Last week the Jansma’s took our standard late August vacation. I had originally booked it for this week not knowing school started for my kids today, in person, can you believe that? I had big plans for this week that involved going to the UP with our motor home and making our way all the way over to the Porcupine Mountains. Due to having to call an audible I changed the location to Traverse City and found a campground just south of town on 31. Parker and I took the mini van up and Aiden rode in the motor home with Shirley, I imagine this is how the rest of life is going to play out for the most part, not that I don’t like Aiden, but he is to Shirley as are grapes to wine. Unfortunately, I had an idea in my head as to where the campground was and that idea wasn’t even close to the actual location, resulting in me showing up to the campground well over an hour after Shirley did despite the fact that I drive at least 20 MPH faster than she does. Now I should have known this going in because when I booked the site it was the last one available, but it sucked, it was the Red Roof Inn of campsites, no shade, on the main road and right up against another campsite.

The good thing about showing up an hour late was that Shirley had everything set up so all I had to do is get dinner going. Typically my Saturday morning consists of me getting up hours before my family, water skiing, playing tennis, and running errands. However, I had no one to play tennis with nor did I have anyone to ski with or anything to ski behind. What was I going to do to fill up my Saturday morning? Was I going to be forced into spending time with my family on a Saturday morning? As was typical, I was up well before my family and decided to take Shirley’s van for an oil change. This was out of necessity, not because I needed to make up something to pass the time, she was 3,000 miles over the suggested mileage, I typically go 300 to 500 over but I never get in to quadruple digits.

As I was finishing up my oil change and about to pull out of the garage the head guy began to engage me in conversation, instead of peeling out and getting the hell out of there I made a huge mistake, I nodded my head and pretended to be interested in what he was saying. He began by telling me that he was in the process of starting a repo business, had an ebay store where he sold boat parts, transported classic cars all over the country, and was starting his own mechanic’s shop. “I won’t even go out West anymore, don’t let my guys go out there either” he said, although I strongly doubted he had any guys to not let go out West. I knew where this was going but there was no way to stop it now, and then he went on to tell me how a lady from the CDC was at the oil change place in November and that he was pretty sure he had Corona back then along with everyone who worked there. On top of that he knew a guy in Traverse City who was in charge of testing and that guy submitted 300 tests that had not been sampled, they were just blank test kits, and they all came back positive.

About ten percent of what he said seemed spot on, but the fact that 90% of what he said was bat shit crazy coupled with how unbelievable it was made that 10% irrelevant. I finally told him I had to get back to the campground to spend time with my family (lie) just so I could get out of there. However, it wasn’t before he was able to get into the black lives matter thing with me, and by what I mean by with me is that he was trying to gauge if it was safe to use any racial slurs when referring to “them”. I don’t want to get too political here, but there are segments of the BLM movement that have taken on similarities to a person on a Mart Cart at an all you can eat buffet. Should they have stopped after they had a second plate, three desserts, and a soft serve ice cream sundae? Yes, yes they should have but their elastic pants had a little bit of give left, and their crocs weren’t buckling to the point of possibly exploding so why not grab another plate? The BLM movement has made its point and have brought about a heightened awareness to certain social issues, the problem is they aren’t satisfied with a couple plates and a few desserts. I never gave him a read so he refrained from any potential offensive language and stuck to the basics.

One of the highlights of the trip was a canoe trip down the Platte river. I took charge when we arrived at the canoe livery and walked up to the first available attendant maskeless. It’s likely he drove his moped to work that day and couldn’t have been a day over 16. I had already decided we were getting a canoe and a tube to tie to the canoe in case the canoe was cramped. As I was completing the transaction Shirley stepped up and said maybe this guy doesn’t like you breathing on him and you should put your mask on? In my defense I wasn’t breathing on him and to top it off we were outdoors. Regardless, with Shirley the mask Nazi looking over my shoulder I was forced to put on my mask when she said “you are not going to like the consequences of not wearing a mask”. As resistant as I am to wearing a mask when faced with maintaining my personal liberty or maintaining my sex life, I’ll choose my sex life every time.

Shirley didn’t stop at ordering me to wear my mask, she also butted in and suggested that we get two canoes, two canoes? I’m awesome, my hand eye coordination is probably in the top 1 percent of the entire world and I can do many things, but I can’t paddle two canoes at one time. I quickly nixed the idea and we settled on a tube and a canoe. The journey started with Shirley paddling for roughly 90 seconds before she left our forward momentum entirely up to me. I had been on many canoe trips with Shirley and new this was ultimately going to be my fate so it wasn’t that big of a deal. The first half of the trip was fairly uneventful until we got to the point where the river turned into a lake, once that occurred there was no current to compensate for the fact that I was paddling my entire family down the river. On top of that the wind was blowing fiercely across the lake making it twice as hard to paddle solo while dragging Shirley and Parker in the tube. Aiden was in the front and vying for a spot in the Special Olympics Canoe race, fortunately every one wins at the Special Olympics. As I paddled and he tried to, he began to yell “I hate you wind, I hate you!” at the top of his lungs, what he should hate is his genetics and the fact that he got way more Shirley and not enough me. Parker on the other hand was a natural manning the paddle, too bad he realized sooner rather than later it was a lot of unnecessary work since Dad was willing to do all the paddling.

Making it through the lake was not truly the half way point, there was a point where we needed to get the canoe out of the water and carry it roughly 30 feet and put it back in the water. The term for this, which was entirely new to me, was portage, as in “you will need to portage your canoe, and your family will just sit there and watch you portage your canoe, they may even jump in while you portage your canoe”. I though portage was just the name of a town outside of Kalamazoo. When we got to the portage site it was a bottle neck, it didn’t have to be, but it was because a family with two grown ass children and their parents were screwing things up. The mom sat down in the canoe before it was floating along with the family dog as one of the sons tried to drag her fat ass far enough into the water so that it would float. It took all of my self control to keep from yelling “get out of the canoe tubby!” Eventually he was able to pull his mom far enough to get her to float but not before suffering a mild hernia. Next up was pops, he ws in a kayak and did the exact same thing, requiring the other kid to drag his ass into floatable water. I may do this exact thing to my kids some day, not because I’m on the dull side, purely out of revenge for all of the additional shitty things they will have done to me by that point in life.

After we were able to portage, (it sounds like something you do at an international space station) we stumbled upon the deadliest thing any river has to offer this side of the Amazon, that’s right, a rope swing. This thing was set up to paralyze or even possibly kill someone. Shirley instantly objected to utilizing the rope swing, the problem is its not in the Jansma DNA to turn their back on possible paralysis or death, a Jansma must face it head on hoping to come out the other side in once piece. To my credit I did wade out to see how deep the river was and it was up to my chest, so I wouldn’t be diving but everything else was fair game. To make matters even more treacherous, there was a sword like piece of a tree coming out of the water right in the swings landing zone. I went first and it was fucking awesome, like pretty much every rope swing. Parker was next, but to put Shirley at ease I stood in the water so that if things went sideways I could make sure Parker didn’t impale himself on the piece of tree sticking it’s head out of the water as if it were a menacing crocodile. Success, Parker didn’t even come close to gutting himself on the piece of tree protruding from the river. Aiden was up next, I clenched my butt cheeks as he grabbed the rope swing knowing that if anyone was going to have a brush with death or at least serious bodily impairment, it was going to be him and I had to be on my A game to keep that from happening or else wearing the mask at the canoe livery would have been a complete waste of time. Sure enough, he let go way too soon and almost landed stomach first on the branch, without me there he would have probably lost a large portion of his intestines.

Our final day found us renting a pontoon boat on Torch Lake. I had never been to Torch Lake, but was under the impression it was something to behold. As we headed out it became evident that it was extremely windy, which was a cause for concern since we were going to be boating on a very large lake. When we arrived at the marina the women in charge was dealing with another customer. When she finished up and made her way to me it was evident that she was the type of person who was always frazzled regardless of the circumstances. The marina only had 8 boats to rent so how stressful could it get? I assured her that she was not dealing with a novice, I owned a Mastercraft ski boat and was even wearing my Mastercraft hat to prove it to her. She didn’t need to explain how a boat worked to me, I had this. The kids insisted they were going to want to tube, something I should have put the kabosh on in light of the hurricane type winds. I didn’t and we rented the tube for $50, the exact same tube I bought at Dunhams on close out last summer for $80.

We puttered down the Torch River on our way to the lake, the river was a no wake zone and it seemed like it took an eternity to get out to the lake even though it was fifteen minutes tops. Once we got out to the lake the it was obvious this was the wrong day to rent a pontoon. However, we were not to be deterred, I put the hammer down and we headed into the bowels of Torch Lake. White caps grew in size as we approached the middle of the lake, a great time to take down the bimini top on the pontoon so that the driver (me) wouldn’t be stuck in the shade and risk hypothermia. The problem was that I wasn’t told how the top came down and it took Shirley and I no less than ten minutes of drifting aimlessly to figure it out and once we were able to get it down it wasn’t readily apparent how to fold it up and contain it. So, we took the anchor rope and jimmy rigged it so that it was put away somewhat satisfactorily (I got this).

It didn’t take us long to realize hanging out on Torch Lake was not in the cards. We made our way back through Torch River hoping that Elk Lake was a bit more placid but were forced to take a pit stop at the marina so Shirley could pee. I wanted to take a pit stop at the public boat launch which seemed much more accessible, but she insisted on the marina. The wind was whipping at the marina and the river was narrow. To make matters worse my ski boat was like driving a Ferrari and the Pontoon was like driving a rear wheel drive Buick in a blizzard. My first mistake was not making sure my trim was down, trim isn’t a thing in a ski or wakeboard boat unless you know a lot of chicks. Turns out the trim was basically all the way up and when I came in to the dock a bit too hot I was entirely helpless as Shirley kept yelling at me to hit reverse. Out of panic she stuck her foot out to stop us as we violently collided with the dock. Immediately she cried out in pain as I managed to put the Titanic in reverse so it didn’t hit the iceberg a second time. Admittedly, I didn’t have it, but by some small miracle there were no bystanders to witness an incident that would have led to divorce in most marriages.

The good news is that the rest of the afternoon went splendidly and as we made our way back to the marina. I was a bit apprehensive docking the boat but nothing remarkable occurred and we made our way into port safe and sound. Both kids had fallen asleep and we let them continue to nap as they checked the boat over to determine if they would be taking any of our security deposit. The kids had decided that the lady running the marina was Carol Baskins, and Carol determined that there was a ding in the prop that may require the marina to replace it. In my defense, when we did the walk around before we took the boat the prop was positioned in such a way that I couldn’t see if there was a ding in the prop originally. Instead of threatening extremely long and costly litigation I let her bring in her dock hand “smokey Bill” to take a look at the prop. Roughly ten minutes later he appeared and climbed around the outboard motor like a monkey on a tree inspecting the prop from every possible angle, his pack of Marlboro mediums fell in the water when he bent over a little too far to take one last look at the prop blade. Had there been anymore than 3 smokes left in the pack I’m certain he would have dove in head first after them, that’s the type of guy he was. However, he remained calm and didn’t even seem bothered by the loss of his smokes. I figured putting him through that type of unnecessary aggravation was certain to result in the need for a new prop. However, I was wrong. Win for the Jansmas!

On our way back to the camp ground we discovered the ultimate dichotomy, a farm stand that was also an ice cream stand. I was able to purchase fresh vegetables for dinner that evening as well as mid afternoon dessert for my kids and I. Rarely do I find an ice cream that contains the world’s best candy bar (milky way) but this place had it and it was delicious. It’s rare that I get two wins in one day when I am with my family but it happened. The only thing that could have made it better was some afternoon delight, but that wasn’t happening.