I was down by the water last week,
When I heard a marine mammal speak,
Yes, a dolphin came near,
And he spoke really clear,
But I just cannot translate his squeak.
This really happened to me! I think he was saying something about “Launch that boat and come play with us.” Or maybe, “Where’s the dog food?”
About three weeks ago, my Dad told us to look for the Shpongle CD he had ordered as an anniversary gift. Oh boy! A present!
A day later, my brother called to tell me he was sending a card with some photos. He’d used up a disposable camera I’d gotten him, and now he was sending me some of the prints. Oh boy! Pictures!
I waited about four days, and then I started going into the office. Every day, I’d stick my head in an ask, “Any mail for us?” “No, not today.” After about ten days of this, I was a little embarrassed to ask. And I was starting to worry. What if both items were delivered on the same day, and the mail got stolen out of the box? It’s not a very secure mailbox.
Finally, I got a sheepish email from my Dad. He’d accidentally put his own address as the ship-to address. Just as I was writing him back, teasing him about his “senior moment,” my phone rang.
It was my brother, also sheepish. “You don’t have to look for that card any more,” he said. He’d put insufficient postage on it, so it got returned.
I sat back, laughing. Here I was, all excited about getting a couple of goodies in the mail, but they were just a tease — both senders had sent them to themselves!
On Friday, I had another “Oh boy! A care package” realization. I poked my head in the office. “I’m expecting another box…” I said. “Oh, sure, they probably sent it back to themselves,” Anique teased me. “No, really, it’s…” I broke off. I was afraid that if I told her what I was expecting, I might never see it.
Finally, I sort of mumbled, “It’s a box of homemade wine.” I didn’t tell her that it’s excellent pear, grape, and cherry wine from Yelm, Washington. But Anique’s reaction was completely unexpected. “You like homemade wine? Really? I have a jar of it in my car!” I looked at her askance, wondering why she would have a jar of wine in her car in the parking lot at work. I guess if she breaks down, like we did in Iowa, she could give it to her Good Samaritan instead of an inflatable space alien.
As it turns out, Anique and her boyfriend have a pear tree, so they made a batch of pear wine. They couldn’t even use all the pears, and they still ended up with a lot — a whole lot — of wine.
Since it was Halloween, I went back to the boat and put on my costume — a big boatyard bunny, complete with Tyvek “bunny” suit and dust mask decorated with a Sharpie marker. The ears were real, though. I hopped across the yard, surprising a lot of serious, hard-working folks and making them laugh despite themselves. Nobody in the yard had any candy for me, so I played Easter bunny and gave candy away instead.
But when I got to the office, I got lucky. I held out my bag and said, “Trick or Treat!” Anique had fetched that promised jar of wine, which sure beats candy corn and little packages of Lifesavers.
I’m still waiting for my “Oh boy!” care packages — Dad’s Shpongle CD, and Hank’s card with the photos, and Tom’s excellent Washington wine. But the consolation prize, sweet North Carolina pear wine in a quart mason jar, was fabulous, and that makes the wait worthwhile.
Now there once was a feller, McCain,
And he took matching funds to campaign.
Now Barack has the dough
For his own TV show,
Which makes baseball fans loudly complain.
Speaking of complaining, Barry rolled his eyes and said no more political entries in our Adventures blog. But he just can’t stop me from limerickin’!
Such a smooth car to drive into town,
But I shriek when I blithely glance down.
“Oh my God, did I drive
“At one hundred and five?”
“That’s kilometres,” he says, with a frown.
We’re borrowing our friends’ Camry for a couple of weeks. I had a heart-stopping moment when I was driving down the highway and I looked down to check my speed, forgetting that it’s a Canadian car. Barry, who had already noticed the Canadian Tire money in the ashtray, had to remind me.
One year, when I worked at Expeditors, I dressed up as Cousin It for Halloween. My costume was incredibly simple — all I had to do was wear a trenchcoat, brush my hair over my face, and put some sunglasses over the hair.
I suspect the reason I won the costume contest was actually not how I looked, but how I acted. Whenever I wasn’t at my desk (and I don’t think Expeditors got their money out of me that day), I would stand up, hold my arms at my sides, and scuffle-scoot across the carpet, making high-pitched bursts of squeaking noises. In a men-must-wear-ties business environment, it drew a lot of laughs.
That Halloween evening, I came home from work, triumphant with success. I wanted to take my winning costume out again, so I talked Barry into going to Trolloween that night. “But what am I going to wear?” he asked.
I started thinking, and I got out the life-sized crow my Dad had given us in honor of our boat, the Northern Crow. “How about putting this on your shoulder?” It was styrofoam-light, with realistic glossy black feathers. I dug out a huge green jacket with a hood to go with it.
“You look great!” I enthused, after he was dressed. His face was hidden deep in the hood, and the crow looked real, wired onto his shoulder. He’d added black longjohns, a pair of leather hiking boots, and a big wooden hiking staff. But peering into the mirror, he frowned.
“What do I tell people I am?”
“You’re not a kid any more. It’s only little kids who get asked, ‘What are you?’ on Halloween!”
That night, my award-winning Cousin It costume was a complete failure. Without the bright fluorescent lights of the office, I couldn’t see a thing. And my scoot-and-squeak performance didn’t translate to the large crowd, nor was it fast enough to keep up with the parade.
But Barry was a huge success. Everyone who saw the crow did a double-take and asked if it was real. Over and over, I heard (although I couldn’t see a damn thing) people saying to Barry, “Great costume, man!”
At the end of the evening, he was as triumphant as I’d been earlier.
Since then, we’re not afraid to dress up in non-representational costumes (although Barry did dress as Jolly Roger Rabbit at Burning Man in 2007). Our costume bins are full of things that are colorful and wildly patterned, and it’s just a matter of putting the right colors and textures together with the right wigs, hats, and shoes.
The next time you dress up, if anyone asks what you are, here’s what you do. Put your arms at your sides, shuffle-scoot quickly across the ground, and make high-pitched bursts of squeaking noises. I guarantee, they won’t ask twice.
A little costume inspiration
Following are a few of my favorite Burning Man costume photos. Please be forewarned, some of the images are very revealing, and although there is no outright nudity, you might see more of Meps (and some other people) than you really want to.
The excitement is contagious when one of our boatyard friends launches their boat. Barry and I take note of who is in the slings, and if it’s someone we know well, we’ll go over and watch the proceedings.
A couple of days ago, Barry popped his head down into the boat and said, “Guess who’s in the slings now!” When I came on deck and looked across to the ways, it was Arima, the rubber boat.
Just kidding. Arima is fiberglass, just like us.
Like us, she came from Hilton Head — Dan even stayed at the same marina while he was getting the boat cleaned up and ready for the trip north. He arrived at Bock a week before we did in May. For his summer boatyard escape, he crewed on a boat to Ireland, arriving back a day after we returned from our Burning Man trip.
At 35 feet, Arima is about the same size as Flutterby, but outfitted very differently. She’s a distinctive white sloop with green canvas and classic lines. And except for the side trips and surprises, Dan would have left long ago.
His first launch date was a Friday in June. It was the last day to be launched before the yard closed for a week’s vacation. I saw the Travelift pick him up, and as he touched up the bottom with paint, I snapped some pictures. It was Dan’s big day, and I thought he’d enjoy the photos later.
Dan tied up at the dock and said farewell to the boatyard employees. He planned to leave the following morning. That evening, Barry and I stopped by with a tiny (1-1/1×2-inches) homemade bon voyage card.
But it was not to be. Water rose in the bilge, and his bilge pump ran often to keep up. So he sat there, at the dock, waiting 10 days for the employees to return. When they did, they plucked him out of the water and put him a new spot.
Anyone else would have been despondent, but Dan took it in stride. He went to work on his cutlass (or is that cutless? nautical terms are weird!) bearing, laying on top of the engine with his head down in the bilge. It was uncomfortable, and I know he was frustrated, but he never complained. He’s a good example that way.
A week or so later, Dan told us he was done, and the problem was fixed. The Travelift picked him up and gently put him back in the water.
This time, water poured in so fast, they lifted him out almost immediately and blocked him up again. I could no longer restrain myself. I published a limerick about his travails and began calling Arima the “rubber boat,” because she bounces out of the water when you put her in!
Dan decided he was over his head, and hired the Bock crew to repair the now-cracked stern tube. Meanwhile, he helped out another boater, an Irishman named Steven. We’d heard that Steven and his nearly-mute Chinese girlfriend were going to launch the enormous mystery vessel in the sandpit “soon” and sail it to Ireland, just the two of them.
A couple of weeks later, I was walking by Arima on my way to the bathroom. Dan stopped me, saying “Hey, can you give me a ride to town next week?” “Sure, where are you going?” I asked. “Ireland!” he said, with a huge grin.
So Dan left his boat in storage and sailed off to Ireland, blogging the whole way. When he came back, it took less than a month to get ready to go.
Last week, when he said he was ready to launch, I chuckled. “He’s like the boy who cried wolf. I hope he’s getting a frequent-launching discount.”
I didn’t want to jinx him, so when Barry told me Arima was in the slings, I kept my camera to myself. About an hour later, on my way to the office, I walked by the boat, still hanging there. Dale was underneath, looking more serious than usual as he chewed on a toothpick.
But what was this? The bottom was wet — the boat had been launched and pulled back out AGAIN!
This time, Dale and Larry and Randy were able to quickly fix two bad through-hull fittings, and Dan made it to the dock where he’d spent that first week in July. Since we know him better than when he first launched, we took a bottle of rum over and sat on Arima, enjoying the feeling of being on a boat that’s floating. “Woo hoo! A wake!”
The next morning, despite high winds and rain, Dan slipped his lines and motored away. At my request, he blew his horn as he left. We were down below, in the middle of a tricky and time-dependent fiberglass layup, so I could only peek out through the portlight. Barry managed to get a sticky, Tyvek-covered arm out the hatch for one last wave.
On my way past Dan’s spot, I took the wooden blocks and pads that had held up Arima, and the chains from his jackstands, and I wrote his name on the ground. A little memorial to the good he did here in the boatyard.
This morning, I have mixed emotions. I’m glad Dan is out there cruising, but I’m feeling sorry for myself. There have been many days when I was depressed and Dan cheered me up. Now I have to cheer myself up.
No, wait, who’s that driving into the boatyard? It’s another Dan! Dan Smith, who rescued us and took us to Raleigh back in December, has just come back for the first time in months. Here’s another laid-back Dan with a positive attitude — just what I needed right now.
Maybe my message on the ground brought him back from Raleigh? Instead of a farewell to Dan of Arima, it’s welcome to Dan of Funny Farm, and all the other positive and cheerful Dans — and people with other names — of the world.
Back in the 80’s, Sam Devlin designed a beautiful sailboat with classic lines. He named her Nancy’s China, a name I found strange but pretty.
I didn’t find out the reason for the name until decades later. It turns out that when the boat was designed, the public was up in arms about some extravagant china Nancy Reagan had purchased for the White House. And this lovely boat, a 15-foot trailerable, could be built for about the same amount as a single place setting.
This week, there’s been a bit of hullaballoo about Sarah Palin’s $150,000 campaign wardrobe. I’ve been thinking about that $150,000, and I can’t imagine spending that much on clothes in my lifetime, let alone in a month. Then again, I shop at the Salvation Army.
Anyway, going back to Sam Devlin, I think there’s an opportunity lurking in this silliness.
There are a few boats around here that cost about $150,000. Some of them look great, slightly maverick, but with lousy performance. If you’d like to buy one, we have the perfect name: Sarah’s Wardrobe.
Our boat is not eligible. Besides costing much less than $150,000, it’s not going to be launched in time for election day. And we had to pay for it ourselves.
Every fall, around election time, the signs sprout like weeds in the median of Montlake Boulevard. Democrats, Republicans, ballot initiatives — hundreds of political signs of every color. And every year, Jeff drives along, indignant, and yanks them out, only to have them sprout again.
We were out for a sunny, relaxed evening of boating when Jeff told me about this. He’s a laid-back blues musician, but when he started talking about his crusade, his eyes flashed with real anger.
Why the crusade? Because the signs are illegally placed on the road right-of-way. Since no one will enforce this, Jeff takes the law into his own hands.
What is strange about this is that Jeff is not the only one. He’s just lucky that his tires are intact.
Three years ago, at a party, I heard the following amazing tale from another, completely unrelated Seattle friend. I’ll call him Floyd, because while he’ll tell the story to anyone over a beer, he doesn’t particularly want publicity.
In 2004, a four-by-eight-foot Bush-Cheney sign appeared beside a freeway north of Seattle. It stood on the grassy verge between the interstate and a small side road — smack dab in the public right-of-way.
Floyd drove past this sign every day, and like Jeff, it bugged him. He and several of his friends contacted the Department of Transportation, notifying them of the transgression and asking that the sign be removed.
The Department of Transportation took no action.
Like Jeff, Floyd decided to take the law into his own hands. But this wasn’t a sign you could just yank out of the ground. He purchased a cordless saw, and one evening, he drove out to the sign and cut it down. “The thing was huge,” he said. “It stood way over my head.”
Mission accomplished. But like Jeff’s signs, this one sprouted back like a giant weed.
Frustrated, Floyd drove back with his saw one Sunday evening. “Going back was definitely a mistake,” he admitted.
As he got out of his car with the saw, he was blinded by bright lights. Two huge men leapt out of a camouflage net, screaming obscenities at him.
Floyd’s first thought was that he could defend himself with the saw. Then he had second thoughts. “I thought I could take off somebody’s leg with this thing, and that would get me into real trouble!” He deliberately tossed the saw into the car and faced the enemy unarmed.
The two men advanced on him and began to rough him up. Both were over six feet tall, and Floyd isn’t a particularly tall or beefy fellow. He did the obvious thing: He ran. As he ran, he thought about his situation.
Since he was the one being assaulted, the smart thing would be to call the police. He stopped and pulled out his cell phone.
“I shouldn’t have done that. I should have kept running while I got the phone out.” Before he could make the call, his attackers caught up with him. Ouch.
They knocked him to the ground, tied his hands, and one of them put his heavy boot in the middle of Floyd’s back. It looked like a brutal beating was imminent. At that point, Floyd began screaming to attract attention, which annoyed and disconcerted his attackers.
“Go ahead. Call the cops,” they said.
When the police came, Floyd was tied up, face-down on the ground. “Am I under arrest?” Floyd asked. “Because if I’m not, you’d better untie me.” The policeman ignored the request.
“It seemed like the cop talked with the men forever, out of earshot, leaving me there tied up.” When the policeman came back, he arrested Floyd. He was unsure what to charge him with, and finally decided on something about defacing a political advertisement. “I’m not sure if I should impound your car. It’s not parked illegally, but…” the policeman said.
Floyd spent four hours in jail. When he returned to his car, all four tires were slashed. “Multiple times,” he said.
Floyd had his day in court, with mixed results. The sign was placed illegally, but it is also illegal to deface a political sign. Evidently, the two don’t cancel each other out.
Still, the judge and prosecuting attorney were sympathetic liberals, even if they couldn’t say so. According to Floyd, “At the final hearing, the judge joked, ‘Are you ready to do your volunteer service for the Bush-Cheney campaign?'”
Floyd’s community service involved planting trees in a park with some little old ladies, an activity he enjoyed. It was fitting punishment for cutting down an illegal weed. Still, he won’t be taking the law into his own hands like that again.
That’s OK, because I know Jeff is still on his crusade. I only hope that he’s keeping an eye out for camouflaged vigilantes, taking the law into their own hands, as he removes the political weeds in the public right-of-way.
One may purchase three items, no more,
After nine at the Food Lion store.
So our cart, piled with food,
Made the checker quite rude
And she scowled ’til we rolled out the door.
We decided to shop for a basket full of groceries after dinner in town, but what a mistake! We were the only people buying more than three items, and the checkout clerk treated us like pariahs. I guess she wants us to start shopping at Piggly Wiggly?
Well, that last piece of mine was a total flop. Across the internet, I could hear my readers rolling their eyes. They wanted a lively Burning Man report with crazy costumes, naked people, and dancing boys. Instead, I got all serious.Sorry ’bout that.
I will now proceed to Day Two, when the sun came out with all the crazy costumes, naked people, and dancing boys.
The dancing boys were on top of a large Penske rental truck parked across from the Squid Wagon. One of them wore only a pair of fur hot pants with a long, furry tail. He was my favorite, and I worried that he might trip over his tail and fall off the truck.
The sun was bearing down on us, so we set to work on our flaccid shade structure. First, we unloaded the roof of the van — two bicycles, a room-sized piece of Berber carpet, and one disassembled porta-potty.
That porta-potty was the reason we were camping with the Lamplighters.
Sometime in July, our cell phone rang in the Morehead City Salvation Army, where we were shopping (unsuccessfully; it’s a boring thrift store) for costumes. A Burner named Cosmo had seen my number posted on a Burning Man ride board. He wanted to know if I’d be interested in carrying a large parcel in our van, in exchange for some gas money. “It’s a shower for the Lamplighters,” he told me.
Cosmo asked me “Where are you camping?” I admitted that we hadn’t figured that out yet. “You should camp with Lamplighters,” he said. “It’s a fantastic group of people — they’re just like family to me. Sometimes, I don’t even leave the camp the whole time.”
Barry thought joining the Lamplighters sounded like a great idea, a completely different experience from last year. Instead of a small group of Seattlites near the outer edge of the city, we’d be with a large international group right in the center of the city, with a communal kitchen and lounge. But was this fellow Cosmo some kind of nut? How could he go to Burning Man without leaving his camp?
We never actually met the man before we set out on our cross-country journey. We made the arrangements by phone, and one weekend, he dropped off a large, lumpy pile of plastic parts at my brother’s house in Durham. A few days later, we stopped through, strapped it to the top of the van, and carried it across the USA to Cosmo and the Lamplighters.
Our camping spot, assigned to us by a fellow called Snotto, was on an alley that ran through the camp. To one side were a forest of tents and the elaborate Lamplighter kitchen. On the other side were the dancing boys and the Lamplighter bar and lounge. Behind us were Cosmo’s Ryder truck and a large cardboard box that we assumed was for storage. And in front, about 20 feet away, was a small row of porta-potties.
As soon as we emerged from the van, it was apparent that our campsite wasn’t on a high-traffic pedestrian walkway — it WAS the high-traffic walkway. The problem was, we needed our shade structure to keep the interior of the van from turning into an oven, and there was no way to reef the sail.
As we set up the giant canopy, I fretted about all those strangers walking through “our” space. Could we hang sheets or set up chairs to keep them from walking under our shade structure, or across our carpet?
Around then, a woman walked by on her way to the porta-potties. She was wearing a beautifully colorful costume, and I complimented her on it. A fellow passed on his way to the kitchen, wearing a 70’s-patterned muumuu, and we got into a conversation about how he found it on the internet. Then a neighbor came from another direction. He wasn’t sure which way to go — there didn’t seem to be a route for him that didn’t go through our space.
“Please, feel free to come through this way — you’re not bothering us at all,” I said. “We can’t figure out any way to make this shade structure smaller, so just come on through and enjoy it.”
That was how we met one of the most interesting Lamplighters, No Account, known around camp as Noah. The lady in the beautiful costume was Day-Zee. The dancing boy was Christopher, but I never learned the name of the man with the amazing muumuu.
I started to relax. What if we didn’t “claim” the space, but actually welcomed people walking through? What would happen?
What happened was that we met dozens and dozens of fun people on their way to the kitchen, the bar, or the bathroom. We were inescapable — since we attached part of the shade structure to our neighbor Mike’s RV, even people who didn’t stop to say hello had to pass under our guy rope, decorated with the same colorful yacht pennants used at our wedding in 1991.
Once the structure was up, we turned our attention to our costumes, packed in three large plastic totes. Mike unloaded his bicycle, grabbed his camera, and set off to see the art.
About 45 minutes later, when Mike returned, we were still there, digging through the costume boxes. He was puzzled. “Haven’t you left yet?” he asked.
What had happened was this: As we sorted through the costumes, people came walking through our camp. We said hello and got into conversations with them. So the 45 minutes included about 5 minutes of costume-sorting and 40 minutes of making new friends.
We’d been admiring Swagmeister’s tatoos, teasing Boxes With Bears about his upcoming wedding, and gossiping with Sean about the dancing boys across the way. Then Leanne and Jeremy came by, and we introduced them to Mike. But he had more to see, so he went off again.
When he returned, we were still there. “Haven’t you guys left yet?” he asked, incredulous. “We’re almost ready!” we said. Barry was just tying the turtle sarong that went with his mind-blowing bowling shirt. I had zipped up my pink knee-high boots and was tying on the pink-and-green hat.
“Have you met Mr. Mister?” we asked. “He’s the guy camping in those cardboard boxes over there.”
This particular hour had been spent visiting with Mr. Mister, who gave me a tour of his home. He’d used aircraft part boxes to construct a shelter that was neatly organized and nearly dustproof. In previous years, he’d learned to make it fairly tall, because people didn’t realize it was a house. He’d once been in bed when an amorous couple sat on top of him and started making out.
With all the visitors, it took us forever to blow up the four inflatable space aliens, A. Leeanne, Ros Well, Lou Wheeze, and Gert Rude, and put on their jeweled neck collars so their heads wouldn’t droop. Then I strapped them onto my bike and assembled their spacecraft. Barry put together his flying apparition and hung it from his bike.
Finally, late in the afternoon, we took off. To Mike, it must have seemed that we dawdled around camp all day. But we’d actually gotten a lot done, from engineering an unusual and sturdy shade structure to assembling ourselves and our bicycles as art. For we were not just there to see Burning Man, we were there to be seen by Burning Man.
Along the way, we made a lot of new friends. I wish I had pictures of more of them. Heck, I wish I knew more of their names. They were strangers when they came to our crossroads, but they weren’t strangers when they left. And that’s the most time-consuming — and entertaining — thing we did for days.