"There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats." --Ratty

Hey kids,

I can't believe it's been an entire year since the last wooden boat show. Or as the snooty rich white folks in jaunty skipper hats say, "The Lake Tahoe Concours d'Elegance."

I didn't think I'd actually be getting a ride in a boat this time around, but almost as soon as I checked in at the media booth, I was practically whisked away on a 1930s 33-footer called the Tahoe Chick. The above photo is our driver Bruce, and the boat in the background is the "chase boat" with the other photographers taking pictures of *us*. So if I had been smart, I would've chosen to ride in the chase boat to get interesting pictures of a wooden boat, which.... er... was the point of even showing up today. As it is, I wound up with a lot of useless photos like this:



On the plus side... one of the photographers in the other boat was shooting for Y@chting Magazine, so maybe look for Momma real soon in a center spread about antique boats, probably with a staple in her head.

I had a therapist appt earlier in the day, and when I mentioned to her that I was going to the boat show, and also my affinity with boats and boating in general, she decided to go after that like a hound down a rabbit hole. So I spent the entire hour recounting my childhood boating experiences, and promising her that I would create some kind of art piece incorporating a few of the more pleasant memories I have.

Speaking of boating memories, here's one for you, although it's not that pleasant:

When the family and I used to go boating on Gamboa Lake in Panama -- this was around 1976-79 -- they would let me sit way up front on the bow, if I wore my life jacket. One day, I grabbed my life jacket and headed up front, sat down and pulled the old-fashioned orange flotation device over my head, started buckling buckles and tying ties. The next thing I know, a huge, hairy black tarantula is crawling up the front of the jacket. Now, memory and intervening years have probably added extra inches to the overall size of this creature, but what I *recall* is a monster about the size of an adult handspan. Much screaming and thrashing about ensued, and a lifetime fear of spiders was born in that very instant.

So here's a GOOD memory about boating: One of the ladies who reads this blog may remember my on again/off again friend named Alan from junior high and then later in high school and beyond. He was definitely a wrong-side-of-the-tracks kind of boy, but very sweet. Anyway, Alan would show up at my house occasionally, in his boat (my house at the time was on the water) and we would go riding all over hell in this thing. I guess I don't have a specific memory here, just vague impressions of going somewhere once where there were wild peacocks strutting about on the beach, or of that one time when he brought a gun with him, and that was kind of naughty and exciting. Or of that time when there was a single white cala lily on the opposite side of a cove that we were ashore in, and he jumped in the boat and brought it back to me, saying something really super-corny, like "For my lady..."

Okay, it wasn't "something like" that. Those were his exact words. I remember that as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.

God... I wonder where Alan is now.

See, this is EXACTLY the kind of shit that happens when your therapist starts rooting around in your brain and stirring that crap around. GAH!

So I will leave you with this:



Umm... even your daddy and I aren't this comfortable around each other, FREAKS. Love you!