A Nice Thing That Happened.

  It’s just a small little thing that may not seem like much to you. But meant something to me and I wanted to share it with you. Nothing big or fancy mind you, just a little thing that made me smile and feel good about my web-page project. I also had witnesses which made it all the better.

 It happened this last Labor Day, out in the river delta.  My family and I were moored up to a friend’s new dock on “Disappointment Slough.”  It has a nice East / West orientation, so with your stern to the West, the afternoon shade grows nicely on the bow. It had been very hot that day,(105f).  My wife Deborah and my long time work buddy and friend Daryl and I were in repose on the bow having cocktails. Due to the holiday and the heat, the boat traffic that passed us by was fairly steady.  Now this is one of my very favorite things to do,  “people watching” while looking and being as comfortable as humanly possible. Waving “hello” from my favorite chair. There was music for my ears. My feet propped up on the rail and a drink in my hand, watching the vast array of watercraft passing by. Big boats, ski boats, race boats. Some slow down and watch their wake, most of them too late to make a difference, others blast on past without a care. It’s a waste of time to get mad. That’s fine. I don’t mind. Our boat is big enough to take most any wake with ease and my tender is air filled rubber so what the hell. Bring on the wakes. I like it. The kids do too.

 So here comes this little inflatable putting along with a man and a woman headed West. We traded the mutual wave showing proper respect, then the man says something-something like  “looks good, better in person.” I wasn’t sure what he said but I could tell it was something nice about the boat and I gave the “Thanks” in return. His voice trailing now as he had passed us still moving further away, he said something “web page” and “quit smoking.” It seemed this guy knew something of me and the boat and the web page. So I waved him to come on back and talk a minute. So he and his passenger circled on around and pulled along side. It was the nice things he said that moved me to write all this stuff down. He tells me that he had recognized my boat from the internet.  Seems he has a boat very much like a River Queen so he started searching the internet for more information. He said everywhere he went people were mentioning me and my refit project. Most all the other pages he found had links to my web-page. Then he told me that he had read all my chapters (no small task) and was looking forward for more postings. Then he tells me that he was so inspired by the things I wrote, it caused him to renewed his efforts on his own boat. (Isn’t that nice.) Then he says, because of what I wrote he had quit smoking cigarettes too! (I had to go look that one up. Yep, it’s right there on the last paragraph in chapter thirteen) He said he hadn’t had a puff for four months now… (Can this get any better or what?)  Then, pointing at Daryl he says “You’re the Chief engineer.” “I saw your picture.”  This of course gave Daryl a big smile. Then pointing to Deborah he adds “You’re the wife that keeps them all in line.” Deb had to add… “You got that right.”

It was a short conversation then he had to push off and get back. I thanked him for stopping by and all the nice things he had said. I promised drinks were in order in the near future and he concurred and off they went leaving us to sit around and grin at each other. Wasn’t that nice?  Now that is what makes it all worth the wile…

Mike Wolfe. Summer 2002