Well Played

Green season is here. The trees in the backyard wintered well. Save one young tree, a Siberian Larch, which looks like it’s on chemotherapy.

Happy Wife’s kayak arrived a couple weeks ago. It’s a stunning boat, all 18.1 feet of it, stem to stern. Custom paint job and everything. Made in Vancouver, BC.

It arrived damaged.

This, despite being enclosed in multiple layers of heavy plastic and cardboard — the kind I suppose NASA uses — reinforced with splines of 2×2 blue board, stem to stern, and liberally labeled with cautions: High Claim Value — Top Load Only. I can well imagine the morning meetings at the warehouse at the shipping companies, the backslapping and wink-winks, “Oh yeah, sure, thanks for letting us know dare, we’ll be sure to take extra care when handling ur package dare…ha ha ha.”

It wasn’t severe damage, a half dollar size crack to the gel coat near the rear hatch, and a pretty good gouge to the hull. Happy Wife was tremendously disappointed. This is her dreamboat. And who wouldn’t be. We paid $700 just for shipping. And now, before it even sees water for the first time it needs repair. We filed a claim with the shipping company to recover the cost. Something I also expect will be met with hearty guffaws. That, or the expected finger pointing will ensue. There were three different companies involved in getting it from Vancouver to Tacoma to Anchorage. You can imagine there will be a lot of, “Hey, don’t blame us, didn’t happen on our watch.” On the other hand, maybe they’ll own up to it, like Keeebler did when I complained that the box of crackers I purchased at the grocery store was mostly schnibbles.

Doubt it. But you gotta try.

Happy Wife overcame the setback and has started planning for her multi-day kayak trip to Bear Glacier. She said, “I need to see if my wet suit still fits. Haven’t worn it in years.”  Uh oh. She disappears upstairs. Husband braces himself.

Minutes later, hot dang if she can’t still rock a wet suit

The pearls I thought were a nice touch.

Even Chuck Woolery seemed impressed. I’d no idea he was still with us. The last I recall he was asking a contestant, “Where will your husband say is the last place you made Whoopie?”

Saturday night we went to a friend’s house for Halibut fettuccine. And chocolate covered strawberries for dessert, shipped overnight FedEx from San Diego by her daughter for Mother’s Day. Shari’s Berries.

Consequently, today, Happy Wife and I went out for twenty miles or so on our bikes, tootling about town unloading calories.

A fine weekend overall.