Ben had a slight meltdown tonight (Thursday night), but he got a second wind and came through like a champ.
When I got up with Ben, he asked for eggs, so I whipped up a couple and microwaved them. Although this method uses less energy than a stove burner, I prefer using a skillet. It’s how I learned, and when I microwave an egg, it makes me wait, but not long enough to accomplish anything while I wait. I prefer being active, not just sitting and waiting. Even if one route to a destination takes 5 or 10 minutes less time, I’m more likely to choose the route that keeps me moving instead.
This morning at about 9, Ben’s grandpops said we should plan to leave at 11 a.m. That way, he said, we would be sure to leave by noon. We put Ben down for a nap at about 10 a.m. while we were doing the getting ready thing. At about 11:15, we got him up, threw everything into the Suburban (A.K.A. “T-rex”), and headed out at 11:30. By 12:00 we were on the boat. By 12:30 we were underway. Part of the holdup came when we realized that the child’s life vest they had was for kids considerably larger than Ben. We ran to a marine store and grabbed one – with Scooby Doo and Shaggy on it.
Their marina is right next to a major highway bridge and drawbridge. Pic is online, along with others, of course.
There isn’t much to see on the way to St. Michael’s, and a cruising boat does not a speedy trip make. One thing that amazed me was the shallowness of the Chesapeake Bay. No, I don’t mean that it talks about how a woman with that kind of figure really shouldn’t wear a blouse that shows her midriff. I mean literally the depth of the water. In places during our 1.5 hour cruise, there was less than 8 feet of water between the bottom of the boat and the Bay floor. I never saw that number greater than 30 feet, but I know it gets a bit deeper than that. It just doesn’t seem it could be that shallow when I see the size of it on a map, and think of all the historic battles that have taken place on its waters.
Ben did well on the boat. He only got upset when we hit the wake of a passing boat. He would stumble, but managed to keep his feet. Still, it scared him just enough that he whined a bit and needed some comfort.
St. Michael’s was fun, even though we only ended up with a little over an hour to walk around. Grandpops wasn’t feeling up to walking around, so we went with Gramma. Just before he turned to go back to the boat, though, he pointed out a plane flying overhead. I could see it was big, and he said it was a C-5. Once a day they see the C-5 fly over, on its way to an area Air Force Base with American Soldiers – in body bags. On that uplifting note he bid us a good time and turned back for the boat.
Ben loved stretching his legs, but did great in the stroller when we needed him to. Most of the stores would not allow us in with it, so I would hang out with Ben, maybe take a picture or two. In fact, that was a great deal for me. I preferred it to walking around inside the shops.
After Shannon and I struck a whacky pose behind one of those paintings with the face cut out, we headed back to the boat and took off for dinner at the Kent Island Yacht Club. The trip back was better. We saw two sailboats, which Grandpops identified. I don’t remember things like that after hearing it once, so I can’t tell you what they were. Just look at the pictures. One was a gaff-rig jack, or skipjack. It wasn’t a flapjack. The other was one of the tall ships, the kind that bring to mind pirates.
That brings to mind a story…
On our very first to Shannon’s dad and stepmother’s place, which also was the first time I met them, we saw one of these tall ships under full sail. We got very close to it as Shannon’s dad went on and on about how it was the first time they had seen that. We were very excited about it, and I was hanging out over the edge of the boat shooting frame after frame on my 35mm Canon AE-1. The grace of that ship, moving with such power and speed with only the sound of wood creaking and water splashing. Crank, click. My dad, who once was an avid sailor and won many races, would love seeing these pictures, especially considering he was the one who got me started in photography. Crank, click. The beauty. Crank, click. I risked taking spray on my camera to get pictures of this majestic ship sailing along just as it would have in the days of the Revolutionary War.
In the car on the way back to the way back to their Virginia home, I took a look at the picture count on my camera to see how close I was to the end of the roll. It read 48. How had I taken 48 pictures on a 36-exposure roll? To confirm my worst fear, I clicked the shutter and watched the film spool wheel on the left as I thumbed the film advance lever. The film spool wheel didn’t move. I started to get sick. I almost cried out, but somehow kept it to a mere, “Oh, no.”
“What happened?” Shannon’s dad asked.
“I was shooting all those pictures without any film in my camera,” I replied, literally holding back tears.
The ribbing started immediately and has not stopped in the 10 years since. The family forever will remember the day I took pictures of an historic boat on a rare solo sail across the Bay, with a phantom roll of film. You know, cracks like, “Boy, that sure was neat to see that boat under sail. Wish we had pictures.” Sometimes it’s simply referred to as the ghost roll. These days, though, it’s, “Sure you have a memory card in there, Mark?”
Today, we saw the same type of ship, but it was running on engines, without all its sails down. I got plenty of pictures, but they just weren’t the same as those I took but didn’t take a decade ago.
Ben got fussy on the way back, because he was tired and hungry. We let him munch some Peppridge Farm Goldfish (those baked and not fried fishies) as Shannon held him in her lap.
The restaurant went great. After a brief fussy period, Ben got fed, got ice cream, and was in prime attention-getting form. At least it was the good kind of attention. One woman said he was going to be a heartthrob, and another kept talking to him from her table, telling him he was just a delightful little boy. I only hope that his little brother or sister, when and if he has one, will take after Ben. Although we’ve had our tough times with him, we consider ourselves fortunate to have such a pleasant little boy.
On a funny note, a man doing some work in the restaurant walked by with a ladder. After he walked by our table, we heard a loud clank. He had banged his ladder against one of the chandeliers. His comment was, “That’s kind of close, isn’t it?” Sure. Close. Whatever you say.
Gramma says we’re just going to relax tomorrow and hang out here at the house. Sounds good to me. Maybe we can take Ben out to feed carrots to the horses again. Did I mention we did that yesterday? No? Well, we did. There’s a picture somewhere for that.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
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