Last year I bought a boat.  I can’t remember if I talked about it here, but basically I bought a cheap 18 foot bowrider made when I was still in high school.  The theory went, we need to buy a crap boat first because I’m likely to hit a bunch of stuff in the river while I’m remembering what it’s like to be a pirate.  I mean boat owner.

Sounds ridiculous, right?  I mean, I’ve been up and down the Damariscotta River about 1000 times in my life.  There is absolutely no chance I could miss the channel markers and drive right over a sandbar I’ve known about for 30 years and ruin a brand new propeller, right?

I think you see where this is going.

But the Layla Mae is in the shop for the opening of the season, trying to repair, among other things, the fact that water which is supposed to remain outside the boat seems to be making its way inside the boat.  Very odd, indeed.

Obviously I need other toys this year.  So I got some.

Sure, the tractor is fun.  You can dig stuff up, haul stuff around, crush the wheelbarrow with the bucket because honestly you’re never going to use it again, etc.  But it’s not all tractor time around here.  Because I also got this:

That, my friends, is a 1996 E350 van with a V10 and 51,000 miles.  We use it to pick up my father and drive him to various places to eat lobster.  It was made available to us for only the cost of some repairs because a friend of my father and my uncle donated the actual vehicle to us.  All kidding aside, it is an incredible thing that someone did this for us and it’s allowing us to get my father out of the assisted living facility all the time now.  Very special and very happy about that.  Also, it doubles as the most bad ass party bus you’ve ever seen.

The boat will be back soon.  And by soon I mean August or September.  And it’s probably going to cost more in repairs than I paid for the boat.  I’m pretty sure that’s the whole point of boats.