Last week, my co-worker found a bright orange blown up boat with plastic ores she just had to have. Somehow, she talked my boyfriend, Chris, into purchasing one as well.
On Sunday evening, we went to Moose Lake after the sun finally started to come out. I had the great idea to blow up the boats in my living room so we wouldn't have to do it at the lake.
With no ropes or bungee cords, this meant one boat went in the box of the truck and the other squished into the back seat, while the three of us snugly sat in the front together. This made me realize that buying a crew cab truck was certainly worth the extra cash.
We debated going to the boat launch, making our boating experience even more official but instead we decided to save ourselves from the humiliation and went to a private part of the beach so we could plunk ourselves not-so-gracefully into our rubber boats.
Lifejackets in hand, Christine, my co-worker, boarded her boat, named Bodan, and only let in about two bucketfuls of water before beaching the boat on sand. I dragged the boat out further, warned her to hold on for dear life, and threw myself in headfirst.
When we were finally situated, we were facing each other. Christine had both ores and I had the chocolate and chips; I couldn't have come up with a more perfect arrangement myself.
Then Chris followed with his boat, which was unnamed. Before boarding, I warned him that sailing with an unnamed ship was bad luck. He didn't listen. This lead to a list of unfortunate events for him.
When he finally got into his tiny boat, it sort of folded in half and sank at one end. He tried paddling from one end, then the other with no such luck. Eventually, he was laying on his stomach with his head and arms flung over the front, paddling with his hands.
We underestimated this technique. Apparently, he's an expert in the doggy paddle, because before we knew it, Chris had caught up with us and splashed us until Bodan had taken on so much water that we were basically swimming inside our boat.
To me, this was fun. To me, this was to be expected. But to Christine, this was war.
After a few words and threats that cannot be repeated in this column, Christine had taken us far away from Chris, which also meant taking the chips and chocolate away from him. He chased us for a while, as we floundered about atop the water, getting a handle of the ores but Christine was no longer in the mood for sharing snacks or playing nice.
Christine and I headed further into the lake, singing about 20 seconds of every song we know at the top of our lungs before realizing we don't know the beginning and ending to any song.
But what was even more embarrassing, were the two little boys who climbed inside a similar boat and paddled their boat more than double the speed than either of our boats could go.
As we headed back, scared to shore by thunder and lightning, we saw Chris swimming beside his boat, also heading for shore. Somehow, the boat had discarded him. Being impossible to board the boat in the water, he was forced to swim through seaweed and muck.
And he said taking out an unnamed boat wasn't bad luck.
