. “Too bad,” Paul III had said. “My money was on your moving to Alaska.”

I held my breath. I wondered what my parents, if they were still alive, would think of my living on a barge in Europe. I thought my dad would have joined us. An inveterate amateur radio enthusiast, a ham, he'd always wanted to be a ship’s radio operator and travel. My mom lived her seventy-seven years within a 60-mile radius of Chicago. Crippled with rheumatoid arthritis since the age of nineteen, she’d vicariously traveled through me. She’d swelled with pride when I returned from China and delivered a slide show to the residents of her convalescent center. Whenever I asked her for her advice, even if the venture would take me away from her, she’d say, “Do it. Do it. You may never get another chance.”

I carefully signed my name.

“This is unreal,” I said to Paul in the car. “Do you realize we’ve committed ourselves to a boat we looked at for only one hour and can’t even read the contract we just signed?”

“Hey, you were the one who wanted to ‘trust her first impressions.’”

To reassure ourselves, all through the two hour drive to our hotel we talked about how beautiful the boat could be (she had great bones), what would stay the same (not much), what would change (virtually everything cosmetic) and speculated on whether An Interested German existed. If we got the boat, I vowed to ask Desirée that very question.

We checked into a creaky hotel in Harlaam and waited. As we sat on the frothy orange and yellow duvet cover, Paul clicked the remote attempting to find some television in English. He found “The Simpsons” subtitled in Dutch, clicked by a sitcom all in Dutch, and finally settled on “Night Rider,” the 1980’s series with the talking Pontiac Firebird. Whatever it takes to distract us, I thought.

When the phone shrilled, he jumped up, grabbed the receiver and held it away from his ear so I could hear too. Mr. De Hahn’s deep voice was matter-of-fact. The owners had countered with a price that was only slightly lower than the original asking one.

“It is early in the season and they have already had a great deal of interest,” he said.

“The German,” I whispered to Paul.

Paul raised his eyebrows and asked the silent question.

I nodded. He nodded.

“Tell the owners we accept their counter offer,” Paul said.

As soon as he hung up, I let my breath out, jumped up and hugged him.

“Can you believe it, can you believe it?” I squealed.

“No, I can’t,” he said shaking his head. We kissed. “Yes, yes I can,” he said with a smile. “I could believe anything right now.” We held on to each other while the room spun.

On Saturday, with one day to spare in our deadline, we drove to Paris. The cool March wind carried a meager hint of spring. Even in the chilly rain, couples of all ages were out strolling hand in hand under the pruned plane trees along the Seine. We looped our arms around each other and kissed, blending in.

“Let's just walk a little further,” Paul said. “There’re more boats ahead.” As we ambled up and down the river promenade, Paul pointed out barges he knew from the Internet. He called out their names as if they were old friends, recited their statistics, and studied them for a long time. We compared paint schemes and window treatments, decided what we liked best and what we might do with our barge.

Our barge.

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