Sometimes I am forced to go places I would never choose to go to on my own. I guess you would call it a hazard of the job. This week I've been in the Catskills. I'm about 40 minutes from civilization staying at a broken down version of Dirty Dancing. For lack of anything better to do, I made my way to a place called Bubba's last night for dinner. My table was in a large sandbox on the banks of White Lake. The food was fried to a crisp and the bar game involved a ring tied to a string that you have to swing onto a hook. Drunk Ryan who kept singing, "I'm getting further from my beer" hooked the ring on the third try. I couldn't hook the thing to save my life. Guess the beer is a requirement at a place called Bubba's. Since I couldn't hook the ring, Drunk Ryan decided to give us a free ride on a pontoon boat. 10 minutes later we were stranded in the dark floating away from the dock with a flooded engine. At least we got to go out on the lake. If it weren't for the bugs, the smell (Drunk Ryan and the gas)and the thought of jumping into 30 feet of pitch black water, we might have called it a party. We were rescued by a jet ski and Drunk Ryan returned to his beer. We headed back to Dirty Dancing part two.
Today we found out that some of us wouldn't be able to stay at our hotel for the entire duration of our trip. The word Motel was brought up as an alternative. Just for clarification, if anyone ever tries to convince you to stay in a motel, flatly refuse. In my world, Hotels are for people who live in houses and motels are for people who live in their cars. Sounds logical to me. Especially when the motel boasts that turkeys are the local wild life and you might get to see a bald eagle if you are lucky.
Well, the bald eagle made me feel patriotic and lead me to the fireworks display back at Dirty Dancing. We kept hearing from the locals about how great they would be. We went to dinner late and were worried we wouldn't find a spot. No worries were necessary. Parking spots were available, chairs were plentiful and real estate for the show was wide open. As we waited a man handed out lyrics to God Bless America and informed us that we would be singing after the finale. The fireworks started. While watching the show, one word came to mind. Recession. This must have been an example of fireworks on a budget. No music, no cotton candy, no glow necklaces. Just one firework at a time. I guess they were trying to spread them out. We kept looking at each other saying, "Was that it?". When the finale finally came, the people were so far apart from each other that anyone who actually did sing sounded like a soloist. Each day keeps getting better and better.
