I don’t often recount hour-by-hour activities to anyone. It’s somewhat vapid and of interest only to me. But let me give a slight breakdown of yesterday, if only to gloat that I had one of the greatest single days of my life. Simple and perfect.
9:30 a.m. Woke up after a considerable sleep. I didn’t go out Saturday night, just watched a few episodes of The Office and called it an evening.
10:30 a.m. Made breakfast for myself and Matt Howard. Ate and departed for Chautauqua Marina.
11:00 a.m. Matt & I took two rented kayaks into Chautauqua Lake. Three hours for $20 is a lovely deal. We stayed near enough to the shore to remain out of heavy wake and made good time cutting around the west end of the lake. When we spied the Institution bell tower on the horizon, we opted to challenge ourselves to make it all the way to the grounds. Being who we are, we assumed the quickest, easiest way to get there would be to simply cut across the lake.
Bad plan. I felt like I was riding a tricycle on a highway of 18-wheelers. Power boats, racing boats and jet skis were coming from all directions, and even if the wakes from the major horsepower had cut down, the wind was still whipping. But the sun was gorgeous, and it wasn’t too hot. We just happened to be caught in a water treadmill.
I very nearly capsized only once, when I tried adjusting my seating while my nose hit a decent wake. It took all my balancing ability to keep my left side from dipping under — an ability I was thankful for when I realized how far I would have had to swim to find water shallow enough to allow me to get back inside the craft.
We never made it to the Institution. ‘Yaked to my dock, I dropped my cell phone off inside, and we headed back — near the shore this time — to the marina.
1:45 p.m. Docked kayaks at the marina and headed to the deli for lunch.
1:55 p.m. They have seafood at the deli! My dreams of grilling shellfish were answered as I ordered shrimp and fat, slimy sea scallops.
2:15 p.m. Matt and I enjoy a delicious hoagie/Doritos lunch on my back dock, where I chide him for purchasing an air horn. “It was only $12.50!” he said. “So much fun for only $12.50!”
The next 3 hours were spent cleaning — dishes, kitchen floor, bedroom — interspersed with runs to the farmers’ market and the supermarket with my roommate Michaela. Loaded up on tremendous amounts of vegetables.
Really, truly, I don’t need to go into detail. We marinated vegetables. I squeezed half a lime over the seafood and the other half into a few g&ts, because I can’t think of a better drink for grilling on the deck. I made fruit salad and sorbet, we desserted, and then once it was dark enough that I got 3 new giant bug bites, we hit the couch (and perfect reclining chair) and watched Finding Nemo. Following that, I opened to a random page in The Seven Storey Mountain and read for a bit.
I mean, that’s all. Maybe I’m just quite easy to please. Or maybe I’m just selfish, that I didn’t have to entertain anyone on my day off, and I didn’t have to share my (perfectly grilled — seriously, watch out, Bobby Flay) scallops with anyone. I was able to just sit in a raft on the lake with a wheat beer and not consider tomorrow or yesterday, but just here and now (and what the weeds feel like in the water, and why don’t the jet skis shut up, and why is the sun so perfectly perfect) and that’s all there was.
And today I got a new cell phone to remind me how disgustingly connected I am, and I’m watching the weather every day to see if it’s going to rain for my flight to New York on Sunday. And I’m writhing inside and I’m nervous as all hell and I really just want to hang out and watch Shark Week. But really, at least I had yesterday.
And I found my iPod. So I can exhale.
