When you travel by boat, it's wise to leave an extra day at the end in case bad weather prevents you from cruising home in time for work Monday morning. Wouldn't want to miss that.
Or, in our case, the extra day can be used when you come into an unexpectedly fun harbor.
Kenosha was an afterthought; we knew we'd need a stop between Port Washington and Belmont, and we'd already explored Racine and Waukegan, so Kenosha seemed the logical choice for something "fresh," as Mark puts it. As in, "I like vacations where we do something fresh and creative."
(This statement cracks me up. Is living on a boat "fresh?" I guess you could call it that.)
On our last night in Port Washington, we serendipitously met some Kenosha harbor citizens who gave us the lowdown on the ever-expanding harbor.
When we arrived in Kenosha the following afternoon, a half dozen fellow boaters greeted us on the dock, helping us to maneuver into the narrow slip and tie up. They spotted the bikes on the aft deck and asked if we had come for the international bike race, Food Folks and Spokes. (We didn't race - so the Colombians won.)
As we experienced in every other harbor, trawlers are like good will ambassadors of the boating world. Sailors and power boaters alike are attracted. "You can tell this is a loved boat," one sailor told us.
We decided to spend an extra day in Kenosha and take the county bike trail back north to Racine, to the lighthouse on the northern end of town. We left just after noon, stopped for a leisurely two-hour lunch at Ivanhoe in downtown Racine, biked the rest of the way to the lighthouse, and got back to our dock in Kenosha around 6:30.
Total biking miles for the week: 70
Total boating miles for the week: 190
Total ice creams eaten: who's counting?
Sunday morning, we left Kenosha under overcast skies and a sight western wind. My favorite part of this last leg started just north of Waukegan, as we encountered a large barge off the starboard. Then we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by fishing boats. Mark sat to my left, reading, as I manned the helm, maneuvering clear of anyone. There was something eerie about passing so many still boats. I imagined we were passing through a graveyard of ghost ships and had to be very quiet and not disturb any of them, and not attract attention. I thought about the ancient mariners, the Greek and Norse, and the mythology that evolves on the water, when you spend days upon days out at sea, listening with your eyes to the sky and the waves, tasting the wind with your skin.
Something different happens to us on the water. Something indescribable, though we keep trying to find words for it. Something about so much space and so much hidden depth that opens the mind and the imagination. A limitless expanse of nothingness - full of possibility, ready for exploration.
There are three of us in this marriage - Mark, me, and Mazurka. In the beginning, flinging around a can in Monroe Harbor, or stuck in the ice on the Chicago River, I resented the hell out of this fact. But now, nearly two years later, if Mazurka needed it, I would carry her over land like an Argonaut.
Maybe we come to love something most when we realize we may have to give it up.
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