Tag: fun

Surfdancing.

I love this pic.

When I got my Mac, I realized that it could only open the windows filesystem on my old USB backup drive in read-only mode.  Not great for doing backups.  I’ll need to reformat it to use it.  But I’ve been procrastinating, because i’m going to have to sort through what’s on there to see what to keep and what to get rid of.  So this week I took the first step – I copied most of what was on the backup drive to my mac to prepare to reformat the USB drive.

Consequently, the next time I opened Picasa, it found ALL the photos that I had just copied and loaded them into its library, which took a while.  But, once it finished, it makes for very easy viewing of many years of pictures.  So, I’ve been spending a lot of time this morning browsing through photos I’ve taken that I haven’t looked at for years.

When I got to this one I thought I’d share it with you.   This is a photo that I took when my sister, Colleen, and her son, Jacob, were visiting about 4 years ago.  We drove down to Port Aransas for the weekend, and stayed a place right on the Gulf-side of the beach.   This is a picture of Colleen and Jacob jumping together in the surf.   I used some piece of software, can’t remember what, to create a water-color effect — oh, and I edited out the oil rig on the horizon :(.  I later printed this and framed it for her.

I guess it’s kind of appropriate, too, because this is Mother’s Day weekend, and she’s a great mom.

I have to smile every time I look at this pic.

First raft-up of the year.

Raft-up!

It’s that time of the year.  This weekend was the first raft-up of 2012.  And it was a doozie!  We had 14 boats, 31 people and 2 dogs.  I don’t have a picture of all the boats, but I took this one of 12 of them as we were coming in to tie up, and Joe arrived later.

It took quite a while to walk from one end to the other.   Some of the boats’ lifelines couldn’t open, so it was a gymnastic feat crossing from boat to boat …with one hand free 🙂

Let me see if I can do roll call….left to right, we had Mark & Sarah on Serenade, Gray & Debbie on the blue hulled First, Bartlett’s parents’ Catalina, John & Claudia & 2 others on the brand new Solace, Tasha & Robert and Tony & Michelle (visiting for the weekend!) on Voodoo, Danny & Casey on the Beneteau 31, Rory & Greg on Sapphire, Camden & Terry on MoonRock, Kurt, Wally & Kevin on Dancer, John & Deanna on Caribbean Run, Mike on Allegro, Lori & Dave on Camelot, Monte & me on Cupholder, and last but not least, Joe on Prelude.  Whew!

As much fun as these are, we did have a rare, bad experience on our way to the cove.  Some <expletive> motorhead nearly crashed into us as we were under sail.  Coming within about 5 feet of us, and going about 30 miles an hour.  As they passed, they turned their boat, pushing up a wall of water that dumped into our cockpit, drenching both of us, and pouring water into the cabin, v-berth and lockers below.

Monte immediately got on the cell phone and called LCRA dispatch, gave them a description of the boat and their heading and … they pulled them over.   Goobers.   It could have been very bad.  I guess it’s good that we only got wet.

Anyway, we didn’t let that spoil our evening.

In true B-dock fashion, the party went on into the wee hours.  A good time was had by all.

It’s truly wonderful to have this bunch of people to play with.  Everyone really enjoys being out on the lake together.  We are very lucky.

We are the people your parents warned you about.

AK Bend at 646'.

Woooo-weee what a party!  Well, we will NOT be doing that every weekend!

After the beer can race yesterday everyone jumped in the water and stayed there for quite a while – me, monte, joe, kurt, wally, lori, dave, marty, sue, wiz, david (new guy on b-dock w/ Misguided), robert, and his friends who own Hakuna Matata on a-dock).  After last weekend’s very wake-y raftup spot in Cypress Creek, this weekend we’ve planned to have a party on B-dock and just sleep on our boats.

Doray, Tom and Judy joined us after the race and stayed til after sunset.   Teri and Jim showed up around 11pm.   We brought a blender, and lots of ice and margarita and pina colada fixins.   Staying in the slip has its advantages.   What a fun time.  Dave left about 9 or so, when his teenage son called my cellphone looking for his parents… heh, heh (isn’t that supposed to be the other way around?! 🙂 )

We pulled out the coleman stove and made a bazillion quesadillas.  Sue brought her legendary bean dip.  We played iPod wars into the wee hours.  There is a digital recording floating around somewhere of what may perhaps be the worst rendition of the happy birthday song ever.  (Happy birthday Mark!)   The security guard even stopped by about 2AM, wasn’t that nice of him?   I think it was about 4AM when everyone headed back to their boats for the night.

I’m so glad we started working on that first wooden boat 13 years ago or so.  We could never have known at the time that it would lead to us learning to sail, making a bigger sailboat, getting a slip at Yacht Harbor marina, landing on B-Dock, and meeting such fantastic people that are so easy to have fun with.

We packed up early this morning and got home about 10AM.   On the way home we took a short detour up to Vintage Villas to see if I could get a shot of the lake from up there.   This is a shot looking down on Arkansas Bend.  In the distance you can see Hurst Cove, where our marina is.

Check out the clouds.

Jul 25, 2010

Catch!

It’s truly amazing how easily entertained we can be.   We spent half the day anchored in the cove, floating out back, cracking eachother up.   I was trying to get a shot of the squishy-splash-ball as I caught it, but I mostly ended up getting Marty laughing as he hit his mark.   Good one, Marty!   🙂

Jun 27, 2010

Wheeeeee!!!

Jen and Rob invited us to go tubing with them and their niece, Channing, today.   We did our traditional  San Marcos River extended float.   We go farther downstream past the official take out point where we park a car and trailer ahead of time to haul tubes and tubers back to the starting point.  That way we have a 3 hour float.

It hasn’t hit 100 degrees yet this year, so it’s a little unusual for us to go tubing until triple digit temps.   But we had a fun time.   The flow was unusually swift, so it was more work than your typical lazy float down the river.

This is a shot just as I entered the chute at the rapids.  I’ve never turned over before, but this time I did, and ended up losing my hat and sunglasses.   My hat was found a bit down river, but my prescription raybans are gone for good.   Oh well.   But it didn’t dampen the fun.

Can’t wait for the next float!