The Dodge With No Name (A Cautionary Tale)

Tuesday was a long day.  Normally I get up at 6:00, but this time my alarm was set for 5:00…and I was awake well before that.  I got to work by 5:45.  As Safety Captain for my department, I conducted the “Hazard Surveillance,” meaning that I made sure extension cords weren’t loose, ceiling tiles weren’t falling, and fire extinguishers were properly signed.  Most everything was good, save 18 unapproved space heaters and, most remarkably, a toaster sitting on the floor, plugged in, under someone’s desk.  Holy fire hazard, Batman!

Dan and Gomez ready the boat

After over ten hours at work—and almost 50 calls to me in Customer Service—I at least knew that I had the Duck Dodge that night.  The theme was “Captain’s Choice,” meaning there was no centralized theme.  Lots of crews didn’t dress up at all, including ours.  Those who did, for instance, all wore neckties, decorated for a Mexican fiesta, or hung their entire hull with gold tinsel.  There was even a man dressed up in a pink bunny suit slung in a harness halfway up the mast.

Santa boat

Tinsel boat

Bunny boat...?!?

42 years on a sailboat in a toga

42 years old.  Does this mean I will come to further understand the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything?  Well, it does mean that I got not only a cool wallet with a Sailor Jerry design but also a new pair of Sennheiser pro headphones.  At work, my desk was decked out, Joseph brought breakfast, and my boss brought cake.  I even got a tiny gag pistol that drops a little banner that says "bang" when you pull the trigger, totally inappropriate workplace entertainment.  Yet nothing seemed simple all day.  I was pummeled and shuffled.  Luckily, I had my best present last:  leaving work behind, and enjoying some of the best wind I've ever had on Lake Union.

The Betsy D braves the melee

Toga night at the Duck Dodge.  Us flabby men looked ridiculous, especially with me in a very loose "Bacchanial" tie, while the women didn't stick with white bedsheets and were sometimes quite shiny.  Gomez, joining Zanne, Dan, and me for his first Dodge, stayed in his civvies.  Fact is, since I'm always the one to go foreward to unfoul the jib and get it over the lifeline, the toga got in the way and was quickly stowed.  Gomez added a bit of CWB-ness to the cruise, but he wasn't the only one:  The dear Betsy D and couple Blanchard Juniors were out in the fresh breeze, too...not in the race, just out for fun.

Dodge again

It is a consistent, known problem.  I think too much.  I worry too much.  I look forward to things, but I can become so debilitated by my own brain that something I want to do, something I am looking forward to and know that I enjoy, can be put off over and over again because I feel, for no actual reason, like I'm not going to be able to, because I'm chicken.  It's human, I know.  But I get so sick of it as a human condition.

Am not!

The last time I went sailing was aboard the Betsy D in February.  Since then I have survived the cold of winter, the pollen of spring, the exhaustion of work, the ordeal of Zanne having an emergency cholecystectomy (she's OK), the shock of G'Ma nearly flatlining at Group Health Bellevue (she's OK), the stress of a drawn out move, and the damned old feeling that came with my own diagnosis of hypertension.  There's been a lot going on, but I have to admit that procrastination and needless worry are just as responsible.  Not any more.  On Tuesday, Zanne and I joined Dan on the Mirus again and returned to the Duck Dodge.  I'm back on the water.

A few islands short of Heaven (Logan's weekend)

Friday.  I am reasonably flush when, after a week's administrative delay, the IRS has given me my annual refund.  At work, as Super Bowl weekend approached, we have had a "tailgate" potluck, each cubicle serving snack food, crock pot BBQ meatballs, homemade chili, and so on.  The sports-minded are wearing jerseys; I declare my Hawaiian shirt as "the official jersey of the competitive cocktail drinker."  When I get off, I drive north to pay rent and come home along the shore of Lake Washington.  There has been no wind all day, but now there are little whitecaps yet no boats taking advantage.  The seed of an urge begins to sprout.

The Dog & Pony:  land of wonder

I'm fidgety, in no mood to give in to the television.  So I head to our local, the Dog and Pony.  Alone and intending to stay that way, I take over one of the big, comfy black leather chairs in the corner.  I have the last pint of my precious Old Rasputin before the keg's out and move on to Silver City Scotch Ale.  The noise of conversation mingles with music streaming from Pandora, every fifth song seeming to be Led Zeppelin (no complaints).  I tune it all out and head to the waters off Cartagena, Spain, where the crew of the Carpanta in Pérez-Reverte's The Nautical Chart is finally on the water searching for the lost wreck of a Jesuit ship.  My barmaid, Erin, notices my contented grin when she brings my nachos (hold the jalapeños).  I tell her that this is almost Heaven--oversized chair, beer, nautical fiction, and no worries.  If only the ocean was just out of the window.  Once the third pint is drained I head home, pour the Sailor Jerry, and watch a movie that is less a musical than a philosophical treatise:  Paint Your Wagon.  To pick one random quote from the epitome of rugged nonconformity, Ben Rumson, "God made the mountains/God made the sky/God made the people/God knows why..."

Muppet Dodge



Yo, Bert!

Back to the Duck Dodge yesterday, where the theme was "Sesame Street."  It doesn't take much for me--an overgrown kid with a daughter as an excuse to relive my childhood--to conjure up that place "where the air is sweet."  Getting a costume together in a pinch was much harder.  I knocked around being the Count, but I had no cape.  So, in a pinch, I put on the fringed buckskin shirt of my Berkeley days and said I was Buffy St. Marie; remember when she actually was a regular on  the show, representing for the First Nations?  Zanne had much better inspiration and pulled off a very good Zoe, the pigtailed, ballet-dancing, tutu-clad girl Muppet.  Very few other people in the Dodge seemed to be doing anything with the theme, except for this fellow in a very complete (and somewhat disturbing) Bert costume.  Dan wore nothing special at all.



Our skipper, Dan, and Zanne as Zoe





"Buffy St. Marie."  Or is that Jeremiah Johnson?  And, no, that is not a dead Muppet on my head.  Really. 

Return to the Duck Dodge

  

'Mirus' is a Latin word that translates roughly as "wonderful," "amazing," or "awesome."  It is related to the Latin root from which the word "miracle" is derived.  It is also the name of the little cruising boat owned by Dan, Zanne's best friend.  Last week, as Zanne was gearing up for her birthday celebration, we called Dan and, in addition to inviting him out for dancing and beers, discussed getting back out on his boat for the Duck Dodge, Seattle's 37-year-old summertime tradition of sailboat racing, mayhem, and inebriation.  Dan naturally invited us out.  Yesterday we met Dan at the little marina under the Aurora Bridge, and we set out, just the three of us, a little shy of 7:00 and the start of the race.