You know we lived here years ago, before we had kids, and we had lots free time that I liked to spend reading or drinking tropical drinks. He liked to kayak. I don't mind reading and/or drinking in a kayak, but there was all of this preparation before the floating and drinking that vaguely resembled work. Also, I like the tropics, but I don't particularly like the ocean. At least the part of it where it is 'fun' to kayak. It's very, very deep and things with teeth live in it that could conceivably eat me.
On kayak days, I would have to get up early and help him load the kayak on top of our rusty Jeep Cherokee. While the early morning breeze and soft tropical sunlight was soothing, the swearing at each other was not. We firmly hated each other by the time we got the kayak secured to the top of the Jeep.
On this particular day, we were going to Managaha, a small island about 3/4 of a mile off of the coast of Saipan. I liked this trip because it did not involve crossing the reef line. Crossing the reef line in a kayak is something like torturing yourself before committing suicide. Exactly. Why? The 'good' snorkeling is on the other side of the reef, on the reef wall. But, do you know what happens on a reef line? Do you? I'll tell you. HUGE waves break. The reason that huge waves do not break on Saipan's beaches is that they are protected by a coral reef where the waves break quite spectacularly. If you don't time your reef crossing right, or if you let the kayak be pushed sideways, perpendicular to the waves, then they happily smash you and your puny, pathetic boatlike structure into the coral reef. Coral reef is a synonym for VERY SHARP ROCK WALL.
But we didn't have to do that because Managaha is inside the reef. Happy day. We set out, with our snorkel gear and our cooler full of beer tied between us. Matt forgot to mention one thing. While we didn't have to cross the reef, we had to cross the shipping lane into Saipan harbor. That is the freaking ship highway. Not like motor boat ships. Like cargo ships. Ferries. Occasionally even Navy ships. It's not a big harbor, he told me, there's hardly ever any ships.
That's Managaha today.
There's a view of the shipping lane and the harbor, with a massive cargo ship conveniently parked for effect.
Another shot, despite my poor photography skills, I think you can tell how large those ships are? I am three hundred feet above sea level taking these pictures. If you click on these pictures and look at the huge version, you can even see the navigational buoys.
So yeah, hardly ever. Except the Tinian Ferry every single day. And the massive cargo ships on some kind of regular schedule unknown to Matt. Oh, and the fuel ships. Other than that, hardly ever.
It's marked by buoys, the ship interstate, so we clearly knew when we were entering the zone of death. After we passed the green buoy, we paddled madly for about ten minutes and we were within sight of the red buoy marking our exit from the oceanic interstate when the lid blew off of our cooler. I paddled for safety helplessly while Matt deftly turned the kayak around and headed back into the middle of the killing fields after it.
Me: What are you doing??
Matt: I'm going for the lid.
Me: No!
Matt: Yes.
Me: We don't need it!
Matt: Yes, we do, our beer will get hot.
Right. Of course. How could I be so stupid? Everyone knows it is better to be squashed like a bug on the windshield of a massive cargo ship then to suffer the horrible fate of spending a day on a beautiful tropical island with warm beer.
I lost the pointless argument about which way to paddle because I am half his weight and I have the arm strength of a flea. We retrieved the lid and survived. But I'm still bitter. I have post kayak stress disorder.
For any of you that are thinking, good call, dude, warm beer sucks, I am mentally killing you right now. With a kayak. And then tying your dead body to the kayak and sending you over the reef.
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Some other things to share.
Run, don't walk to One Ping Only where Maura is helping hungry people and giving away Starbucks gift cards! All you have to do is leave a comment. Maura's donating a dollar for every comment to Second Harvest Food Bank. Plus, you're entered in the giveaway! It doesn't get any better than that. No wait. It does. If you mention you came from here (anymommy) then I get a special entry for some kind of grand pooh bah SB thing. That makes me massively happy because I am experiencing severe SB withdrawal and I am going to need large, expensive doses of SB when I return to civilization.
Our internet connection is defunct and it is driving me insane. Today, the entire island's internet is patchy and I am at my third restaurant trying to post this post. Which makes me remember a special report I watched the other night about internet addiction and I think, go and play with your children. So, I play with them for about twenty minutes and then I remember how boring it is long term and think that the people who made that special must not have small children, because if they did, they would not be mocking people with internet addictions. It's all good. Cue and I are sharing a mango smoothie and he is playing with floor grime. Boosts immunity.
I finally have the packages all ready to ship to Psychmamma and For Myself! That only took me two weeks. It's worth it though because I found these miniature prints of my very favorite painting by my very favorite local artist. I'm so excited. I could not find crunchy spicy peas though. I looked every where. I failed. Sorry. I came through on the mangoes.
Yesterday, I threw up in the McDonald's Drive Thru. There are so many things wrong with that statement that I don't even know what else to say. Cue laughed at me, outright baby chortled at my misery. He'll be going on a kayak trip with his father.
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