Kelli's Kaleidoscope: Where's the camera???

Ever have those moments when you needed your camera, but didn't have it? I've had a couple of those recently.

During the first instance I was driving, so it was probably a good thing (safety wise) that I didn't have the camera. But man I wished I had one! I would have snapped a shot of Paul on a tractor driving 20 mph on a highway where everyone else is driving at least 65 mph or more. Yep, he was "that guy" on the road that causes everyone to switch lanes and then check their rear view mirror after they pass him, thinking "what's he doing on the road"? I was the car behind him with my flashers on so that no one would hit him (instead they'd hit me, but I guess the theory was that I would have an airbag...which would probably hurt me more than help since I'm short, but that's beside the point).

The next incident involved our sailboat on Paul's birthday. One day I'm going to get a waterproof case that I trust for our camera, and I'll capture these moments. For his birthday, we took off work and went out to Clear Lake near Kemah Beach, TX (the lake feeds into the Gulf). We stayed on the lake part - didn't venture out into the Gulf part (I'm too chicken).

It started out kinda rocky for me - I just have trouble with getting the sail up and keeping the boat pointing into the wind while we get the sail up. So I started out pulling the sail up, then switched with Paul so he could pull the last 6 inches up (it always gets caught at that point and I just don't have the guns to pull it the rest of the way). So I'm now at the tiller (while he's pulling) trying to figure out which way the wind is coming from so I can stay pointed into it. It didn't work, and by the end of it I'm on my knees on the bottom of the boat with my head touching my knees to avoid the boom (holds the bottom of the sail) from coming across and hitting me (because the wind has caught the sail that's partially up - all my fault). We did survive this, and after 10 minutes I was able to speak and relax and enjoy the sailing part. Paul's comment was "I don't remember you being so nervous about this when we were in North Carolina" (refering to high school days sailing at his grandmother's cabin)...to which I replied, "I was young and stupid back then - I know better now" (because now if the boat capsizes I have to figure out how to un-capsize it and pay for any damages that occur).

But that's not the part that needed a picture. The really great part was as we were coming back. We had survived--and had fun--going all the way down to the end of the lake, and had survived coming back (a little trickier to tack with the wind behind you we found out, but we did make it work). But on the last tack, Paul said, "Coming about", I switched sides, and then a crazy gust of wind or a big wave came along and tipped the boat up so that I was literally looking DOWN at Paul. I started to lean way back to try to counteract the boat's movement, Paul was scrambling to try to climb UP to get to my side of the boat, but in the meantime water was pouring over the side of the boat. By the end of it we were ankle deep in water inside the boat, but thankfully we were upright. Paul immediately starts laughing hysterically and can't stop, and I'm left sitting in shock wondering how in the world we're going to make it into the dock without crashing our boat (another time during sailing when I get pretty nervous).

My next research project is to find an electric motor that we can have on the boat so that we can motor out away from docks and cement walls to put the sail up and bring it back down again, and be able to motor into the dock (not paddle).

I do have a "before" picture of us with the boat. The car took the picture (timer on the camera), so that's why it's looking down at us, instead of at eye level.

Below is a pic of the concrete that we had to navigate around. It helped keep the dock area calm and broke the waves, but it still made me nervous and I paddled super hard to make sure we didn't hit it.

Okay, tell me if I'm alone in this, but doesn't this sign seem a little odd to you? I mean, usually with the "don't" or "no" signs, they have a picture of the activity with a circle and slash through it, or a No preceding the picture. But this picture doesn't look like a person swimming. It looks like a person drowning. But they're clearly trying to say no swimming. Maybe they needed to put the words "Swimming", then an equals sign, then the picture of the person drowning. Or just put a person that is swimming inside a circle with a slash. But this sign is just a little disturbing to me. Maybe I'm the only one though.

I'm going to combine blogs here and add Saturday to our Wednesday adventures. Paul installed a garbage disposal. And not just any garbage disposal - one that doesn't use electrity. It uses water pressure only. It's a little slower at chopping up the stuff, but it is so quiet you almost don't know it's running. So that was fun. Paul had fun installing it, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching (there's only so much room under the sink, so clearly I couldn't fit in there to help, especially since I know NOTHING about plumbing). :)