Soooo, I’d thought about what happens if I lose my key to my motorbike. And like all self-fulling prophesies, this one came through a few days ago. A good reason not to anticipate doom.
The Key Lady works to make my new bike key
I had parked my bike next to the market and upon return, could not find my key.
A man nearby, seeing our fruitless search, came over, and talked with Trinh a bit to determine the problem. He returned a few minutes later with a Yamaha key for a motorbike similar to mine and voila, it worked, not perfectly, but it worked.
So, it was decided he’d drive with me 50 meters to the spot he anticipated a locksmith to be.
But alas, the locksmith cart turned out to be a watch cart.
Trinh had followed behind on foot and after more talk, new plan: we’d take the key and drive motorbike to a key cart.
Well, the search became ever wider and Trinh decided to go to the key cart woman she knew existed about 10 minutes away near her house. so that’s what we did that.
After looking and trying our borrowed key, that while it worked, was not perfect, she got another new similar key, which she tried in the both the ignition and seat locks.
She then got her metal rasp and started filing away on certain teeth, fine tuning the new key. Ten minutes later it worked (better than the key I lost) and she also made a duplicate for me.
I paid her 50,000 VCD or US$ 2.10
This entire process took less than an hour, on a Sunday no less and cost two bucks.
I ended up better than before and it happened because everyone was helpful and friendly.
Vietnam is a place that just works. They find a way to make a solution, usually a handmade solution.
I’m an eclectic person, who grew up in New York, lived overseas for many years and have a boat, Dauntless, a 42 foot Kadey Krogen trawler yacht. Dauntless enables me to not only live in many different parts of the world, but to do it in a way that is interesting, affordable, with the added spice of a challenge.
Dauntless also allows me to be in touch with nature. As the boat glides through the ocean, you have a sense of being part of a living organism. When dolphins come to frolic, they stay longer if you are out there talking to them, watching them. Birds come by, sometimes looking for a handout; sometimes grateful to find a respite from their long journey.
I grew up on the New York waterfront, in the West Village, when everything west of Hudson St. was related to shipping and cargo from around the world. For a kid, it was an exciting place of warehouses, trucks, and working boats of all kinds: tugs and the barges and ships, cargo and passenger, they were pushing around.
My father was an electrical engineer, my mother an intellectual, I fell in between.
I have always been attracted to Earth’s natural processes, the physical sciences. I was in 8th grade when I decided to be a Meteorologist.
After my career in meteorology, my natural interest in earth sciences: geology, astronomy, geography, earth history, made it a natural for me to become a science teacher in New York City, when I moved back to the Big Apple. Teaching led to becoming a high school principal to have the power to truly help kids learn and to be successful not only in school but in life.
Dauntless is in western Europe now. In May and June, I will be wrapping up the last two years in northern Europe, heading south to spend the rest of the year in Spain & Portugal.
Long term, I’m planning on returning to North American in the fall of 2017 and from there continuing to head west until we’re in Northeast Asia, Japan and South Korea, where we will settle for a bit.
But now, my future lies not in NY or even Europe, but back to the water, where at night, when the winds die down, there is no noise, only the silence of the universe. I feel like I am at home, finally.
View all posts by Richard on Dauntless
Dauntless at Sea 