October…it was bound to happen, i know, but

DANG it got here in a hurry.  and here i am sitting on my couch, and it’s not even 50 degrees outside…

and once again, i’m trying to remember what, exactly i was so very busy doing all last month.

well, first and foremost, i had to take many pictures of lester.

poor fella, he’s been very neglected, photo-posting-wise.  he seems to be pretty OK with that, though.

les helped kevin take plenty of naps, a good thing for healing kevin’s bad eye.  he was supposed to have some eye laser surgery yesterday morning, but the opthamologist said the eye wasn’t quite clear enough for it yet.  but it’s definitely getting better, so that’s a good thing.

even though kevin’s sight isn’t very good, he was determined to get the boat out of the water.  his original plan was an elaborate one, involving launching the sailboat and bringing it over and then towing the pontoon with the sailboat and i don’t know how the sailboat’s tiny motor could have managed the load.  even though kevin likes to be so self-sufficient, i suggested asking our neighbors to tow us over instead.

so i called frank and linda on wednesday to see if they could do it thursday.  linda told me they were leaving for SINGAPORE then! for three weeks.  holy cow, they really get around.  but they weren’t leaving til the afternoon, just driving to their son’s house in chicago before flying out on friday, so she’d see if frank would be up for it.

i expected them to say NO WAY JOSE, which is probably what i would have said because they were off to SINGAPORE for three weeks.  so much packing and last-minute stuff to do, no way no way no way…

but frank and linda are way more laid-back than i’ll ever be, so frank called kevin to say he’d be fine with towing us over to the boat launch.  after all, it shouldn’t take much time, right?

when is it ever quick and easy with boating?

we started out early enough on thursday morning.  that is, kevin got somehow moved the boat to one side of the dock from between the two docks.  he managed to drag it around before i was even out of bed.  he had this handy hook thing – it had a hook on one end, to grab the dock when we got there and a paddle on the other end.  the paddle was just an added bonus, because we wouldn’t need it.  theoretically.

frank drove his boat over, kevin hooked them up, i climbed aboard and away we went!  meanwhile, kevin got in the van and headed over to the boat launch.  he was driving even though he hasn’t driven at all because of his limited visibility, and of course the boat trailer is complete ruined so the trailer part hangs over the middle line on the road.  luckily it’s a very short drive.

i took a picture of the shore because i knew it could be a very long time before i’d get to see that view again.  unless we do some kayaking, which we really should do sometime soon.  but not today, because it’s cold and windy with wind gusts up to 40 mph.  that’d be some mighty tiring paddling!

speaking of which…frank maneuvered the boats kind of close to the dock, but then…his boat died.  hmm, not a good thing.  he realized that he’d run out of gas.  oh boy.

luckily we had the hook/paddle combination, so it was suddenly my job to paddle to the dock.  frank had no paddle, so it was all on me.  it felt like i wasn’t getting anywhere, but somehow i made it to the dock.

i got the boat up to the dock and kevin used his matching hook/paddle to pull us in, and then lined up the boa and hoisted it out.  it was actually a simpler procedure than it usually is, when i’m trying to guide the boat into position.  we also pulled frank’s boat to the dock so he could secure it and go home and get some gas.

and now, no more boat in the water.  will our boat guy, josh, be able to fix it?  kevin now has confidence in our broken trailer and thinks he could successfully tow the boat all the way to josh’s, but then, who knows it it’s fixable.  it’s always something.

and that’s it for now on this pretty dang early and chilly october morning.

mrs. g. hughes.