Just (4 times) around the riverbed

Finally have something to write about! I've had a really hard time getting my thoughts down for awhile now so I've been avoiding even opening up a new post for fear of the blank page that would stare at me for 45 minutes before I decided I could probably find a better way to spend my time. But! A few funny things happened this weekend, so I thought I'd share :)

My mom's birthday was last week so my aunt, uncle, mom, mom's boyfriend, and I went out to a lake on Sunday and had a picnic. We packed up the cars and left around 11am because they were really worried all the "good spots" would be taken by the time we got there. They weren't. We snagged 3 picnic tables, decided that the 5 o'clock rule doesn't count on Sundays (or any day really) and poured ourselves some sangria. From the second we sat down, my aunt had her eyes on the lake and was desperate to rent a boat so we could go out. Somehow I got recruited as her first (and only) mate, so we sauntered over to the concession stand and got a boat.

And here's where we ran into our first problem.

Neither of us had ever manned a boat before, so we asked the guy who was shoving us off for a short tutorial. Here's what he said "one way is reverse and the other is forward. And don't run it into any rocks." Apparently he wasn't too concerned about us crashing back into the dock or any of the other boats around us. How about a little more direction there, buddy!? Nope. Eventually my aunt figured it out and we made our way to the open sea...sort of. As it turns out, our "motor" boat was something I think he called a trolling motor, aka it goes about 2 mph. For awhile I couldn't even tell we were moving. Honestly, I think the wind was blowing us more than the motor was propelling us. I decided to use the oars so that we'd back it around to the other side before nightfall. I'm not sure when the last time I rowed a boat was...maybe never...but it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to get it down. At least we were moving, though!

And here's where we ran into our second problem.

Just as we were rounding the bend (cue Pocahontas), the metal piece holding the oar in place broke, which left us with one working oar and a basically dead battery-operated motor... We ended up having to turn the boat around and travel back to the dock in reverse because it was about 3 times as fast as moving forward. We looked ridiculous. It took 20 minutes to go probably 100 meters. After finally getting back to shore, I was ready to give up on the whole "adventure," but we had already paid for the full 2 hours and they weren't going to give us a refund despite the defective boat. But the guy said he'd give us another boat so we reluctantly agreed. Armed with 2 more cups of sangria (my aunt took a detour back to our pic-a-nic site), we got back in the boat, took our positions, and shoved off once more. We quickly realized that this motor worked much better than our last one, which is to say that we were able to go about 5 mph instead of 2. So I went ahead and continued rowing. Everything seemed to be going fine and dandy. We finally made it to the other side of the..peninsula..? Haha I have no idea what to call it, but we rounded the bend and saw our fellow picnic-ers. On our way back to the docks, we were rounding that pesky bend once more.

And here's where we ran into our third problem.

All of the sudden as my aunt is trying to figure out which way to move the lever to turn the boat so we can avoid hitting a couple of kayakers, the motor decides to jump ship! I'm not quite sure how the screws keeping it IN the boat were loosened, but it almost fell completely into the water! Fortunately my aunt was able to catch it! However, since I was rowing, she was holding onto both cups of sangria, so we were in a bit of a predicament. Never one to waste alcohol, she wound up combining them both into one cup, shoving it in my hands, and reattaching the motor. So there I was, trying to make sure we didn't lose either of the oars while simultaneously ensuring none of her precious juice was spilled. Hahaha I'm sure it was quite the sight to see.

And here's where we ran into our fourth problem.

As she was working on the motor, we were just sort of drifting along wherever the water took us. I was faced toward her so I had no idea where we were headed. It didn't seem like a huge deal since we were moving at a snail's pace. Well hindsight is 20/20, my friends, because it turned out to be a big deal as we sailed straight into a bed of rocks...in an aluminum boat... I noticed we were on that path with just enough time to do absolutely nothing except yell "Shannon the rocks!!!" So much for the man's warning... At this point, she still didn't have the dang motor attached so we attacked that first. Then we tried pushing ourselves out of the rocks while still in the boat, but that didn't do any good so she decided she would get out of the boat, stand on the rocks, and push us out. I was a little wary of this tactic as I wasn't sure how she would get back in....but she seemed dead set on trying so what was I to do? When that didn't work, I told her to hop back to her spot and I would just try using the oars again. Eventually, we escaped our rock prison but not before hearing the awful sound of stone grinding against the bottom of our boat. We were sure our boat would sink at any time, a fact which wasn't helped by the gurgling sound we were hearing! But alas, our fears were unwarranted as we made it back to the shore unharmed and, mostly, dry. I sure hopped out of that contraption reeeaaaall fast though!

All in all, I spent about an hour and a half rowing those two boats and I had the blisters to prove it! Sure makes for a funny story now :)