The Comeback Skiff
• Used trailer that required considerable re-work to be useful, and a brief foray into a life of crime to pay for: $1000
• Carbs cleaned, plugs changed, new trim switches installed, closing costs on home mortgaged to pay bill: $320
• Two new (pro-rated) deep cycle marine batteries purchased after one imploded and filled house with toxic hydrogen gas that has left entire family addled and torpid: $120
• One new charger to replace version that led to imploding battery: free (unless you count the high price of donor’s cackling amusement)
• Three separate and utterly inept attempts to reconfigure new trailer by non-trailer-fixing (insert plural version of colorful noun): $360
• One wonderful job fixing trailer bunks and winch at shop I drive by every day but didn’t know existed, which resulted in three wasted trips to accursed non-trailer-fixing (colorful noun again) mentioned above: $240
• Two new trailer tires installed after originals were found to be roughly egg-shaped: $140
• Surgeon bill for getting son’s arm X-rayed and plumbed for projectile that shot off of the defenseless rock he was inexplicably hammering while dad was trying to work on boat trolling motor: $280
• Suspicion level of spouse upon husband’s quiet insistence on getting boat running again despite regular speeches about the need to be frugal in light of uncertain economic times: undetermined, but suspected to be high
• Money still to be spent buying safety kit, new vinyl bench seat, radio, lures/flies and other odds and ends: books’ll be cooked to keep this figure deliberately vague
• Pining for lost days when I hooked the (bleep) boat up to the (bleep) trailer and went and caught some (bleep) fish when the (bleep) mood struck: (bleep) incalculable
• Level of irony related to finally getting boat in running order just as daylight savings time renders the world dark at the end of the workday: off the charts
• Hope that one can regularly fish again despite demanding job, home-based business, spousal maintenance, volleyball practices, boy scouts, home repairs, flute practice, errands, flying projectiles, homework monitoring, etc: wispy and fading
• Ability to muster the energy and resolve to face dark departures, bad weather, extreme heat, long days, frustration, and the odd dangerous moment even if I did have the time to fish regularly and my body hadn’t turned to cookie dough behind a desk the last few years: pipe dream
—–
Knowing that my skiff is at long last ready for action again: PRICELESS
