We were at our dear friends, Craig and Beanie’s cabin last summer. Spectacular weekend. Our friends had invited another couple that lived on the lake to join us for dinner. When they left about 11 p.m. my wife said, “It’s a beautiful night, let’s go out in the pontoon.” We all agreed that was a terrific idea. We grabbed a cooler loaded with assorted adult beverages and headed out on the lake.
Now this lake is about 7 miles long. We motored out to a middle-of-the-lake location, cut the motor, fired up four cocktails (then four more, and then who knows how many more) and turned on the music. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon to be exact. We had the entire lake to ourselves. Not another soul on the lake, no wind, and beautiful starry sky. And the music was magical. Faw-kinn-ae! Life is good!
About 1 a.m. someone said, “Well we might as well head in.” The music had been on for about 2 hours and when Craig went to start the motor—well nothing... Faw-kinn-ae. Couple more attempts to start the motor and it was obvious it was not going to start.
“Well not a problem, we’re only about a mile and a half from the cabin we can paddle back. We’ll just grab the paddle.”
“Hmmm no paddle,” Beanie said. “Well let’s see what else we can use?”
There were two styrofoam noodles in the boat. Yeah, styrofoam noodles don’t really work. In fact it was extremely funny watching impaired people try to paddle with styrofoam noodles. Now the laughter started... Faw-kinn-ae!
“Well what else do we have to paddle with?”
“Here is the bottom to the dog kennel,” a sheet of plastic about 24” x 36”, only slightly better than the noodles. “Oh wait here’s a landing net.”
“Yeah but it has holes in it.”
“I’m going to try it. Faw-kinn-ae we’re moving (just not very fast)!”
It’s a good thing the wind wasn’t blowing or we would have spent the night on shore in front of someones cabin, probably seven miles from our destination. Believe it or not we made it back before the sun came up. I couldn’t get the landing net out of Craig’s hands once he had a hold on it. That maniac paddled us all the way back.
Nine months later I’m still laughing about that crazy night that went from perfect to maybe even more perfect. Yup, Fawkinnae!