In my last post I mentioned that I had friends visiting from Seattle. Ten years ago my then fiancé, now my ex husband, and I lived out there with my son. We had not seen these friends since they visited shortly after our daughter was born and then it was only for a couple of hours. My friend and I had been talking about this trip for years and planning it for the last 6 months. When they arrived we spent two days in St. Paul to catch up with other friends and then went to the cabin for the Fourth of July weekend. Along with my friends were their two children, my daughter, my ex, my two dogs and his dog. My friend’s husband spent a great deal of time getting the boats working. He was also primed to clean out the gutters but I wouldn’t let him. Have I mentioned that these people are wonderful?

Anyway, in addition to getting the pontoon running he also got the Jet Ski running. We had it serviced last summer and it worked until the 4th of last year. Apparently someone had dropped the battery and cracked it. He bought a new battery and after a difficult time getting it in we borrowed the neighbor’s truck and backed it into the lake. Amazingly it fired right up.

I say amazingly only because the Jet Ski has not been really maintained very well in the past, much like most things up at the cabin. I don’t mean to paint a picture of a run down place, it isn’t, in fact it is rather grand but there is so much of it and so much landscaping and so much junk in the garage that it really is a full time job to take care of the place. I know nothing about boats and thus haven’t attempted to do any maintenance on them.

The kids loved the Jet Ski. None of them are old enough to drive it themselves but they could steer as long as an adult was on with them. The men took turns taking them out around the lake. I have some fantastic pictures of the kids and their dads with the same grin from ear to ear.

While the kids are on the water craft you cannot go as fast as you would like. This particular Jet Ski goes about 70 miles per hour. If you hit a patch of waves it is better to plow through them at high speed rather than slowing down. If you slow down you risk dumping the boat. It is counter intuitive to speed up when the water gets choppy and takes some getting used to.

My ex, who rides a very large Harley Davidson, took the Jet Ski out on his own prior to bringing our 5 year old on with him. He wanted to get the feel for the craft and show everyone what he could do with it.

He took off from the dock and about 100 yards out started doing donuts at high speed. Before he could complete one rotation he went one way and the water craft stopped. He had hit a wave at too high a speed in too tight of a turn. Within seconds we could see that he was alright and everyone on the dock was clapping for him to do it again. He took a bow and started it up again and took off in a straight line for a leisurely ride to the other end of the lake and back. When he returned our daughter asked him to do his trick again since it was so funny.

In the evenings we took rides on the pontoon and watched the fireworks from the lake. We had fantastic weather the whole time. The bugs didn’t seem that bad until I noticed the kids were covered in welts from mosquito bites.

Both my ex and my friend’s husband are great cooks. Even nicer they both enjoy the process so my friend and I were only responsible for side dishes and salads. We ate wonderful food, drank some really great wine and kick ass beer and best of all we got to spend some much needed time together again. They say you can’t go back and maybe we didn’t but we had a hell of a great time. As these things always go, it ended way too soon.

We are making plans to go out there for either Thanksgiving or Christmas.