Day 29: Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Underway: Marina      Motor Off: Marina      Miles Traveled: 00      Stayed At: Marina

First Things First: First ebelskevers of the trip; first overnight boat guest, first dock-tails (cocktails by the dock).

Mile 32 to Mile 32: The day dawned bright and sunny – finally – a good day to have brunch with our boat friends. Cindy and I were up early prepping the batter and cooking bacon for our brunch. Since our boat is too small, Rumpshaker was nice enough to offer their boat for our little party. (Thanks for all your hard work getting ready for a bunch of boat guests). You couldn’t have asked for a better party. We were joined by Joel and Debbie from Water Music, Bruce from Tango, Ron and Lynn from Northern Spirit and Dave and Joy from Maia. A big crowd for Ebelskevers. Thankfully, the first batch turned out perfect (no swear words from Cindy) and were soon followed by many more batches. Except for Rob and Ann, ebelskevers were a new experience and a big hit – especially covered in strawberries, powdered sugar, peanut butter, syrup or even just plain hot out of the pan. We ended up with 6 left from a double batch and these did not make it back to the boat.

We found another one of those random connections while chatting with Joel and Debbie from Water Music. It turns out one of their daughter went to school with our nephew Ryan and they knew Cindy’s brother and sister-in-law Sue really well. A really, really small world.

Cindy wanted a t-shirt like Lynn on Northern Spirit had – a line drawing of a sailboat saying “Life is Good” (which it is). We walked to town to get a shirt and wander around for a while and came home with a boat guest.

While we were in the Cool Things store I heard a click…click…click sound. I knew what makes that sound – bike shoes with cleats. A young guy in biking gear walked in looking for postcards. I like to bike and I had to find out more about this guy. There has to be an interesting story here right? So we started talking. It turns out Richard is from England and he is biking from Washington State diagonally across the US to Florida (www.richardonabike.com). On a fully loaded 80 pound bike. Alone. Now that is an adventure.

After talking to him about his trip, we decided to invite him to stay on Aurora (now that will be an adventure for Richard). He was interested but was hoping to get another 20 miles down the road. After we told him we had a pool, sauna and hot showers, he decided he had gone far enough today – he could make up the mileage some other day. And we are glad he did.

We walked back to the boat and Richard parked his bike on our end of the dock and went up to enjoy a quick swim and sauna. We organized the boat a little and put several bins that were in the starboard quarter berth outside in the cockpit. Plenty of room for a guest.

When he returned, it was time for our first docktails with friends from Took the Plunge, Seabatical, Rumpshaker, Jet Stream and other Loopers. Richard is on a different journey but he fit right in and fun was had by all. About 8 pm Cindy decided we needed to feed our guest so we were going to go back to the boat and cook spaghetti but KC on Jet Stream overheard our conversation and said she had a container full of spaghetti ready to eat. So before we knew it, we were on Jet Stream getting loaded up with spaghetti, watermelon and toast. (This is the second time they have fed us – we loaned them our rice cooker at Kaskaskia Lock and it came back full of leftovers). Thank you KC and Scott –we appreciate your generosity and kindness. What an amazing and unexpected adventure. Just another unforgettable day on the Loop.