Charleston, South Carolina - 4 kilometres walked
At 4am the winds finally dropped to below 10 knots, providing for a much gentler ride and by the time we reached the inlet at Charleston the waters were glassy and a small pod of dolphins was there to greet us. I had an hour long nap in the cockpit while Ana watched the helm and I felt surprisingly good after that, considering I’d been up since midnight.
We anchored in the Ashley River then I got out the bucket and gave SeaLight’s decks a good salt water scrubbing while Ana cleaned up the cockpit and cabin. The water here isn’t nearly as brown as most of the ICW up to this point, but still I’m hoping for a good rainshower to give her a fresh water rinse.
By the time we left in the dinghy, the ebb current was raging along at 3-4 knots so we powered against that into the dinghy docks at the Safe Harbour Charleston City MEGADOCK. The dinghy dock must have had at least 20 dinghies jammed in and we could not find a space for ours. Instead we started tying up to the nearby bridge connecting the main rigid dock to the floating dinghy dock, but a local who passed by said that was a bad idea as he’d seen dinghies squashed and punctured beneath the bridge as the tide fell, and the tide rises and falls a full six feet here. Fortunately, a guy returned to his dinghy and left, which opened up a space, and we were able to ram, jam, and cram ours in. I also had to walk to the main marina office to pay the $5/day usage charge, and it was a very long walk due to the size of this marina.
After the long ocean trip our goal today was modest – get groceries. We walked to the Publix grocery store which was less than a mile and stocked up on things we needed. During our walk I noticed some big differences here – we are now seeing rows of fully grown palm trees and Ana even spotted a little green lizard sunning himself on a concrete step. Beaufort felt like our first baby step into the south; Charleston feels like we’ve arrived. The temperature was also a balmy 23 degrees, which felt even warmer after Ana showed me the picture my Mom sent of the results of a big snowstorm in Saskatoon last night – six inches of fluffy white snow covering everything.
Back at the boat, we received a call from our friend Adrian from Kingston, Ontario. He and his wife Sara are in Charleston for a few days so we made plans to spend the day with them tomorrow which is sure to be a blast.
What I really wanted to write about today is making my wife laugh. I think a lot of husbands spend a great deal of time and energy trying to get a laugh out of their wives, and I’m no exception. But Ana’s not easily entertained or impressed. She gets this from her mom. Maria is such a sweet lady but man, is she hard to impress. But who doesn’t enjoy a challenge? A few days ago Ana and I were at a grocery store and wandered through an aisle with all those easy to make cake mixes. As her birthday is coming up, we decided to buy two so we could have a tester to make sure it turned out, ensuring her birthday cake is spectacular. As I had also been on the lookout for a secondary anchor for the boat, I suggested I buy her a fabulous Danforth for her birthday, you know, like a real special nautical gift. She didn’t even crack a smile. In fact, I think I was threatened with violence. That night when we were having a phone call with our relationship councillors Ben and Kate, I mentioned the idea, and said the anchor would be a symbol of our steadfast love – sturdy and immovable. Ana didn’t laugh. Neither did our councillors. They just said it was a bad idea.
I often use the power of dance to get a laugh. I can sometimes get a chuckle out of her with a surprise Macarena, a sloppy Moonwalk, or sometimes the parts of The Ketchup Song dance I can remember, but usually she’s just embarrassed because I’ll do it at the grocery store or at one of her art exhibition opening galas.
One move that’s a sure hit that every guy knows is twirling your penis like a helicopter and making the rotor sound, like at the beginning of MASH, then pretending the power of the dick rotor is pulling your body around the house. That always gets a laugh, but you can’t overuse it, and doing it in public spaces is really frowned upon by the authorities, not to mention the general public. I didn’t invent that one. I think my brother told me about that move years ago, as he found reasonable success with it getting wife giggles.
I have some tough competition for humour. And that competition would be her phone. She’s always laughing at things on there, usually memes sent by Magnus or Stella, often about cats or dogs or monkeys or little kids getting knocked over. The other day she was laughing at one reel that had a series of little kids looking at a frog then the frog jumps up and sticks to their face and they freak out. It was pretty funny. But the memes she’s into recently is this weird little woodchuck-like creature called a Hyrax that makes this awful screeching noise, then overlaid with lines like, “When I see my sister wearing one of my shirts that still has the tag on it.” I know, sounds dumb, and it is. But she laughs at these every morning. But I don’t know how to make memes. I’m thinking I should learn.
No comments:
Post a Comment