GroupWBench

We went down to Port Aransas the other day to see our friends Dave and Renee on their boat Alegria. They are about to cast off on their big adventure and start heading out for the cruising life. We spent two days hanging with them while they hustled about putting all the details together for their big trip. There are probably a million things to do to get ready for an adventure like they are going on. Getting the boat all ready, watching weather, selling or dumping almost everything that you own (or owns you) and then finding places for what you do keep to squeeze into on the boat. Every time you check something off of THE LIST, two more things pop up. And that is with a boat like Alegria that is in fantastic shape. I really feel for the people with project boats they are prepping for a trip.  I know both Dave and Renee are waking up at night with more stuff to do popping into their heads. Whew. They are working very hard.

It made me think about how funny it is that some people are so willing to work really hard at having fun, while others seem to find their fun in simpler ways. Ivy and I have always seemed to find fun the hard way. Rock climbing is seriously fun, but it isn't without a lot of work. Hiking in, cooking in the heat, freezing in the cold, getting rained off the side of a cliff, thinking really hard about being super safe, that is a big old bunch of work without even talking about the brute force effort that goes into dragging your body up a vertical cliff by your fingertips. And Judo…having your body flung about and bent into unnatural shapes is only the start of the hard work.

While we were visiting on Alegria, we met a couple who had a small catamaran who did day charters. For some people, paying $300 for a half day of sailing as a passenger then going to a bar and drinking with friends is plenty of fun. There is probably a work to fun continuum that ranges from total couch potatoes to extreme adventure addict who spend years and thousands of dollars just preparing for a single adventure. Sailors mostly fall fairly deep on the side of willing to work hard for their fun. The cruising dream may look like someone just kicked back in the cockpit with a drink in their hand while the sun set lights up the sky, but the getting there is far more work than having that same drink and enjoying the same sunset on the back porch. There has to be something in the hard work and effort that some people just thrive on.

Sunset on Alegria