It's All Basically the Same

Some people like the rain, others find themselves keen on the sun. To be honest, I think I'm more of a sun person, even though most people in New York are not. They're not sun people because if they were, they'd be more than slightly disappointed for most of the year, due to the rain of course. My bachelor party began on a beautiful spring day in late May, 2006. I was shanghaied by my friends into the backseat of my own car. After having a hood placed on my head and several airsoft pellets hurled at my side; the ordeal was over and I was seated at a nice Mexican restaurant. Now its important to note that while New Yorkers are not sun people, they are lake people. Whenever the aforementioned sun rears its little head, every New Yorker instinctually runs out to the park or hops on a boat, knowing that they must grasp every ounce of short-lived sunlight. Being from New York, I followed this protocol on the night of my party. It was a sunset cruise. We pushed off while the glorious day was ending, and deposited ourselves in the middle of the lake to take in the dark night and stars. Night boating is fun because there is rarely anyone else out on the lake with you, and you can grab some pretty nice stargazes since there is not a light until the shoreline, which is at least a mile off on either side. After a couple hours of chewing the fat, we started to feel a bit chilly, it being New York and all, and decided to head back to the dock. I jovially put the key in the ignition, made a remark about flatus, and then turned over the engine. When I say that I turned over the engine, I mean that I attempted to turn on the engine. It seems that when a battery sits through the winter in a barn out in the middle of the field, bad things happen to it. Bad things meaning that it may only give you enough gas for one start, and then knock out entirely on the boater; my battery suffered no different fate. Once, twice, ten times and nothing doing. All things considered, its not such a bad experience. While its chilly, at least its not raining, and with the lights the boat would be easy to find. So, a quick call to 911's boat Sheriff, a few Mountain Dews, and we were back into party mode. That is, until someone crashed our happy little world. That someone would be none other than Mother Nature herself, and she was in full form: the full form of fog. Fog. Just like the merry gents of London toddled through on their walk home during the industrial revolution. It was probably the same fog that Jack the Ripper hid in, because we couldn't see 20 feet in front of us let alone any sign of the shore. Fog is cold. It's like the air is filled with little ice droplets that have marked you as their final destination. Not only is fog cold, fog has the joyous quality of being opaque. Lying on the deck in a caffeine driven stooper, I noticed that 2 and a half hours had passed, and it was now 2 o'clock in the morning. There is a vibration in my pocket, it's 911 calling me back for the fifth time that evening. However, this time the operator has the news I want to hear: the rescue boat had finally gotten a GPS fix on us! We wave the mag-lite and blow SOS on the whistle. A flash in the distance. A yell. The churning of a motor. A voice appropriately saying, "What the hell are you doing out here!" We are home. We have no idea how, but we are there. After a quick, restorative coffee at Denny's, the party comes to an end after following an amazing and fun trail that I never would have expected.