A Dock to Remember

I have to share this story with the masses. Last week as I’m sure you all know was the great summer holiday of the 4th of July aka American Independence Day. Well my family generally has a few traditions that we like to try and stay with through the years. One of them happens to be spending some time at my grandmas on Lake Minnetonka. Well to make a long story short (which most of the people reading this know how hard that is for me), we decided to take the pontoon out to watch the fireworks (yes, yes to answer all of your unspoken questions, this was the same pontoon that I was holding on to when the infamous phone incident occurred. For those of you who have no clue what I am talking about search down the page on Intelligent Confusion), and on the way back, the fun started pouring out the sides like a bilge pump.

As we came back to the dock, I was on the front deck with a spotlight (as it was dark, because that is when you watch fireworks) to help guide my uncle (who was driving) back to the dock. With spotlight in one hand, and a rope in the other, I took a leap to the dock to turn the boat around and tie it up. Let me take this opportunity to take you back a few months (for those of you reading this that are board my apologies but stay with me), to a time when my dad and I started the process of building a new dock. My dad decided to build one section frame out of aluminum and put the normal wood boards across the top. We thought that this would make the section lighter (which we were wrong), sturdier (which we were wrong), and would last longer (which we will never know, ok can you see a plot here?). Ok back to the fourth of July, I jumped out onto the section (the one I just spoke of), and started to pull the boat around. Then one of the greatest moments of my life thus far happened as my dad took a running leap from the boat to the dock. It was an impressive leap of about 2 ½ feet, and a graceful landing if I do say so myself. Ok anyway as he hit the dock, the highly touted section that was going to be lighter, sturdier, stronger, and last longer, buckled like my knee circa 1996 Minnehaha JV football. The dock section dropped about eight inches, and I honestly thought that my dad and I were about to take a swim. The dock looked like a giant U. It was one of the funniest things that I have ever witnessed. I was laughing so hard that I laid down on the dock (a section over so I didn’t fall in), and laughed till I cried.

When we went to fix it last week, the frame of the section was the biggest mangled mess I had ever seen. Hence lies another Fourth of July. It ranks right up there with the time that I loaded a firework in a tube upside down and it blew up shattering the tube and making the loudest noise I had ever heard. Yet that is for a different time and place. For those of you who read the whole thing, I hope that I was able to express in words the story as funny as it actually was. For those of you who know my dad I think that you know why this is so amazing, for those of you who don't, that is a crying shame.