Daring Rescue at Sea

Sunday was our "Second Annual Neighborhood Pontoon Party" and we all had high hopes for a day of fun. Like the fateful trip the passengers took on the Minnow, ours was to be a three-hour tour. (A three-hour tour.)

As you may recall on their voyage, "The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed..."  In our case, it began gently sprinkling and gradually turned into a light rain.  The weather didn't dampen our spirits though - largely because our spirits were in coolers.

Then...disaster!  Overboard and into the murky waters of Lake Wylie!  Tension was high.  Someone turned off the party music.  Our Skipper (brave and sure) maneuvered the behemoth boat around with precision and speed - which is difficult in a pontoon - and, just at the perfect moment, The Mate (a mighty sailing man) leaned far, far out over the water, reaching farther than he'd ever reached before. He finally grasped ...

...Keith's hat.  Waterlogged, but otherwise okay. 

The men were jubilant!  The Captain and The First Mate high fived each other.

The Captain and The First Mate

Music blared again, spirits lifted, the women danced, the men smiled.  And then...the unthinkable.  The angry wind whipped and Mary's yellow ball cap was airborne.

If not for the courage of the fearless crew, the yellow cap would be lost.  (The yellow cap would be lost.)  The men ignored Sweet Mary's protests and, with a battle cry of "No hats left behind," they sprang into action.  Again, for the second time in mere minutes, they executed another successful rescue mission.

Jerry, the HERO!

The big reach

                 










During the debriefing, someone remembered hearing Jerry remark, "We train for this all year but we hope we never have to use it."

If any ship I'm ever on "sets ground on an unchartered desert isle," I could do worse than having these guys with me.    

Love and Sunshine

My youngest daughter bathes in sunshine.  She basks in it.  A sunny day is to her as a glorious, crisp, fall day is to me.  Her mood is elevated.  Things just seem to go better on a bright, sunny day.

For the last nine years, Katie has lived in the second cloudiest city in the United States.  All through that time, she's dreamt of the day when she would move into the sunshine.  That day came last Thursday when she packed her car up with all her worldly possessions and headed south.  She arrived at her destination after dark.

During the night, it began to rain and Friday dawned, gray and drizzly.  Saturday crept in wearing gray tones and didn't change her clothes all day.  Sunday, rain.  Monday, torrents.  Isn't that just the way things go?  You're expecting one thing and get the opposite.  

Katie rummaged through her stuff and pulled out a sweatshirt to wear while wondering out loud if donating her fleece jacket had been such a good idea.  We both started carrying an umbrella with us when we stepped outside.  Today started out to be another gloomy day too, but then finally, mid-afternoon, out popped the sun and blue skies returned.  

Patience pays off and finally Kate was smiling.  Then we got the weather alert.  Severe thunderstorm and flash flood watch until 10:00 p.m. 

April showers bring May flowers everywhere but in South Carolina.  Here it's May showers bring, well, rain.

Welcome home, Katie.  

Beautiful April flowers

Road Trip, Part I

After mulling the idea over in my mind, I decided to embark on my very first cross-country road trip, driving from South Carolina to Michigan to attend my high school class reunion.   The unveiling of my plan was met with a dull thud.  Nobody except me was at all enchanted by it.  

Everyone in my family knows I don't like to drive and always avoid it whenever possible so, frankly, they all thought this idea was to ridiculous to even entertain.  At first, they tried to talk me out of it.  Then, Jerry actually offered to drive me up himself and just turn around and fly back.  That idea really added to my feelings of self-confidence and competence.

Their truly impressive lack of faith in my abilities fueled my desire to make the trip.  It was like the ultimate double dog dare! While it is true that during my first driver's ed class I drove on a sidewalk for about a third of a block, I did somehow pass the driver's test on my sixteenth birthday and I have held a valid license ever since.  The decision had been made and was is final.

Having thrown caution to the wind and abandoned all good sense and judgment,  I was so excited I couldn't sleep. Instead of leaving at 6:00 am like I'd planned, I left at 3:01, probably not my smartest move.  The first thing I saw as I turned my first corner was what some people might indelicately call a rat, but I prefer to think of as a bunny with a long, hairless tail. I've never seen a rat in the wild before (if you can call my neighborhood "the wild") and it seemed like a bad omen.

My first leg of the journey would be an easy eight hour trip from Charlotte to Cleveland, a straight shot up I-77.  I'm legendary for being a pokey driver, so I decided that this time would be different.  I would use cruise control and program it exactly for the speed limit.  The first hour flew by.  I checked the odometer.  51.6 miles.  I had expected it to be 60 miles so I was a little let down by that.  I rationalized that getting onto the highway was the slowdown.  I would make up for it the rest of the way.

An hour later I stopped at a rest stop.  It was still the dead of the night but the parking lot was full of cars. Nobody was walking around though.  That spooked me.  All the rest stop horror stories I've ever heard flooded into my mind.  I got nervous about getting out of the car.  As time ticked by, I became more nervous about not getting out of the car.  About the time I was getting desperate, another woman showed up, so I zoomed into the bathroom right behind her.  That rest stop break set me back about fifteen minutes. 

Forty-five minutes later, I was getting drowsy.  The more I thought about it, the sleepier I got so I stopped yet again at a rest stop and took a little cat nap that lasted a smidgen over three hours.  When I woke up, I decided that it was the same as if I'd have left at six am.  As an added plus, my snooze had served to break the trip up, so there wasn't so much ahead of me.  Since nobody really knew what time I had left,  I could still wow them by arriving early.  Then I hit Fancy Gap.  And fog.  Driving through the clouds is exciting!  (And slow.) 

After fog came rain, buckets and buckets of rain.  Other drivers stopped by the side of the road, but Mario Zimmerman pressed on and into sunny weather. 

The rest was an easy drive.  I rolled into my daughter's driveway just in time for supper.  Trip time: slightly under fourteen hours.

Take a bow, Chris.  You did it.  TA-DA!!