"Let us never know what old age is. Let us know the happiness time brings, not count the years."
So, Saturday was the big six-oh. A great day, overshadowed by events in Pennsylvania. We'll stay away from that topic, except to note that P and I spent a depressing Sunday shopping real estate overseas and planning for what feels at this moment like the inevitable. Until, finally, we stopped and came around to the notion that after it happens, and we rattle off all the terrible things that will likely follow if the right cleaves to Project 2025, our life together as a couple really won't change all that much. We're not worth coming for, and let's face it, we're already both so antisocial these days that the knowledge a majority of our neighbors aren't very good people will do little or nothing to alter our weekly supper plans. I mean, I already knew all that. So we'll likely stay here and watch the country gradually slip under the waves from the highest deck we can find.
But I do think I need to start thinking about timing an exit from the stock market sooner rather than later. A lot of our immunity from the coming contagion flows from having accumulated and maintained some savings, and markets get skittish over things like Russian tanks rolling across Europe, and a new administration firing every competent federal bureaucrat and replacing him or her with some Federalist Society flunkie. I reckon we'll ride the wave a little while longer, then step over the side into some "safe" bond fund or the like.
I'm starting to sound like those old people who watch too much Fox News and then fall victim to the ads on that horrible network urging gullible geezers to buy silver coins for the coming socialist apocalypse. Come to think of it, by golly, I am a geezer!
After P and I went through a few days of eleventh hour gymnastics trying to find some special destination to celebrate my 60th, we finally gave up and just decided to spend the day up at the Cliff. We took the long way to get there, driving up through Seneca Falls to pick up the newly-repaired Chris Craft up at Cayuga Wooden Boat Works, where Phil and Ken seemed utterly smitten with Peg (can't say I blame them there), and Ken and I took the boat out onto Cayuga Lake for a test run during which the old straight six roared to 2500 rpm like a beast.
Fatefully, as we hitched the trailer Phil noticed the hitch pin was missing, went to get a replacement, then forgot about it. P and I drove away blissfully unaware, down NY 20 through the Montezuma swamp and Waterloo and finally Canandaigua, dropping off the boat and trailer at the yacht club for the next day's adventure before arriving at the condo and incinerating a steak.
As an aside, this summer at the lake has been a bit of a bust, due to climate change. The balcony faces east across the lake, meaning no breeze ever and a sweltering mid-morning sun that drives us off the patio and roasts Peg's poor garden to the verge of death. So the only time we're out there is to water the plants, spending the rest of the days and evenings hugging the air conditioner inside.
Saturday morning we made our way into Canandaigua so I could buy a belt to wear to supper, having left all of the ten or so belts I already own back home. On the way we passed through a shoe store, of the old school with shoe boxes stacked up twelve foot shelves and that strong shoe leather aroma, and Peg found a pair of decent boat shoes to replace the sandals that were all wrong for this slick, varnished mahogany vessel. I bought my belt and a too expensive seersucker shirt that struck P's fancy (for me to wear that night), and we drove back to the Canandaigua Yacht Club where we launched the boat so effortlessly that one might've thought we knew what we were doing. The old girl then fired to life, and in no time we were thundering up to the Lake House for a triumphant docking and cocktails.
The folks at the Lake House have their act together when it comes to operating a marina--with two toots of our horn a couple pretty high school girls in matching outfits dashed out and assisted with mooring and fenders.
She's a beauty, eh? Not a bad looking boat, either.
We spent the next little bit in an empty bar with a nice young bartender named Michael, a thoughtful, pale fellow with thinning hair whose approach to bartending was part chemist, part artist or chef. He was also the drummer in a band called Dude Daiquiri you can apparently find on Spotify.
Fortified by our stop, we hopped back into the Chris Craft and took off across the lake, thinking we'd pull up behind the Cliff for some photos.
But as we made our way south, I noticed the oil pressure was about half of where it should be, while the temperature gauge appeared to be climbing. Figuring a seized engine would be an unpleasant way to end what had been a great boat ride, I turned back for the dock at the CYC.
We pulled up at the dock, and I dashed up to the truck and trailer for the haul out. As I drove across the grass and down the steep hill, I heard banging from the trailer and a feeling of, I dunno, getting slammed into from the back.
Another club member ran in front of the truck, waving his arms for me to stop. When I walked around back, I was horrified to find the unpinned hitch had flopped off of the ball, and was dragging the pavement when it wasn't slamming into the tailgate of the truck with full force.
This truck has always been a little snakebit. I feel like a complete idiot. Still trying to decide whether to turn in an insurance claim, which USAA will surely pay but then increase our already outrageous premiums. Peg suggests we should just live with it until the trade in at tax time.
We managed to hoist the trailer back onto the ball and pull the boat out of the lake. The guy waving his arms brought us a replacement bolt for where the pin should've been, and introduced himself as the owner of the house next door that Peg has admired since we got here. We exchanged contact information, I promised to arrange the wooden boat ride he said his wife covets, and we drove our dinged and diminished pickup back home.
That evening Peg made us a reservation at a stylish Korean fusion restaurant in downtown Rochester, Nosh. The internet promised good food "served in a restored factory with industrial-chic decor." For the 45 minute drive up to Rochester, we took the roadster with the top down, on a perfect evening in western New York. The food proved pretty amazing, with P and me sharing a huge appetizer plate of Korean meat goodness and kimchi over a good bottle of red.
We drove home with the top down as dusk gradually gave way to stars, winding through farms and hills back to the condo. Not a bad way to end a day that's just a number, after all.
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