A Day Sailing

I can proudly cross "visit the beach" and "ride a boat" off of my list of things to do this summer. Yes, despite the rescheduling here and there, we finally got out to Newport and got a thrilling ride on Lacey's mom's friend John's boat. John is a professor at OSU (he was my dad's favorite professor in the 80's, as a matter of fact) and seems to be kind of a Jack of all trades, and quite the character.

I woke up yesterday morning at 7, after getting to bed at 1:30. I sleepily got ready, packed my things, made myself some coffee, and made a mix CD for the occasion. As I rushed out the door, it occurred to me that my CD player was lost and/or broken. I got into the car, without the CD player, and with a case of Cd's, as I started to give my grandma directions to Lacey's house. When I got there, I waited about 5 minutes for someone to open the door, and when someone did, it was a still tired looking Lacey in her pajamas. I waited patiently in the living room, while the family got ready. I worked on my anagrams ( I recently began making anagram names for everyone in my grade, like this: Cielle Charron = Ellen Arcorich) I had got quite a good list going, and on just that one paper I had about 30 of so names.

When were were all ready to head out, the five of us climbed into the cramped little car. The drive up was very beautiful, as usual. The only bad thing was having to share Lacey's CD player, back and forth, each listening to the song the other had just listened to (thank you Lacey). We did not even get through one CD. Everything is going to be so much simpler with an iPod. When we got into town, we drove straight to the dock where John's boat was....docked, and got everything ready for our adventure.

After everything was ship shape, we set sail into the channel. The way up was lovely, not to much wind, sunny, smooth sailing if you will. We glided on, taking lots of pictures, waving to other boaters, taking turns at the wheel, and looking at the splendid scenery (mostly trees, old beach houses, and old rickety boats). A few hours in we dropped anchor near a nice grassy island, and had lunch. After lunch, Lacey and I played someting similar to Scrabble on the bow. I think that was my favorite part, just hanging out on the bow, playing games, almost losing some stuff to the water, taking pictures, and discovering a new entrance to the cabin below. But right when everything seemed fine, a big gust of wind took my anagrams, and sent them floating down the river. Thry're probably way past Toledo by now. We could turn around for Lacey's hat, but not my anagrams. After lollygagging on the boat for a few hours, we headed for the dock. The way back was a little less smooth, then the way up, and was pretty windy, but was pretty fun to navigate in, and I ended up taking us back about half way.


When we got back we were all pretty cold, and after putting the boat back in order, we went and stood in front of the hand dryers in the bathroom, and then went off to eat dinner. We ended up at a very nice, expensive restaurant, where we had a great view of both the beach, and a lady with really crazy robot glasses. After hardly eating my meal, and gawking at some strange people, we got back in the car and drove to Agate beach. We did not spend all that much time there, but I can tell you that there were some nice barken dunes (whatever John said), a pretty blue sky, and lots of sand. It did not seem like normal Oregon coast sand, because it was not all wet, and covered in garbage, it was very soft and clean.


After trying to run up and down a bunch of dunes, and getting sand in my eyes, we when back to the car and played a thrilling game of "try and get the sand out of the camera", we lost. I had so much sand in my eyes, I couldn't see, and when I did get most of it out, and could see we were in front of a small candy store, and Lacey and I when in and got some salt water taffy. Now, armed with taffy and sand, we headed home. Gazing out the window, sharing headphones, and looking at the crescent moon with two planets making a diagonal line straigt through it, the drive seamed to go by too fast, and I soon found myself at my front door, saying, "thank you", and went in to share my good time with my family.



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