Normally, I would have gotten up Sunday morning and put in some time on the trainer before church. This was far from a normal Sunday morning, though.
I’d been sitting quietly the night before, watching an episode of ‘The West Wing’ when my cell phone began to vibrate. I looked at the name; one I recognized as a very good friend, but knew immediately it would be something unusual since it was 10:30 p.m.
“John…hey…I’m kinda drunk,” she said, with slurred speech and a slight giggle. “I’m in Chagrin Falls at…um…Gate Keepers of something.”
“Do you mean ‘Gamekeepers’,” I suggested.
It was and after getting the address from her, I went upstairs and warned Jack we would be having an overnight visitor and he needed to make up the guest room and clean up his bathroom while I drove to pick her up.
I made it to the bar in 30 minutes, but she wasn’t there. I started worrying that she’d forgotten she’d called me and had tried to drive home. I finally found her outside near her car.
“Why are you out here walking around in 4-degree weather? If you’d fallen in a snowbank, you might have frozen to death,” I said.
She wasn’t completely with it and gave me some story about needing to check her car. I packed her in my car and tried to question her as to why she was alone in Chagrin Falls when she lived in Lakewood.
“I wasn’t alone. My friends are in the bar. We were at this shower thing...” she said.
I knew I might not be getting an accurate accounting, but what kind of friends wouldn’t have been assisting her with getting home? I was more than happy to help out, but that seemed pretty bizarre. I drove her to our house and showed her to the guest room and bathroom. I’d made no arrangements for garments beyond what she was wearing. It didn’t seem to matter though since she went into the bedroom and never made another sound.
Jack came downstairs to talk about the situation. “I don’t get why people go to a bar and drink too much when they have to drive,” he said.
“Well…not being a drinker I don’t know for sure, but I suspect they go and have a drink or two…or three…and then realize suddenly they’ve had too much and shouldn’t be driving. The good news is my friend had the sense to call me and get a ride,” I said. He nodded agreement and maybe learned a very valuable lesson.
She came downstairs in the morning to my kitchen cleaning. I offered to make breakfast, but instead we went to ‘Yours Truly’ where I got a story about friends having their husbands with them and not being available to help her get home. Bad friends, if you ask me. I ate pancakes with lots of fake syrup instead of riding my bike, though.
I spent some time with my nephews in the early afternoon looking over my late father’s ruined 1968 Chris Craft Sea Skiff. It’s up on blocks, where it has rested for the past few years, rotting away. During the kayak portion of ‘Tour Ohio’, Nathan had discussed with me the possibility of purchasing and restoring the boat to its original glory.
“It’s worth almost nothing right now and if it stays out of the water another year, he’ll have to scrap it entirely,” Nathan explained.
I told him I was very interested in the project and so there we were trudging through a foot of snow to have a look at what was left. Nathan and Jonathon pointed out the issues where the hull was collapsing due to the improper placement of the jacks holding it up to the rotting transom and wood throughout the interior. The twin, 327 Chevy engines that powered the boat appeared to be winterized and were something Nathan could rebuild regardless.
“It’ll be expensive and I don’t know anything about working on wood Uncle John, but I’d be willing to tackle it if you would,” Nathan said. I knew Jonathon felt the same way since he’s spent many hours working on it with his grandfather so many years ago.
I returned home, grabbed Dakota and drove to Mimi’s to catch up with her granddaughter, Mikala, who I’d promised a hike in the park on her next visit. Though there was a foot of snow on the trails, she was seven and couldn’t have cared less.
“How about we hike into the beaver marsh and walk across the ice to the beaver lodge,” I suggested to her and her mom.
We bundled up, drove to the park and hopped out and into the snow. It was deep and walking was difficult. The hike to the marsh took 30 minutes, but it was frozen and we were able to walk out to the lodges. On the return trip, Mikala asked for a ride so I placed her on my shoulders and carried her for a half mile. It proved to be an excellent workout, especially since she insisted we climb ‘a mountain’, which meant hiking up the steep slope I normally use for my karaoke workout.
Hike: 90 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 70-100 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 450.
