Another rainy Saturday.

It's been raining pretty heavily since I woke up this morning. I really wouldn't mind, normally, since rain always gives me a good excuse to feel lazy and be lazy, but today we have planned to go to Brimfield (yes, I know, don't we always go there?) and it probably won't be as much fun in the rain. All the vendors will have likely packed up and we'll be stuck with the die-hards and crazies. Great.

On the bright side, thanks to Uncle Jimmy and his roving reporting, I have some photos of last weekend. No photos of our trip up Mt. Cardigan, which is unfortunate because the view from the top was really breathtaking - honestly - but there are several photos of our boating adventures.

Here is one of me and Doug preparing for the inaugural trip in the kayaks.LL Bean should use us as a commercial.

My mom, brother, Doug, and I went out in the boats again on Monday morning, before Doug and I packed up to leave. It was a grayish morning, but really that's the best time to kayak. The lake is calm and quiet and the sun isn't beating down on you turning you into a piece of burnt toast. Since there weren't enough kayaks to go around, Doug and I took the two Manatees and my mom and brother decided to trek out in the canoe. With a special guest, though. My brother decided to take Tyrone along. And by taking Tyrone along, this meant pretty much picking him up, putting him in the canoe, and hastily paddling away from shore before Tyrone could jump out. He was a good boy during our trip, that Tyrone. A lot of whimpering and a lot of turning from one side of the small boat to another, making for a very unsteady ride for my mom, who was convinced that at any moment Tyrone was going to flip the boat and they'd all be soaked. But that never happened. Instead, we had a nice leisurely paddle around the sandbar areas and up the mouth of the stream that dumps into the lake. Couldn't go too far because of the rocks, but still, it was a nice ride. On the way back, my brother decided to jump onto one of the rocks in the sandbar and go for a swim. Mind you, it was about 50 degress that morning, no joke, but my brother is a bit of a masochist and loves to suffer (case in point - there was plenty of room for him to sleep inside the cottage on his air mattress, but he insisted on sleeping outside, on the open porch, in temps that fell to around 40 degrees, wearing only a t-shirt, his BVDs, and a few light blankets. Crazy.), so he dove in, swam around for a little bit, and then convulsed with shivers all the way home (and probably for the whole rest of the day). To try to warm up, we decided to race home (and in so doing disturbed a couple of loons who made their feelings quite vocally known - they did not want us anywhere near them, especially with the dog in the canoe). It's hard to see, but Doug is crouched low in his kayak and really digging in, trying hard to beat me. It couldn't be done. I won. But Doug had to play a little bumper boats to show me that he's still the man in the relationship, big, tough, and able to beat me.

Ah. Kayaking. How peaceful it is. If only we had a free weekend day before my parents and uncle close up the cottage to go back up and kayak a little. The house is only about 2.5 hours from our house, maybe a little more (and definitely more if traffic is bad), so it's not unreasonable to go up there for a day and just spend the day roaming the lake in the lovely orange Manatees. Those kayaks are really nice, but the paddles - so great! Lightweight and make maneuvering the kayaks quite effortless. Next spring and summer we're there, man. Get me in my boat!