I recently updated my page on sailing watches, and it reminded me of something we used to do on those long drives to Optimist open meetings and regattas.
You would think that these long drives were a lot of fun.
Especially for the adult or adults driving us.
Two or three hours in a car (each way) with bored teenagers is a barrel of laughs for all concerned, and I’m sure, if you were asked to guess, you’d predict that my parents (or my friend’s parents) looked forward to these journeys with great anticipation.
Surprisingly, this wasn’t the case. Arguments over music, elbow room, noisy breathing, whether Craig Johnson was better than Paul Walsh, who got the biggest banana, and so on, seemed to annoy them.
And even though we very regularly interspersed these arguments with queries about how much longer the journey was going to last, the adults in the car still did not seem to be enjoying themselves.
Then, one magical day, all this changed. Continue reading →