The highlight of the day for me was doing some woodworking with my dad and my son. Dad was very patient in teaching Jeffrey some of the more advanced woodworking techniques. Dad somehow didn’t remember that I had had extensive woodworking experience in my past so he was teaching me as well. I didn’t say anything because I wanted Jeffrey to learn; that, and my dad had three tools I had never seen before because most of my experience is now 20 years old and a lot of new machines have come into existence for specialized woodworking since then… so I was learning (still, I mentioned to mom that dad seemed to have forgotten my experience, and I know from a later conversation with my dad that my mom had reminded him of the fact. I was a lot more free to do as I wished after that). After a couple of hours, Jeffrey and I had a couple of wooden spatulas used for stir-frying – Jeffrey with cherry wood, and me with maple wood.
Dad shows Jeffrey how to plane wood
The other task we did today was to put my brother’s speed boat back in the water. My dad’s boat had engine issues and if we wanted to do any water skiing or tubing, we needed a boat. With that accomplished, we took the boat out mid-day to do some tubing. The lake was rough with high winds – perfect for sailing, but terrible for boating (and yet, there were so many boats out right now that it looked like a weekend… except that these boaters knew the rules). It got too rough for the kids. For some reason, my wife wanted to go around the bluff to see homes on the other side of the “Y” of our lake. Courtney drove the boat. As we got to the bluff, the swells were reaching two and three feet. We and the boat were getting hammered. Once we had accomplished our goal of getting to the other side, I took over the controls and headed back. I found a less rough spot on the other side of the lake so I went there. Once there, Jeffrey wanted to wake-board all the way back to the house. He accomplished that feat, but he was really tired; there were still a lot of waves and many wakes caused by many boats. In the evening, just before sundown, the lake calmed, so we went out again. This time, we were the only boat on the lake, and we decided that now was the best time for water skiing. Barbara got up and did a couple of laps. Jeffrey then wanted to try, but the sun had just gone down. Technically, you stop water skiing at this point. While we were setting Jeffrey up, the Sheriff’s boat drifted by. He knew we were pushing it (as Barbara was mounting the night lights on the boat), but generally, they will allow a water-skier to ride back to their house. We waived, they waived, which to me meant tacit approval to go for it. Jeffrey got up on the third try and we got in a couple of laps. Just as we were putting the boat away, we could see the Sheriff’s boat blue lights flashing in the distance as it chased down another late water-skier. You can ski into dusk, but there is an official time that you cannot cross.