Know Your Walrus - Week 4 - Your Most Significant Childhood Memory

August 13, 2012 - Know Your Walrus - Week 4 - Your Most Significant Childhood Memory

Wow, my most significant childhood memory.  That conjures up all kinds of different scenarios; good memories, bad memories, traumatic events, tragedies, etc.  I could come up with one for any of those.  The memory that I'm going to pick involves a moment of personal triumph and ingenuity born out of complete stupidity.

My dad's uncle owned a cottage on a lake in Michigan called Ackerson Lake.  As far as lakes go it isn't huge, but the fishing is good and it size is capable of sustaining leisure activities such as water skiing, tubing, etc.  Occasionally my family would have an opportunity to visit the cottage and be able to enjoy what it had to offer.  One of the big things that sticks out in my mind is that there were eight boats.  There was a ski boat, a pontoon party boat, a bass boat, a pedal boat, several rowboats with or without outboard motors and a few canoes.  The cottage wasn't huge so it always seemed excessive to me that there would be eight boats for four people (because usually is was just Mom, Dad, Sarah, and me).  

So I don't remember the exact occasion, but at some point my dad and I went up to Ackerson Lake for a father/son weekend.  It might have been spring break, it might have just been a weekend during the summer. Like I said, I don't really remember what the occasion was but I do know that it was early in the season and in fact it was way too cold to swim in the lake.  I was somewhere in the middle school age range 6th/7th/8th grade.  Anyway the last couple of times we'd been up there my dad had started letting me take out a rowboat with an outboard motor onto the lake all by myself.  I remember vividly my disbelief that dad was going to let me go out on the lake unsupervised. I'd usually bring some fishing gear with me and throw that in the boat but by the time I got in control of something with a motor I kind of got tunnel vision. I was so enamored with the thought of being under my own power with a motorized vehicle that I wouldn't ever end up fishing and I'd just cruise around the lake with that tiny 10HP Evinrude motor.

Well I must have done something dramatic or impressive to earn my dad's trust or maybe it was just because mom wasn't around, but on this trip he decided that he'd let me take the bass boat out all by myself.  Imagine my complete shock and amazement.  I was going to get to take out a boat with a steering wheel all by my lonesome.  I couldn't have been any more excited.  As I recall, I took the boat out a few times without incident and just had a really enjoyable time cruising the lake much faster than I was used to.

It was shortly after breakfast one day and I was really itching to get out on the lake and drive the bass boat around.  Dad was moving kind of sluggishly so I think he was happy to let me go out and do something that'd keep me out of his hair.  So I grabbed the key to the boat and off I went down to the dock.  I got the motor warmed up, unmoored the boat and was out on the water in about 10 minutes flat.  I headed straight out to the middle of the lake and started driving in circles.  After about 10-15 minutes of super fun boating the motor started to cough and sputter and then nothing.  It was dead.  Well it turns out that in my haste to leave that morning I forgot to check the fuel level on the gas tank.  I was completely out of fuel.

I had no idea what to do. So here I am in middle school stranded in the middle of a lake on a boat with no way of communicating with anybody.  The first thing I tried was paddling with the one oar that was on the boat, but since the bass boat was so wide I just ended up going in circles.  The one thing that hadn't dawned on me was that there was a trolling motor on the front of the boat.  As I said earlier, it must've been early in the boating season because it wasn't hooked up, but the battery was on board.  Mind you, I'd never used a trolling motor before and had no idea how to hook it up but I figured "Hey how hard can this be?"  So this motor had a foot pedal for for steering and throttle.  The pedal was hooked up to the motor, but not the battery.  I had no tools or way to fasten the cables so I took the red cable and touched it to the red post and the the black cable to the black post.  Since I didn't have any way to fasten the cables, I just stepped on them with my foot to hold them in place.  Then, using my hand I manipulated the throttle and steering pedal and got myself pointed in the right direction.  After about an hour I finally made it back to the dock.

I went up to the cottage and let dad know what had happened and he said he'd been sitting and watching me from the bay window the whole time.  He wanted to see if I could figure it out myself.

This experience was such a huge confidence booster for me.  It let me know that I could be put in a crisis situation, analyze my surroundings and come up with a solution to my problem.  I'm so grateful to my dad for NOT coming out and rescuing me.  It was one of those moments that made me feel smart beyond my years.  When I think back on it, it wasn't really that monumental of a deal that I figured out a solution but it's still one of those things that I carry with me as a big lifetime triumph.

Update & Hospice Lowdown

08/12/2012 - Well, as I've been told repeatedly, I'm not doing a very good job keeping my "Know Your Walrus" blog project going.  I've had a few things go on recently that have thrown me off track. I haven't forgotten about it but sometimes priorities change.  Such is the case with the last month.

So July started off fantastically. July 1 through July 5, my friend Ryan and I decided to ride our motorcycles to Memphis, TN so that we could visit Graceland. It was five days and four evenings of great rides, good camping, and good company.  Sure, we didn't go the most direct routes and actually ended up riding 500 more miles than we needed to, but the purpose of the trip was more for the ride itself than it was the destination.  Ryan's rigid 1974 Kawasaki KZ400 was a complete champ and aside from the fuel tank being "volumetrically challenged" performed with flying colors.  Impressions: Memphis is kind of a dump and the roads into/out of Memphis are in horrid shape.  The ride down and back was (although really hot) super fun.

After returning from Memphis, I rested up for a day and then was out on the road again.  My friend Pat and I went to Normal, IL on Sunday July 8 so we could go see Drag The River play at Firehouse Pizza.  I'm not going to lie, the turnout for the show was pretty lousy.  That being said, it was a great show because it basically degenerated into Chad Price and Jon Snodgrass trading acoustic duties and taking requests from the audience.  It was a quite the low key intimate affair and I was really glad to have made the trip. Drag The River was one of the only bands that I had never seen live that I REALLY wanted to.  So now, I can scratch that off of my list.

Next came a quick trip with the family focused on baseball.  Laela had hatched up a little scheme to get us to four baseball parks in four days. So on Thursday July 19 we tossed Miranda into the driver's seat and pointed her south as we headed to Bowling Green Kentucky to see the Bowling Green Hot Rods (single A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays). From there we went to St. Louis to see the Cardnials vs. Cubs. We then went to Louisville to see the Bats and followed that up with a stop in Cincinnati on the way home to see the Reds play.  It was a lot of fun (other than the Cardinals winning).

So now fast forward to the following Wednesday.  I'd been grouchy and sore all over for a couple of days and I couldn't seem to not be fatigued.  I took my temperature which was high and by all indications I was coming down with a case of pneumonia.  So I called my oncologist and the next thing you know, BAM I've got hospice care coming to my house to treat me.  I didn't think I was in that bad of shape but apparently I am.  Hospice isn't as awful or as ominous as it sounds.  It just means that I've got some extra equipment in my house to help me cope with some of my symptoms and that I have a nurse that comes and visits me a couple of times a week.  So they brought me a hospital bed, an oxygen machine, a bedside table, a wheelchair, a bunch of portable oxygen tanks, and any meds that I need.  I've now got a new point of contact should I need anything.  If I need meds or for the nurse to visit me I just call hospice and they arrange everything for me.  So I must have nipped the pneumonia in the bud because as soon as my course of anti-biotics was completed I felt much better.  

That's basically hospice care in a nutshell....I just have someone new to call for my primary health care needs.  The sky isn't falling and there is no need to make a big deal out of it.