Spartan Gold: Timex Expedition and more

pg 19
Sam looked at his watch, a Timex Expedition.

Timex Group USA, Inc. (formerly known as Timex Corporation), a subsidiary of Timex Group B.V. and its US headquarters, is based in Middlebury, Connecticut. The company is the current day successor to the Waterbury Clock Company, founded in 1854 in nearby Waterbury, Connecticut.

Advent of the wristwatch
With the beginning of World War I there were new demands for timepiece design. Artillery gunners needed an easy way to calculate and read time while still being able to work the guns. The Waterbury Clock Company met this need by modifying the small Ingersoll ladies' Midget pocket watch to become military-issue wristwatches – lugs were added for a canvas strap, the crown was repositioned to 3 o'clock, hands and numbers were made luminescent for nighttime readability – thus making one of the first wrist watches.

1997 saw the introduction of the successful Timex Expedition brand, designed for rugged outdoor sports.

They gathered their packs and hiked the half mile back to their skiff...

The term skiff is used for a number of essentially unrelated styles of small boat. The word is related to ship and has a complicated etymology: "skiff" comes from the Middle English skif, which derives from the Old French esquif, which in turn derives from the Old Italian schifo, which is itself of Germanic origin (German Schiff). "Ship" comes from the Old English "scip", which has the same Germanic predecessor.

Traditional Boats - Americas
In American usage, the term is used to apply to small sea-going fishing boats. It is referred to historically in literature in Moby-Dick by Herman Melville[2] and The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.[3] The skiff could be powered by sails as well as oars. One usage of skiff is to refer to a typically small flat-bottomed open boat with a pointed bow and a flat stern originally developed as an inexpensive and easy to build boat for use by inshore fishermen. Originally designed to be powered by rowing, their form has evolved so that they are efficiently powered by outboard motors. The design is still in common use today for both work and pleasure craft. They can be made of wood or other materials. There is a similar style of craft in Central American/Mexican, generally called a panga.

The nearest town and their base of operations was Snow Hill, three miles up the Pocomoke River.

Snow Hill is a town in Worcester County, Maryland, United States. The population was 2,409 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Worcester County.

History
Snow Hill was founded in 1686 in Somerset County by English settlers who may have named it after a street and neighborhood of the City of London called "Snow Hill". The town received its first charter on the October 26, 1686, and was made a port of entry in 1694.

In 1742, Worcester County was carved out of the eastern half of old Somerset County and Snow Hill, centrally located in the new county and at the head of navigation on the Pocomoke River, was made the county seat.

Major fires in 1844 and 1893 destroyed the center of Snow Hill, including two successive Court Houses, although some eighteenth century structures survived both fires. Following the second fire, much of the commercial area was rapidly rebuilt, so the downtown today contains many historic buildings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Snow Hill Historic District, which includes approximately 80% of the town, was created in 2002.

In December 2010 a Snow Hill businessman started a petition to remove the towns incorporation and revert the area back to county control. The reasons given were lower county taxes, better services provided to the town, and a need for revitalization. The push was abandoned in January 2011.

The B&B they'd chosen had a surprisingly decent wine cellar and a crab bisque...

A bed and breakfast (or B&B) is a small lodging establishment that offers overnight accommodation and breakfast, but usually does not offer other meals. Since the 1980s, the meaning of the term has also extended to include accommodations that are also known as "self-catering" establishments. Typically, bed and breakfasts are private homes with fewer than 10 bedrooms available for commercial use.

A wine cellar is a storage room for wine in bottles or barrels, or more rarely in carboys, amphorae or plastic containers. In an active wine cellar, important factors such as temperature and humidity are maintained by a climate control system. In contrast, passive wine cellars are not climate-controlled, and are usually built underground to reduce temperature swings. An aboveground wine cellar is often called a wine room, while a small wine cellar (less than 500 bottles) is sometimes termed a wine closet.

Bisque (Bisk) is a smooth, creamy, highly-seasoned soup of French origin, classically based on a strained broth (coulis) of crustaceans. It can be made from lobster, crab, shrimp or crayfish. Also, creamy soups made from roasted and puréed vegetables are sometimes called bisques.