The Day Everything Broke

Another weekend, another set of disasters, but this time more expensive than ever and also aquatic. I’m the parenting version of Water World.

For our latest trip, my family and I traveled to Wisconsin to see Rocco and Phoebe, our friends from college. The distance I’m willing to travel to visit someone depends directly on their boat ownership status. Rocco and Phoebe are boat positive, which justified a six hour drive to see them. (If you have a yacht, I’ll do twelve.) Then again, with current gas prices, I could have nearly bought a boat for what it cost to get there. It was a mistake to buy a minivan instead of a team of oxen. Usually, on long drives, I write while my wife Lola takes the wheel. It’s a good system, at least for me, which is the only standard that really matters. Trapped in a moving vehicle, I have limited options for procrastination and I actually get quite a few words on the page. Then again, I’m also distracted by my duties in the passenger seat, like passing snacks, yelling at kids, and talking to Lola. I’m not the best at multitasking, which is how my books end up with lines like, “God lived in a coffee maker on deck four, and also, don’t forget to take the van for an oil change on Monday.” Lola and I have some wild road trip conversations. This time, though, I drove. We didn’t leave home until after work, and I didn’t feel like writing late into the night. More importantly, I trusted myself to stay up till midnight more than Lola. Her bedtime is currently whenever she sits still. I decided this trip would be more fun if we all survived.

Normally, when I drive, I listen to books on tape and podcasts at triple speed. I’m not a fast learner or anything. I’m just impatient for all the information I’m instantly going to forget. It’s a bit like wanting a sip of water and then turning on a fire hose. Nobody else wanted to listen to six hours of warp speed gibberish, so Lola put on some music. I was instantly bored. That’s typically more of a problem with the kids. Although I remind them multiple times to charge their tablets, invariably one of them forgets and/or deliberately decides to sabotage the trip. One kid without a tablet has the free time to distract and harass all the other children minding their own business, and soon, we have a riot on our hands. There’s a reason we travel with tear gas.

For the Wisconsin trip, I was the distraction, but I came prepared. I packed car games for this exact scenario. None of them were actually car games, per se, but regular games I thought we could play in a moving minivan without killing each other. After a few hours, I finally convinced Lola that we should open up one, although she picked a game called Worst Case Scenario, so maybe she was trying to tell me something. It’s a game of Trivial Pursuit-style multiple-choice questions about surviving weirdly specific dangers. I tried to get the whole family involved, but Lucy (eight) and Waffle (six) both chose to ignore the rest of us. Staying alive is way less fun than playing Mario Kart. According to Worst Case Scenario, the technique I learned in Boy Scouts to detect poisonous berries would actually get me killed. Just to be safe, I never eat fruit. The game also helpfully taught us that a warning sign that someone has ingested turpentine is that their pee smells like turpentine. Keep that in mind the next time you’re sniffing urine in a public setting. Turpentine poisoning can strike when you least expect it, but it’s more likely to strike when you most expect it, which is immediately after you drink turpentine. Satisfied that literally everything would kill us, we moved on to another game. We picked an RPG-style adventure where one player reads from a script and imitates the computer games of old, asking for simple two word commands. That game was engrossing enough that I missed two consecutive exits in Milwaukee, although that was also partially due to Google Maps. It was off its game the whole trip, especially when it switched us without asking from a route that would cost two dollars in tolls to a route that would add forty minutes of driving and cost us an extra million dollars in gas. The artificial intelligences have officially rebelled, but right now they’re just trying to max out our credit cards.

For the final game, Lola was fast asleep along with three of the four kids. I was yawning like I would soon join them. My twelve-year-old, Betsy, saved the day. She pulled out a true-or-false trivia game and asked me questions for the last hour of the drive. I sound pretty smart when I have context clues and a fifty-fifty chance of guessing right. The adrenaline from my unfairly inflated ego kept me awake and alert until we pulled into Rocco and Phoebe’s driveway just before midnight. I didn’t think to ask why Betsy had such an easy time staying up so late. I should be concerned for the teenage years ahead.

The next day was lake day. Rocco towed his boat to Wisconsin’s biggest body of water, which is really more of an inland sea. I’m terrified at the thought of taking the most expensive thing I own pulled by the second most expensive thing I own and backing them both toward the water, but Rocco made it look easy. Phoebe solemnly instructed Betsy, “Marry a man who can back up a trailer.” Honestly, that’s good life advice. It’s a shame Lola didn’t follow it.

In the week leading up to our northern sojourn, the daily high was hot enough to make small birds burst into flames. But the two days we were in Wisconsin, the temperature was only in the seventies. That’s Fahrenheit, not Celsius, for any international readers who think I just described the surface of the sun. We took the boat to a sandbar to let the kids play in the water. They jumped in and climbed right back out. In Wisconsin, the lake ice doesn’t fully melt until mid-August. Mostly, we just spent two hours sitting in the boat getting sunburned and eating the sixteen coolers full of snacks we packed. Boat trips, like car trips, require ten million calories per person per hour. Also like with car trips, boat trip calories don’t count. I eventually broke down and got in the water, but only because I had to pee after drinking superhuman quantities of diet soda. Rest assured, I’m perfectly healthy. My urine didn’t smell like turpentine at all.

The next morning was the day everything broke. Rocco and I woke up at the crack of dawn to play frisbee golf, which is taken very seriously up north. In Indiana, frisbee golf courses are mostly thrown up in existing public parks as an afterthought, but in Wisconsin, there are dedicated, purpose-built courses complete with greens fees and custom apps. The group of players ahead of us had wheeled duffel bags to carry all their specialized discs. I played the entire game with the same frisbee, and I think it was a putter. I regret nothing. Then again, I came in last by fifty throws (Strokes? Tosses? I refuse to look up the official terminology.). There might have been a connection. We didn’t finish all eighteen holes (baskets?) because I took twice as many throws as everyone else and also because one of the other members of our foursome had to go to brunch. He had his priorities straight. Rocco and I tried to leave, but it didn’t quite work out. His brand new truck wouldn’t start.

When I say “brand new,” I mean it. The truck is less than six months old. It had problems right from the start. It broke down on the side of the road a month ago. When he called the dealership to ask what the warning light meant, the mechanic replied, “I have no idea.” That’s always a good sign. They continued to have no idea after the truck was towed to their shop. The manufacturer was so baffled by the issue that they simply replaced the entire engine, which is the most stunning admission of engineering failure since the Hindenburg blew up. Thank goodness for the three-year warranty, which is now worth more than a winning Powerball ticket. The new engine had six hundred miles on it when it broke down in the parking lot of the frisbee golf course twenty minutes from Rocco’s house. We got a ride home from the guy not going to brunch, but Rocco had to return to the parking lot later to wait for the tow truck. Last I heard, the leading suspects for the current engine problem are ghosts and car cancer. They need the mechanic equivalent of Dr. House. In the meantime, Rocco looked up Wisconsin’s lemon law, which only applies if a vehicle breaks down four times over the same issue. If it only breaks down three times, though, I’ll enact street justice and name and shame the company. I’m sure that will have a huge impact on the zero people who make their truck buying decisions based on this newsletter.

Losing the truck was a major blow to my family’s plans for the day, but it was an even bigger setback to Rocco and Phoebe, for whom it was an existential threat. It was their only vehicle powerful enough to tow their huge boat, and now it could be in the shop for weeks—again. They only have four months of good weather before the lakes freeze over and the abominable snowmen return from the north. Rocco tried to salvage the day by borrowing his dad’s SUV. The plan was to go out on the river to let the kids do some water sports. We thought maybe they wouldn’t mind the cold temperatures if they were getting dragged behind a boat at high speed. Adding in the fear of death really helps people look past minor annoyances. It’s all about perspective.

After hours of delay, we finally got out on the river. Rocco fired up the boat. He was immediately greeted by a warning light. There was something wrong with the engine. Clearly, we weren’t meant to be on the water that day. We puttered up the river, pondering what to do. The kids were less than thrilled. Despite the cold water, they wanted to get out on the kneeboard. You don’t have to get wet if you never fall. Finally, Rocco texted all the engine’s readings to his friend who has a similar boat. I say “friend,” but a better term would be “enabler.” His friend’s response? “Send it,” which is Wisconsin talk for “gun the engine and damn the consequences.” He probably would have given the same answer if Rocco said, “The boat is sinking and also currently on fire.” Regardless, Rocco throttled up the engine. It didn’t explode. That was a good start.

One by one, we gave the kids rides on the kneeboard. In our defense, if the boat did burst into flames, trailing behind it was actually the safest place to be. Betsy went first and managed to stand up on the kneeboard, which takes a considerable amount of balance. Mae (ten) followed suit and did the same. I now have proof that neither kid is related to me. Lucy opted to stay dry on the boat. At least one daughter has my DNA. Then it was Waffle’s turn. At first, we made one of Rocco and Phoebe’s kids go with her because she’s so small we thought she might not be able to keep the board in the water. The last thing we needed was her flying behind us like a kite. After one run with two kids on the board, however, we let Waffle attempt to go solo. She loved every second of it. She didn’t need a partner, just the chance to spread chaos on her own. She doesn’t fear death because death fears her. The grim reaper just put on his life jacket. As for me, I only jumped in the water when I needed to go to the bathroom, as is my custom. Each time, I nearly died of hypothermia. I need more body hair or friends with boats on warmer bodies of water. Are there any newsletter readers in Florida?

Boat hair, do kind of care.

One of the kids. At that distance, who knows which one. It could also be Bigfoot.

Later that afternoon, we (and by that, I mean Rocco entirely on his own) managed to get the boat out of the water without anything exploding or melting down. Hopefully whatever is wrong with the boat is a cheap fix because the vessel is no longer under warranty. Rocco and Phoebe already had it serviced once a few weeks ago after the same warning came up. Apparently they just paid the boat mechanic to turn off that light for a little while. Keeping the boat and truck operational during Wisconsin’s brief window of “warm” weather is proving to be a challenge. It looks like they’ll be without one or both for most of the summer. That’s why I don’t own either one. Also, I don’t have the money, access to a body of water, or the skill to operate a large vehicle of any kind. But other than that, it’s a personal choice. I’m more than happy, however, to visit Rocco and Phoebe to see what it’s like when most of the drama in your life comes from machines and not from kids. Both lifestyles are equally expensive.

The other big story of the weekend wasn’t the boat or the truck, but Rocco and Phoebe’s new house. I couldn’t fit that tale in this week without making this newsletter longer than Game of Thrones, but I’ll write about it Thursday for paid subscribers. Thanks again to everyone who’s chipped in to help keep my writing career going. I look forward to chronicling my bad decisions for you for years to come.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James