The misadventures of Jay and Joe

Yesterday we had our last summer fling with the family and friends at Echo Lake (Camp Plymouth) in Vermont. What a great day. It was actually too cold to go swimming - not that a little thing like freezing water stopped the middle-schooler among us, but enough to send the 10 and under set to tears because they had hoped to go swimming. Oh well.

We spent most of the day eating punctuated with some activity - frisbee, playing in the playground (I did take an exhilarating whirl on the big swing- whee!), cooking more to eat, chatting, and canoeing.

Canoes - I love going out in the canoe, it's so much fun, it's so wooshy through the water. One of the big complaints I have about Echo Park - and to be honest, this is the only complaint - is that they allow speedboats to get very close to the beach shore and to areas where people are boating. Canoes, in some waves, with boaters who don't really know much more than how to paddle forward have a tendency to capsize.

So, yesterday, 4 of our group went out in 2 canoes. I went with Sam (hah- the Boat of Sam!) and Jay and Joe went out (Jay is my husband and Joe is the other Sam's father). We all went out at about the same time and for fun, when they got close to us in their "racing" I did spray water at Jay, and I did it again when they turned away - poor Jay, his shirt was soaked. Then Sam and I started paddling out to the middle of the lake, leaving Jay and Joe to their own devices.

It was a few moments later when Sam said, "Hey, what's wrong with their boat?" Looking over I saw Jay and Joe sitting in their boat, not rowing, but the boat looked really off. There was just a sliver of it over the water - it looked like it was sinking and they were just sitting in it. "How do you sink a canoe?" I said, amazed that it looked like they had managed it.

The Boat of Sam decided to continue ignoring them as nothing looked serious. But upon turning back a few minutes later I realized that I was seeing more of the boat on top of the water - but none of the two inside it. Oh dear, the boat was floating completely upside-down. So, we paddled over.

Luckily there was a man out on a paddle-boat that got there first. So, by the time we got over Joe was perched on the front of his paddleboat holding Jay's cellphone and wallet and Jay was still wearing his sunglasses in the water trying to pull the boat out (a little exercise is good!). Still not knowing that it was a power boat wave that had taken them out, Sam and I had concluded that it was simply their bad karma for trying to spray us - or something, anyway, it was easy to assume that some bad karma had gotten them. And we tried very, very hard not to laugh at them and create our own bad karma. We asked what we could do to help and Jay handed us his shoes, which we handed back to the guy in the paddleboat who was holding everything else. Oh, and Jay's cellphone is so toast! When you look at the screen all you see is this layer of water swishing around inside - yay, full replacement warranty!!

Finally, realizing we could do nothing to help, we paddled back out - still laughing (karma be damned, now that we knew they were ok, that was funny!) and we watched the shore to see what the group would do when they made it back to our tables. We finally watched them slosh their way back to the table (it was a long trip for them) and since our time was about up, decided to head for shore ourselves. We did, and we landed, and all was fine.

When we got to our tables there was a changing of clothes (Jay had to put on his swimming trunks - hah!) and lots of laughter and questions. As our friend Michelle put it: "I'm really upset that I missed it. And I'm even more upset that I didn't get a picture of it." I was in tears from laughing so hard. Then we ate more and all was good again.

I don't think Jay and Joe will be out in a canoe anytime soon.

What I'm reading: Get Fuzzy

No time to watch anything, it was a long day and late night, and now it's Labor Day morning and I'm looking at the fact that I actually have some work to do. *sniff*