Well, last weekend was certainly very busy. Not only was it the annual Antique Power Show in Burton (more on that later), my sister Linda and her family came up to visit from Maryland. The last time that they came up we took them tubing on Lake Erie from our cottage at Fairport Harbor. Of course they wanted to go again this time especially my niece, Faith, who didn’t get to go last time. I did my best to get everything ready for the trip, but as they say, “It’s not an adventure until something goes wrong”.
Saturday we all trooped up to our cottage, and the kids gave me a hand getting everything ready. Uncover the boat, check, inflate the tube, check, round up enough life jackets, check, hook up the Jeep, check, let’s go! We got down to the dock to put the boat in OK. I got a warning from the guy at the dock office that the Game warden was checking fishing licenses, but I’m sure that you can see from the picture the huge size of our tubing float that we got last year. He knew that we weren’t going fishing. He did come up to me though. He said, “Hey, I like your Jeep!” Faith and my nephew Jack helped along with the others to get the boat in the water. There were only a few hiccups and we were off.
Once we got out past the breakwater we got the tube out of the boat and loaded it up with some victims (I mean volunteers) for a test run. It went OK until I opened the throttle a little for some speed. The boat stalled and stopped like a dead thing – Not Good! It restarted right away, though and I tried it again. To make a long story a little less long, it continued to stall periodically for the rest of the trip. It seemed like water in the gas, it would run fine for a bit, then stall again. It did get better as the day went on and taking Mary Anne’s advice to just “gun it” we got it up to tubing speed.
Everyone got a turn to take a ride except me. I decided that discretion was the better part a valor and that it was better for me to stay at the helm as long as the motor was acting up. The tubers did OK and we all had fun. I didn’t have any trouble getting back to the dock, as the motor was running better by then. It did take me two tries to get lined up to the ramp correctly, but in the end it all went smoothly. We got the boat back into the driveway (probably the hardest part) and stowed the gear. It was too soon the end of another fun day at the lake. It’s not by mistake that Lake Erie is called a “great” lake. Before you know it though, it was Monday morning, time for me to get on the computer to order a new fuel filter for the boat, from the Old Hardware Store…
