Fuck It

Tonight I gave in and turned the heat on. It's July 20th and I have the heat on. Cold, windy, foggy, and dark. Summer in San Francisco.

Rapids

Over the 4th of July weekend I went on a 4 day canoe trip down the Eel River. There were 27 of us. 20 adults and 7 kids. My friend has been making this an annual trip for about 30 years. At this point it is so well organized you don't really have to think about anything except when you are going to have your next beer. I got so relaxed on the trip that all of my ailments went away and my sense of humor came back. On one of the days we only saw one other person besides the folks in our group. We also got to see a bald eagle. He was looking stoic high up on a branch of a big tree above the river. On the first day of our journey people were running into rocks and having to bail water from their canoes. I told my brother that we were NOT going to let that happen to us. The day after that we came into some rapids and hit a rock broadside and flipped the canoe. My brother grabbed his 3 year old son and I went after the canoe. We are still blaming the incident on someone's 40 lb. watermelon that ended up in our cooler.

Before I left for the trip I cleaned out some items from the pantry that I knew I was never going to use even if there was an earthquake. Like the non-dairy creamer that has been in there for years. In my neighborhood you can put anything out on the sidewalk and someone will take it away and use it. So, I gathered a box of food from the pantry and set it out for people to take. They took everything but the non-dairy creamer. I took it back inside and thought, "Well, maybe I should take it on the camping trip just incase we run out of milk."

When we flipped our canoe we were just around the corner from where everyone else had stopped to set up for lunch. As they were organizing lunch they noticed some mash mallows go by. Then a hat. Then they swam out to collect the rest of our stuff. It wasn't until later that night that my brother and I realized that a bottle of Maker's Mark and two bottles of wine had been lost to the river. But someone had managed to save the non-dairy creamer. It floated downstream upright in it's half empty plastic container.

It has been two weeks since our trip. Some of my ailments are back and I have forgotten what a sense of humor is. My brother came by today to drop off some things I had left in his car. Some sunscreen, a towel, and the non-dairy creamer. It is safe and sound back home in its place.