Mein Knie

On, I think, the Thursday in the guys’ week, Dan Murray was having the 9:00 meeting. He had an object lesson to illustrate one of his points. His point was (if I remember correctly) the values we place on different choices, and the object lesson was as follows: he would pull an item out of a small cardboard box he held in his hand and toss it into the middle of the room. We guys could choose individually whether we valued the item enough to dive for it and try to grab it first. The first item was a blue crayon. I chose not to dive for it, but some of the other guys did. Next was a piece of paper, and then a small stick of pink chalk. As at the first, several people dove for those things, but I refrained. Before Dan pulled out the fourth object, he mentioned that it was the last thing, so I prepared to jump. Seeing a flash of green as Dan pulled the item—a dollar bill—out of his little box, I made a decision to dive, and I did. It was a decision I would later regret. I did get the dollar, but being the first to the floor, I ended up at the bottom of a pile of young men that included Ben Holscher, Justin Lerra, and Andrew Bean, among others. Their collective weight ground me into the carpet in the Fellowship Room of the church, and I came away from the room a dollar richer but possibly scarred for life.

Well, although I was planning on limiting myself to one story per post, I may have to amend that to mean one old story per post. If I didn’t, I would constantly end up being about three weeks behind in what I wrote about. With that in mind, here’s a little update on the news here: The Holschers stayed here for the weekend and Uncle Dave went sailing with Daddy and one of our neighbors. I drove them down to Portsmouth, RI, and then drove back. This is news because the car I drove on this trip has a manual transmission, and it was about the second time I had driven it. It was certainly the first time I had driven it farther than the top of Chestnut Hill. I did fairly well, but this was only because of the lack of traffic. I didn’t have to shift out of fifth from as soon as I got on the highway in RI until I came to the big intersection where Rte. 101 meets Rte. 114 in Bedford! Naturally, starting from there I jerked and bobbed and screeched and felt very conspicuous. However, I went with Daddy on Monday to Portsmouth, NH, and back in the same car, and I did much better—and that time we DID have stop-and-go traffic.

I'M BAAAAAAAAAACK!!!

Well, my faithful readers (or should I say, faithful blog checkers), my title says it all. I am back, back I am. I've been off the web almost as long as Rush Limbaugh was off the air last year. And I have SOOOOO much to write about. Fortunately for you, I will not even try to write it all out in one long long long long long post. This way is good for me too, in that I have many many many many many subjects to write about. So, for story number one.....

As most of you know, one of the first weeks after I stopped posting was the guys' week at Fairwood. It was very hot the first couple of days there. And for some reason, the room Ben and I were sleeping in was the hottest room in the dorm. We tried everything: we opened the window all the way; we turned on a fan in the window; we left the door open to the hall for cross-ventilation; we didn't use any blankets (I didn't, anyway). Yet we were still sweltering. I was perplexed. The next morning I went over to the window to feel what the temperature was like outside. I pressed my hand against the screen and felt.....glass? Then it hit me: the storm window was closed! I slept comfortably for the rest of the week.

Back from the almost-perfect storm

I had an incredibly busy weekend. Incredibly. That’s all there is to it. I bet no one else has ever had a weekend as busy as the one I had. Almost, anyway. I mean, who could? I was busy every second! There was not a moment – hardly a single one!! – where I was idle. And it was an extended weekend too! Have I piqued your curiosity yet?

My incredibly busy weekend started with a bang on Saturday. We had to get out of our Cape Cod cottage by 10 a.m. We got up bright and early and worked and worked and worked. We packed and cleaned and packed and cleaned. Then we cleaned some more. We got out at eleven.
Soon after that we stopped at the Eastham Superette, a nearby general store, for lunch with the Holschers. It was there that I saw the tick on the speedometer, and it was from there that I drove a trailer for the first time. (See Bria’s blog)

All that was well and good. We got home in good time and started to unpack despite the 90 degree heat and oppressive humidity. I was very hot and tired, but I was glad to be home. I planned to spend the rest of the weekend relaxing. Little did I know......

It was around seven that evening, I believe that my plans changed. I found that I was going to go to RI with Daddy that very night. Conveniently, all my clothes were packed, but we still didn’t get out until about nine or nine thirty. (The trip had something to do with sailing, but rather than explain our plans, I’ll just tell you what happened in the end, as it’s almost the same.)

We got to our destination (Uncle Jeff’s house near Newport) around midnight. We spent the night there and left at seven the next morning for Cape Cod with Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Jeff. I got a pretty good sleep in Ben’s bed, but the neighbors across the street woke me up around 5:30 by yelling in Spanish and banging car doors. Oh well.

We got to Wellfleet harbor, where Daddy’s Hunter 30, Eagle Wings, was moored, around 10. I helped unload the stuff from the car and then drove off to Eastham while the older relatives sailed off into the bay. I joined up with the Holschers again at the Donut Hole, and proceeded with them to the Eastham Inn, where they had elected to stay another day. We went swimming there in the pool, and I had an awesome time.

After the swim, we drove in a four-car caravan down the length of Rte. 6 to the Cape Cod Canal. There are two roads that run the length of the canal – one on each side – and we went biking down them. It was quite fun, and there was a stunning view of the canal and the Sagamore Bridge. We got back to the cars after an hour and proceeded to eat lunch/dinner and wait for Eagle Wings to come cruising into Sandwich Harbor (where we were). When it finally did, I went over and joined the crew. After they grabbed something to eat at a nearby seafood restaurant, Aunt Cheryl drove the Mazda (which, by the way, has nothing wrong with it despite breaking down two weeks ago; since then its been driven home, to Newport, back to Cape Cod, back to Newport, and home again) back to her house. I went with Daddy and Uncle Jeff to Newport by a combination of canal, bay, and sound.

Here’s where the "almost-perfect storm" part of the title of this post becomes relevant. One of several reasons that I chose to go on the trip was that the weather was predicted to be very warm. Boy, were they wrong! They weather was, in fact, COLD! In addition, the waves were very steep, and every couple of minutes the bow would crash down into the trough of a particularly tall wave with a sickening mixture of "thud" and "smack." This lasted for about six or seven hours. I was busy for half of it steering and manning GPS units, and for the rest of the time I was VERY busy trying unsuccessfully to sleep.

We reached a small inlet with moorings in it about a mile from Aunt Cheryl’s around 2:20 a.m. We docked on an unoccupied mooring and set about preparing a little inflatable raft we brought for the water. Uncle Jeff and I set out for shore while Daddy stayed on the boat. It turned out to take a lot longer than we expected. In unfamiliar places in the dark on the water, one’s depth perception can be a bit off. Aunt Cheryl got to the boat landing a good ten minutes before we did. It turned out that the boat landing was on a closed beach. Pretty soon a police officer showed up to inform her of that fact. She told him that we had gotten in later than expected and were rowing in. They started chatting, and he kept shining his light over the water. Aunt Cheryl asked him if he could see us, to which he replied, "No." Naturally she started getting a bit nervous. After all, she WAS on a closed beach at 2:30 in the morning. Fortunately, the officer spotted us pretty soon, and left almost immediately.

The next morning, after a good seven hours’ sleep at the Jenkins’, Ben took me on a tour of St. George’s, which is about 1000 feet from his house and where he goes to school and Aunt Cheryl works. It was stately, to say the least. Anyone who hasn’t seen St. George’s hasn’t seen anything beautiful! Well, not really, but the only mar on the school’s beautiful nature is the fact that Howard Dean is an alumnus, and the school is proud of it.

Daddy, Ben, and I sailed some more after that. The sail that day almost made up for the treacherousness of the previous day’s sail (but not quite). The water in the Sakonnet River was smooth, and we were propelled up the river by warm 10 mph breezes at our backs. In fact, we were going as fast as the wind, so it felt as though there was almost no wind at all – not even a zephyr! We reached the mooring we were heading to (it’s owned by the family of one of Daddy’s friends) and Uncle Jeff picked us up. He took us back to his house, where Ben and I played ping pong (more awesome fun) and loaded up the car with our stuff. (By this time it was Monday afternoon, in case you’ve lost track.) After we said our goodbyes, Daddy drove us to the boat again. We closed it up, I hit my head on the boom, we lost an expensive paddle, and then I drove the rest of the way home. It was my second time driving through Boston in only three days!

Well, how was that for busy? I’m glad it’s over, but it’s weekends like that that memories are made of. I had a fun time over all, but I was dead tired when we got home. I might write more, but this post is easily long enough, and possibly too long, and plus I have to go to a birthday party for Alicia Abigail Bright. Arrivederci, my dear readers.

OK, this is NOT a page filler

You may be wondering why none of us Sandford/Holscher bloggers have posted in the last seven days +. The answer? We're all at Cape Cod together. Duh!

We've been having an awesome vacation. It's hard to believe it'll be over in less than two days. It'll be good to get home, but it'll be sad to leave here too.

Caleb has the most incredibly outgoing personality. On Tuesday, he, Ben, and I went to a little general store here in Eastham to buy a treat for a short sail we were going to take in Daddy's 30' boat (not to be confused with the 25' one, the 14' one, the 10' one, the 9' one, the other 9' one, or the 8' one; not to mention the canoe...). I let Caleb pick between ice cream sandwiches and eclair sticks, or something like that. As we took the box he chose (the sandwiches) to the checkout, Caleb declared loudly to the clerk, "I picked those out myself. Know what? He (pointing at me) picked out two boxes and said, 'Caleb, which one should we get.' And I said 'That one.' " He said some other things too, but I can't remember them specifically. I just remember laughing pretty hard.

Another time, he made up a song on the spot about Spiderman. One of the lines in the song went something like, "He can climb walls, he can make spider web. He can kill goo--no, I mean--bad guys. (spoken) No, no, wait; pretend that didn't happen." Of course, everyone who heard him laughed, and for the next few days he would occassionally say something like, "Wasn't I soooo funny when I made that song? Remember how I said 'pretend that didn't happen'?"

We went mini golfing today. I had a really fun time. Ben, Caleb, and I were on one score sheet together the first round, and Daddy joined us the second time (it was a "buy one, get one free" deal). Daddy did REALLY well. Par was 49, and he got 43! For a while he was nine under par. I didn't do as well, but I wasn't too bad. The first time I got 52 and Ben got 51, but the second time I got par and Ben got 52. We got ice cream at Friendly's afterward, and Caleb started talking with a lady and her two kids, a boy and a girl. The lady knew Caleb's name because she and her kids had been playing mini golf one green ahead of us for an entire round of golf. This pleased Caleb immensely. He asked the boy how old he was. The boy replied that he was three. "Ha!" said Caleb. "I'm older than you!" He asked the girl how old she was. She told him she was seven. Caleb responded with mixture of a groan and a wail. It was quite comical.

Well, as usual when I am writing a post on my blog (especially on vacation), it's very late, and I should go. So, tata for now, and probably until I'm back home in the good ol' Granite State.

Page filler

I tried to think of a new post for a long time, but I couldn't think of anything substantial to write. Still, I wanted to write SOMETHING so here it is.

There are a lot of fishermen that come and stand on the beach near our cottage here on the cape. They never catch anything, as far as we can see. Oh, except once. Two days ago, one guy cast his line, which was baited with herring (which practically fill the brook near our cottage, supposedly attracting larger fish that attract fishermen). Someone here noticed him reeling in his line. More than that they noticed what he was reeling in ON his line: a seagull. HAHAHAHA! What a stupid bird.

Tada! My first June post is complete!