A friend of mine and I had talked about going kayaking together for what seemed like months. Finally, our schedules converged and we decided to get out of work early and head over to the Charles River, since he needed to rent a boat and it's the only place where it's convenient to do so after work hours.
Odd thing this year...most of the kayak rental places close way too early for after work activities. It wasn't this way in the past, because I used to go with friends after work and we never had to leave work especially early.
The solution is everyone should just buy a boat!
OK, so we get out on the river and the weather is glorious, for a change. No thunderstorms, no rain, just puffy clouds and sun. My friend is new to kayaking and he's all elbows and splashing. I try to give him some gentle tips, but decide that he's having fun, why get all teacher-like.
We get all the way down to Waltham before turning back. My friend discovers he has a spider in the boat with him. This is a freaky thing because he's just recovered from an alleged brown recluse bite which landed him in the hospital (I say alleged, because no one knows for sure if it *was* a recluse bite, but it was something spider-ish and very toxic). Once we get the spider scare out of the way, we can relax and just enjoy the scenery. We indulged ourselves with some gentle chasing of the resident swans.
And my friend was kind enough to take over the whole loading/unloading of my boat for me. He just picked up my boat over his head and plunked it on the rack. I was awestruck. Granted, the boat doesn't weigh a lot...still, for all the times people have helped load my boat, no one has ever done it so well. :-)
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