A Titanic Re-enactment, a Too-Tight Scuba Suit and a Metaphor

My first blogging weekend didn't go very well. At least as connectivity to the blogoshpere is concerned. This last weekend was the Annual Welvaert Family Dock and Boat Lift Installation at our family cabin on Lake Mille Lacs. So we had no internet access. Poop. But the weekend opened up a cornucopia of things for me to do to make myself feel like a kid again:

I ran around the yard chasing the dog.

I ate about ten handfuls of soft toffees (insert Homer Simpson drooling sound effect here).

I splashed around in the lake water (Yeah, it was amazingly cold – didn't feel my fingertips full until an hour later).

I played board games all weekend long (Go, Killer Bunnies!!!).

I listened to a lecture from my dad on something I did wrong.

I drank more soda (no orange Crush, but lots of Coca-Cola – mom and dad are on a soda cleanse, so us kids are drinking up their stores so it doesn't go to waste).

My mom gave me money for a treat.

I watched a fantastic thunder/electric storm light up the night horizon on the lake.

Okay. I don't want to be a downer, so I'll get this out of the way. This weekend I realized that there were some moments where that child-like feeling kind of sucks. Having my dad school me on on proper investing, saving and job searching, takes a lot of fortitude to sit through. Having to take a handout from the rents to buy the kids a treat, makes me feel utterly worthless.

But in retrospect, both my mom and dad are doing what they do best, taking care of their kids, either monetarily or lecturatorily, or whatever. Bottom line: they aren't acting that way to make me feel bad about myself, they're just trying to help. Too often, we think the people that love us the most say those things or do those things to make us feel bad, when in reality, they're being helpful.

Okay back to the fun stuff – the Annual Welvaert Family Dock and Boat Lift Installation. This year is the 5^th year we've had the cabin on the lake and like with all new things, sometimes it takes a few times to get the perfect process down to accomplish something – it's an experiential process. This is exactly how the Annual Welvaert Family Dock and Boat Lift Installation became a family holiday.

To preface things, lets just describe the type of materials we're dealing with: a 30-foot dock with wooden planks, iron under carriage, a single axle base with two tires and trailer hitch; and a 20-foot aluminum boat lift with a single axle, two wheels, a trailer hitch and a canopy. A lot of moving parts, cords, tires, pins, poles, s-hooks and other mechanical pieces that could cause things to go terribly wrong.

The first year, the Welvaert's, who often boast about knowing the right way to do just about everything, attempted their first ever dock and boat-lift installation – by hand. Even though the dock had a trailer hitch (you know, those devices that allow a user to hook something up to a truck for transportation), the Welvaert's believed the best and easiest way to get the 900 lb. Dock into the lake would be to move it manually using the three strapping Welvaert men.

You can probably tell where this is going. Moving 900 lbs into the water and over undersea rocks and sand – IS A LOT HARDER THAN YOU THINK. After an hour of the most heart-curdling cussing and not to mention arm-bending pushing, heaving and exertion, the Welvaert family succeeded. Succeeded in using the worst possible solution to install a dock. And the boat lift didn't fair any better – see it was tippy. Meaning you had to have able bodies hanging on the end of the frame as ballast to gravity and leverage as you push it out, manually of course, into the lake. Again, hours of manual exertion and a whole new dimension in building compound swear words.

This is why the Annual Welvaert Family Dock and Boat Lift Installation draws such a crowd – we innovate completely new ways to look stupid doing something seemingly simple.

Year 2: Manual installation of dock takes a Titanic turn. A misunderstanding of which poles get pounded in first (the ones closest to shore always go in first - ALWAYS), leads to a dramatic re-enactment of the sinking of the Titanic, where in order to keep my dad from tipping into the lake, I scramble up a quickly inverting dock to lever the entire dock back down to Earth. Somewhere nearby I Celine Dion could be heard singing.

Also manually installed the boat lift – with the same results. The only difference now, is that we must go underwater to remove the lift's tires, as the previous year the waves worked the bolts off and the tires floated away. The Welvaert boys learn about combating the beginning stages of hypothermia after having to submerse to their necks in near freezing water.

It took us until Year 3 to maximize the use of automobile's to do the majority of the heavy lifting for these tasks. This last weekend we installed the dock to very little fanfare for a change, even though numerous family cameras were on hand to record the trouble we would undoubtedly get into.

We might just be getting the hang of this.

The interesting part about every Annual Welvaert Family Dock and Boat Lift Installation is that no matter what happens, despite any plans being made or timing developed, nature never, I mean never works in our favor. Those of you who know Mille Lacs at all, probably know that a dry fart on the like creates three foot swells you could surf on.

And we've endured it all from three foot waves filling your waders with ice-cold water to rocks magically growing underneath our dock posts to two inches of ice coating everything and having to blow torch your way out of the lake. It's always something. Yet we endure. I endured wearing a skin-tight, black scuba suit that was put on me backwards. My brother endures my ineptitude with mechanical things. My father endures the fact that he can't do all of this alone and no where near the way he used to when he was our age.

So I guess if I apply dock and boat-lift logic to my current job situation, I guess things could be a lot worse. I could be dipped in ice-cold water. Someone could see me stretching out that scuba suit. Things will be fine, I just need to keep pushing, keep pulling and my dock will find it's place on the lake.