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Thar
She Blows!
The
Pirates of Georgetown
Cherry Blossoms Paddle and Work Party of 2006
I
showed up at about 8:30 am with a huge box of donuts and a tankard
of coffee, thinking that as those lazy Pirates started straggling
in they would need a sugar and caffeine fix to get started working
that morning. Shiver me timbers! Was I surprised when I found the
parking lot full and at least a half a dozen people already hard
at work raking all the leaves from the hillside between the lot
and the docks lower down. Tom, Gina, Dan, Todd, Eugene, and I am
sure a few others whom I have forgotten already where sweating and
filling trash bag after trash bag with leaves. I felt kinda bad
to have to stand there eating a yummy chocolate and coconut covered
donut and drinking my morning coffee while I watched all that hard
work. Well, I couldn't get started until I had my sugar and caffeine
fix first, now could I ?!
Gina moving heavy boxes.
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We
did a pretty good amount of work. Never enough, understand
that, but enough for everyone to appreciate the heat of
the day and the great sunshine. The leaves were racked from
the hillside, and from behind the boats still in their winter
storage area next to the parking lot. Some of the heavy
row boats had to be moved in order to get all those pesky
hidden leaves. Kingsley personally lifted and tossed aside
a couple of three hundred pound boats with only a minimal
amount of screaming and groaning. Aargh!! But will he be
up for paddling after all that hard work? Even Gina got
into the heavy lifting, when Eugene asked for someone to
move the boxes where the Boathouse PFDs are stored. I guess
Eugene knew that it was a woman's job.
Frank,
the Boathouse owner, was still finishing up a Home Depo
run while we were doing all this cleanup. He arrived somewhere
about 10:00 am with lots of lumber on top of his car. He
had in mind some serious work; building a new floating dock
section. Trust me, there is little else that compares to
the toil of building a new dock section!
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But first, an old disintegrating and sinking dock section
had to be removed from the water. Why? 'Cause it was in the
way, and because it still had pieces of iron connected to
it that were to be reused on the new dock section. All those
keyed up Pirates jumped at the chance to tear something apart,
and before I knew it, it had been hauled piece-by-piece out
of the water, torn apart, and disposed of in the dumpster
up on K-Street. Of course everyone did a great job salvaging
the important pieces of iron before dumping it. great Job!
Then just to finish off the job, Dave R. & Bob, with a
little help from Gina and myself, cut up the old iron cable
holding the docks together, so that Frank can splice it back
into some semblance of working order. And then Tom & Kingsley
started nailing down boards onto the docks where there were
gaping holes, so that us paddlers will not fall through every
time we come down in the evening to launch our boats. |
 Dave
R. & Bob cutting the cable.
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Todd digging himself a hole.
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Now,
what was the event leader Todd doing during all this? Well,
digging himself a hole, of course. The water spigot that we
all use to wash up with has been dropping in pressure, and
Frank theorizes that there is a broken pipeline somewhere.
So Todd dug a deep hole next to the pipe. He never did find
the leak though.
Finally,
at about 11:30-ish some of the paddlers decided that there
was enough work done, and it was just about time to get out
on the water for a good paddle. They started carrying their
kayaks down to the docks. This gave everyone the same idea,
finally, and we began to get ready for the next part of the
fun-filled day, the Cherry Blossoms Paddle.
Read
on to hear about 'The Big Blow.'
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