Tennessee Flying Fish and Jet Skiing Grandmas

Last week I was lucky enough to join the Bernheim family in Tennessee for their family vacation. Seven days of board games, movies, card games, sleeping in, boat rides, homemade meals, corn hole and ladder golf tournament, celebrating summer birthdays, power outages, being out of breath walking to and from the dock, trying like crazy to catch a decent-sized fish and flipping a jet ski.

We had a nice vacation rental house right on the lake. I figured the private dock would be prime fishing real estate. If I had any idea what I was doing, I’m sure it would have been. But after throwing my entire tackle box and three dozen worms into the water, I only came away with a bunch of minnows and bluegill. Still a ton of fun to fish under stars, during early morning fog, in the rain and in the hot sun.

The highlight of the week had to be Grandma Joan riding on a Jet Ski. She got onto the ski from the boat and road around for a while with her son-in-law, John. Pretty awesome.

Quick tip for anybody who’s never driven a jet ski… it’s best to speed up a little when making a tight turn. Slowing down might cause the thing to flip, forcing your passengers to launch themselves off the side of the vessel. About five minutes after after getting on one of these things (for the first time) I tried to make a u-turn. For one reason or another, I slowed way down and the darn thing just kept rolling over. So it wasn’t a spectacular crash that splashed water high into the air. It probably looked more like an elephant slowing lying down and flipping onto his back. Laura and Michael (Laura’s 11-year-old cousin) were both fine and Michael thought it was pretty awesome. If I’m not mentioned in his “what I did during summer vacation” essay on the first day of school, I’ll be very disappointed. (not really)

Ok, now for the photos. I tried to put them in some kind of order. Oh, and we split up the drive home by stopping for a night in Atlanta to catch a Braves game. We wanted to see a game at Turner Field before the team moves into a new stadium next season.

I went on a run. I knew there were hills, but they’re a little more intimidating when you’re on foot looking up. Made for a fun challenge. But, I took screen shots of the elevation chart and weather charts from my run in Tennessee and compared it to my first run back in Florida. See if you can guess which one was from vacation. There’s also a couple photos from the run. When you’re in a new neighborhood and you have to use intersections to get back home, having a road intersect with its self doesn’t help one bit. Made for a good mid-run laugh.

On the final morning, we drove into town for breakfast. I whooped up a few of the photos into a slideshow for the family to see. The grandparents seemed to like them. And this cell phone shot might be my favorite from the trip.

Comments

comments