LAUNCH DAY

We arrived at the park for the traditional boat launch and the park was closed because of high water. That's a first. I got out and walked up and there were people there fishing, so I figured we wouldn't get arrested, but we did have to walk in instead of driving down there to park. The water on the south side of the river is about 25 feet wider than it was last year. In one way, this made it easier to get the boat into the water -- since it was in the parking lot -- but more difficult to actually get the boat into the current.

Zoe and I have a tradition that we've done for at least four years with this boat. We write our hopes and dreams -- like, say, world peace -- and also things we want to get rid of in our lives -- like, say, fat -- and send them out to the universe. Hopefully the universe will take the fat and send back the world peace, though for the past few years it seems to just send back the fat and keep the world peace somewhere else. But I digress. Every year the boat has a different seaworthiness rating, and while this one is probably the best, the candle malfunction took away points.
We got the little boat out of the box -- I prefer to describe it as a mini-Rose Bowl float, only mine really floats, but it does meet the other requirements, totally decorated with flowers and natural materials -- and tried to light the candle. First of all the lighter didn't work very well because it's probably out of fluid, and secondly, as soon as we took down the box barrier, the flame went out because there was a breeze.
Well we finally decided to actually put the damn thing in the water, even though we couldn't keep the candle lit. Though, frankly, since the glue had already come off it, it probably didn't matter all that much as it would have fallen off in the raging water.
Does this picture make my butt look big? Okay, then let's cut some of it off. Thanks, Zoe. You're a true friend.

I did wish I'd shaved my legs though, because getting in that cold water made me feel like I was walking next to a cactus plant only the cactus plant was my spiky legs. The place I'm standing with the rake to put the boat in the water is where the parking lot was last year. Those barriers are the things you pull the front of your car up to.

And then the damn thing got caught in a sort of a backwater, and I couldn't get it to go back out, even though I was throwing sticks in the water and small rocks, trying to make some waves to move it out. Of course, to say I throw like a girl is an insult to girls everywhere, but it's the best excuse I can come up with for the fact that the boat was about 15 feet away and I couldn't land a stick or a rock near enough to it that the water ripples weren't on the far reaches by the time they got to the boat. Finally it came so near the shore that I was able to capture it and relaunch it totally.

Eventually, it did go out.

Postscript: Our SIS group was planning on going out to dinner tonight, so I had brought a decent pair of jeans and my old-lady dress up shoes to wear (dress up shoes means they are sensible leather shoes instead of sensivle athletic shoes) after I got my other clothes wet in the river. Except I forgot them while I was busy dragging rakes, boats, and backpacks out to the car this afternoon. So I ended up going to my birthday dinner (Gail was in Vietnam on my real birthday) in my sweatpants. We ate at Gonul's which is a sort of Turkish, sort of Mediterranean place in east Sacramento. Dinner was wonderful. We had a pris fixe dinner which included a great pear salad, a sort of sweet sort of spicy pumpkin soup, and turlu or Moroccan lamb stew, and dessert. We also had extremely large quantities of wine with our dinner, but it was something that must be favored more in other parts of the world than California. Zoe and I (since Gail & Karen don't drink) could have each had two glasses and a carafe of wine, but we only had one apiece. But the dessert made up for it. IT was a wonderful dinner.