I’d joined the Coast Guard Auxiliary. Chris the Mapper is the head of the Auxiliary here. He’s taking off for some kind of an international Coast Guard exchange. Which means two and a half weeks in Amsterdam and Scotland. Pretty sweet. I hope that his brain and liver survive. A couple weeks back, one of the trainers from HQ in Comox came up to give us some training. A few of us spent an afternoon learning to park the Zodiac (24-footer?) on the dock just by idling the motors, then the trainer took us out to show us what the boat was capable of. We were all wearing float suits and helmets, looking a little dorky, in a spaceman kind of way. But when he punched the throttle, the boat leapt up in the water and everything turned into blurred lines like we’d just jumped into hyperspace. My eyeballs set back a touch in their sockets and I got a grin on my face like I’d just done something inappropriate. Banking through corners was just like leaning a motorcycle through a tight turn except that we were on something the size of a small school bus. That’s what a quarter of a million dollars worth of boat and gear will do for you.
