Big daddy

Have you ever heard that saying "When you borrow your mom's boat, something will go terribly wrong."? No? Well you have now.

So, I wrote about the awesome weekend that Angela and I had with some friends this past weekend, however, I did leave out one small incident that caused some mild stress and discomfort. That story goes as follows: A couple of weeks ago Angela and I went down to Shell Knob to familiarize ourselves with my mother's new 24' pontoon boat. She warned us about some slight difficulties she had been having getting it started out of the boat slip but Don (her new husband) showed me a neat trick to make the big boat work. I was instructed to report back to her any problems that I had with the boat this weekend. Here's how that conversation went:

Mom: Hi, so you had some problems with the boat? (I had been talking to Don earlier and she had overheard his end of the conversation)
Me: Well, yeah, you could say that.
Mom: What happened?
Me: Well, Shaun, Andy and I went down to the boat and got it all ready to head out and pick up the rest of the group. We had a little difficulty getting her (the boat) started but I didn't think much about that because you had warned my about it earlier. So we went on our way, the boat ran well. We filled up on Gas at Campbell Point marina and had a little difficulty again getting started. But it worked out. We picked up the rest of the group at the lake house and headed out to find a place to fish and swim. We drove around a few min and found an area that looked good and decided to stop. We cut the engine and were ready for some fun in the sun. However, there was a stiff breeze blowing and it just happened to be blowing us in the direction of a large rock bar. As we got within about 15 yards of the rock bar, I jumped behind the wheel and tried to get her started....No luck....I tried again....no luck....We were just getting over the gravel bar (my attention at this point was wholly on the ignition) and I tried again.... Lucky me! It started up and as the propeller started it hit a rock and broke a blade off the propeller. I got out and pushed the boat off the rock bar (creating some chuckles on board when I couldn't get back in the boat) and got back in. I then decided that the water was not so bad and I jumped back in for a swim. When I came around the back of the boat to get back in, I checked out the propeller and found the blade problem. This caused some concern. I alerted the passengers and we decided to head back toward the lake house. As you could probably imagine, we had some trouble getting the engine started. To make a long (45 min or so) story short, we made a lot of attempts to get the engine started again and we failed a lot. We ended up docked to the Kanakuk camps dock (empty at this time) as our mechanics (thank God for Mike and Cory) worked on getting us under way. They did and we decided that we would not cut the engine until we got back to the boat slip. And it was so.

Mom: Well, that happens when you have a boat.

Seriously? That's what happens....I'm never buying a boat.

So, that's my story. It will be a good one to tell for years to come. I'll probably have a follow up story about how I tried to replace the propeller blade by myself and how hilarious that was (I haven't tried this yet but I could probably go ahead and write the story).

Moving on to another topic. It is Monday and it's time for a weigh-in. I would like to mention that I successfully completed another trek from home to work this morning. I completed the walk in 10 min less time than last week. It seems that my weekend did not impact my goals as negatively as I had imagined. My stated goal was to break 220 by this weigh-in. I did not break 220 but here is the result.

Starting weight: 230 lbs
Current weight: 220 lbs
Total loss: 10 lbs

I'm pretty happy with this and will set my goal at a reasonable 3 lbs by next Monday's weigh-in.

Praise God.