So we took the boat out. . .

So Terrance and I took our boat out on it's maiden voyage a couple of weeks ago in Temple. Temple, TX really doesn't have much to speak of but this summer I learned that it had a great river just west of town with a boat ramp. We started with a picnic by to water and discussed how nice it would be to have a boat to navigate the river in. After a little more discussion, we broke down and bought ourselves a boat. Now it was several weeks before we had a chance to actually take it out on the water and I was so excited to finally get to do it.

Now I had wanted to air up the boat at home but Terrance wanted to wait until we got to the water. Oh, did I mention that our boat was actually a Coleman 2-man inflatable boat? We pulled up to the boat dock on what happened to be a busy day. There were several trailers already in the parking lot and more arriving after us. We hooked up the little air pump up to our deflated boat and tried to ignor the stares of those around us who had brought real boats. Terrance tried to hide behind the car using the premise of assembling the oars as an excuse but I exposed him and guilted him into coming out into the open for all to see. After finally getting the thing all aired up, we trucked it down to the water and stumbled into the thing. This is about the time we learned "2-man" boat really meant that you could fit two men in it but really was only meant for one. The embarrassment that started with the noisy air pump continued with the two guys stuffed in the inflatable boat desperately trying to paddle across the river and have very little success.

We quickly gave up on the paddling and just floated around, trying to avoid those boats with actual motors that were passing us. We regretted not bringing a cooler of beer with us (where we would have put it, who knows). Now on the way back to shore, Terrance got the bright idea to get into the water and swim around. I joined him and we swam toward the shore towing the boat behind us. When we got about three feet from land, we both noticed the little water snake bobbing around in the water nice in front of us. As you can guess, the two of us freaked out and hilariously scrambled to get back into the little raft. I'm sure the snake was laughing at us just like the two families waiting along the shore were.

As we climbed out of the water, we finally accepted our place in the boating community and proudly carried our prized boat back to the car.