2008-03-24 01:51:35′, ‘
For Spring Break the TurnerClan went to the Lake house. Many Lizards were caught. We lasso’d a snake and I pulled it out of its hidie place. Then I let it poop all over Ryan. Anna helped to lasso a different snake the next day but failed to get it to come out of its hole.
One day, Nick took Brenda for a ride in his jet boat. While they were using the Electric trolling motor, the steering mechanism for it went out. Once they came in, Eddie and Zack got Nick to agree to take them for a boat ride. Nick decided that I had to go along to help. As we were launching, I got Laura to hop on for the ride. As we are heading for the No Wake zone, Nick informs us that he does not have much gas so we have to keep the ride short. His gage is showing empty as we head out into the lake. So Nick does a couple of high speed circles and then shoves the throttle forward. The boat starts to accelerate then BAM!! The boat stops accelerating and the engine revs. Nick plays with the shifting system but the boat does not want to go anywhere. Nick mumbles something about a Shear Pen snapping. After about 30 seconds of playing with things, the Overheat alarm starts to go off and Nick Kills the engine. I inform Laura that this is bad. I dig out a Paddle and start waving at a boat that is about 500 yards away. It ignores me and speeds away. We are about a half mile away from the dock with a very light wind blowing us towards the dock. Nick goes to the front of the boat and drops the electric trolling motor. He lays on his stomach on the bow and reaches down to grab the trolling motor. He tells me to sit on the front seat and push the trolling motor throttle button. It starts up and we move. Nick adjusts the motor with his hands so that we are sort of heading for the dock. Eddie and Zack keep asking when we will make it back to the Lake House. I notice that our course is drifting away from the dock. The drifting keeps getting worse and Nick seems to be just lying there staring at the water. I let him know and he looks up and re-adjusts the motor with his hands and we start heading back to the dock. After a while we start drifting again and I let him know once we start heading back into the lake. A couple more repetitions of this and the trolling motor suddenly stops. Nick pulls it out of the water and starts disassembling it using his Leatherman. We are about 200 yards outside of the No Wake poles and the water is WAY too cold for Laura to get out and start pulling us towards shore. We dug up 4 paddles and Zack, Laura, Eddie and I start paddling for the Dock while Nick tries to get the Electric Trolling motor working. The wind helps a little while I worry that Zack or Eddie are going to drop a paddle and we will have to go after it. Nick eventually gives up and takes a paddle and tries to order us around to make us paddle properly. I ignore him and paddle the way that I want to. We make it back to the Dock and celebrate that our ordeal is over. Yeah!