Mayday Mayday!

31 07 2011

This is an old photo of the ol’ Rocky Comfort when we first put her in the water 2 years ago.   Take a close look, I added a few additions to the photo to help illustrate my story for today.

Now, picture a very sunny hot day on Lake St. Claire in Michigan, put me in the spot where Loyd is and imagine that we are just leaving the dock.  With Nathan at the helm, I jump up to the front of the boat to help guide us through the dock poles.  And then…it happened.  If there was ever a reason to make sure that all your lines are organized, now would be the time.  See that ‘arrow‘ and the ‘orange circle‘?  Well, that would be the spot where I got caught up in the jib sheet lines and I fell over board into the lake water.  Yup.  I fell overboard.  And I don’t know how to swim.  It’s okay to laugh.  Obviously I survived and I’ve realized that if I fall out of a boat I know how not to drown.

It all happened in slow motion.  I almost heard the water splash around me before I realized that I had fallen in, but I kicked my legs and made it to the surface.  And then I hung on to the side of the boat, in shock for a little while, until Nathan told me to get my phone out of my pocket (so, if you’ve tried to call me, my phone is drying in a bowl of rice trying to suck out all the lake water).   Nathan tried to hoist me up, but that wasn’t going to work so I paddled over to the back of the boat and hung on to the dock for a while.  I tried to grab onto the dock and lift myself out of the water, but my arms were so weak!  Damn that Insanity work out that I did this morning with all of the push ups! (I actually did think that at the time, and ‘aren’t the Insanity workouts supposed to make my arms stronger?‘).

I did finally make it out of the water with a little help from the swim ladder.  And yes, we did end up going for a sail after I made it back into the boat.  I gave a little wave to everyone as we left the marina, since yes, there were spectators to my hopefully graceful fall overboard.  And if anyone is wondering if Nathan jumped into the water after me, the answer would be “No”, since at that point the boat was floating with no dock lines attached and it didn’t seem smart for both first mate and captain to be overboard with a runaway boat.

To think just moments before I fell into the water I was thinking, ‘I better not sit on the cushions right now since we just hosed them off, I don’t want to get my shorts wet or dirty.’  It’s like I jinxed myself!!

 


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Categories : Detroit

Change is in the air…

24 07 2011

Do you ever get the feeling that you’re so busy with keeping the things in your life organized that you start to lose the ability to organize anything?  That no matter how many things you can cross off your list, there’s always three items to add on for every item crossed off?  And when you wake up in the middle of the night; for that brief second between when you realized that you were awake and the next second when you turn over and go back to sleep, you have to literally stop your mind from picking up where it left off on your checklist.

It sucks doesn’t it.

Maybe instead of fighting against the flow it’s time to embrace the change and start moving in a different direction. Everyone always says, the only thing that remains constant, is change.


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Categories : Miscellaneous

A Toast: to Small Pleasures

4 07 2011

With all of the things in this world that can cause stress and anxiety, it’s comforting to think of all of the things that can cause simple happiness and a feeling of contentment.

The jolt of joy that you get when you hear your friends have gotten engaged.  The instant image of a little baby face that forms when you hear that a new baby has decided to arrive.  The feeling of anticipation that you get when you have your feet dangling above the water and you’re waiting for a wave that will come up and splash you with cold water.  The feel of walking through cool grass with your bare feet.  The sound of a cat purring in your ear and re-reading a book you love because you like the way it makes you feel when you read it.

Hope everyone had a happy long weekend.


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Categories : Connecticut

Where am I again?

3 02 2011

Sometimes I forget that it’s not normal to be constantly traveling from one city, one state, one hotel room to the next.  More often than I’d like to admit, I wake up in the morning and think, ‘where am I again?’ – and not because I had one too many ‘happy’ at Happy Hour! – but because it’s been a whirlwind trip that has taken me to Detroit, to St. Louis, down to Tampa, over to New Orleans, into Alabama, and then back to New Orleans, a flight back to Detroit, then a day trip to New Jersey, a quick bite to eat in NYC, and then a jaunt back to Alabama on the way to Dallas.   It’s exhausting even writing it all down much less living through that much traveling in the span of 2 1/2 weeks.

Wow.  2 1/2 weeks?  That’s all it’s been?  No wonder I walk, key card in hand, thinking what’s the room number again?  409?  No wait 203.  No that was last night.  Aha….312.

This was a real sign!  Just last Thursday in Mobile, AL.  I saw a ripple in the water, do you think it was an alligator?

Here I’ve been thinking that nothing’s happened the last couple of weeks, but I guess potentially seeing an alligator in a hotel parking lot, eating traditional cajun redfish and catfish in New Orleans, and a candle lit dinner in the village in NYC (with some apricot grappa that you could light on fire) is nothing to scoff at.  I’ve just gotten so used to the randomness of daily travel.

Traveling so much you become an expert at small talk.  True to my Canadian roots I talk about the weather a lot, it’s a great ‘go-to’ conversation topic.  And it doesn’t hurt that the weather’s been a hot topic for everyone lately.  And if you’ll note my travel route above, one might say that the storms have been following me around the country!

When you always look like you’re from out of town, but act like you’re a local, people ask questions.  I never thought that answering the question ‘Where are you from?’ would be so difficult.  Most often I respond, “good question” or “[awkward pause]….well my work base is out of Detroit, but I’m from Vancouver, Canada”.   You have to give people a sense of where you’re coming from so they can place you in the overall scheme of things; however, I need to make sure I’m clear that I’m not from Detroit, and that I’m not American.  And if you say Vancouver, BC, no one knows what you mean.   It was even worse when I first moved to the US from Toronto because then I would add that extra detail – ‘well I work out of Detroit, but I’m from Toronto, but originally from Vancouver…..so……yes, that’s where I’m from”.

What is probably just a quick question from someone wanting to do a little polite small talk soon becomes a complicated story of a work/travel/personal lifestyle that’s all wrapped up into one very messy, but somehow cohesive, ball.


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Jack Frost is a Nipping

12 12 2010

It’s official.  Winter is here.  I made it up until December 5th before seeing any snow on the ground and up until Dec. 10th before I woke up to snow on the ground (although it was gone by the afternoon).

There’s no escaping the snow today.  In Detroit it’s been snowing since 5am (it’s 9:30pm now) and it doesn’t look like it’s stopping anytime soon.

Not to worry though, I see the snow as an opportunity to spread some Canadian good cheer!  Just in time too, since I was in Windsor, ON this weekend and stopped in at Tim Horton’s and I forgot what a French Vanilla Cappuccino was called.  I stammered at the counter, ‘you know what I want – what everyone orders… a…. a ….. french vanilla something’. My eyes zigzagged around the room looking for clues, but I was so panicked because I couldn’t remember that I couldn’t see what I was looking for.  I felt like  Robin Scherbatsky on ‘How I met Your Mother’ – a woman with no country, resisting the American ways but realizing that the Canadian norms aren’t so normal any more.  Don’t worry though, I still say ‘you’re welcome’.

So, in an attempt to reclaim my Canadian citizenship, I stomped around every snow covered surface that I could find to mark my territory and establish my Canadianism.

I haven’t had this much fun stomping in the snow since I was a kid.  Is it wrong that every few steps I took I would look behind me at my Canadian tracks?


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Categories : Detroit

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