Later in the morning, Joy and Moku went with us on the boat. After his back surgery he isn’t allowed to jump. After I tied off the stern line I opened the gate to pick Moku up and put him on the dock. He wasn’t having it and squirted past me only to fall in the water between the boat and the dock. He had to swim under the dock and over to the “beach” on the other side to get out. He is fine, but Joy and I are both recovering from heart attacks.

On Sunday of the Labor Day weekend we attended the historic St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Louisburg, NC and then Joy, Sherry, and Carol put the WaveRunner through its paces on the lake.

St. Paul’s was built in circa 1904 by the congregation organized in 1895.  It is a small but wonderfully designed sanctuary that shows what can happen when we express our Image-of-God-ness through creativity.  It is a the traditional European cruciform footprint married with a distinctively Victorian turn of architectural detail.  The diminutive pipe organ in the choir section is a paradigm of perfect scaling to a space.  The woodwork is ornate without being over the top.  There really is little to criticize.  If I could throw in a baptistry or it had a stream through the grounds, it would perfectly suit my taste as a meeting place for worship.

The church was warm and welcoming and we enjoyed the donuts and fellowship after the wonderful homily given by a professor from Shaw University.  The reception was in the adjacent Parish House of the same vintage as the church building.

Mary came down to the lake with Jimmy this weekend. Sadly, rain that wasn’t in the forecast was in the air. We badly need rain in this part of North Carolina, but it does limit one’s fun at the lake. Saturday we caught a showing of Salt at the theater in Wake Forest. Sunday turned out to be a much nicer day. We spent most of the day just hanging out on the pontoon boat and watching Mary’s dogs entertain us as they played in the water. As you can see in one of the album pictures, Faith is getting tempted to become a swimmer, but she never quite wanted the ball badly enough. Mary and Jimmy helped us rack up some more of the break in hours on the WaveRunner so I expect next weekend will be the last before the 10 hour service. Mary’s foot is still pretty sore from her volleyball injury, so the rest of us could almost keep up with her. (-: We had lots of fun and look forward to Mary and Jimmy coming back.

I’m also putting up a video of this crazy fish that actually swam up on a rock eating and was so busy feeding that Jimmy was actually able to scoop it out of the water with his hand. I wish I would have caught that on film!

Note: Clicking on the picture will start a slideshow in most browsers. If you are using Google Chrome, you will need to click on the caption of the picture and select “View Slideshow (Fullscreen)” at the top of the album page.

Bobby, Lindsay and Clayton swung past on their way home from the beach and we enjoyed another day mostly on the water.  I say ‘mostly’ because we had a sudden thunderstorm chase us back to the dock from well down the lake.  I had turned on My Tracks before the rain started so it logged the race for the pier.  In fact you’ll see that it logged a change in elevation because it was still on as we ran from the boat to shelter! My Tracks is an Android Phone app that logs your path and a bunch of other statistics.  It is usually used by joggers, bikers, and hikers.  When I got home I used the app to upload to Google Maps and as a spreadsheet in Google Docs. I thought both the family jocks and geeks would enjoy seeing this. (Don’t miss scrolling to the bottom for a quick video.)

Sunday, Joy and I concentrated on cleaning, maintaining, and repairing.  We replaced several loose dock cleats and even one of the decking boards on the dock that was too far gone to hold a cleat.  We also installed a removable ladder at the end of the dock for those adventurous enough to brave the dreaded band of muck.  Somehow the wake action of passing boats collects all the leaves and such in a band about 9 meters wide starting about 3 or 4 meters off the shoreline.  The practical issue here is that unless you swim to the sandy shore you will be standing in muck to get on the ladder at the end of the dock.  One would think that this would mean no one would ever jump off of the end of the dock, but actually it happens quite often.  Plus the ladder might be useful for people getting on and off of the tube when their turn is over.  So, we’re all spruced up and ready for your visit.  Hope we see you (again) soon.



View Larger Map

Total Distance 4.54
Total Time 00:30:50
Moving Time 00:18:18
Number of Tracks 2
Average Speed 8.83
Average Moving Speed 14.89
Elevation Gain 72
Min Elevation 73
Max Elevation 88

Saturday was just the beginning of a great weekend. Yesterday, Ruth came out with a few of her friends to enjoy some tubing and a brief tour of the lake. It was fun to show some folks from Morgantown that even a little lake like Lake Royale can be fun. After all, it often reminds me of Cheat Lake. Jack was unable to attend due to philanthropic obligations, but maybe we’ll catch him next time.

The title of this post is an expression Joy often uses as we enjoy our lake, a scene from a cruise ship portal, or time with you, our family and friends.  The greatest blessing in our opinion is the shared blessing.  Last weekend we enjoyed having family down from Morgantown and this weekend the Pittsburgh contingent came through, followed closely by our church community group.  Every moment shared with you guys makes that moment richer – and, yes, I do know how sappy that sounds – deal with it.

Saturday morning started with picking up the new WaveRunner, a Yamaha Cruiser VX.  Things have come an awful long way since the days of my old SeaDoo.  This ski is more comfortable, faster, and even more fun.  Lindsay and Clayton and Bobby and Kristin broke it in for us before our friends from church came and took their turns.  It was hilarious watching people ride and tube.  When the church gang went for a tour of the lake in our pontoon boat we stopped for a swim and happened on an Osprey.  They were common when we were doing coastal cruising, but have become a rare treat on this little inland lake.

Hope your weekend was not just a good one, but a shared one.  “How blessed are we?”   Very, very.

Occasionally one gets to enjoy a very nearly perfect day.  Our Fourth of July was just such a day.  Sherry was already here.  (For a staff photographer, she does one heck of a cleaning job.)  Thanks for the help, sister.  Then mid-morning Mother, Dad, my two sisters, my brother-in-law, my niece and Jack arrived.  Jack had been seated at the far end of a Rio Grande restaurant table one night some time ago but we had never had a chance to visit.  I started to become a fan when he wore Moku out with a game of fetch.  Diving off the dock and playing in the water just cemented the deal.  We spent most of the day sitting in the shade at the lake and watching people launch their boats on the ramp across the way and piling on to and off of tubes those boats were there to pull.  It is quite an entertaining show.  They brought some good Carolina bbq and cole slaw which made for delicious sandwiches.  Most of us piled onto the pontoon boat and did a quick-ish tour of the lake.  This was followed by more eating and drinking and cheering on the bustling waterway full of people.  Everyone seemed to have a good time and to help everyone else to have a good time, so guess what?  I had a very good time.