Sunday, August 5, 2012

Since I Can

The air conditioning is running which means the generator is running. So I fired up the laptop and the hotspot on the phone, and we're off and running.

I updated the video so it should work now but I see it's not oriented correctly. Now I know which way to shoot it so it will play back right side up. (On the To Do List for today.)

We are anchored just outside of Andrews Bay waiting for friends to join us for today's airshow. Yesterday, we had four boats rafted with us and we'll have at least that many again today. We always arrive first because we have the biggest anchor and the most chain to lay out.

Two nights ago, out here on the water, I met a woman who is a concrete finisher with a nickname of "The Four Foot Assassin." Don't know how she got it but that'll make it's way into the Now & Then pages for sure.

Besides the hydroplane races (which we never get close enough to actually see), Seafair is mostly an excuse to party on Lake Washington. Women are compelled to bare their breasts in exchange for a few pennies' worth of plastic beads made in China and men are driven to heave water balloons at one another between boats.

Two of the boats that were rafted with us yesterday provided us with both: Women in pasties and 450 water balloons. Generally speaking, it's good natured fun with an x-rated component.

It's all fun until someone gets poked in the eye, that is.

Last night, we had a friendly water balloon exchange with another boat which turned not-so-friendly when they launched a tomato. Conceptually funny, it could have proved dangerous and was very not cool. As it lobbed towards us, it looked like a red water balloon headed pretty much straight for me. I was sitting on the swim step and figured I might have to dodge to avoid it but, other than that, figured the worst that would happen is I would get wet.

The tomato landed hard on the trunk a few feet from me and we assumed it was a dud - a water balloon that didn't explode on impact. But, it didn't take long to figure out what really happened and to find the bulk of the fruit floating in the water. Not cool, we had a small mess to clean up but there wasn't any damage.

However, a few feet in one direction and I could have had a face full of tomato sauce and a pretty good concussion. If the tomato landed a few feet in another direction it would have landed in the interior of the boat and been considerably messier. (It was actually launched by catapult.)

The boat's name was "Her Idea." I'm betting it wasn't.

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