Shasta-Rama 04

For those of you who noticed (Skippy), I went on a another vacation and I just got back today.  I know it is hard to continue living when you know that there will be no updates for a bit, but I really need to get out of here every few months to make sure I do not die.  Life in the Middle East is not all lollypops and sandwiches you know.  I have to deal with terrorists, suicidal driving, and 300 degree heat every day.  The next time you feel the need to bitch about something, bitch about stuff that deserves it, like Oprah, or Justin Timberlake.  Don't even get me started about Justin Timberlake, or I may have to take another vacation.

If I can deal with me taking a vacation, you can too.

Ok, I know I never finished the story of my last vacation.  I feel really bad about that.  Although no one has complained about it, I think I should give you all some closure.  Here goes.

If you remember, in the back article, I mainly mused about the plane ride to Oregon.  Well, here is the rest.

I got to Oregon, my wife and kids picked me up.  We hung out and then went to Florida.  We hung out there for a while and got sun burnt.  That part sucked.  We left Florida and drove to New Orleans.  My wife and I quickly noticed that the Mardi Gras area of New Orleans was not a good area to bring kids.  I think it was because of the urine/vomit smell seeping out of the, well, everywhere.  We went back to Oregon and hung out some more.  All my relatives asked me to fix their computers.  That sucked also.  My wife and I then went to an Indian casino and lost about $300.00.  Then I left and came back to Qatar.  The end.

Ok, now I feel better.  On with the show.

One of the things we did during this vacation (hereby known as "Shasta-rama04") was rent a house-boat on Lake Shasta in Northern California.  We had a great time and while we were there we also rented a ski-boat, for water-skiing and looking cool.  There is serious cool deficiency noticed when driving a house boat.  It's sort of like driving a mini-van.

I have no previous maritime experience and contrary to what the house-boat renter people told me, I soon found that operating a house-boat is not something you can learn in a 10 minute orientation.  Driving a house boat is like driving, well, a house.  I am sure many of my elderly readers might think this is not a big deal, since they are used to driving recreational vehicles, but I am not used to that.  The problem with the house boat has nothing to do with actually moving.  The problem is with stopping.  There are no brakes on a house boat.  Sailing a house-boat at breakneck speeds of up to 15mph (or knots) is easy even for me.  The trick is getting the boat to stop.  Just because you let off the throttle, does not mean you stop moving.  I found this out the first time I tried to dock the boat at the marina gas station.  Don't worry, I did not damage anything that could be easily seen.  I merely splintered the top deck awning of the boat when I gently rammed it into the corrugated steel awning of the marina gas station.  As far as I can tell, only me and nine other people saw this.  All nine people assured me that it was the awning's fault and that they would tell no one about the mishap.

All house-driving accidents aside, I learned something during my maritime tenure.  I am getting fat.  Ok, I am getting fatter.  I had an idea that I was starting to expand in the abdominal area, but until now, I was in denial.  I came to this beefy conclusion while I was attempting to water-ski.

When I was a younger lad, I was pretty good at water-skiing.  In fact, you could go as far as saying that I was a water-skiing maven.  The last time I went water-skiing was about 14 years ago.  I was awesome.  I probably could have turned professional.  I actually declined a water-skiing scholarship from the University of Anchorage because I really wanted to be an accountant, also because of the petty politics of competitive water-skiing.

Ok, let's just go and say it, I was a great water-skier.  I had no reason to believe that I would not be able to repeat my water-skiing awesomeness during my recent vacation.  Well, I was dead wrong.  Apparently, when you weigh 130 lbs, ski-boats have no problems generating enough power to get you up on the ski.  If you weigh over 200 lbs, some ski-boats, especially shitty rental ski-boats, have many problems.  It took me swallowing about 25 gallons of lake water to realize that my abilities were not the issue of me failing to get up on one ski.  Our rental ski-boat was just not powerful enough to tow my fat, prone ass to a standing position.  My sister, who weighs about 130 lbs, had no problems whatsoever.  I hate her sometimes.

After roughly 30 attempts to get up on one ski, I gave up.  My hands and shoulders felt awful.  I can only have the rope ripped from my hands so many times before I can no longer hold on.  My whole body was battered and my grip was shot.  I could not even hold a can of diet soda.  It was at that moment, that I vowed to lose some weight.  

I took the vow very seriously, until about 30 minutes later when I saw that we had a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips on the house-boat.  Man, they were good.  Even though my grip was shot, and I could not actually pick any chips up with my hands, I still enjoyed them.  After I had my daughter open the bag for me, I simply crushed all the chips into a fine powder and shoveled them into my mouth with an ice cream scoop.  Fat or not, I still had my problem solving skills.

I got over my non-water-skiing performance quickly.  I was not at Lake Shasta just to water-ski.  I was there to relax and enjoy the time with my family while spending lots of money.  One of the things I had not budgeted for was the price of gas.  Tooling around Lake Shasta in a house is fun, but the fun only happens when you have fuel for your floating house.  Apparently, the gas you use to fill up your boat is different than the gas you use to fill up your car.  When I say different, I mean that it is different only because you buy it at a marina, and because it is magical.  It had better be magical because it cost $2.00 more per gallon than the ordinary gas at a land-based gas station.  I know it sounds exciting at first to learn that there is such a thing as magical gas.  I was practically pissing myself with excitement.  I was very disappointed, however,  when I learned, that the only thing magical about the marina gas is it's uncanny ability to make the money in your wallet magically disappear at an accelerated rate.

Ok, it is not about spending money, as I said before, it was about spending time with my family and relaxing.  I did relax.  I did spend time with my family.  I also damaged the wooden upper deck of the house-boat and got away with it.  I certainly do not get to do that every day.  

If you take nothing away from this article, take this:  If you get a chance to go to Lake Shasta, for God's sake, go!  The fun you will have will make you forget all about any humiliations you might have suffered because you were to fat to ski.