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

In the Belly of the Whale

Newlyweds study a new language - the looks of their beloved. It starts with the "Wow we're in love - who knew the world could be so wonderful" look and the "I can't believe someone as amazing as you exists" look and evolves to include the "Just got home from a rotten day" look and the "I don't know how to fix this thing but I'm going to keep trying till it kills me" look.

One of Mark's more foreboding looks is the Saturday Morning look. Foreboding because I never know what it will lead to - running errands? going to a movie? pulling apart the entire engine room to paint the floor?

One thing for sure - it will involve me.

Like the Saturday before we left for our honeymoon in December. The final task to prepare the boat for winter was to shrinkwrap the top. Shrinkwrapping, in essence, is wrapping the boat in thick plastic, then taking a blowtorch to the plastic to seal it down tight. It keeps the boat warm, protects it from the elements, and eliminates the need to shovel snow. It's also the annual winter feat for live-aboards, who try to outdo their work from the last year, and the work of their neighbors. Some wrap the entire boat in plastic and build a door. Others, like Mark, just wrap the top and leave the windows clear. Last December it snowed early and Mark stayed up all night to build the structure and shrinkwrap the boat. It didn't snow for the rest of the year, and he fought the thing all winter, patching holes and struggling to save it from caving into the wind.

This year, Mark had a new improved plan to build the structure. Of course, plans are always slightly ambiguous in his mind, and in less than an hour, he had me outside, holding PVC tubing while he torched the middle to curve it, all part of an elaborate crown design for the fly bridge. By mid-afternoon when our friend Dennis arrived to help, it was pretty clear there was no way PVC tubing was strong enough to suspend the heavy plastic, and we went with a simple yet effective revision: five tall saw-horses, hinged at the top, built on six-foot 2x4s, three atop the fly bridge, one at the bow, one at the stern. The design was perfect in its simplicity; neighbors came out to applaud.

But we spent so much time on the structure that we ran out of time to actually wrap the boat in plastic. We flew to Rome for our honeymoon, spent another week in the Dolomites, where they were trucking in snow for skiers. The talk everywhere was of Global Warming. We returned home on New Year's Day to a balmy 50 degrees.

To wrap or not to wrap? Mark asked my opinion; I told him I thought it was a waste of time. "Of course, it could drop below zero next week," I said. "This is Chicago."

So the next Saturday, a spring-like day in early January, Mark was out testing the blowtorch before I was even out of bed. Soon I heard him calling from the dock, "Can you come out here a second? I just need you to...."

Ten minutes later, I'm dressed and standing on the fly bridge. Mark is perched on the dock in front of the boat, a four-foot roll of plastic balanced across two deck chairs before him. Slowly, he unrolls the plastic, sending it up to me and down the back until the entire boat is draped in a thick white blanket The air around me is still, quiet, the sounds of downtown muffled; I felt like Jonah, peaceful and safe in the belly of the whale. This isn't so bad, I thought. I like helping my husband...

And then, as it often does in Chicago, the wind changed course and a frigid gust blew up the river, up under my secure blanket of plastic, and suddenly I was holding for dear life onto a parachute I could not control. It turned under like a tidal wave, while I fought to keep the plastic from diving into the river water and taking me with it. Below on deck, Mark raced around, trying to secure the plastic under the white strapping around the perimeter of the boat. But as soon as he tucked up one side, the other side blew out. Stan appeared - "I couldn't watch you guys do this for much longer," he said - and he and Mark taped the plastic to the sides of the boat while I steadied the top. Once it was secure, Mark strapped the blowtorch to a gaff and within the next few hours the entire marshmallow top was heated and sealed down tight - and not a single bit singed.

And now? We are nice and toasty inside this igloo, and good thing, too, 'cause the temperature has dropped to the single digits again. Mark cut a zip-door in back so we can reach the cooler, and the top stays tight, even when the wind blows, while elsewhere in the marina, plastic is blowing off boats like abandoned kites.

And my husband's Saturday morning looks have changed to a lighter variety - last week it was, "Let's go score some scalped tickets to the opera."

Gift-wrapped for the Holidays

Mazurka's winter home

The Great Equalizer

The last week of November was 60 degrees. Mark and I rode a motorcycle back from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, it was so warm. And then, it got cold. And the wind blew. And it got even colder.

How cold? My toothpaste was so stiff I couldn't squeeze it out. Cabin temperature fell to 52 degrees. The electric heater hummed nonstop; the gas-fueled furnace still wasn't working. Are we waiting for a pump still? The last one was defective. When it comes in the mail maybe Mark will be able to fix the furnace, maybe not. In the meantime, he is putting plastic over all the windows to stop the draft. Cabin temperature rises to 55 degrees. But maybe it's all the body heat inside.

The pump comes, the furnace still doesn't work. Mark deduces through phone calls to manufacturers in Anchorage that the motherboard is broken.

The guys in Anchorage take pity on him and sell him another furnace at cost. It'll be here in a few days.

The cats sleep under the covers with us. We keep space heaters beside the bed.

Cabin temperature hovers between 52-60 degrees, when the sun is shining. Outside, it's 12 degrees; windchill is -1.

My friends are concerned - everyone in the city is cold now. "How's life on the boat?" they ask, prepared to offer their place as refuge.

My dear friend and running partner - who just bought a place in a gold coast gated community where the mayor's brother reportedly lives - has four floors and lots of windows and when I tell her the cabin temperature is 58, she says, "That's what we're keeping our place. Who would have thought they put single-plated glass in that place? Single-plated glass! It would cost a fortune to heat it. I don't even want to take a shower it's so cold."

Winter in Chicago is the great equalizer. Doesn't matter if you've got a posh place in the gold coast, a boat on the river, or a piece of cardboard under the Webster Street overpass: if you're cold, you're cold you're cold. The most any of us can hope for is a warm place to sleep tonight.

The Economy of Space

It's amazing how much stuff you don't actually need. Donate all your furniture. Throw out the old Valentine's cards and college term papers. Get rid of most of your kitchen stuff, except what's really important to you, or was important to your great-grandmother. Leave stuff in the alley and it'll be gone in ten minutes. Give away three-quarters of your clothing - do you wear all of it, anyway? - and put next season's stuff in storage. In all, I walked away from 14 years of adult life with a dozen Rubbermaid containers. They are well-organized in a storage unit downtown by the bus station, beside Mark's motorcycle. I have less stuff now than when I left for college.

You know what? I don't miss all that crap one bit.

The Mayor of River City

The Lake region doesn't take too kindly to winter boaters - the last remaining harbors are closing their docks, shutting off their water, making it generally impossible for somebody to stay all year if they choose. River City just south of the loop is one of the last homes for the winter boaters - those few renegades whose love of boating goes beyond drinking and riding the waves and getting sunburned. The diehards. The Live Aboards.

River City is not as pretty as Monroe or Belmont harbors. The lakefront is much more regal, much cleaner thanks to all the zebra mussels. People dump all kinds of shit into the river, even though Friends of the River has a plan that it be swimmable by 2015. (It's almost 2007 and you're not supposed to let the river water touch your skin.) As my friend Kathy pointed out, "You could dump a body back here and nobody would know." And I'm sure they do, in between the dark docks and mysterious lines, along with all kinds of industrial waste and other impossible-to-place-garbage. Last spring I saw floating the small carcass of an unidentifiable animal - was it a lizard? an oversized tadpole?

This winter, River City is housing eight boats with Live Aboards.

We are an ecclectic crew: a suburban PE teacher, an NPR addict, a City of Chicago union worker and his girlfriend, an IRS employee, a dentist, an engineer planning for retirement and sailing the world, and overseeing us all, the unofficial mayor: Stan the Man.

Stan the Man is Irish, usually drunk, though you'd never know it if you stayed out of breath-shot. He worked as a handyman with travelling carnivals for a while amidst other unknown careers. How he ended up in Chicago living on a nameless Chris-Craft I don't know. He is the kind of guy who lives under the radar, always attached somehow to the main action; the kind of guy you believe has connections to politicians and mobsters, if only because he's willing to do the dirty work at the last minute and take the cash without asking questions.

He's also kind, friendly, and warm, keeps Rice Krispies on his boat, along with mirrored letters on his door that spell out STN. When we had to move Mark's boat in subzero temperatures last January, Stan was the first to arrive to help. When a boat arrives in River City, he is right there to take your lines. When we returned recently from a trip and sent Mark's brother ahead with some things for the boat, Stan was right there asking him who he was and why he was aboard Mazurka.

One night after midnight Mark and I came home to a quiet River City. We rounded the gates and passed noiselessly along the dock's corridor (though making enough noise to scare away any rats). The water was quiet and still; the only sound was a subtle steam coming from the post office across the river. As we passed Stan's Chris-Craft, there was the sudden unmistakable howl of Roger Daltrey, followed by Stan's cry: Won't get fooled again!

Every neighborhood has its unofficial mayor: the old Japanese painter who sits on his front porch and chats it up; the retired black gentleman who sweeps his walk and smokes cigars; the Irishman who always magically appears whenever you need to slide into a slip and tie up your home.

What we all need is a mayor who's rocking on out to The Who.

Safe Harbor

We were supposed to leave our autumn home in Belmont Harbor on November 15th. The same day Japan was bracing for a great tsunami. That night, we drove home from work with two of our friends. It was windy all day, but not till we hit Lake Shore Drive and saw the lakefront like a pail of water lugged by a three year-old did we realize just how windy it was.

We tried to convince ourselves it wasn't that bad - as waves crashed against the shore and shot twenty feet into the air. In the safety of Belmont Harbor, Mazurka rocked back and forth. I worried that the City of Chicago would fine us for staying in the harbor past the leave date. We listened to the weather report, we hemmed and hawed - none of the other straggling boats in the harbor seemed in a hurry to get outta Dodge.

"I'm claiming Safe Harbor," Mark declared.

Who knew there was such a thing? But maybe because large bodies of water are the last wild frontiers - gale force winds can come up in an instant...runaway thunderstorms...pirates.... As we sat around the table that night drinking wine and eating dinner, Mark told us of his uncle sailing Lake Michigan when a storm came up. He parked his boat at the Great Lakes Naval Station, claiming safe harbor, and even though civilian boats aren't allowed there, they had to let them in.

What a concept: If you are in trouble, they have to let you in.

Mazurka carries with her an aura of safety no matter where she goes, even the shady south loop. She has a security system, but it's more for nautical purposes; she has her own phone line and will call Mark if she starts to sink, or leak fuel, or if someone tries to break in, I suppose - but who's going to board a boat docked in the middle of Lake Michigan? We have a lock for it - a thick padlock in the shape of a man, his crotch the keyhole. And every morning when we leave for work we lock her up. But if someone really wanted to get on board, they could. Downtown Chicago, where thieves will break your car window just for the change in the cup holder, but boats are left untouched.

There's a mystery to boats. "People are intimidated by them," Mark says.

Like we were with the gale force winds that night. The lake is 17-22 feet deep along the course we would sail to River City. With 14 foot waves...that made for a rather shallow bottom for the keel on this ship. We stayed put for four more days, till the smooth sailing of the weekend.

And the great tsunami of Japan? 6 foot waves.

Wimps.

Cheek to Cheek

I visited my friend - a great photographer with a long white beard - in his basement studio. As unusual as he is, he is perplexed by my living aboard a boat. "Isn't it cramped?" he asks. "Don't you feel like you're right on top of each other?"

I look around his studio, only a bit smaller than Mazurka. "Well, there's different levels," I explain. "And I have a room and bathroom in the front. I can work up there. It doesn't really feel crowded - it feels like we're outside."

Surrounded by windows - the reason Mark bought a trawler to live aboard - you are always acutely aware of the nature around you, even in the city. Each morning, the first thing you notice is the sky - is it sunny or gloomy? Is the lake filled with fog shrouding the downtown skyscrapers (as it was this morning)? You may go to work in a building with few windows, but all day you know what outside is like, and you return to it at night.

You wake up to water, you fall asleep to water. There isn't a day I approach Mazurka when I don't zip my pockets and clutch the keys close to my chest for fear of losing them to the bottom of Lake Michigan.

And you learn to be economical with your space. The first thing I did in my new role as "wife" aboard Mazurka was rearrange the kitchen. I removed the microwave that required eleven minutes to heat a can of soup. I cleared the pantry shelf and threw away half-used packets of meat seasoning and instant coffee from Thailand. I organized the counter and put everything within easy reach. The lack of space necessitates shopping two or three times a week, which means fresher food, less waste. We have a dorm-sized refrigerator, and a large cooler outside, where I store vegetables and yogurt. A shelf two feet wide and two feet deep serves as our main pantry, with cereals, fruit, crackers, coffee, and cat food. And the squat shelf above the plates and cups holds cans of soup and extra spices.

Boating magazines always include cooking articles, and it seems that boaters latch onto one item they really like - a pressure cooker, a crock pot - and use it for everything. The previous owners left behind a breadmaker and Mark makes killer chocolate pumpernickle cornbread. But our true staple is the grill - a fantail off the stern, fueled by good ole propane.

As little space as we seemingly have, we're having some fantastic meals. Grilled hamburger, sauteed mushrooms, onions, peppers, edamame, salad, and Spanish red wine. Grilled vegetables (zucchini, squash, onions, potatoes) and ribeye steak, and for dessert apples sprinkled with Chinese cinnamon, cheddar cheese, and white port. We cook together, and we clean up together.

The thing I didn't explain to my friend is that, for the few hours we spend aboard Mazurka each day, it's not enough. Maybe it's because we're newlyweds, but I only want to be five feet away from Mark at any given time. Even if he's sitting at his computer, or reading the Wall Street, paying absolutely no attention to me at all. Mark can take apart the entire boat trying to fix the furnace while I sit in the midst of it all writing letters. We are learning to be in each other's space - which we will do for the rest of our lives; we are learning to waltz cheek to cheek.

Water, Water Everywhere...

To provide hot water for your shower, your dishwasher, and your clothes washer - perhaps all three run simultaneously! - the average house these days boasts a hot water heater that holds 30, maybe even 50 gallons of hot water.

The hot water heater aboard Mazurka holds six.

Yes, six. Six gallons. Take that gallon of ice cream in your deep freeze, that gallon of milk in your jumbo refrigerator and multiply it by six. That's the most hot water there is at any given time.

If you are a man with little hair, you can take a quick shower and be done with it. But you can see how this would be a problem if you were, say, a woman with long, fine hair - very fine hair - which requires two rounds of conditioner. And if you were a woman who, though not a regular leg-shaver, periodically used a razer to clean things up. You can see how this particular woman might be screaming three-quarters into her shower, and then begin to avoid showering on the boat altogether.

"I can just go to the gym," she tells her husband.

So her new husband, wanting to please his new wife, begins to search for alternatives. A new water heater - a cylinder that holds 12 gallons, a cube that holds 10. The cube is a great price on clearance but won't fit in the engine room without knocking a hole in the wall; the 12 gallon heater costs $1400.

"I can just go to the gym" she says again.

And so she does. Monday morning, she's there to swim, then enjoy the long, hot shower. But as she steps under the nozzle...it's cold. Ice cold.

Water, water everywhere - and none of it hot.