Last Gasp of Summer

We spent last weekend at Pat's cabin on Lake Donner. It was utterly perfect - 80 degree weather during the day, no wind and not a cloud in the sky. The lake water was calm and there were only a few boats. I spent every moment thinking of ways that I could soak up the last gasp of Summer.

I'd heard there was a canoe in the basement storage area. Apparently one day Jon's mom looked out the window and saw a big silver thing poking out of the beach sand. They dug it out and it was a massive silver canoe. Biggest canoe I ever saw in fact. I got it out this weekend and it seemed to be in great shape.

But of course there were a lot of questions - it hadn't been used since it was found. Does it float? Are there spiders living in there? Do we have oars?

As luck would have it there was a set of oars in the basement too.

We shoved off from the rocky beach into calm water and abundant sunshine and Friend I tell you it was utterly magical.

We paddled around, dipping our hands in the still water every once in awhile. We would stop and drift along for awhile and then pick it back up again. We bumped over the wake of other boats and glided over the large boulders underneath the surface.

Eventually and inevitably Jon and I decided to play a little game to see how fast we could make the old girl move. We are ALL about friendly competition. The sprint would involve a lot of digging, reaching, and well...rowing, so we took a moment or two to drift along before we counted down to start.

Jon said "You ready?" and I said "Let's do this!" and when I tell you we were taking it extremely seriously I am not even exaggerating.

But as soon as we both dug in to row, the canoe rocked a uncharacteristically. I shot Jon a concerned look, knowing that rocking in such a way would definitely take seconds off of our finish line time. But when I turned to look at him he was holding up his oar, Which, after one meaningful stroke he literally bent into a 90 degree angle.

You see he's very strong.

But bending a metal object in water by brute force, Who does that?

Anyhow, we headed back towards the cabin, and with only one working oar I was determined to do my share of the paddling. But after just a few strokes we found ourselves in an unrecoverable left turn. If I hadn't handed my oar to Jon I'm sure we would have drifted into the nearby docks with the rest of the lake debris.

The day was capped off by a fabulous dinner at Cottonwood restaurant, which has a great patio with a view of old-town Truckee. We had a few drinks, good food and I had a truly delicious creme brulee.

And just when we thought the day couldn't get any better, we ended up playing Trivial Pursuit until 1:30 in the morning. Singing, laughing and...cheating. It was a blast.