Annapolis – 5 miles by dinghy, 4 kilometres walked
I lost my best girl today. Ana left this morning in the rental car for a trip back home to attend Stella’s grade 12 graduation, to see Magnus, to visit with her folks, and to take care of a few administrative tasks such as buying new winter tires for the car. The kids are good for taking care of basic housing necessities, but when it comes to plump maintenance expenditures, a parent’s credit card is a necessity.
My first day of bachelorhood was good, for the most part. I started working on my list of boat projects after kissing my beautiful wife goodbye and it didn’t take long until I found a major problem. There seemed to be 12 volts of electrical current passing below the boat, in the super conductive seawater, through the engine shaft to the metal parts on the underside of the boat, such as the keel and thru-hulls which tends to disintegrate things and cause one’s boat to sink. Just another day in the boater’s life, so I took it in stride and started testing everything on the boat with my multi-meter, ruling out certain theories, and ruling in others. I was tempted to call SeaLight’s electrician-in-chief (my dad), but I wanted to give myself a respective margin of failure before taking it to the next step. It didn’t take long before I hit a dead end, so I gave up, in hope of gaining some inspiration though purposeful procrastination.
I met up with Kate and Ben and we took a long dinghy ride to the furthest end of Back Creek and walked for 22 minutes to Fawcett Boat Supplies to pick up project materials. It is a great chandlery and the people working there were wonderful. I picked up a new zinc, a 12 volt charge port for the v-berth and associated connections, flag clips, and a few nuts and bolts for other needs, plus a boat electrician recommendation. We also hit a wine shop and Ben and I each scored a 1.75 litre bottle of Sailor Jerry's for $29, what a deal! We then walked back to the dinghy and rode back to vessel Waddington where they invited me in for a sundowner and we had a lovely sundowner indeed, being visited by various spooky witches and creatures on paddleboards, then enjoyed the warm sun and cozy cockpit thinking about the likely sub-zero situation back home.
After a few Sailor Jerry’s rum and cokes I dinghy’d back to SeaLight and started some serious reflection as I made a tikka masala Indian curry (anytime I am separated from my life partner I sprint directly for ring-sting inducing Indian food as she is not a huge fan…) I put on my Spotify 2021 Thanksgiving playlist that we and my brothers’ families made at that time, and it's an incredible set of songs that I listen to all the time. A song came up – Love Song by Tesla, an 80’s rock band. And you know who I thought of? My best buddy from high school, Darren Bessette.
I first met Darren Bessette in the change room in grade 10 as some of the other weak kids were getting rat-tail towel whipped in the showers by the hairy super jocks . He was complaining about something or someone (probably the super-jocks) and our complaints exactly matched so we became friends. And we remained best buddies for a long time, including those awkward high school years where boys think of nothing else but getting drunk and getting laid, and we had tremendous success with the former, but far less with the latter, despite our best efforts.
When I set off from Saskatchewan in search of my life, Darren remained there in pursuit of his. We went our separate ways, and tried to stay in touch, but our realities started to change. When I met the woman of my dream, there was never any doubt he would be my best man, as I was his, back in our early 20’s when he married Darla, from Debden. We had a great time meeting up again, but things had changed, and our paths and geographies were very different. We moved from overseas to Calgary, and we met up once or twice, but the reunions became infrequent after that. He ended up getting divorced from Darla and we moved to Ontario and somewhere along the way we stopped talking. Darren never was great for keeping in touch, and as soon as I stopped calling him, the communication ceased.
I know he’s bumped into my parents in Saskatoon over the years. But I haven’t spoken to him for at least ten years. A couple of years ago I got his cell phone number from a mutual friend of ours and tried calling him a couple of times but no luck. One night I was listening to a band we used to love – L.A. Guns – and I called him and left a 10 minute long message for him, playing tunes, talking about stuff, whatever. I probably dialled the wrong number, or maybe he thought it was a prank call (if people still do those...) I'm sad I was unable to get hold of him, but I do know if we ever met up in person again, we’d revert right back to where we left off and have a great time. Different realities, different priorites.
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