Double Trouble

Hello dear readers, if there are any of you left out there. It has been a while but I hope you will forgive me when I say my summer sounds like a movie title, but backwards ~ 3 funerals and a wedding.

I hope that bad things, like so many others, happen in three’s and the Mitchell have paid their account in FULL for a good long while.

Hot on the heels of our latest tragedy, some good news. Another of our coven (that’s Breaking Dawn lingo for family, “go camp Jacob!”) turned 40 and CJ and her SB boyfriend treated our merry little bad to a week on Georgina Island. First, I must say, I had no idea Lake Simcoe was so HUGE.

Having now looked at a map, I see that Barrie, where Momo lives, is situated near a little bay. That being my only reference for good old LS, I didn’t realize there was more beyond the bay.

Our week was full speed relax. Two spring garage sales and a band of merry Mary’s (and Mary friendly) made sure there was enough food for two weeks. We also had two charming pooches to entertain us, mountains of books (I myself managed my way through 3 ~ David Sedaris –When you are Engulfed in Flames (mucho recommend), Breaking Dawn (go Jacob!) and The Last American Man (jury is still out. Good book, but the Eustace seems like a bit of a dill weed) and an entire lake for adventure.

There was also Trouble. I mean the game. Oh, there were other nice, family oriented games that we played sans problem. But when the Blue Girl from the doll house casually suggested a round of Trouble, it was best to turn the other way. Easier said than done of course, she would ply one with drinks, like you were her best friend.

Then WHAM-O! The Puppet Master would slide behind her Wizard of Oz mirror and ‘suggest’ what peg should be moved where, who should be sent packing and promise that if you did her ‘this one little favour’, she would be nice to you next time. She also decided if the dice had had a full ‘pop’. If not, or she didn’t like the number, she would simply pop again.

Naïve or drunk, not sure which, but we all got sucked in by her little giggle and before we knew it, were crying in our pink wine as she did her little happy dance out on the dock. In an effort to escape this relentless butchering, I had an ill conceived Magellan inspired moment and asked IronMan to canoe around the island with me.

Calm, flat waters on one side of the island would surely translate into the same all around. Without much enthusiasm or reluctance, he agreed. Much like my knowledge of Lake Simcoe, I really didn’t appreciate the size of the island. As we rounded each point, I thought, and eventually prayed to both God and Poseidon, that we surely must start heading north at some point and safety would be within our grasp.

Two or three turns in, the Gilligan’s Island theme song started repeating in my head. The weather didn’t start getting rough, but the water certainly did. Some comfort was found in being able to see the bottom, if we stayed close to shore, but that meant exposing our port side. Attacking the waves head on was a must lest we be flipped, worst case, or swamped, from the side.

I found myself looking for expansion joints in the canoe when it seemed that only bow and stern were touching water. I made an Edmund Fitzgerald reference upon our return which my brother poo-pooed. Apparently it did not split in two as I thought, it sank whole, cracking in half when it hit the bottom. He then proceeded to sing the entire Gordon Lightfoot song.

I had at least packed a Diet Coke for my man and water for myself. We stopped at one point and I asked if IronMan wanted to turn back. He said it was up to me. Near as I can figure, that was about 45 minutes in.

Surely we had to be half way and right around the next bend was the ferry dock and it was only 4 km from there. I have since discovered that Georgina has a circumference of 21 km and it takes two men 3 long hours to conquer.

About 2 hours in, we had no watch so who really knows, the bow went eerily silent. “Do you still love me baby?” Silence. “Are you having fun?” Silence. “Do you want another Diet Coke?” (not that I had one to give) Silence.

At long last, we spied the ferry and the water was calm. “This is not fun for me” I finally heard. “Just think of it as a spinning class for your arms” I tried joking. 4 more kilometres of silence. My knees were sunburnt, my two sizes too small life jacket was chaffing my right arm pit and I really needed to pee but not one word of complaint escaped my lips.

He has now told me he feared for his life but thought I must know what I was doing or surely I would have stopped. I didn’t see how that was an option. It was not a portage friendly canoe (no yolk in the middle) and I really didn’t want to turn around after about 30 minutes in the waves, I kept thinking it MUST end soon so carry on.

I did contemplate stealing a lounge chair off a dock we passed. It had wheels on the one end and I thought the canoe would rest on it perfectly and we could just pull it back along the road.

The next day I rode Fauntleroy’s bike around the island and realized that would have been a longer walk than I thought, much like the canoe trip itself. In the end, we made it safely back to dock where Blue Girl had lured two more foolish little flies into her web. She had Kitkat pitted against his new Mexican boyfriend and was smiling all the way to the Trouble finish line.