Restaurant Hopping on the Water

My friend Betsy tagged me with a “meme” – a chain letter for blogs. The objective is to name the top 5 restaurants in your city. I immediately wrote my landlocked list (Café Blossom for sushi, Wishbone for Southern & soul food, Chicago Diner for vegetarian, Las Pinatas for Mexican, Angelina’s for dessert – chocolate pound cake…mmm…– and a tie between Hackney’s and Edgewater Tap for American bar food – okay, that’s six). But then I thought again. The theme of this blog is newlywed life on Mazurka…so I gotta go with restaurants you can reach by waterways when you’re in love.

1. Japonais, 600 W. Chicago, is really pricey sushi, with lots of shi-shi girls in swanky tank tops and fake tans posing with cosmos at the bar. But imagine you’re on a second date with a guy who owns a boat: he’s going to take you out on a Friday night. “There’s this sushi place up the river I’ve always wanted to go to,” he tells you. You’re game, ‘cause this guy fascinates you. You climb on board and he cruises up river to the wall outside a restaurant where a lot of young guys in overpriced suits are smoking cigars. This is not a dock or a port, but he pulls up anyway, ties up, and you two hop over the railing. The guys in cigars look impressed. You go right in, wearing sweatshirts and blue jeans, but they seat you anyway, at the very end of the sushi bar nearest the kitchen. At the end of the dinner, you prance right out to the boat, where cigar-smoking guys are admiring the ship. You hop the fence, untie, and push off.

Did it really matter what the food tasted like?

2. Dick’s Last Resort, 435 E. Illinois, is described by NFT (Not for Tourists Guide to Chicago) as “Tourists’ last memory of the night.” It no doubt is, nestled right into the magnificent mile in between conglomerate hotels and 8-floor shopping meccas. It’s also situated right on the Ogden Slip, a small inlet of water just west of Navy Pier, north of the Chicago River. Last year, on the first day we tore the shrinkwrap off Mazurka in cold, chilling April, we took a cruise down the river, up into the Ogden Slip, where we docked and walked around downtown. We decided to spend the night there, and since it was so early in the season, nobody said anything. In the morning, we went to Dick’s Last Resort for brunch, where you can throw things and write on the walls. It was a pretty good brunch buffet. Then we climbed onboard and cruised home.

3. The Green Dolphin, at Webster and Ashland, I have mixed feelings about. This is where we cruised to have dinner with our friends Jay and Lynn the night we spotted the South Loop coyotes. This is also where, two days later, we chose to dock and pick up Birthday Girl Kathy’s 27 friends. The owner – or whoever he was – was none too happy; he tromped down to the dock and gave mighty hell to our captain. “This isn’t a public dock – you better call somebody – we gotta private party here tonight.” He then went and locked the gate so that Kathy had to go up and sweet-talk him into letting in the last few party guests. But as far as dinner goes, the dock is easy and safe, they have a terrific chef (the tuna is excellent), a killer wine selection, and afterwards, you can go into the lounge and listen to awesome jazz.

4. Reza’s, 432 West Ontario, is an outstanding Middle Eastern place I’ve eaten at a hundred times, in the River North area, as well as its northern little brother in Andersonville. It’s terrific. We usually go by motorcycle. You can probably get there by boat. Or take a taxi. The food will be just as good. (Mark and I had our first fight here – he wanted me to tell him a story like the main character in Out of Africa and I went blank. I spent a half hour hiding in the bathroom, giving myself a pep talk in the mirror not to walk out on him. Ah, young love.)

5. Bob Chin’s – now defunct – it used to be right next to Mark's favorite Italian place Sorriso’s, also defunct. I’ll be honest – I’ve never eaten dinner here. But I feel compelled to list it as a place on water to fall in love, because four years ago my best friend Jill had her first date with Scott here, aboard his brother Mark’s boat, which at that time was Mazurka’s predecessor, the Escape Hatch. They docked and ordered mounds of crab legs, which Jill hadn’t a clue how to eat. “I look around and everybody’s just opening them up like they know what they’re doing…I had no idea.” Scott ended up cracking the crab legs for her. “There was nothing pretentious about her,” he says, “She just was who she was. It was refreshing.” Two years later, they got married in Michigan. I stood up for Jill, Mark stood up for Scott. That’s how we met. (At their wedding, Jill’s Aunt Karen suggested perhaps I date the best man. “They’re good people,” she said, “They’re water people.”) A year after that, Mark and I got married. Jill stood up for me; Scott stood up for Mark. They had just learned they were pregnant. On May 3rd, 2007, their daughter Sophia was born.


Mark, Jill, Scott, Felicia, August 2005


(Part of the meme game is to tag other bloggers. I tag Mary, Kristin, Jenny.

Nicole (Sydney, Australia)
velverse (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
LB (San Giovanni in Marignano, Italy)
Selba (Jakarta, Indonesia)
Olivia (London, England)
ML (Utah, United States)
Lotus (Toronto, Canada)
tanabata (Saitama, Japan)
Andi (Dallas [ish], Texas, United States)
Lulu (Chicago, Illinois, United States)
Chris (Boyne City,
Michigan, United States)
AB (Cave Creek, Arizona,
United States)
Johnny Yen (Chicago,
Illinois, United States)
Bubs (Mt Prospect,
Illinois, United States)
Mob (Midland, Texas United States)
Yas (Ahwatukee, Arizona USA)
Alicia(Idaho Falls, Idaho, USA)
Tug(Hell, Colorado,
USA)
BondMemphis, TN, USA)
TopChamp
(Glasgow, UK)
Kailani
(Honolulu, HI, USA)
Amber
(Henderson, TN, USA)
the weirdgirl (San Francisco Bay Area, CA,  USA (I'm still pretending to be an anonymous blogger))
CoffeeBetsy
(Moline, IL USA)
Life Aboard Mazurka
(Chicago, Illinois, USA)

Our Weekend Itinerary

My friends are passing around emails about the hundreds of fun, free things happening this weekend in Chicago. Like the Chicago Blues Festival, the Old Town Arts Fair, and the Printer's Row Book Fair.

I love this itinerary. I would love it even more if my itinerary for the weekend weren't the following:

Fill up fuel tank
Fix generator
Change transmission oil
Finish touching up varnish
Change generator oil
Clean out office/bow of boat so my parents have a place to sleep
Clean the front bathroom so they can have some privacy
Clean the stateroom
Take everything extraneous to storage
Scrub everything in site
Vacuum the cats

Can you tell my parents are coming to visit? We’re taking them on a five-day Father’s Day fishing trip across Lake Michigan and down the coast of Michigan back to Chicago.

The View from Our Front Door

“I have to tell Mark he’s not a bachelor and he can’t do this anymore,” was my first thought Sunday morning, awaking at 4 AM to pouring rain and my husband and our friend Carl discussing the air conditioner.

I called out to them, “You guys aren’t seriously fixing the air conditioner now, are you?”

No, not fixing the air conditioner, but preparing to go fishing, which I had agreed to as well. Not because I like getting up that early, or because I’m wild about fishing. But I liked the crew (Jeff and Carl) and if you don’t go out early-morning fishing while you live on a boat, what’s the point?

We had gotten home late that Saturday night, after attending Carl’s annual crawfish boil/margatini extravaganza. When we invited him to go fishing with us, he stopped the tequila and switched to beer, but we honestly didn’t know if he’d show up or not. Sure enough, 4 AM, he’s at the door in the pouring rain.

Mark was already up, trying to figure out what is wrong with the air conditioner, which keeps freezing. Carl hadn’t even been to sleep – he cleaned up his party and came straight to ours. Jeff arrived shortly, telling tales of the strange activity you see in Chicago alleys at 4:30 in the morning.


We set sail at 5:30 and headed out at 60 degrees, watching the city skyline disappear behind us.



In an hour or so we hit a depth of 75 feet – a ledge that drops off to 100’ depth, and they cast their lines. Half the sky was rainy, the other half sunny. We had calm waters. And not much happening.
























I have little patience for fishing, unless they’re biting. As a kid I would bring a book with me when I went out in the boat with my dad, or ice skates along in the winter. But when you’re fishing from your house, things are different. I made everybody breakfast, did some work, cleaned up. I took a chair out to the bow with a book and a blanket. It was the first time I had ever been surrounded by 360 degrees of water.

It was awesome.

Did we just come from a city? I couldn’t recall.

Only Carl caught a fish that made it into the boat: a coho salmon.



















But we arrived back at Belmont exhilarated. When you free yourself from the constraints of land, you free yourself from all the land-locked worries: bills and work and obligations and all the other daily worries that weigh us down. When you’re surrounded by water, you’re alone, and also acutely aware that you’re part of something much bigger.

There’s still so much about this boat that I don’t know. It’s full of surprises, and changes all of a sudden, depending on the environment.

Like the view from our front door.

I Spy

When Mark is working on Mazurka, the boat starts to look like one of those children’s puzzles where you have to find things.


Find the power drill. Find the broccoli. Find the clown.

Find the captain.

Why Our Shit Don't Stink

“Do you think it’s full yet?” is a far-too-common question around our home, and oftentimes first thing in the morning. “Do you think the pumpout is full?” Mark will ask me on his way to the head.

“Pumpout” is our term for “sewage.” The sewage tank holds 50 gallons, and emptying it is the bane of our chores together. (Frequent readers of this blog will be familiar with the pump out process…it’s gotten no fewer than four entries.) Actually, pumping out is not that big of a deal – you cruise on over to the dock, tie up, put the nozzle of the pumpout hose into the spigot in the deck, and 7-10 minutes later, the shit is gone and you’re on your way.

Oh, were it that simple. The problem is we never know when it’s full, we’re always guessing, and oftentimes, we guess wrong. We look for telltale signs that it’s full, like a gurgling noise, or a slower flush, or the fact that neither of us can remember the last time we pumped out. But the fact is that sometimes we don’t know it’s full till it overflows into the bilge – the small hatch in the floor in the bow, where two bunk beds serve as my office. The office starts to smell like shit, and then the whole boat, and then we not only have to pump out the holding tank, but Mark hauls the hose into the bow to suck out the overflow. Rinse, repeat.

So Mark bought a sensor. He and his friend Carl hooked it up. It works by two electrical wires suspended in the sewage tank which transmit a current and identify when the tank is at a ¼, ½, ¾, and then a red light flashes when you better empty the tank. But before it will work, it has to be calibrated to empty and full, and before we can calibrate it, we have to figure out when it’s full, and so every morning I’ve been checking the bilge for overflow, and we looked for the tell-tale signs. Except this time, there were no signs – two inches of sewage suddenly appeared in the bilge, and at 7 AM we were at the pumpout dock, Mark in the bow with the hose and some bleach.

I thanked him for doing the crappiest job possible while I waited on the dock. “This is the last time,” I assured him.

I’m sure there’s some metaphor for life in all this, some metaphor about the first year of marriage – that we are learning to handle our shit together, learning how to get rid of it and not let it overflow and stink up our life. I wish there were some sensor to let us know when the stress and anxiety of daily living was getting to be too much and we needed to purge lest it clog up our happy home. And since I like to draw big universal lessons from the mundane, I will muse that the first year of marriage is all about learning to calibrate.

Early Retirees

For three years Mazurka has had cheap plastic lawn chairs on the fly bridge. A few weeks back, in rough weather when somebody went toppling over, Mark started looking for something sturdier. We bought two of the popular gravity chairs, the ones where you lean back and the legs come up, the kind you could sleep in, if you wanted. Last night we made dinner and sat out in the chairs with our feet up, as the sun went down, watching over our toes the traffic on LSD, the bikers and runners and roller bladers and dog walkers.


“This is exactly what my parents do,” I said, startled to realize I was becoming my mother. “They sit on their porch and watch the traffic go by.”

“Most people do this when they retire,” Mark said.

I am 32 years old; Mark is 44. What will we do when we are 65?

A Party Even Gatsby Couldn't Miss

Jay Gatsby threw all his amazing parties for one reason – to get his lost love Daisy to attend. So he never really mingled his parties; he would linger in the outskirts, scanning the guests for a glimpse of his true love.

On Mazurka, he’d have nowhere to hide.

Throughout the summer we have parties – sometimes twice a week, to fit the Wednesday/Saturday fireworks schedule at Navy Pier, where we glide underneath the display, the lake itself giving the best view of the action. This was one of my first dates with Mark, in September, the last fireworks show of the season. He was hosting some friends and their parents and invited me along, and as we found our spot right off Navy Pier, I wandered down to the bow, when suddenly the show started. I sat alone, the fireworks pouring over me, as if they were a show just for one. There was only one other audience member – Mark, at the helm, observing this new girl onboard his boat.

We try to bring people together for different reasons – colleagues, or family, or friends who really should meet each other. Mark auctions off a boat ride for a student fundraiser at his university. Sometimes they are guests neither of us has met – a friend visiting from out of town will bring along their family who live in the suburbs.

That’s part of the great thing about living aboard a boat in Chicago; you can show people who are visiting and people who have lived here twenty years a view of the city they have never seen.

You learn a lot about someone by sailing with them. Last summer, I had a group of my writing friends on board. While Mark drove us around, we read aloud our manuscripts. Just when the last writer was reading, a thunderstorm came up of Lear quality; we huddled underneath the bimony, laughing hysterically. The storm passed as suddenly as it came on, and we watched the fireworks. Later, in the cabin, Mark passed around dry clothes to everyone. “You don’t happen to have a skirt, do you?” my friend Julia joked. Mark brought out a white skirt he made in a sewing class he had taken to learn how to sew curtains for the boat (he was the only guy in the class, and their project was skirts). It was white denim, and fit Julia perfectly. Another night, at the end of a two-week heat wave, we had about a dozen people on board to go swimming; a lightning storm came up; rather than go inside, we collected under the bimony, watching lightning strike other boats in the harbor. Only when the rain came sideways and the grill wouldn’t stay lit did we go back inside, crowding into the cabin, chatting away.

The group dynamics are fascinating. You take a group of people who perhaps have never met, and you throw them all together on a boat where anything can happen. Probably there is beer and wine, and a promise of dinner later on. Put a lifejacket on them and tell them to hold onto a rope as we pass through the locks, and they are lifelong friends. Last night, for example, as we finished a five-hour cruise and headed through the lock at Navy Pier, we came upon very windy conditions and rough water on the lake. It was about a half hour ride from Navy Pier back to Belmont Harbor, where the wind threw us from side to side. Atop the fly bridge, with Mark driving, we blasted Steely Dan and linked arms to keep our chairs from sliding too far. Inside, the crew held tight to anything that might go flying off the shelves (we lost two wine glasses).

You can tell a lot about the crew by the way they disperse on the boat. Our first party this year was a birthday bash for our friend Kathy; most of her guests we had never met. They collected mainly in the bow – they are up front, friendly, taking-life-by-the-horns kinda folks, a lot like Kathy.

Last summer, a crew of psychiatric medical residents spent the entire evening inside the cabin, talking shop, even though we were parked in front of the Hancock building on a beautifully calm night. Most of the time, people collect on the fly bridge, where you can grab a plastic chair and sit near the captain, and maybe convince him to let you take the helm for a moment.

Whatever judgments you make of someone in the first five minutes will disappear once you set sail. ‘Cause now you’re on the water, where anything can happen. The crew is all you have to depend on. Dormant parts of a personality suddenly come alive on rocky waters; someone you thought was wishy-washy, or shy, suddenly emerges with strong, deft decision-making. The introvert can lead the crew; the know-it-all sulks in the cabin. The way a person reacts to the beautiful lake, or challenging weather, or the immense space says a lot about them. And nearly every single time we arrive back at port, our guests will exchange phone numbers and emails – they’ve sailed together; they’ve bonded.

That night I went aboard Mazurka with Mark to watch the fireworks, we learned a lot about each other. I learned he had tools all over the place and didn’t stand on much ceremony. I learned he was generous and kind. He learned I wasn’t the kind of girl who needed constant attention; I was happy to sit on the bow of the boat, alone, watching. I could handle my own business.

He figured I might just make a good first mate.

Dinner Under the Stars

Subzero nights aboard a boat in winter are made bearable penance for all that summer has to offer.

On a Thursday night, when we want to go out to dinner, we start up the engine and drive our house out to the best view of the city.

After a week of feeling like sardines in Lincoln Park, we cruised out to the “playpen,” the calm area right in front of the John Hancock building, protected by a breaker wall. In the summers, yachts park and blast house party music from 6-foot speakers and bikini-clad girls dance on the fly bridges. In mid-May, it’s usually pretty empty. We were the only folks out there, and we dropped anchor and grilled dinner, watching Venus shine brightly in the west. Hunter and Leo came out on deck and wandered around.


Rinsing the lettuce before dinner, I heard something new. “What’s that sound?” I asked Mark. It’s all about sounds and smells aboard a boat. Smells differentiate between leaking fuel and grey water that’s overflown and sewage in the bilge. Sounds differentiate between a sump pump working properly and a water pump that won’t shut off – which is what I was hearing – which indicates that the water tanks are empty. Sure enough, mid-sentence, the faucet ran dry.

“Looks like we’re out of water.”

We’re never too far from the next chore, the next potential problem. Though it’s a strange feeling to be surrounded by water yet out of water, empty tanks are not an emergency – not when dinner’s grilling and the night is still – so we sat on the aft cabin and ate perch and zucchini with our fingers, watched the traffic on Lake Shore Drive, the darkening roof tops of skyscrapers. And in a while we hauled up the anchor, cruised back to Belmont, and filled up at the slip. Then I took a shower, just because I could.

Forget the Little Guy

Usually in the City of Chicago, the way to get things done is by finding the employee at a desk in the basement who eats her lunch before a brick wall every day and hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to be human for all the mindless directives she’s given by pompous administrators. This is the lady who has worked so long in the system that she knows it better than anybody else and knows how to help you if you make the appeal that you, too, are getting screwed by the man. She will take pity on you and go to the people who owe her favors and will help you get what you need. She will probably say God Bless You, too.

This is not the way with Westrec.

Maybe it’s the power trip that comes with managing harbors for the third biggest city in the nation. Maybe it’s all the money to be made. Or maybe it’s the fact that more than a few boaters are jerks who have a lot of money and can buy big toys which they don’t know how to operate. Whatever the case, Westrec was not buying the Driver’s License + Vehicle Registration + Insurance Verification we were sending them to prove our residency in this fine city. They weren’t disputing our residence, but they demanded two utility bills to prove it.

We were running into the brick wall these city workers eat their sack lunches in front of everyday. In the late hours of our infuriated head-banging, we had visions of getting a lawyer and suing Westrec for discrimination; we were being discriminated against because we live on a boat and don’t have utility bills.

My Aunt Kathy shook her head, “Just can’t be a non-conformist anywhere anymore,” she said.

Mark can be a little disorganized at times. And while his constant searching for lost items is endearing…and sometimes a little maddening…the good part is that sometimes, his disorganization gives way to the great benefactor called Chance. By Chance, he lost Westrec’s number and did an online search for the company. By Chance, he found the Westrec Head Office in California. By Chance, he called and talked to a nice lady in customer service who said, “What are they making you fax them? Why don’t you send it to me.” By Chance, this nice lady called the Chicago Regional Manager – twice – who finally had his little guy get in touch with us and say, send your lease. So Mark emailed our lease, proving our winter residence, and we haven’t heard anything since.

Sometimes, as in the case with city workers on a power trip, it’s best to go to the top.

And for all parties involved, we are calling this matter closed.

No Love for the Live Aboards

In our first week at Belmont Harbor, Mark came home with the mail and a disappointed look on his face. “They’re trying to…well…maybe it’s not that bad. They’re trying to charge us the nonresident rate.”

He slaps on the table a new invoice – this one from the Chicago Park District, Marine Department, managed by Westrec Marinas, which says that a PO Box does not constitute proof of Chicago residency, and we have to prove we are residents with drivers’ licenses and two utility bills. Or else pay $1,143.56 by May 18th.

Our driver’s licenses give the River City address, but we don’t get utility bills. And all mail comes to the PO Box.

I’m not too upset about it, though. “Will you call them tomorrow?” Mark asks, and I agree – I can be more charming on the phone. We go for a run at the lakeshore, and I spend the entire time mulling over my argument. We live on board a boat, you see, so we have the licenses, but no utility bills. And there’s always the issue of revealing that you live onboard – the boating community doesn’t take kindly to us live aboards. By the time we get back from the run, Mark feels better, but I’m pissed off.

The next morning I call Westrec. I explain my situation to the guy on the phone, that I live on a boat and don’t get utility bills. “You’re on your husband’s boat, you mean,” he says. This irks me, but whatever. He transfers me to Mr. Munson. I explain our situation to Mr. Munson. He tells me that Live Aboards do not constitute residents, because how does he know we’re not spending our winters in Florida? I tell him we’ve both lived in this city a dozen years. For the past three, Mark has lived on the boat. He spends the winters at River City, the summers on the lakefront. This is the first time we’ve ever gotten a notice like this. I tell him we can send the driver’s licenses, but all the mail comes to the PO Box.

He’s not budging; it’s gotta be a driver’s license and two utility bills.

“It’s the same as if you’re applying to be a policeman or a fireman,” he says, “You have to prove your residence.”

If I wasn’t trying to be diplomatic, I would have told Mr. Munson that I wasn’t applying to carry a firearm and drive fast vehicles on behalf of protecting the public; I was applying to keep my boat parked on a dock at the rate of a Chicago resident. They are not the same thing.

Instead, I ask him, “What else can I do?”

“You can write a letter to Scott Stevenson.”

“Who is that?”

“Regional Vice-President.”

I thank him for his time and get off the phone. I do an online search for Scott Stevenson. In an April 22nd article in the Chicago Tribune called “Moor, moor, moor: Rising Chicago harbor fees make waves, but boaters agree operation smoother,” all about the 8% increase in Chicago Harbor mooring since last year, Mr. Stevenson is quoted as saying, “If a boater is having a hard time financially, they have the option of selling [the boat].”

This is who we’re going to make our appeal to?

“These harbors were supposed to be affordable boating for Chicago,” Mark says, “But it’s only affordable to the rich.”

The thing that is the most frustrating is that no one is disputing the truth. We do live in Chicago. We are residents. We have paid the $4,674.25 for a dock in Belmont Harbor from May 1 – October 30 (that’s $779.40 a month, all you who think boating is a good way to save money…). But boating is big city business; if you can’t provide the documentation, the human factor does not matter. There is no one you can get on the phone and just reason with.

So we are taking an alternate route. Mark found his City of Chicago vehicle registration, which identifies our street address at River City, and his car insurance, which also gives the street address. I wrote a letter to the nice woman who sent us the call for more documentation, explaining that all our mail is sent to the PO Box, but here’s two more pieces of identification, plus the license. Mark is going to fax it all today.

We’ll see what happens.

Bluegill and Trout and Carp, Oh My!

The other morning Mark went out on the deck - "Hey, look at these fish!" he calls. Trout, maybe ten inches long, swimming a foot below the surface, just outside our door. Last night, we were spotting bluegill and more trout. This afternoon, I was out on the stern, talking on the phone to my parents, when I had to interrupt. "Mom, there's a four-foot carp swimming right in front of me. There's another one...and another...." I counted as many as ten at once, swarming together, hovering. They're huge, and ancient-looking, and no, I wouldn't want to catch one, even though my dad says they'd be fun on the line.

Oh, the wildlife we do see.

On the Street Where You Live

Moving in Chicago conjures up a lot of unwanted hassle: maneuvering a rented truck through tight alleys, badgering your landlord for the rightful return of your deposit, bribing your friends with beer and pizza to move all your boxes of books and sleeper couches up three flights of stairs. And once you move to your new place, the fun has only begun – now it’s time to unpack and take care of all the stuff the last tenant ignored and find your way around your new ‘hood.
Moving Mazurka to our summer home in Belmont Harbor was a picnic – literally. Our crew of four actually thanked us for having them along. We loaded a few hoses and remaining equipment onto the bow, said goodbye to the geese still tending unhatched eggs, hauled the dinghy to storage, and set sail.

At dusk we passed through downtown and the lock at Navy Pier, and in the darkening sky of a near-full moon, sailed north to our home for the next six months, in the northern armpit of Belmont Harbor, precariously close to Lake Shore Drive and the bike path, where the gates are locked but people jump the fences anyway, including us because at 11 o’clock at night, there’s no one in the Harbor Master’s office to tell us the code for the gate.

It was almost ten o’clock when we docked and fired up the grill, and nearly eleven when everyone left to hail a cab back to their parked cars. I stayed onboard, alone in our new slip. The first thing I did was call my dad. It felt odd to be in such a strange harbor, where there’s no internet, and no friendly neighbors, where my cat Leo took off running down the dock, under the fence into the park, where feral raccoons the size of small bears are just waiting for a fight. All night I had nightmares about where I had parked my car and people stealing from us.

In the morning, I didn’t feel much better. There was some fence-jumper fishing right by my kitchen window while I made coffee.

It’s a weird thing to move, even if the interior of your home doesn’t change.

I checked in with the Harbor Master’s assistant, and he congratulated me for getting into Belmont. This is the trendy harbor in Chicago. Later in the day I met the unofficial mayor, who also keeps his boat on A Street; he filled me in on how things work around here. And while I appreciate the strong recommendation for the honey wagon service, I still (for some strange reason) want to pump my own shit.

When we first moved to River City last November, I was appalled by the garbage, the industrial plant pumping smog right across the river, the concrete and cement and lack of trees. But it grew on me. And then there are no more attacking geese, and I had learned the neighborhood, and the river took on the smooth, easy living of early summer…and it was time to go.

Mark says it was time for us to leave the nest, too.

(Thanks to crewmember Carl for the photos of Mazurka's summer slip and the skyline at dusk...and to Mary, Chris, and Jeff for helping us move!)

Eight-Foot Dinghy Needs a Good Home

We got transferred for the summer from a can in Monroe Harbor to a dock at Belmont Harbor. Goodbye South Hotel Ten and rough waters…hello shore power!

He's Handing Out Cigars

Saturday morning we were greeted by six new little puffballs. Cheney is a proud papa, and he and the Mrs. spent all day corralling their new brood.

Okay, so maybe it was worth a month of being attacked. Even Stan can’t help oohing and awing over how cute they are. Despite my cajoling to be godmother, Cheney still gave me half-hearted hisses and wing-flapping, for old time’s sake.

By Sunday morning, the nest was completely abandoned. Now Mark and I and anyone who comes to see us can come and go as we please, without an umbrella or weapon, without hitting the deck when the goose swoops down on us, without any worry at all.

I kinda miss the old bastard.

The South Loop Yeti Spotted

Last night we took Mazurka on her maiden 2007 voyage. Our friends Jay and Lynn came with us. We planned to go up the river, to Webster and Ashland, and have dinner at the Green Dolphin. It was freezing cold, and raining, but who cares - the calendar says it's spring!



First, we went south a bit, to Ping Tom Park in Chinatown, where we turned around to head north. A police boat was coming towards us. It seemed to be emitting a strange siren, sort of like a dog call. We worried that it was summoning us. On deck, one of the cops crouched low, and waved – I thought for sure he was going to pull us over for something – but then he pointed to shore and called, “There’s coyotes!”

There are rumors of illusive coyotes in the South Loop. Just last week, one reportedly walked into a Quizno’s on Michigan Avenue. I’ve heard them calling in the night, but I’ve never seen one. Not till tonight, when all of a sudden, three good-sized pups burst out of the bush, tackling one another.

They’re fast, and camouflaged, and hard to see at dusk on a cloudy night…but I managed to capture one good image of the mother.


We saw other strange Chicago wildlife on our trip north, such as the not-so-illusive, far-too-prevalent Barge-o-Garbage.


And as for food, the Green Dolphin, while a bit on the pricey side, is definitely worth it. Try the ahi tuna, stay for the live jazz.

My Husband's Mistress

In the past month, I have traveled a lot – to the point where everything I own is in a 3 oz container and I’ve spent a week in every time zone in the Lower 48. On only one of these trips did Mark and I go together. So our seventh month of marriage has been a lot of phone calls and happy reunions. And while I’m away, he reverts to his bachelor mode a bit – bratwurst and scrambled eggs for dinner, staying late at the office, spending a lot of time fixing up Mazurka.

On my last trip away – to Jill’s baby shower in Detroit – I spent five days with Mark’s family, without my husband. We talked morning and night, mostly about how he was getting the boat ready for me to come home. He took the plastic shrinkwrap off, scrubbed and buffed and waxed the deck, put up the bimony he repaired, stowed winter gear like space heaters. On Sunday morning when I called he was drilling holes. “I’m working on the sink that doesn’t drain,” he explained. “What sink?” I asked, since to my knowledge, there were no problems (yet) with any of the sinks. “You know, that one in the kitchen that doesn’t drain – the thing that always stops the water.” “You mean the dish strainer?” “Yeah – that – I’m drilling holes in the bottom.”

I was flattered he missed me so much he was drilling holes in Rubbermaid.

When I returned Tuesday afternoon, Mazurka looked beautiful. Mark came home from work, and after the big kiss and hug, showed me two small bags holding gold. “Here they are,” he said, waving the two couplings in front me – the pieces he had been waiting for to fix the generator.

We went for a walk, came home and made dinner, and talked about what would happen if we moved somewhere else, whether or not we would live on Mazurka. After a week with family and babies and houses, I was in a different frame of mind. You can’t have a baby crawling around in the salon, and where do you put a crib – on the fly bridge? But even without the idea of a family on board, I was growing tired of the constant maintenance. People sometimes tell me, “Oh, living on a boat – you must be saving a lot of money.” These people have no idea what they’re talking about.

“One thing for sure,” Mark said, with love in his eyes, “she needs to be in the water. She can’t survive if she’s not in the water.”

Around 8:30 Mark started to get the look that washes right over me as if I’m not there – the Fixing Mazurka look. At ten o’clock, I kissed him down in the engine room and went to bed. At eleven, several unsuccessful attempts to start the generator woke me up. I went to the door. “Mark,” I said, “I haven’t been home in a week. Can’t you come to bed now?”

“I almost got it…” he called.

I closed the doors to the stateroom and went back to bed, little devils scurrying in my mind, planting seeds of "He doesn’t really love you, he loves the boat. He didn’t miss you at all – he just wants to be alone with his boat." I didn’t give in and didn’t pout or start an argument – and in a while Mark came to bed, put his arm around me and promptly started snoring.

My biggest fear moving on board Mazurka was that I would be living on a project. And truly, that’s what this is – it’s Mark’s epic. And he loves it. He loves solving problems, he loves the challenge. The generator is almost fixed (he was up early and had it running before work today), but lately the water pump has been sounding strange and that’ll be the next thing to go. It’s probably time to fix the toilets before we bring my parents onboard for a Father’s Day voyage. We triumph over winter only to get the problems of summer. It’s the same reason I write – I hate the challenge as much as I love it, and as much as I complain and stress out about a piece that’s not coming together, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Mark respects my writing more than I do - I should at least show him the same reverence for his beloved projects.

Last night as I lay in bed alone, I had to remind myself why I do like living on board – because it’s the most creatively stimulating thing I’ve ever done. Everything is in chaos – the unexpected can happen at any moment, nothing is ever guaranteed, and there are constant reminders that it’s only through the grace of God that the whole thing doesn’t just sink.

But the best moment of all – and after six months of being tied to this dock we’re dying for it – is the moment you take up the lines and push off. Suddenly you feel a different pull: The pull of water, the pull of a story – you forget that you were ever tied to land; you forget there was ever a time you weren’t free.

Running on Ether

When you live on a can in Monroe Harbor all summer, your power source is a generator. Last year, at the end of summer, the generator quit working. Just stopped. Mark replaced the fuel filter; no go. He replaced the glow plugs. Nada. He called his brother Ed, a mechanic in the UP, who told him he could probably get it going with ether. Which is what we did until the end of the season, when we sailed into shore power at Belmont Harbor.

Every time the cabin filled with the sugary scent of ether, I would think of Hunter S. Thompson and his wise words about a man in the depths of an ether binge.

On a dock, you don’t need to worry about a generator. And with all the ice problems this winter, the generator issue has been quiet. Until a few weeks ago, and the early onset of spring, and the fact that as of May 1st, we will be back on a can.

Mark got the name of a guy who works on generators. He called him on Saturday, Paul came on Sunday. He was a surprisingly young kid, but pretty nice, and as he bent down in the engine room to examine the problem, Mark gave him the detailed story of everything he’d done to try and fix the thing. Paul said he had to come back the next day. We were gone, but he came by, and later called Mark to say he had to take the lift pump and test it. He called again to say he tested it and it didn’t work, and told Mark he had to get a new generator. Paul offered to look into it. He called a third time to quote him a price of a new generator, plus warranty, plus installation, all for a meager $15,000. Mark said he’d get back to him.

My husband checked online and found generators that were less expensive. He also posted the problem on a boaters’ site; fellow boaters (the good community they are) responded in droves. “Sounds like you need a new mechanic,” was the consensus.

Mark broke down and called the Onnan, the generator manufacturer. They charge $400 to send a repair guy for two hours. But compared to fifteen grand, it didn’t sound so bad.

When Dave arrived, first thing he said to me when he got down in the engine room was, “Looks like something is missing. Did somebody take something off this?”

So I call Mark at work, he calls Paul, Paul calls me and asks to talk to Dave, and I hand the phone over. They talk for a few minutes, then Dave hands the phone back. “I can’t come today,” Paul says, “But I will return the part tomorrow.”

“I don’t know what that guy is talking about,” Dave says, “He’s talking about ratios that don’t exist.” Without the part, he can’t test the generator, so he leaves, apologizing that he has to charge me anyway for the visit. “I don’t see half that money,” he explains.

Thus begins a daily series of phone calls to Paul to get the lift pump back. He doesn’t come the next day, or the next. Mark calls him at least twice a day. He tells his brother Ed about the situation, and even Ed calls Paul, to talk to him “mechanic to mechanic” about returning the part he stole. Paul does not return the calls. Finally, Mark gets angry. He leaves a message that says, essentially, this is a small boating world, pal, and if you don’t return that piece, I’m telling every harbor master and every marine sales person and every boater I know that you screwed me over. Paul calls him back that afternoon. He was on vacation in Florida and didn’t take his cell phone. He doesn’t mention any of the messages. He does volunteer to put the pump back in the generator, but Mark refuses to let him onboard. “I’m going to start the thing on ether all summer,” Mark tells him. “Yeah,” Paul agrees, “That’s a good idea.”

The lift pump is waiting beside our door when we get home.

Dave comes for another $400 visit. First thing he says when he walks in the door is, “Do you have an attack goose out there?” Mark and I laugh. Dave is over 6-foot, a Harley guy, with tattoos up and down his arms. He has to go back to his truck for a tool. Mark asks if he should go with him, to protect against the goose. “Nah,” Dave says. But when he has to go out a third time, he asks if Mark will go with him. “I’m not afraid of the goose, though,” he says.

Originally, Paul said there was nothing wrong with the injector pump. He said we needed to replace the whole generator because it wasn’t generating enough compression to pull fuel from injector pump to the injectors.

But Dave finds that it is the injector pump – which the Midwestern Injector people rebuild for less that $400, finding a broken spring that prevented the pump from opening and closing.

When the rebuilt pump arrives, I’m out of town. Mark is excited to put it back together and get it running before I return. He’s hunched down in the engine room, reassembling everything the way Dave instructed him, with his brother Ed on the line. “I had all these washers and these injectors, brass washers, aluminum washers, there was a washer with holes in it – I couldn’t figure out why would a washer have holes in it…. I just had two more fuel lines to put on, the final steps, and there’s an elbow connector coming out of the rebuilt injector pump that went into a coupling that goes up vertically that brought fuel from the primer pump to the injector pump and also fuel to the injectors – it came up to a T – when I was twisting the coupling into the injector pump, threading it into the injector pump, it broke off.”

It’s a $4 piece. It’s on back order till May.

Art Day Onboard

My friend Anne is a terrific painter. She likes to have “art days” with other painters. The host team makes a substantial lunch, which the painters eat together, then take a walk, meditate, have some tea, and get down to painting. She makes an exception for me since I'm not a painter - but I'm willing to learn.

Today was my first time hosting. As we paint with watercolor, it seemed fitting to paint onboard. I was worried about what Anne would think of Mazurka – you know, it’s not the cleanest, although it is pretty damn clean, considering it’s a boat. It's small, and smells faintly of fuel and oil, there are sewage problems, and after the long winter wrapped in plastic, it can smell a little...closed in. I was worrying that she would be appalled at the way we live. But then I thought, this is the Bohemian artist’s lifestyle, baby! What’s more “Bohemian” than going to visit your writer friend down at the river where she lives on a boat? Especially if she’s been up since before 6 AM, making you bouillabaisse to go with fresh-out-of-the-oven French bread?

And there’s nothing worse than preparing for a guest and finding a dead rat floating beside your front door. Literally. The marina was particularly filthy on this day, with all kinds of shit floating by, and when I came back from my morning walk I noticed a strange thing floating among the Styrofoam cups and plastic debris. A white belly with what looked to be short black wings; at first I thought maybe somebody killed a goose; then it turned, revealing two little back legs with tiny rat feet. The belly was as long as my forearm.


The current swept it toward the stern, where it bumped the boat and then started along the side toward the bow. I hoped that by the time Anne arrived, it would be gone. But it wasn’t. It floated there all day long.

Despite this ominous omen, the day went off swimmingly. Lunch was good, Cheney stayed put (to the point that Anne suggested I choose a nonaggressive name - Michel - and speak sweetly to the goose), and our day-long process resulted in some interesting work.


"Cold April Walk," Anne Nordhaus-Bike, Mixed Media: Pen and Ink, Watercolor; 2007.




"Through the Window," Felicia Swanson, Watercolor; 2007

Marcello Mastroianni and a Bullwhip

My Dad suggested a spray bottle with ammonia. We started crossing the dock with an umbrella and a bottle of homemade Windex. Cheney would take on the spray full force, then just dip his face in the river to clean up. He was invincible.

Joe, one of the maintenance guys, said the only way to get rid of the "protected species" was to burn their feet off with lye.

But one day, Mark picked up the failed Field Museum rubber snake and snapped it at Cheney like a bullwhip; just like that, he swam the other way.

Fellini knew how to tame those wild ones all along.

The Pin Test

The war against the geese has not been going well. Mrs. Cheney decided to nest right beneath the owl; Cheney is attacking anyone who comes within a thirty-foot radius. We have to walk right through his territory to get to Mazurka.

This year he’s more aggressive than the last – he comes back repeatedly, and will hover mid-air, attacking you as if he’s a hot air balloon. No, hot air balloon is too friendly – think more Nazi zeppelin. Sunday afternoon, Mark’s out there boxing with airborne Cheney, while the Mrs. stands beside her nest, not leaving it for a second. They are steadfast parents, to be sure. Once we get to the other side, we find an audience of three teenagers hanging out in the warm spring afternoon. “Looks like an attack bird,” one of them says to us. They're laughing; they’ve been watching Cheney attack people all afternoon.

It’s hard to describe how much this bothers me. I’m not afraid of animals – I like spiders, I can tolerate snakes, and unless it’s a bear, I won’t carry mace. But I don’t like the idea of being repeatedly attacked every time I walk to or from my home.

So I came up with an alternative plan: “I’m going to row the dinghy to the other dock,” I told Mark, "and avoid them altogether."

My husband thinks this is unneccessary, and keeps trying to convince me it isn’t that bad. Monday morning, leaving for work, he says, “I’m going to use the pin test.” He puts a safety pin between his fingers and out we go. The Cheneys are grazing, away from their nest, and as soon as we get near them, they start squawking and running for their homestead (apparently Mrs. Cheney hasn’t laid eggs yet, or she’d never leave it for a second). She gets up by her nest, while Cheney keeps sweeping down on us, and eventually gets close enough for Mark to stick him with the pin. Cheney lands beside us, stunned, and for a second the four of us all stare at each other – what just happened? Then Cheney squawks and flies down into the water, but he’s no longer hissing, and we go on our way out to the street.

“The pin test worked,” Mark says, exuberant. “I got the idea from when I was a kid.”

“Why don’t you start carrying the pen knife you did in kindergarten,” I say. I don’t find this all that funny.

“I don’t want to draw blood. The pin hurts just enough, but it won’t draw blood – it will heal before a cut would. I figure a couple more times of the pin test, and he’ll learn to stay away from us. It’s good security, too – nobody in their right mind is going to pass by that goose.”

“Exactly,” I say. “I’m going to start taking the dinghy.”

“Don’t you think that’s extreme?” Mark says.

“As extreme as being attacked every time you leave your boat, and sticking a goose with a pin?”

“Okay,” he agrees, “I’ll get the boat out for you tonight.”

So now, instead of simply walking off the dock to the parking lot, I'm going to pile my stuff into the dinghy and row twenty feet to the opposite dock, tie up, and walk around.

I've lived on Mazurka for six months now. I've weathered bad plumbing, frozen pipes, inclimate weather. I can't believe it's a goose named Cheney who's going to bring me down.

A Snit in the Stern, A Spat in the Aft

My friend the great white-haired photographer is harassing me to write about the fights on board Mazurka. “C’mon, you gotta write about life on Mazurka. You gotta tell us how you fight on board – get to the real stuff – you gotta dig deep!”

The thing is, Mark and I don’t really fight. There are no broken dishes, no screaming, no raising ones voice. Maybe it’s because we’re still newlyweds, or maybe ‘cause we’re both a little older than the 25 year-old just marrieds and we’re still (and hopefully always) invested in seeing each others’ points of view, or maybe it’s because this is a really small space and we pretty much have to get along. But our disagreements – small as they are – are few and far between.

We do have our occasional tiffs, though. The first one happened on board his boat, around midnight, when we were just dating. He was uncharacteristically quiet and cold. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. “I just thought we should slow down a bit,” he said. “Okay,” I fumed, “We’ll slow down.” And I stormed out. It was late, downtown Chicago, and as I walked to the el by myself to go back to my apartment, I kept thinking, “He’ll come after me…he’ll come after me….” I was so mad I got on the train going the wrong way, and had to turn around on the west side to catch a train going up to Wicker Park. I kept thinking, “He’ll be waiting for me at my place.” He wasn’t. The next day, we exchanged a series of emails till we figured out the whole thing was just stupid.

That’s pretty much how our fights go. I feel like he’s not giving me the attention I think I so rightly deserve; I act cold and angry, like I really don’t want his attention, anyway, while of course I’m dying for him to fawn all over me. And then I break down or he breaks down and we’re happy newlyweds again.

Last night was a little different – he was starting in on the generator again, and how the last “mechanic” we’d had out had taken a couple parts off the boat and had yet to return them or return our phone calls. This guy has been the bane of our existence for two weeks, and I was sick of hearing about it. “Just let it go,” I said.

Mark bristled. “I’ll let it go when the generator is fixed.”

So I let it go. I went to the bow and read for a bit, took a six minute shower, was about to climb into bed to read, when I heard him on the phone to someone in his family, complaining about the generator. I heard him say, “Do you want to talk to Felicia? She’s right here,” and he handed me the phone. It was his brother Scott. Scott is married to Jill, who has been my best friend since we were 12 years old, and is the reason I met Mark. Jill is six months pregnant with their first child, and that day had gone for her second round of chemo for a 9 cm tumor they discovered in her breast on Valentine’s Day.

I took the phone and forgot about our tiff, forgot we were getting screwed on the generator, forgot an editor declined the article I’d worked on all weekend, forgot I had gotten another damn parking ticket, forgot that outside Mazurka geese were preparing to dive bomb me. None of that stuff was worth anything, anyway.

You want to get to the real stuff? Life is short. Don’t waste time arguing about stupid shit.

Turf Wars

When I was in graduate school, I lived on Farwell and Ashland in the north side neighborhood of Roger’s Park. Parts of Roger’s Park, right on the lake, are really beautiful – the other parts are run by drugs and gangs. In the four years I lived there, somebody was killed on the Morse el platform every year. Guys would post on every corner, claiming their territory. On my three block walk to the el, I could follow the running of drugs as it passed from somebody’s girlfriend to a young gang member to the car and the buyer (any white guy in a nice car in my neighborhood was only looking for one thing). Once, my best girlfriend was propositioned by a prostitute – we couldn’t figure out if she was joking or not. My boyfriend at the time, who was leaving before dawn for morning shifts at a radio station, was stopped more than once for having his hands in his pockets, and made to prove he wasn’t carrying a gun. I was taking late-night classes downtown and would return home on the el at 11:30 or midnight, bracing myself for the walk home. I reasoned I had as much right to live there as any of the gang members. Nobody ever gave me a hard time.

I was preparing to move anyway when one day, around noon, a kid in red was shot outside my apartment. Within minutes, a whole crowd of more kids dressed in red gathered around him. It took 20 minutes for the ambulance.

In all that time, I never carried mace, never carried pepper spray, never carried any weapon at all. I didn’t want to fight potential violence with more potential violence. I didn’t want to play the role of the scared white girl, even though I was.

Yesterday, however, when I passed by Cheney and his wife, and that damn goose followed me a good thirty feet, hissing and charging and dive bombing me…I called Mark. “Bring the hard stuff.”

He brought home pepper powder, and spread it all over their turf.

I respect Cheney for taking care of his own, protecting his wife and the eggs she’s about to lay. But I refused to be intimidated by gang members and I refuse to be intimidated now by a damn goose, even if he has nested here for twenty years. I will not lose this turf war.

The Geese Are Winning

The owls might as well be sticks wearing flannel fabric for all their power to scare away the geese.

I’ve been watching Mr. Goose with his wife. He has staked out a territory with a 30-foot radius from last year’s nest. When other geese swim into the marina, he comes flying, squawking, dives in, arches his neck, head close to the water, and swims toward them like a shark. The other geese get the hell out of his way. He then goes back to the dock where his wife sits, preening herself, getting ready for the big day with her nest. I don’t know where we get the idea that springtime is all baby bunnies and pastel clouds; it seems more about staking out your territory and attacking anyone who reaches a beak over your border. I’ve nicknamed the goose “Cheney.”

A few afternoons ago I was walking along the dock when Cheney, grazing with his wife on the brown grass beneath the owls, starts hissing at me. Stan comes out and laughs. “I know somebody who uses fake snakes,” he tells me. “Works every year.”

So I trek to the Field Museum and buy three fake water snakes. I tell the cashiers what I intend to do with them; they’re used to selling overpriced seeds and stuffed animals and amethyst; they look at me like I’m crazy. I decorate Mrs. Cheney’s nesting area so that it looks like a snake pit. I’m very pleased with myself. I don’t see the geese out there the rest of the day.

This morning, they’re grazing right alongside the snakes.

Short of a BB gun, this is getting serious.

Bring the Owl

There are two kinds of geese in Chicago – the majority are migratory, and spend their winters in the south, returning each year to hatch the next batch of goslings. They return to the places they’ve had reproductive success in the past, much like we humans return to our honeymoon spots years later. We like the place where love lies – we think it brings us luck.

Unfortunately, Mazurka is surrounded by honeymoon nests.

Now, I had run through geese often enough at the lakefront, and they had dispersed in a friendly, non-aggressive manner, as I figured was due to their understanding that I, as a human runner, was atop the food chain and they would do best to look out.

I learned last spring this was not true.

On the last Sunday in March, I picked up Mark from Midway Airport, where he was returning after spending ten days away. As we rounded the first bend in the dock, a goose came at us, hissing. Mark started after it aggressively. The goose flew off, into the water, where I thought he’d land, but no – he swooped around and came back after us. I covered my head with the stack of mail and newspapers and began to run for the boat, with Mark just behind me. I could hear the flapping of the goose’s wings, and then he was down upon me, the gross and kind of terrifying weight of his large, feathered round body resting down on my head before he swooped off. He didn’t have time to come back for another pass before we were out of his territory, away from the nest, but we kept running, laughing, Mark’s phone ringing - “We’ve just been attacked by a goose!” he announced to the caller.

Thus began the daily fight with Mr. Goose. As we rounded the bend where his wife sat atop her nest, he would charge us on land, or fly off into the water, turn around and come after us. Mark started to charge the goose – not fast, and not violent, just an assertive walking towards him – and the goose hissed but flew off into the water.

One rainy afternoon Mark went ahead, but I found I could not move. The dock was L-shaped, with the nest raised up on the other side of the short leg, overlooking the river. As Mark rounded the corner, I watched the goose come around the short leg, straight for him, and shuddered, unable to watch. But Mark had the right idea, and charged ahead, so that the goose, despite its hissing and ruffling feathers, had no choice but to fly into the water, lest he be run over by a man. After Mark passed through, the goose returned to his post, watching me, halted at the top of the L. I sat down with the umbrella over my head, trying to look casual as I studied the goose, trying to figure out its mindset – can you reason with a goose? Do they learn? After a while, would he grow used to us? Could we ply him with food? Throw sardines at it? What does a goose eat? Mark called me on his cell phone, and though I hated being the scaredy-cat girlfriend, he returned like the ferryman Charon, taking me over the River Styx.

I did some research on goose gestation – an average of 25-30 days. I wondered if maybe the goose would keep me from seeing Mark for a whole month, or that the matter would become violent. I called my Dad. “They’re not that far above fish,” he said. “If it comes after you, just snap its neck.” I imagined crossing the dock, the goose attaching itself to me, fearing that I would have no choice but to grab its neck and kill it, that I would have my first goose like the Babel story.

Instead, I started carrying an umbrella.

I learned it was important not to startle him, so I would make gruff stomping noises. It was best not to look him in the eye, not to acknowledge his presence at all, and never, ever, look at his wife, sitting atop the nest. The goose was always on duty, and often would dive bomb me (so that I raised my umbrella above my head, keeping him a clear distance), or would only hiss meanly, often at night, when he was tired.

One night I passed by without much turmoil, arrived at Mark’s boat, and while standing in the salon, casually looked out the window towards the river and there was the goose, circling in the river, watching me. I ventured out on the dock and stood tall; he circled closer. We stared each other down, the river’s reflection of the Sears Tower lighting our showdown. In the quiet pulse of the central post office late-night business, the quiet din of sleeping factories, this huge tower overlooking us – this was an ancient standoff, irrelevant of the massive city of shoulders enclosing us – this was man against beast.

I researched possible deterrents – plastic or live swans (which people say don’t work), fake alligators for ponds (also said not to work), bright streamers, flags, and balloons, whose color and flapping-in-the-wind noise annoys geese, and my favorite – specially trained dogs.

Border collies are taken out in the morning and afternoons during migration to clear away the geese. And if a flock of geese flying over what looks to be a great area and sees it’s empty of their kind, they’ll think there’s a reason and move on. There’s even a story about a blind and deaf great horned owl who successfully scared away two flocks of geese from the Winnipeg Airport property just by hooting.

Another method of goose reproduction control which is often endorsed by animal rights organization as a humane alternative to slaughter and gassing is “egg addling,” in which the nest is interrupted, eggs are shaken (by humans) and coated with corn oil. Geese do not know the babies in their eggs have been destroyed and they continue incubation. “GeesePeace,” Canadian Wildlife Services, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services all use this practice.

After watching the geese sit on their nests all day and all night, through pouring cold rain, steaming hot sunny afternoons, wind, sleet, and all the while, bracing themselves and settling over their young, this method seems the cruelest torture of all. Can you mentally abuse a goose? If they’re not that far above fish, probably not. But what agony to sit for over a month on a carefully-tended nest, only to see that all your efforts are in vain, and once again, you are without your offspring.

This year, we started planning early. I considered covering the whole area with barbed wire, but Mark said that was a bit extreme. We asked around. Mark’s sister Heidi had the solution: “Get a fake owl.” My Dad gave me one for Christmas. We bought two more, plus dowels to stand them on. They sat in Mark’s trunk until one early March morning, when Mazurka was surrounded by squawking geese, staking out their territory. I called my husband on the phone and gave the code phrase for spring:

“Bring the owl.”

And now, with Mazurka surrounded by three ominous great horned owls, turning on their stands, eyes following you…so far so good. So far.

Amiable, Lovely Death

You don’t expect to see sky burials in the city – but they’re all around. Burials when the ground is too hard to bury a body, so the culture ceremoniously leaves the deceased out for vultures to pick away at it. It’s the natural order of things, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Except there is no ceremony in the city.

On Saturday Mark and I came home late, crossing through the alley on a cold night, making some noise as we usually do to scare away any rats. We’ve both had the experience of sneaking up on one, catching him by surprise – once, in the parking lot, I had three little ones race towards me in their game of tag before I screamed and they quickly veered off to the right. Another time, Mark had a big fat one nearly run square into him before it saw a person standing there and took off the other way. This night, coming down the alley, we came up on a big one, a foot from head to butt, lying on its side. It looked to have just died. His fur was clean and brownish grey, his belly white. He was well-fed and strong, and probably poisoned. We rounded it respectfully, though I wanted to take a closer look. It felt disrespectful somehow, to gawk. The next morning he was gone, presumably swept away by maintenance workers.

Yesterday morning while making coffee I looked out to watch the ducks in their precarious premating rituals: one brown female surrounded by five green-headed males, all of them vying for her attention, and as they bathed themselves in the icy water, a dead carp floated by, unnoticed.

This morning I was awoken by the loud screams of sea gulls – a group had gathered on the ice over the river and were pulling apart a dead fish. They have been out there for hours, pulling out sections of its gut, two or three standing guard while one takes its turn at the carcass.

We cannot bury our dead with so much concrete. We go out to the expressway-rimmed suburbs, we cremate and sprinkle the lake. For some reason I am glad to know that sky burials are still a viable option.

When All Else Fails...

…Suspend a ceramic space heater down the sewage area and melt the proverbial rat in the snake’s belly.

Mark had the pump-out working in less than an hour, and we had good plumbing again.

Ah, the wonders of outsourcing.

Peeing in a Bucket

Word on the marina was that the pump out was broken. It had been a good two weeks since we pumped out, but when we heard the news from Stan on Sunday, we didn’t take it too seriously. J---, another boater, had tried to pump out to no avail. “Too bad, ‘cause he’s full, too,” Stan said. We agreed. Too bad. And we went on our way.

Monday, we noticed some overflow in the bilge. Probably from the condensation that had formed ice inside the boat and was now melting. It wasn’t very dark. But by evening, it was dark. And smelly. And Tuesday morning, the toilet was resisting when we tried to flush it. Yep – time to pump out.

If pump out was a two-person job before, it’s now even more complicated. While Mark stands on one side of the marina, separated from our boat by water, I toss him one end of a yellow rope, which he ties to the pump out hose, and I drag across the marina to our side. It just reaches the opening to our tank, and I attach it tightly while Mark flips the switch. We communicate by yelling across the marina; if it’s windy, we use cell phones.

But it was still questionable whether the pump out was working. After shoveling a foot of blowing snow off our deck, I tromped over across the marina to the pump out, which was duct-taped and had a sign: “Out of Order Management Called.” When Mark came home, he thought he could still get it to work; he couldn’t. We had a full tank, a nonfunctioning pump out, and a snowstorm so bad that they were canceling university classes.

Mark made some calls. The other boaters all said the same thing. “I’m peeing in a bucket.” He called Captain P---, president of the condo association and supposed marina management. Captain P--- said he outsourced the marina management to a great company – but they’re on vacation for three weeks. He didn’t seem very eager to do anything to help the situation. The hose was probably frozen – just gotta wait till it thaws out. And the fact that temperatures were supposed to drop below zero for the next week? Captain P--- shrugged over the phone. “I’m peeing in a bucket.”

Mark relayed all this to me after he hung up the phone.

I repeated it to make sure I understood. “You mean the condo association president is peeing in a bucket ‘cause he outsourced the job of fixing things and the company he outsourced to is on vacation?”

Mark confirmed this was true. “The entire marina is peeing in a bucket."

We did this before, you know. We went without water when the boat froze, and peed in a bucket, and came up with an ingenious design of a plastic bag in the toilet to catch our solid waste, which we promptly threw out in the same dumpster beside the rats. It’s not like this is new or anything.

“I don’t want to pee in a bucket,” Mark said. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

I asked him if he could just leak the waste into the water. “I’d do it if we were out on the lake, but I don’t want to do it in the marina.”

We discussed the options. There weren’t many. Mark got a scary look in his eye. “How about we just get a shop vac and suck it out? I won’t throw it in the marina, but I’d throw it in the river.”

“Maybe you should sleep on this idea,” I suggested.

Our sewage tank holds 50 gallons. “If we had a 10-gallon shop vac, it’d be ten times flushing it out,” Mark said. “If we had a 20-gallon shop vac, that’d be half of it. You don’t like this idea, do you? C’mon baby, where’s your sense of humor?” But I know he’s not kidding. “Trying to be self-sufficient, too, you know?”

“You don’t have any problems emptying 50 gallons of sewage into the river?” I asked him.

“Hey, it was your idea,” he said, “But I am a member of Friends of the River. I took an oath and all…”

So we're peeing in a bucket. And finding toilets in restaurants, libraries, and office buildings as often as possible. Who knows when this problem will be solved. The trickiest part is, nobody really knows who’s managing the River City marina. River City? The condo association? Captain Pee? Some mysterious outsourced company in India?

The best thing about living on a boat, you’re under the radar. The worst thing about living on a boat? Still under the radar. Just remember to bring your bucket.

The Other Live Aboard

I first came to know him in the middle of the night, scampering in the walls. I thought I was dreaming; Mark said I was imagining things. But I couldn’t shake the feelings that we weren’t alone.

He leaves clues after a long night. Like last night. Before going to bed, we turned down the diesel furnace. This morning when we turned it back on, it didn’t work. Fuel pump is intact, everything is the same – but no go. On Saturday, Mark vacuumed up an inch of standing water in the bilge under the bow. We thought maybe it was sewage that had overflown. This morning, it’s back, but not quite so brown, so not sewage. Where’s it coming from? What could have caused these mysterious disturbances?

Fate and chance are too obvious, poltergeist too adolescent. No, we have deduced that it’s the gremlin. We joke that he’s half rabbit, half rat, ostracized by both communities, and at risk of being eaten by the coyote who lives in the trees along the south loop river bank. He’s come to live on Mazurka for safety, lurking about in the darkness of the engine room, and because it amuses him. He’s a trickster – what can he do? Is it his fault he’s surrounded by wires, just waiting to be crossed? Is it his fault the generator is so complex that every night he can tinker with just one more piece, thus eluding the captain from ever figuring out the “real” problem?

We thought maybe the cats would kick him out, but he seems to have struck a deal with them – they pretend to know nothing of his existence, and look the other way when something goes awry. And, as much as I love my cats, I know they’re not smart enough for these top-notch jobs – they’re amused just watching the snow slide down the shrinkwrap.

He’s a bit of a klepto, too, probably due to his feelings of insecurity and lack of stable social network. Somewhere on board he is hoarding flashlights, wrenches, critical O-rings and bolts, and bushels of pens, batteries, hats, and lighters of all variety (he seems overly fond of fire, which sometimes worries me). You’d think in a small space like a boat it would be impossible to hide anything for long – you would be mistaken.

I refuse to appease him by setting out snacks. St. Anthony can handle our pleas for lost items, and I stopped putting out cookies for Santa long ago.

Even if I could get my hands on his jaunty little self, which I know prances around with pride while we struggle and swear at his handiwork, even if I could get ahold of his rabbit foot or his rat tail, I wouldn’t kick him out. I feel for the guy. These shores are tough – between the River City canine community, who spend all day cooped up in Jetson-like apartments and are just itching to sink their teeth into a pokey little gremlin, and the hissing geese who, when they start nesting in about a month, are likely to beat him to death with their wings if he comes within twelve feet of their eggs, well, there’s too many enemies. Not to mention his own kind – the city rats and the country rabbits – who scorn him ‘cause he looks different. I can relate to straddling those two worlds – the urban and the rural – and those of us who don’t fit in neither world gotta stick together.

Just as long as he keeps his paws off the shrinkwrap.

Shackleton's Endurance

Every February Mark's family meets in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for the Munising Ice Fest, a long weekend of cross-country skiing and climbing frozen waterfalls in subzero temperatures.

You have to really love the cold to want to climb ice. It requires putting on several layers of clothing, procuring the necessary gear (harness, crampons, two pick axes, and a helmet), and hiking out to a frozen waterfall. Walls of ice are unforgiving, and don't much care how fit you are or how far you drive to climb them - they are cold and foreboding and will stand firm no matter how much ice you chip off in your attempt to scale the wall and conquer it.

We were exhilarated Sunday night, driving back to Chicago, counting down the temperatures ("Now it's -8!"), and returned from a weekend climbing ice to find...ice. The Chicago River was virtually frozen over, with geese like new penguins sliding around on the geometric shapes of dark black ice. River City's marina was completely frozen, and ice closed in on Mazurka's hull so that it resembled Shackleton's Endurance at the South Pole in 1915. Inside, cabin temperature was 28 degrees - everything was frozen, including all the faucets, pipes, olive oil, and contents of the fridge. It felt like an abandoned ghost ship, save for Hunter and Leo, their fur puffed up, looking a bit shell-shocked and thirsty - their water dish was a solid block.

We deduced that sometime after Saturday afternoon, the electric heater stopped working, probably when the river temperature became so cold that the water inlet froze and the heater could no longer pull in warm water to heat the boat. The backup furnace, which runs on diesel, also stopped, the fuel tube somehow bent. "This is my worst nightmare," Mark said, and started the engine - the quickest way he could think to start warming things up - and we plugged in space heaters. We heard the terrible crack of a pipe breaking; thankfully it was just the drinking water filter under the sink. Expensive, but not dire. We stayed up till 1 AM, when the cabin temperature had risen to 42 degrees, then went to bed on an ice cold mattress over the water tanks, which were probably frozen, too.

While I love climbing frozen waterfalls as much as the next girl, I like it even more when I know at the end of the day, we're going to hike back to civilization and drive back to the hotel, where there's hot soup and coffee and a sauna and whirlpool. Driving eight hours back to Chicago, I was looking forward to a nice, hot 6-minute shower, some clean clothes, and a warm bed. Instead, we lay down on a block of ice wearing the same three layers of clothing and hats and coats we'd worn all weekend. I tried to be grateful that I had a roof over my head when there were plenty of people sleeping under cardboard. It was all I could do not to break down sobbing. "I feel like throwing up," I told my husband in the darkness. He agreed. It was the first time in four months I thought maybe living on Mazurka wasn't such a great idea.

The next morning we worried about living on board without water. We considered which friends we could stay with. Mark said he would stay on Mazurka to make sure she was okay. My first thought was to put my cats in the car and drive to my parents' house till things heated up, but I thought again - I was married now. I would stick by my husband.

Shackleton told about the sound of ice squeezing the Endurance, locking it in a vice that eventually forced the crew to abandon ship and haul lifeboats across the frozen Antarctic tundra. It was one of these lifeboats that Shackleton and a few crewmembers sailed on an amazing voyage to get help and save the entire crew.

I doubt any of that crew ever forgot what it was like to walk away from the Endurance, abandoning her to the ice.

"What's the worst that could happen?" I asked.

"A pipe could burst and the boat would fill with water and sink."

We kept the engine running and space heaters cranked while I drove Mark to work and bought two more space heaters. By mid-morning we were up to 50 degrees. Mark came home just after noon and built a contraption off the dock to suspend the de-icer - a large bubbling fan - beneath the bow of the boat, which began churning the water, fighting the ice from squeezing the hull and potentially cracking it. For fun, and because it looked possible, I decided to test the strength of the ice off the stern and stepped right from the swim deck onto the ice. It held. Cabin temperature kept rising. By late afternoon the pipes had thawed and we had water again, but drains stayed frozen. We decided it was safe to turn off the engine.

That night, we slept in a warm bed, listening to the reluctant moan of ice as it released its grip on our home.

By Tuesday afternoon, cabin temperature was 71 degrees, and we had hot water and functional plumbing again. The de-icer had cleared all the ice from the boat. Hunter and Leo basked in their new sources of heat. Outside, it snowed and windchill remained below zero. By Wednesday, we were floating again.

When I told my friend Anne our adventures, she laughed. "Instead of trial by fire, you're going through trial by ice!"

Jonah's Point of View