Tongue in cheek aside, this post won’t be filled with joy or
even slutty photos. Or any photos for that matter as I am too lazy to download
the poor ones I’ve taken lately.
What I did want to discuss was our day of reckoning on June
30th. Marc was called in to the main office of his new company to be
let go. To be honest, this wasn’t a total surprise since it often happens that
personnel at the top of the food chain (read salary) are often the first to go
when a larger company gobbles up a smaller one and wants to replace all the “old”
people. The average age at the new company is likely thirty-something, so to
them, Marc is downright ancient and stuck in his archaic, ponderous ways that
over 50 years of hands-on construction work has taught him really “works”. I’m
not sure this is important to the new way of doing business: hey, if it can’t
be done online than what is the good of it? Who cares if the engineer flubbed
and the roof trusses are an inch short on the right side of the building? Or
that the front façade windows on a four-story building don’t line up because they’re
all off by an inch and a quarter but only in certain sections?
What’s done is done, no undoing it, and life will move on,
of that we’re sure. Marc battles between feeling great relief from his mountain
of stress and the new mean streets of knowing that we really weren’t
financially prepared for this to happen. Meanwhile, why not take the summer off
and ponder the bigger questions like is it time for him to retire?
We were awaiting our kayaks to arrive, which was delayed a
week, then I suffered major disappointment as we unwrapped mine to find it skewered
through the hull with two holes the size of a forklift prong. It doesn’t matter
that the wrapping clearly stated in big letters: Do Not Use Forklift; someone
obviously had and hoped to get away with it.
In case you haven’t noticed, anything to do with recreation
lately is entirely sold out due to Covid; either factories are not working or
demand is sucking up what little supply remains so there is no replacement for
the kayak I ordered, nor is there even another brand available until “maybe
October”. It’s this way with fishing poles, bicycles, pools, even RVs.
So, for the rest of this year I figure I’ll be taking turns
on Marc’s, which will just be a real ton of fun, eh? Not quite what we had in
mind to enjoy all those wonderful, remote lakes in the Upper Peninsula. Marc
has worked hard on designing and building a kayak rack for the garage, a kayak
rack for the truck (using an electric winch) and still has to do an under-kayak
wheel setup to get it to the water once it is unloaded from the truck because this sucker weighs in at about 115 lbs. All this
has taken about a week but our leave taking is finally on the horizon after
tomorrow’s bad storm. We should be good to go Wednesday.
The true meaning of freedom—I’m not even sure what highway
we are taking north, having only a general idea of about four different
campgrounds which will satisfy our yearnings. It will be so good to finally get
away! Pictures next time: Marc is taking the Go Pro and the drone and his cell
phone is in a waterproof case just in case things get dicey out there on the
water for such an old has-been.
