The Canoe Incident of 2009

So on Sunday, after dinner, B and I decided to go for a little adventure in the canoe. This house is on a body of water and Minnesotans apparently call it a lake, but I think it qualifies as more of a pond. Either way, it's a really fun place to paddle around for a few hours on a sunny afternoon. So we put on our lifejackets, grabbed some oars, and got in the canoe.

Now, I don't have a ton of experience with canoes, and neither does B. I decided to be in the back this time which made me in charge of steering. B was in front, and because he has better upper body strength I had to work really hard to keep us from going in circles. Anyway, I haven't quite mastered the art of the C-stroke or J-stroke yet (or whatever) and we were a little unstable and then all of a sudden... we were dumped into the water.

Now, that picture I posted a few days ago of the pond/lake looked really nice, right? But that was a wide view. Let me show you what that water looks like up close.

Yuck. Isn't that gross? The pond/lake is certainly a very... uhhh... natural body of water. People don't seem to swim in it very frequently, and certainly our family doesn't. The whole thing is overgrown with some sort of water weed.

It's disgusting. And I had to swim through that shit and drag the canoe to shore. Luckily, the pond/lake doesn't get very deep, and was probably only five feet deep where we tipped over. I chose to swim to shore becaues I did not want my feet touching the muckiness of the bottom. B was braver and walked to shore. The family had a really good laugh, I think. I was too grumpy by the time we got back on land to wait and pose for pictures, but I suspect this is not the last time we'll tip the canoe this summer so there may be another photo opportunity. We showered right away and managed to go through a whole bar of soap between the two of us, and managed to prevent "the itch" or any sort of rash.

So yeah, life in the suburbs... bucolic, yet dangerous!