Fore and Aft
(warning: extremely long post)

Rich's had this fascination for owning a boat and boating around the east coast of the U.S. He'll often say to me, "hey, imagine we could just hop on a boat and go to New York instead of driving?" But of course we could not afford a real boat (with motor and sails and bathroom), but then we'd say, "hey what good exercise it would be to be part of a rowing team, stroking it down the Charles river," that then led to "hey we should get a row boat and row around". And so he got his rowing machine and rows on it everyday... but of course it's infectious... the call of the sea air, the beautiful water, the little islands all around us. I've been asking him if he wanted to take a tour of the neighboring islands (there's a real tour, with free water taxis from each island), but his comment was, "why can't we take our own boat?" my reply was, "what boat?" Then he'd shrug his shoulders. Until yesterday...

On Friday, after the run, I said, "hey look, that shop right there probably lets us rent a row boat cheap!" but then he replied, "i'd rather have it be ours and not have to worry about a rented one." So I said "what the heck, let's get a cheap boat and go boat around" and after a bunch of research Rich narrowed it down to inflatable kayaks, either single or double passengers, for a very good price. On Saturday we decided to go to three different stores to see which one had the items we needed, which were: oars, the kayak and life vests. We went to the Sport's Authority first and found everything we needed there, but we had to be sure so we went to one other store: Walmart. Ew! I had to pee bad and let me tell you never use a Walmart bathroom ever! And to top it off, we couldn't find anything we wanted. So back to the S.A. where we got all our gear and walked excitedly out of the store, with dreams of kayaking and a day full of merriment.

So as soon as we got home we made sure our life vests were to our specifications. Rich got out his air pump and I read the instructions. His mother hemmed and hawed, of course, because she's a big worrier, exclaiming things like, "oh what if you drown?" to which we replied, "that's why we have life vests on m'dear" and "why are you making me worry?" or "this is yet another thing I have to worry about!" and "Kelley fell off her kayak once when she went kayaking," "what if you fall off?". I think she looked for ways for not letting us go, (it may be unconscious), in a state of great agitation she called Rich to read to see if we needed permits to go boating about, and reiterated the questions she said above to us. But we inflated it, giving her no mind, and strapped it onto the top of the jeep, placing our valuables (cellphones) into a double zip lock bag, making sure the bigger one had air inside so that it would float if we were to topple over. Then we were off to the little harbor, boat docking area (which is 2 minutes away).

At the parking lot we grabbed our oars, seats and kayak and stepped into the water, where my flip flops were immediately suctioned to the bottom of the mucky muck. I finally had to reach down into surprisingly warm water and wrench them out, making my way to the deep barefooted. Rich climbed into the boat and I followed and off we went for a two hour tour, a two hour tour, of the little harbor. Oh it was glorious!! Beautiful sun, and water, and geese dropping sea air. Lovely. I was in the back so I controlled the direction of the boat as well as doing my job paddling, and a few times we had a scare of falling over the edge, and we got ourselves soaked from the water dripping from our oars, and we sat in a few inches of water, but that didn't even bother us, and we continued around a few islands, watching out for boats and their wake. Lovely lovely. By the end of it, I could feel how sore my arms were and we headed back. At the beach Rich called his mom to pick us up, but she was already there. We planned to go again sometime next week.

At home I threw on my bathing suit and jumped into the very, very cold pool, just to try out our life vests and to see if it would keep us afloat, it did, and I ran out after a few attempts at swimming with a cumbersome thing tied on me. We looked at the map and decided our course for the next few outings.

After a shower we had an uneventful rest of the night...except when I awoke at 12:30 with horrible shooting pains down my wrists and forearms. My biceps were sore too but not in this kind of pain. I asked Rich to get me a pain killer and after taking it I tried to go back to sleep. I'm afraid I was horribly mean to him. It doesn't do to have me off kilter, but he was sweet about. I dunno if the pain killer worked because I was in discomfort for most of the night, but it musta knocked me out because I woke up at 8, this morning, still feeling sore but the pain was gone. That happened last time too when we first went biking (on my legs). And so ended our first trip out on our very own water vehicle!

Okay, I hope you guys won lots of money at A.C.!!
Gotta hustle on my sermon!

Peace be with you and have a great day!

Me.