Who Needs Work When You’re Having Fun?

Wednesday March 18, 2015

A little over a week now in the work yard and we have spent about…hmm two of them working.  Ok, ok, there have been some projects happening (and I’ll get to those in one of my next posts), but the truth is, we’ve just been having lots of fun instead. Those Germans we talked about, Ben and Hannes, have a way of distracting us from our work with fun.  Although they’re telling us the same thing, so I guess it works both ways.

Matt and I still have not gotten over our habit of sleeping in and by the time we get to ‘work’ after 10 am, we usually only get about a good 2 hours in before it’s time for lunch and a little socializing.  Which is extremely easy when you’re friends are less than 50 feet from you and you just wander over to say hi or “Whatcha working on?” and it turns into an hour conversation.  Then beer-thirty comes just a few hours after that and it’s relaxing in the space between our two boats with a cold Miller High Life in hand. Monday night we had another late night at the patio with these guys, but yesterday was even better when we introduced them to an American St. Patrick’s Day.

We’d heard through the marina grapevine that a group of people were headed up to the local watering hole, JR’s Saloon, for $1 tacos and $1 drafts, their Tuesday night special.  When we thought there might be green beer involved as well we jumped at the chance to join and found out the guys were doing the same. As a huge treat for us, Hannes and Ben agreed to drive us out their in the school bus they just purchased and are renovating into a type of RV for a road trip across the US in a few weeks.  As we stepped on it for the mile long journey, we could see that they’d taken out all but one row of seats and thrown their cockpit cushions on the floor as well as most of their other belongings.  I have no idea what it will be like to road trip in this vehicle for six weeks, but it will be interesting to see what they do with it.

Getting to JR’s and locking up the bus with a good ol’ fashioned chain and padlock, we entered to find we had come fashionably late and almost everyone was already done eating.  I guess that’s what happens when you show up 30 minutes before happy hour ends.  We spent a little time meeting new cruisers from the marina, but personally I was having much more fun with Ben and Hannes, noting the differences between our cultures and making light jabs at each other.  Like when I handed the guys a Shock Top and told them it was a delicious wheat beer, they about spit it out and said that it was extremely watered down and if we wanted a real wheat beer we needed to come to Germany.  (All in teasing though, I mean, they do drink nothing but Miller High Life at the marina).  Then it was my turn to make a few jabs at Ben as he told me a little bit about his family.

“My cousin just got a baby”

“Really?  Where did she get it, Amazon?”

“You don’t say ‘got’ here?  What do you say?”

“Have.  One has a baby.  Usually you would only say ‘got’ if it was something you were given or was purchased”.

“Oh, ok.  Well, she ‘got’ hers on clearance, very cheap.  It was a German model.”

Without skipping a beat.  I love it.  And it was like that with them all night long.

 When we’d finished our meals and the crowds had thinned out, it turned out the four of us weren’t ready to go home yet.  Plus Matt and I wanted to make sure we forced some more terrible American beer down their throats so we purchased a pitcher of Shock Top and made our way over to the pool tables.  One pitcher turned into two, and two games turned into four.  Before we knew it the sky had grown dark and it was time to go home.

We thought the night was going to be over once we got back to the marina but it turns out that all our fellow dinner patrons that left us at JR’s were just bringing the party back to the patio.  Music was already being played between acoustic guitars and even a fiddle.  We were already tired and knew we needed to at least try and get up early the next morning to get some work done, but when there was a bottle of rum placed on the table along with some fruity mixers that one of the cruisers was trying to get rid of, there was no way we could say no.

We ended up spending another couple of great hours sitting out at the patio, enjoying live music, and sipping on a few green cocktails.  The guy that had brought the green food coloring to the bar to give us a hand there with our beers since they apparently were not serving it, made sure to leave it in the kitchen at the marina so we could keep with the St. Patrick’s Day theme all night long.

Hannes and Ben grabbed their instruments to join in on the fun and I was even given a quick lesson on how to play the cello.  I think that for only having two strings at the moment, I did pretty well.  So, now you can see why we haven’t been getting much work done on Serendipity so far.  All these impromptu events keep coming up and we don’t want to turn them down.  Life is too short, and hey, the work can wait.