cincibuck
You kids stay off my lawn!
Since last I graced these pages we have moved from our gilded loft at the Guest House at Seal Cove to a less pretentious, but thoroughly charming farm house that looks out onto Poorhouse Cove... which is exactly where FUBAR/SNAFU vacations go to die.
It seems that Jan, the manager/owner of Guest House, forgot that she had rented the place for the second week, so she went back to Anita... now the patron saint of vacationers... who managed to set us up in this place which turns out to be the best loved of the three houses we've been in, but then our point was to come to Maine, settle in, eat lobster and write and instead we've become the Bekins Moving Van Company of Vacationland. I feel like Quadaffi or Sadaam... which house am I sleeping in tonight?
If they made a highlight film of this trip the middle section would have to include my kayak adventure. Picture the sun glinting off of the water, stairs running down a pine laden hillside and ending on a 12 by 14 foot dock with two kayaks resting on it. Picture a 6'2, 230 pound man slipping a kayak into the water and then sliding into the seat. The first few seconds the kayak sways wildly from side to side... it's like the first few feet of riding a bike after not touching one since, oh, about 1984. Then your mind remembers that sometimes balance is restored when the body stops trying to counterbalance each little movement of the bike/kayak/canoe. That settled, I paddle out to the middle of Seal Cove to get up close and personal with some rock bound cormorants and gulls.
Sidenote: Cormorants have a really evil looking red eye, spend more time primping than the Clinique cosmetics saleslady at a Nordtrom's and gulls are BIG up here, I mean this one looked big enough to serve at Thanksgiving. Neither one can sing worth a damn.
Anyway I'm drifting along and taking in the nature info and decide it's time to get back to the dock and swim for a bit. By this time Kathy has wandered down to take her turn in the kayak and offers to help me dock and un-ass the tippycanoe.
First task: get at least one leg out from under the front end of said canoe. I've got long legs, I've also got a bit of a Heinekin's Blister/Keester, and no one in this lifetime has confused me with Rudolph Nuryev. Once, twice, three times, right leg, left leg, back to right leg and I'm still sitting with both legs tucked under the front of the kayak-a-thing. Wife is holding boat and laughing hysterically and suggesting things like, "Just take your leg and put it on this step," which would work if I had a wooden leg. I finally grab my left foot and bend it back against the aforementioned love muscle and now have one leg on the top of the kayak-deathtrap and one leg inside.
Second task: Decide if you can get second leg out of kayak's hungry mouth without tipping over. Wife is rolling on side, barely able to breath due to fits of laughter... wait till we next see the marriage counselor... she's holding onto the kayak and suggesting a yoga move somone like Ghandi could do with ease, that will extract me from the damn thing... where's the pilot's ejection seat when you really need one? I now have a free leg... and hence one foot... on the ladder, but the foot and the ladder meet at such an angle as to suggest to the gulls, who are now observing me up close and personal, that men walk on the outside of their feet. I'm trying to scoot my butt back so that I can begin to get my second leg out from under the kayak and the kayak is moving forward and backward, but my butt is remaining right where it is. An object not in motion tends to remain not in motion I seem to recall from some long ago science lecture. Wife keeps giving helpful hints like, "Turn your foot so the sole is on the step," which of course brings us back to the wooden leg and/or contortionist concept. I begin to have daydreams in which I'm up in the Guest House, trying to eat my dinner while still stuck in kayak.
Third Task: Extraction, wife has nearly wet herself due to laughter, but continues to hold kayak/man-eating device next to dock. I get grip on a) self b) ladder rail c) opposite side of kayak. I manage to lift butt off the floor of kayak and scoot to back side of seating area enough to bring knee of trapped leg up out of the bowels of the damn thing, which frees me to turn and face the ladder enough to get most of the sole of the free foot onto the ladder rung, pull self up, extract trapped leg, and step onto dock without tipping kayak, falling into the water or sinking the dock. Wife howls like Hurricane Katrina. I take an unspoken vow of vengeance.
So what do you do for toppers to that act? I get up early this morning. An old high school buddy, who now lives in interior Maine, is coming over to play golf, drink beer, trade war stories and remember things as they ought to have been, not as they ever actually were. So, I wander around in the morning gloom... after two glorious, spectacular, beauteous, magnificent days it has turned gray and overcast... and decide to make coffee. Locate filter, locate coffee, put 5 scoops of same into filter, put filter holder on coffee maker, add 10 cups of bottled water... much of Maine is on the Mexican waterworks net... to coffee maker, close lid, turn coffee maker on. Sit down at computer and pick up e-mail, check into Buckeye Planet, note that it is less than four weeks to Northern Illinois game, read "Kerry in 08" thread and see that it's still a food fight. Look for tomato to throw as I love a good food fight, listen to coffee gurgling in background, finally hear that spastic burp from coffee maker that tells me that coffee is made, get up and fetch coffee cup from cabinet, turn around and look at coffee maker and note that the carafe is sitting next to the coffee maker and not under the filter/coffee holder. Which brings us to Science Monday... did you remember that water (and most liquids like water) seeks its own level? Did you know that 10 cups of coffee set free to seek its level will cover the top of a wooden stand, create a river to the floor, spread across the top of a 12 by 23 foot kitchen floor like irrigation water across the Vietnamese delta? I'd love to write more, but I see a mop with my name on it.
Cincibuck
It seems that Jan, the manager/owner of Guest House, forgot that she had rented the place for the second week, so she went back to Anita... now the patron saint of vacationers... who managed to set us up in this place which turns out to be the best loved of the three houses we've been in, but then our point was to come to Maine, settle in, eat lobster and write and instead we've become the Bekins Moving Van Company of Vacationland. I feel like Quadaffi or Sadaam... which house am I sleeping in tonight?
If they made a highlight film of this trip the middle section would have to include my kayak adventure. Picture the sun glinting off of the water, stairs running down a pine laden hillside and ending on a 12 by 14 foot dock with two kayaks resting on it. Picture a 6'2, 230 pound man slipping a kayak into the water and then sliding into the seat. The first few seconds the kayak sways wildly from side to side... it's like the first few feet of riding a bike after not touching one since, oh, about 1984. Then your mind remembers that sometimes balance is restored when the body stops trying to counterbalance each little movement of the bike/kayak/canoe. That settled, I paddle out to the middle of Seal Cove to get up close and personal with some rock bound cormorants and gulls.
Sidenote: Cormorants have a really evil looking red eye, spend more time primping than the Clinique cosmetics saleslady at a Nordtrom's and gulls are BIG up here, I mean this one looked big enough to serve at Thanksgiving. Neither one can sing worth a damn.
Anyway I'm drifting along and taking in the nature info and decide it's time to get back to the dock and swim for a bit. By this time Kathy has wandered down to take her turn in the kayak and offers to help me dock and un-ass the tippycanoe.
First task: get at least one leg out from under the front end of said canoe. I've got long legs, I've also got a bit of a Heinekin's Blister/Keester, and no one in this lifetime has confused me with Rudolph Nuryev. Once, twice, three times, right leg, left leg, back to right leg and I'm still sitting with both legs tucked under the front of the kayak-a-thing. Wife is holding boat and laughing hysterically and suggesting things like, "Just take your leg and put it on this step," which would work if I had a wooden leg. I finally grab my left foot and bend it back against the aforementioned love muscle and now have one leg on the top of the kayak-deathtrap and one leg inside.
Second task: Decide if you can get second leg out of kayak's hungry mouth without tipping over. Wife is rolling on side, barely able to breath due to fits of laughter... wait till we next see the marriage counselor... she's holding onto the kayak and suggesting a yoga move somone like Ghandi could do with ease, that will extract me from the damn thing... where's the pilot's ejection seat when you really need one? I now have a free leg... and hence one foot... on the ladder, but the foot and the ladder meet at such an angle as to suggest to the gulls, who are now observing me up close and personal, that men walk on the outside of their feet. I'm trying to scoot my butt back so that I can begin to get my second leg out from under the kayak and the kayak is moving forward and backward, but my butt is remaining right where it is. An object not in motion tends to remain not in motion I seem to recall from some long ago science lecture. Wife keeps giving helpful hints like, "Turn your foot so the sole is on the step," which of course brings us back to the wooden leg and/or contortionist concept. I begin to have daydreams in which I'm up in the Guest House, trying to eat my dinner while still stuck in kayak.
Third Task: Extraction, wife has nearly wet herself due to laughter, but continues to hold kayak/man-eating device next to dock. I get grip on a) self b) ladder rail c) opposite side of kayak. I manage to lift butt off the floor of kayak and scoot to back side of seating area enough to bring knee of trapped leg up out of the bowels of the damn thing, which frees me to turn and face the ladder enough to get most of the sole of the free foot onto the ladder rung, pull self up, extract trapped leg, and step onto dock without tipping kayak, falling into the water or sinking the dock. Wife howls like Hurricane Katrina. I take an unspoken vow of vengeance.
So what do you do for toppers to that act? I get up early this morning. An old high school buddy, who now lives in interior Maine, is coming over to play golf, drink beer, trade war stories and remember things as they ought to have been, not as they ever actually were. So, I wander around in the morning gloom... after two glorious, spectacular, beauteous, magnificent days it has turned gray and overcast... and decide to make coffee. Locate filter, locate coffee, put 5 scoops of same into filter, put filter holder on coffee maker, add 10 cups of bottled water... much of Maine is on the Mexican waterworks net... to coffee maker, close lid, turn coffee maker on. Sit down at computer and pick up e-mail, check into Buckeye Planet, note that it is less than four weeks to Northern Illinois game, read "Kerry in 08" thread and see that it's still a food fight. Look for tomato to throw as I love a good food fight, listen to coffee gurgling in background, finally hear that spastic burp from coffee maker that tells me that coffee is made, get up and fetch coffee cup from cabinet, turn around and look at coffee maker and note that the carafe is sitting next to the coffee maker and not under the filter/coffee holder. Which brings us to Science Monday... did you remember that water (and most liquids like water) seeks its own level? Did you know that 10 cups of coffee set free to seek its level will cover the top of a wooden stand, create a river to the floor, spread across the top of a 12 by 23 foot kitchen floor like irrigation water across the Vietnamese delta? I'd love to write more, but I see a mop with my name on it.
Cincibuck
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