Prepare

Written for The Chicago Shimpo/June 2011

Today is the 11th. It has been 6 days since I started my leave and I am now just getting around to a nap. In those 6 days I put the finishing touches on my new dingy (four coats of varnish, rowing hardware, garboard drain), worked out how to hang it from the davits, tucked away the garden with weed suppression cloth and mulch, helped a friend bring his boat to the harbor and put up its two beautiful wooden mast, paid an enormous credit card bill, said goodbye to friends, packed and then move everything — and I mean everything — to the boat where I seemed to start the process all over again.

It has been a blessing that the weather prevented us from venturing across the lake. There is never enough time, but at some point enough is enough and you have to leave. Lists have there place but only if you are willing to disregard them. I have spent a lifetime reading about other people’s adventures. A common theme is that they depart before their lists are completed. And this is usually after years of study and hard work.

Any task requires triage. There is a compelling scene in an episode of MASH where one of the surgeons needs a third party to tell him that the patient he is trying to save requires too much attention and that he needs to care for other less wounded soldiers. He could not make the decision himself but once nudged he moves on.

Some of us are better at separating the wheat from the chafe than others. Many people spend their allotted time in preparation and never leave. They delay, waiting for the perfect moment: for the right amount of money, the next electronic gadget, the perfect mate. It never happens and so, they stay put and watch others leave.

I am using a trip as a metaphor. I suppose if I were a better writer I would not have to tell you this, but if I had waited to be a better writer I would never be writing this. I wonder about the Lady Gaga’s of the world. Granted she is talented but so are many others and they never get anywhere. What drove her, what drives any of us?

I have often cajoled young medical assistants whom I find intelligent and therefore bored with their jobs to go back to school. None have taken my medical school suggestion but several have become nurses. To motivate them I tell them in four years they’ll be done, and if they do nothing they will be four years more frustrated.

Despite all the insurance payments we make each month most things in life require a leap of faith. You can get educated up the ying-yang and still not amount to anything, but not likely. Besides, being well educated has its perks. For one thing most of the stuff that other people worry about you can disregard. There is nothing like calculus, chemistry, physics and biology to give you a firm basis in how the world actually works.

I guess I should explain what’s got me down this path. It is leaving the harbor. My wife Charlotte, after close to thirty years in the corporate world (because she went back and got educated for a life in IT), retired. And because I have always had ants in my pants, I took a leave from the office and we decided to cruise to Canada. The North Channel at least and maybe Georgian Bay in the northern waters of Lake Huron.

So we sit here in Montrose Harbor in the fog and rain of early June, and wait for a favorably day to cross to Michigan. It is often like this on the Great Lakes. The weather has a way of dictating the schedule. I have learned to listen to mother nature. And just how do I do that, well mainly on the Internet these days.

Prior to the Internet we were at the whim of the marine weather broadcast on channel 1. Listening to it was a bit like listening to the Chairman of the Fed: hanging on every word and searching for their hidden meanings. Now I can see the jet stream and the radar and the satellite pictures and data from buoys in the middle of the lake and read a synopsis of current and future trends. I can watch the next storms come off the northwest Pacific or be gathered up from the Gulf and flung at us by the jet stream.

It is not perfect but it is a whole lot better then it used to be. So I hope that after all this I am prepared. I think the fact that I can nap, subconsciously means I am. We will see. Remember there are no guarantees but that is not reason to try.