St. Peter is the patron saint of (among other things), "cordwainers," which is a specific kind of shoemaker who makes shoes from new leather. In the olden days, "cobblers" were allowed to repair shoes, and to make shoes out of old leather, but only members of the cordwainers' guild could make you a shoe from new leather.
Under Catholic doctrine, you can call on St. Peter to help you in dealing with frenzy, fever, or foot problems.
Some Protestant faiths say that Peter never existed at all, let alone existed and was Jesus' disciple and was crucified upside-down at his own request because he didn't feel worthy to be crucified the same way Jesus had been.
When people say St Peter they are almost always talking about the Peter who palled around with Jesus and now holds the keys to Heaven. They are probably never talking about St. Peter Nolasco, who made it his business to free Christian slaves and formed an order made of knights who guarded the coast during their duty and sang in a choir when off-duty.
St. Peter Nolasco is said to have seen seven strange lights glowing for four consecutive Saturdays over the same place; these lights would drop from the sky and land in the same place each time. St Peter Nolasco ordered his men to dig there, and they found "a clock of prodigious size bearing a beautiful image of the Virgin Mary," so he ordered that an altar be built there.
You mean like our lives are all mapped out for us, from birth to death,
no chance to change our paths? As in are we all simply following a course
down a hill, blindly, believing that we are in control when
in fact we are merely automatons?
Yeah.
No.
So you believe in free will then?
No, not really.
If you don't believe in predestination, then
doesn't that automatically mean that we have free will?
Well?
They aren't necessarily opposites. Or the only choices.
How can that be?
You just want to have it both ways.
Predestination presupposes a higher power, whether that be a god
or merely orderly machinations of physics, beyond our control and
pushing us around like gamepieces: we go where we must,
regardless of whether
it is what we would prefer.
True free will, though, posits that there are no controls on us whatsoever; although, even if you meant 'the freedom to do what is in our physical capacity to do,' we are never truly free, because the universe has been shaped around us by the choices we, and every other thing ever, have made, and as shaped, it pushes against us from all sides, narrowing our options at times, widening them at times, but at every interval it is the same: We have only so much choice as we, acting in concert with everything that has existed to this point in time, have allowed ourselves.
TO-DAY a rude brief recitative, Of ships sailing the Seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal; Of unnamed heroes in the ships- Of waves spreading and spreading, far
as the eye can reach; Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing; And out of these a chant, for the sailors of all nations, Fitful, like a surge.
-- Song For All Seas, All Ships,
Walt Whitman.
___________
The thing about kayaking to a place is you have to kayak back.
This is something I of course have always known, although knowing something as a part of your brain, and knowing something as a thing you act upon are apparently two very different things for me.
In the past I tried to ameliorate, at least in part, the whole paddling back thing that goes along with paddling to somewhere. Many many years ago, I and my brother decided that we would go canoeing and camping 'up North," as we say here in the part of the country that is in the north but is not quite at the absolute top of the country and so we can still say that we are going up north to do something.
We went up north and rented a canoe and had our backpacks and tents and everything ready to go, plus we had a foolproof plan. The plan was this: we were going to canoe upriver all day Friday and Saturday. Then, when it was time to return, we'd drift leisurely back down the river, enjoying canoeing the way the kings used to enjoy it before all the kings were beheaded or whatever.
That plan fell apart about two hours into paddling upstream on a hot summer day. Paddling upstream is a ridiculous thing to do, and I would say I don't know why we thought we could do it, except that I do know: we were idiots. We were the kind of people who, having been raised in the suburbs and exposed to only the most extremely tame kind of 'wilderness' for twenty years, figured we had this thing, nature, licked. After all, if you can go camping for two whole days at Ottawa Lake State Park and survive, then what else could nature possibly have in store for you?
We were therefore two hours upriver before we finally got some common sense, realized this was not going to get any easier as we went on, and decided to stop exercising and just camp for the rest of the day and night, with the idea that the next day we might maybe go hiking or something around there because screw all that paddling. Then that night we heard what was almost certainly (in our minds) a bear, or possibly a tiger, and decided that if we survived the night we would the next day quit camping and go instead to River Falls to see if we could spot Joe Montana at the Kansas City Chiefs' training camp.
That was not my only canoeing trip, or my only camping trip to take a drastic left turn into something way way more civilized. Nearly every camping trip, with or without canoes involved, has ended in disaster/early retreat to civilization. I have given up on camping for that reason (plus: bugs). I no longer imagine that I would enjoy camping. I have no desire to sleep outdoors, or even spend very much time there.
But I have not yet given up on canoeing, or it's ilk, provided that there is a good reason to do so and it doesn't last too long. Which is how I ended up on Lake Mendota one day not long ago, kayaking myself and Mr Bunches out to Picnic Point and back. I lived to tell about it, albeit just barely as evidenced by the fact that it has taken me nearly three weeks to find the strength to put the adventure on paper. (Literally: the strength. The kayaking caused such a bout of asthma that I had to go see a doctor.)
This picture is put here as a service because the story is about to digress for a while
from the actual POINT of the story (kayaking) to something about "mountweazels."
The latest BIG Adventure Squad outing took place without Mr F, and also took place without me calling it Adventure Squad. There is a reason for both omissions.
First, I am not to call it "Adventure Squad." Mr Bunches let me know that in no uncertain terms, which is a weird expression if you think about it. No uncertain terms. I suppose that is simply a fancy way of saying he said it clearly. He said it without using any terms the meaning of which was uncertain. That is, at least, the first meaning of the idiom; the alternate or secondary meaning, according to the Collins Dictionary, is forcefully, which raises the question: can you copyright a dictionary?
This is something I have been wondering for the last few days, since driving home from Milwaukee late Thursday night and being unable to listen to It on audiobook because It takes two hours to download onto a phone. So I listened to a podcast which talked about mountweazels, which are fake words that are stuck into dictionaries in part to catch someone copying their dictionary. (I just looked into it: Dictionaries are copyrightable; phone books are not.)
I digress. Mr Bunches does not want me to call this Adventure Squad, because, to quote him: "We are people, not a squad." Both of those are not uncertain terms. So this is the Secret Adventure Squad, with 1/3 of our team not knowing that he is actually on Adventure Squad, no matter what he says.
Mr F, meanwhile, was left out of today's adventure because I am not entirely sure that Mr F would want to be on a boat. I am entirely sure that I would not want to be on a boat with Mr F. Mr F is almost magnetically attracted to water. He can sense it, wherever it is. One night, for example, we went to "Tall Park," which is actually Rosecommons Park in Fitchburg. Mr F is my charge when we go to that park, because Sweetie gives out the childcare assignments, and she takes the easy ones. So while she hung out with Mr Bunches, who was playing DC Justice League vs. DC Supervillains (TM) on the large slide, I chased Mr F through the mud and then had to roll with him down the hill. While both of those things are fun, I have (as noted) terrible asthma and can't keep up with him that well. Also (this is where I started this thought) Mr F found, somehow, a puddle to roll us through.
On a hill. He found a puddle, on a hill.
The thought of putting Mr F into a kayak and trying to keep him in the kayak while we paddled around Lake Mendota is enough to give me a stroke. I am 100% sure that we would not have gone kayaking, per se, but would have simply been swimming next to an upturned kayak for most of the day.
So we left him home, which was fine anyway because technically this was not just an Adventure Squad mission but was also Mr Bunches' Birthday Transportation Present.
Mr Bunches is enamored of transportation. He talks constantly about cars, buses, motorcycles, you get it: Things that move people. From when he was a little boy he has had a book called Let's Go, which details various modes of transportation. He has graduated from that book to detailed books about airplanes, rockets, cars, trains, you get it: Things that GO. So a couple of years back, we started giving him Transportation Presents. First was a ride in an airplane, a little four-seater that flew us around Madison. Then last year was a helicopter ride that was absolutely terrifying if you were old enough to understand that helicopters should not work the way they work. I know they do work, but they don't feel like they work. They are abominations unto God.
This year, we went the quieter route: Kayaking. Mr Bunches likes kayaks, and we see them all the time around town. Madison is made up primarily of an isthmus between two big lakes, with a smaller lake off to the side, and a bunch of other rivers, wetlands, waterways, ponds, and stuff. We're almost like Venice with less garbage and more college students who don't bother paying attention to traffic signals. (Or blood alcohol limits.)
I would go so far as to say that Madison, Wisconsin, is the kayaking capital of the world, only when I went to check out whether that was true, or what might actually be the kayaking capital of the world, I learned that Homer, Alaska, is the 'halibut fishing capital of the world." Homer, Alaska, is the town that was "The End Of The Road" in those stories by Tom Bodett; it's also featured on pretty much every reality show set in Alaska, or at least the ones that don't feature Sarah Palin putting carcasses into a wood chipper. Homer also apparently has a pretty vibrant kayaking scene, along with being a hot "foodie and art vacation" spot.
I like the idea of Alaska, but I doubt I would like living there. I already hate having 15 months of winter every year here in Wisconsin. Alaska would be a living Hell for me. Nonetheless, I almost went there once as a college student, to work in a national park. I applied for a summer job but didn't make the cut. So I went to Morocco instead.
I always figured kayaking would be pretty terrible. Growing up, I saw kayaks and they were always these thin tubes of fiberglass or something, with a person plunked into the middle of them, sealed in so they looked like a half-man/half-boat hybrid creature. It was like a kazoo had been shot with gamma rays and then tried to eat a man. The kayakers had helmets and those cool double-paddles and goggles and wetsuits, and you'd see them shooting rapids and barrel-rolling like crazy. That was what kayaking meant to me: claustrophobic seating and constant barrel-rolls. I wondered, watching them, how their legs didn't cramp up, and why anyone would want to use a boat that was upside-down half the time. I couldn't see how kayaks had ever been a good idea for Eskimos. Why would a boat that deliberately dipped you into arctic waters be a good thing?
The "modern kayak" was brought about by a man named John MacGregor, in an early bit of Columbusing. MacGregor designed the "Rob Roy" in 1845. This is apparently what passes for kayak 'humor'. MacGregor, see, was apparently playing off the fact that Robert MacGregor went by the name "Rob Roy." Robert MacGregor was the famous (??) Scottish outlaw whose exploits were exaggerated by a poet attempting to turn him into a "Scottish Robin Hood." He succeeded insofar as someone eventually made a movie about him, and that movie sucked. John MacGregor, I am assuming with zero evidence to back me up, was somehow tying himself into Robert MacGregor and/or making a pun. The reason John MacGregor is revered among modern kayakers is because John MacGregor designed a canoe. Look, I'm not the one who comes up with these dumb things. John MacGregor, canoe designer, made kayaking popular around the time Andrew Jackson made having bank panics every 10 years popular. Give or take a decade.
John MacGregor was also a lawyer, back in the days when all you had to do be a lawyer was to say you were a lawyer. That was pretty much how everything was back then: if you wanted to be one of the 'learned' professions (doctor, lawyer, teacher) you pretty much could just be one. It was the late 1700s when people began getting medical degrees. Licenses weren't issued until 1806, but even then a license simply meant you could collect your fees in court, not that you weren't just a sawbones with a bag of leeches.
The modern MODERN kayak, i.e. the ones you can rent for about $17 an hour on a lake around here, don't really resemble those Wide World Of Sports kayaks. They look like canoes. They pretty much are canoes. To me, a canoe is any boat shaped like a canoe. A kayak is any boat shaped like a canoe but covered over with a hole in the middle. Wikipedia seems to focus on the kind of paddle you use to propel the boat to differentiate between the two, which is dumb. Why would that matter? That's like saying a bicycle is a bike because it's pedaled while a motorcycle is... never mind. It's dumb, either way, and Wikipedia recognizes that about two sentences later when it (smartly) agrees with me and says a kayak is a canoe with a cover on it.
(The Brits use the terms interchangeably, which is about what you'd expect, from them.)
We didn't tell Mr Bunches the particular day he was going kayaking. He knew he was going kayaking for his birthday, but having only a vague sense of time/days, Mr Bunches barely knows what a birthday is . We had plans to take him on the Saturday before his birthday, near the end of August. But we didn't tell him that because if you tell him you're going to do something, and then have to change those plans, he does not take it well. Mr Bunches does not care what your reason for not doing something you'd planned to do is. He will cry, give you the sad face, have an awful day, and otherwise make you feel like you are the worst parent in the world, and he is so effective at this that you eventually will start to change your mind against all reason and common sense. "Well," you will think to yourself, "What are the odds that lightning would actually strike us, out there on the lake in a thunderstorm?" This is why you cannot tell Mr Bunches about things that are subject to cancellation.
It was a good thing, too, that we hadn't told him because it did thunderstorm the Saturday we'd planned to go, so rather than face his disappointment, we simply went to the library and had a wonderful day.
The next day, Sunday, it was pleasant and sunny and warm enough to go on the lake, and the kayak rental place was open, so we were ON.
"How would you like to go kayaking today?" I asked Mr Bunches.
"Okay!" he said.
"We're going to go to Lake Mendota and kayak over to Picnic Point," I said.
"No," he said. "We go kayaking on the river."
Mr Bunches said this because the only place he had ever seen a kayak in the wild was at the river where we go to throw rocks in the river. We were there, the Adventure Squad (this was in our pre-squad days), throwing rocks into the river, when two kayakers came by.
It was sort of weird, seeing boaters come into the river while we were on the land. It's like we were in two different worlds, and they suddenly overlapped, the world of boaters on water in kayaks and the world of kids with dads on land. The boaters sort of didn't acknowledge us, and we sort of didn't acknowledge them. The whole thing was strange, as if we'd run into a family member in the grocery store, unexpectedly, while also realizing that we weren't wearing pants.
We could not go kayaking in the river, because not only do I remember all too well the nature of river paddling, but also the only place I knew to rent kayaks was down at the Memorial Union Terrace, where the "Hoofers" rent boats of all kinds.
"Hoofers" seems like a kind of weird name for a club that sails and boats and etcs, but it turns out that Hoofers aren't just into sailing. They're into all kinds of stuff. I went to their website to find out why they are called "Hoofers" but I got frustrated because first I kept typing "Hoffers" and then when I finally got that right the page took a million years to load and I couldn't stand it so I clicked away as quickly as I could. The Hoofers motto is "Adventure Is Out There" which means we have reached the point where kids who watched Up! as kids are now making their websites for their college years. I remember when I first realized how old I really was: I was driving back from a hearing in Waukesha County. I'd taken four of the law clerks with me so they could see me in court and start learning. On the way back, all four of them had a very serious discussion about the Harry Potter books and I have never felt more like a babysitter than that ride.
The Hoofers don't accept reservations for kayaks. Getting into a boat is strictly first-come, first-served, and they opened at noon. I tried to get there as quickly as we could and as close to noon as possible. We were going on the Sunday before Labor Day, and college classes would start two days later. Sweetie and I spent a little time Sunday morning trying to debate how busy it would actually be, and we settled on not very busy because while the weather would be very nice and it would be the day before a day off, which could mean that students would eagerly take to the water for a final day of recreation, we were putting our money on most of those kids are going to be way hung over to go kayaking. Better safe than sorry, though: Mr Bunches and I headed downtown about 11:40 a.m.
Wegot to the Memorial Union by walking through the construction that has surrounded it for the past several years. The Library Mall, with the churches and art museums and monolithic scary library building that looks like it belongs on one of those planets that Meg would have to tesseract to in order to teach people the importance of nonconformity, and the Red Gym Armory castle building and Science Hall which looks more like Hogwarts than Hogwarts, is usually a spectacular place to walk through. But for the past year or two or ten, it has been blocked off by various cranes and trailers and fences, the fountain in the middle covered up, and today was no different. We had to kind of hustle by the construction and then into the Union itself, which is also being renovated.
We need more buildings like this, and fewer glass boxes.
That, too, had caused us some concern, Sweetie and I, because we do not know how to fit into society. We had heard that the Memorial Union was undergoing renovations, and that half of it would be closing down. I had, as it turns out, been in the part that had already been renovated, last year when I took the boys to see Newton's Apple Tree and jump off the pier into the lake. So I guessed that the newer half, which was where I thought they kept the boats and the college students who rent them to you, would be. Sweetie thought the whole thing might close down. It was kind of nerve-wracking, walking into the Union and not knowing whether we were going to actually kayak that day or not. I mean, by now Mr Bunches knew we were going kayaking. I'd had to tell him: even Mr Bunches, who is pretty easygoing, won't just get into a car and not demand to know where we are going.
We walked past the temporarily-closed ice cream stand, and past a sign that advertised what I am pretty sure was a beer and coffee drink, which almost dragged me to a stop with a why. I didn't stop, because Mr Bunches was pretty eager, and also because that would have been pretty melodramatic. Still, I couldn't help but feel superior to everyone around me after that, as I imagined them all being smart enough to get into college but dumb enough to combine two awful-tasting drinks into one awful-tasting mess, and somehow think that was cool, the way kids combined vodka and Red Bull a while back. I am pretty sure that nobody who drank Red Bull, ever, will amount to a person of consequence, and I am equally sure that anybody who mixed Red Bull with alcohol has at least one misdemeanor conviction on their record, one they'll downplay twenty years from now but still won't get the job. Serves them right. Seriously: Red Bull? Coffee and beer? Young people suck so bad.
We made it to the rental office, where Mr Bunches told the man that was helping us fill out forms, the girl answering the phone, and the girl who said, twice, that she was just waiting for someone to come back with her ID, but who probably had been dumped there and didn't know it (or didn't want to admit it to a man and a little boy and the girl answering the phone) that we were "Going Kayaking!" He said that, as soon as we walked into the office.
"Hi!" he told the man. "We are going kayaking!"
The man said "That's great," and then looked at me and said "So what can I do for you?" I couldn't tell if he was joking. He didn't seem to be. I thought about saying "Oh I'm just browsing" and seeing if he would go back to Mr Bunches and help him. Maybe he didn't know we were together?
We signed off on several waivers of liability in which we promised never to sue anyone ever no matter what happened to us even if it was the direct result of someone from Hoofers trying to harm us. I didn't read them. I never read anything I sign. I haven't read anything I signed since I got a law degree. Why would I read something? I have a law degree. I'll sign whatever, and sue my way out later. For all I know, the Hoofers own my house or my kidney or both. I'll see them in Court.
(True story: When I had my heart attack, which I feel compelled to point out was not caused by ill health but was caused by nearly being stung to death by bees five days earlier, a point I have to mention because while I am fabulously unhealthy, TERRIBLY unhealthy, my level of health has not sunk so far as to begin actively destroying my internal organs. Yet. I am not that bad. It took a plague of insects just to try to level me. Anyway, when I had my heart attack, I didn't know I was having a heart attack. They were about to put me onto a treadmill just to see if my heart was at risk of attacking itself or whatever happens there, and a cardiologist came in and said "He's having a heart attack right now," and they immediately made me lay down on a stretcher and began prepping me for surgery. While I was wondering if I should start praying, and also thinking I was going to punch the stupid nurse in the ER who had decided that I was just suffering heartburn and then given me his business card while telling me he was a LARP-er, someone handed me a form and had me sign it. I do not know what I signed, but it was obviously the least enforceable contract in the history of agreements.)
Once we signed away our mineral rights and trademarks, we were told that we could lock up our stuff in the lockers nearby, a handy thing to have for people who knew there were lockers AND who brought a quarter with them to pay for the locker. The rest of us have to just carry all our things with us and hope that if we do tip the kayak, the clever nesting of three ziplock bags we have devised will protect our wallet, cellphone, and keys.
Then it was on to the somewhat humiliating task of picking out, and then putting on, a life preserver vest. For Mr Bunches, this was as simple as grabbing a red one and having me clip it on him.
For ME, this was a matter of finding the largest size, loosening the straps, trying it on, taking it off, loosening the straps, trying it on, and so on, for four rounds, at the end of which I was trying desperately to suck in my stomach because a large sign said you absolutely had to have a life preserver and what if I couldn't get the thing buckled? Finally on round five I simply let out the straps all the way, an admission of defeat akin to buying jeans with a stretch waistband. (It hasn't come to that for me. Yet.) But I got the thing on, and then the two strong young people ho worked there, and who had graciously pretended not to see me stuffing my entire self into a puffy life preserver, picked out a kayak for us and dropped it into the
About the only instruction they gave us was how to get into the kayak (sit on the dock and slide in while they hold it) and which side of the paddle pointed which way (the paddle should be held so that the concave surface is toward you. Mr Bunches, not knowing concave, got his exactly opposite and throughout the ride I was unable to get him to correct it. Eventually I stopped trying. It's not like it made a huge difference.)
Then we were off.
It's always something of a shock to just be allowed to do something dangerous these days, isn't it? These people had me sign a sheet and then set me loose on a lake where people are operating motor boats and sailboats and where there are fish like this:
Technically that is in Lake Monona and we were on Lake Mendota, but the two lakes are only about 5' apart, and don't tell me THAT thing can't portage that gap.
SPECIAL ADVENTURERS NOTE FOR PEOPLE WHO, LIKE ME, HAVE SEEN JAWS AND THUS HAVE NEVER FELT SAFE AGAIN IN THE WATER: Being in a lake does not matter to me. It doesn't matter what kind of water I am in. I am deathly afraid that something -- if not a shark, then whatever that giant fish up there is -- is going to bite me. Lake, ocean, river, brook: It's all the same oat bag. Don't tell me it can't happen. Just three years ago an innocent man dangled his foot in the water and got it bit by a muskellunge, which is like the pit bull of fish. It therefore took an extra act of courage for me to get into that kayak and paddle out onto a lake that was filled with giant eels probably or something, because everytime I looked down at the dark water as we paddled, all I could picture was that scene where Roy Scheider was spooning chum into the water
Anyway, as I was saying, it's always strange in this world of releases and lawyers and leagues and Moms, to just be allowed to do something. No training, no coaches or guides or tandem bikes or whatever. Just here's a boat hope you know what you're doing. I felt sort of alive at that, like how the pioneers must feel. I also felt hopeful that if this turned out badly, I could sue them for not making us watch a mandatory 30-minute video on safety, which was (no lie) the only instruction I was required to undergo the time I went parachuting and was allowed to jump out of a plane all by myself.
I should add, the two healthy people did not entirely skip the safety tips. As we slowly drifted away from the dock, the muscular guy who helped us and who probably had no trouble putting on his life vest, said -- accurately surmising my boating skills -- "If you get stuck and can't get back, wave your paddle straight up in the air. Rescue watches from over there and they'll come get you."
(It's almost like he knew about the time I went windsurfing near Oshkosh on vacation. I went windsurfing entirely in one direction, and then couldn't figure out how to windsurf back, and had to paddle a giant windsurfing board all the way back into shore. I am no longer a fan of windsurfing. People hear that story and say you had to tack your way back in. YOU tack your way back in. Tacking is witchery, and I can't do it.)
With that, we were off.
"Where should we head?" I asked Mr Bunches.
"That way," he said, indicating no particular direction while splashing me with his paddle. So we set out to paddle through the sailboats anchored all around the Union Terrace, and it was super easy to do. Just paddle and paddle and paddle and paddle, smoothly shifting the paddle up and over and down and over and up and paddle and paddle and my god what did we decide to do? After roughly one hundred million strokes, when I was nearing cardiac failure, I took a break from paddling and realized two things:
1. Mr Bunches was actively working against me. He would dip his paddle in the water, get confused, push it against the water, and say "It's stuck!" before pulling it back up.
2. We had gone about 100 yards.
I decided to take a slightly easier pace. We settled in: I would paddle once or twice, and we'd coast, and Mr Bunches would get his paddle stuck, and we'd coast, and that way in about 10 minutes we made it out into open water. It was really kind of spectacular. There's something really neat about being farther out in the water than you'd ever imagined, and it's even neater when you're in a boat under your own power. Watching the shore recede, even in the little way we did kayaking 10 or 15 minutes out into Lake Mendota, gives me the kind of feeling that Lewis and Clark must have had for the first 10 or 15 minutes of their journey.
"See you in fifteen months, Mr Jefferson!"
Once out there, we looked around. Picnic Point was off to our left, a slim peninsula not too far away.
"Should we go to picnic point?" I asked.
"Yeah," Mr Bunches said. So we began paddling there, watching for motor boats or jet skis to come near us so there'd be waves. (I used my expert boatsmanship to steer the kayak directly into the waves so that we wouldn't swamp, a trick I learned from the movie poster for A Perfect Storm:
If they'd had me, Diane Lane wouldn't have had to marry Richard Gere only to have him kill her lover to save their marriage.)
About twenty minutes in, a pod of paddleboarders passed us; it was beautiful.
We slowly drew in on Picnic Point, where things got awkward again. We were paddling up there, and Mr Bunches wanted to try to get all the way into land. I said we weren't going to get out of the kayak simply to land on Picnic Point, because I was afraid we'd never get back in or the kayak would drift away or something. So we opted to cruise in to the end of the peninsula, where there were a few guys sitting and watching us paddle in. They had been talking, but as we came in closer, they just stopped and stared at us. All three of them, just staring, as Mr Bunches and I paddled in closer and closer. Their eerie silence started to spook me, and I began talking too loudly and too much to fight it off.
"Okay, a little closer, paddle, careful, want to go over by the tree? We can head in this way," and the entire time, the three guys just stared until we paddled away under an overhannging tree branch.
At that point, we hit the part of kayaking that always occurs when I am on or in the water. This is the What Now part. People love the idea of boating, swimming, kayaking water skiing, etc. (I love the idea of all those things, except boating. I do not get the appeal of boating. It's just driving around. If I called you up and said Hey let's take my car and go drive around this one really big flat parking lot that's like three miles across you'd hang up the phone, even if I said no really it's okay lots of other people are doing it too and they're probably drunk. Why does it make it better that you're driving around on a body of water? At least sailing requires some technical skill to make a jib or whatever. Canoeing and kayaking and paddleboarding are physical exercise. Boating is just sitting, at high speed.
The What Now point comes in any water-based activity once you remember that we are not aquatic animals and that therefore there is only so much we can do in the water, and 'so much' is actually not very much at all. If you are swimming, you will go through the basics:
1. Wade in slowly until someone splashes you or you get brave and dive under water.
2. Splash some other people.
3. Do a few strokes of the crawl or something.
4. Do a headstand or somersault.
5. Stand there, bored.
(If you are a teenager you will also challenge another teenager to a fight of some sort, because: girls.)
Boating, etc. are worse. Once you have boated here, all that is left is to go there. Or just sort of cruise around aimlessly. It's not like we were out there to fish (THANK GOD) or explore. It's just a lake. We're not discovering the Northwest Passage or something. The time I went canoeing with the Wilderness Club in high school, we canoed from a place, to other places, going from island to island. That made sense: that was transportation. Recreational boating is just nothing after about 10 minutes. I bet people who can boat for more than 30 minutes are dead inside, just hoping that the wind will whistle through their eye sockets and make them feel, if only for a moment, like they have a soul.
We'd only been out 25 minutes or so, and we wanted to go an hour. The kayaks cost $17 per hour, and I had exactly $17 with me, so it wasn't that we didn't want to go over an hour, it was that I didn't know what would happen if we did, so the decision was already sort of made by that: we would head back, because if we got there early (?) we could sail around the boats again, but I didn't want to be late and held in Hoofer Jail or whatever.
It was a good thing we did, too: it took us most of the 35 minutes we had left to get back to where we came from, notwithstanding that I took a more direct route back than we'd taken out. I attribute some of that to Mr Bunches' discovery that his paddle could stuck this way, too, and part of that to the fact that I am basically a pile of gelatinous goo held together by my "Bob's Burger" t-shirt, as opposed to being, say, a functional human being with actual muscles.
TRUE STORY: The other day I got so sweaty and winded doing beginner's yoga that I had to quit after 15 minutes and use my inhaler. Middle age is not going to be kind to me.
By 40 minutes into the trip, all the idea of fun was swiftly evaporating. For me, it was because I was beginning to actually be unsure I could paddle us back, at least in time. To spur myself on, I tried to imagine how big the fish were underneath us, as well as how it would look on the news if I had to actually be rescued from a kayak on Lake Mendota. Because of fatigue. For Mr Bunches, it was the disappearance of a bunch of people on a giant inner tube.
A boat had gone by us dragging one of those inner tubes that carry seven people, only one of whom is having any fun while the rest either are jealous that they didn't get to be next to Kelly, or upset that everyone wants to be next to Kelly. (Kelly, by the way, isn't so great.) Mr Bunches had been entranced by it, thinking it was an awesome thing. Then, about five minutes later, it had come back around, this time the tube hauled up and everyone safely drinking "Bud Lite Limearitas" again and listening to No Woman No Cry.
"They all fell off," Mr Bunches said.
"No, they just got on the boat," I said.
"No, they fell off," he insisted, and then began calling to the boat "Hey! Man Overboard!" but they didn't pay any attention. Death's grim spectre now hung over our journey, making sounds like the creaking of my vertebrae.
We kept paddling on, or at least one of us did, and wended our way through anchored sailboats. We got back into the dock with a few minutes to spare, and sailed in, exhausted but victorious, and proud.
We were now men of the sea, joined to our earlier brethren who navigated Earth's waters by our courage, our strength, our daring,
I couldn't tell if the Belleville Printing Company, with the fading logo on the sign here, is still a real business or not. But the drawn shades and the way the sign is slowly drifting into the past suggest if it still exists, it won't for long.
