2016 Father's Day Fun - 12 Hours of Awesome

Father's Day has always been a critical holiday in my mind.  My Dad is my rock and anchor in a very busy, chaotic and adventurous lifestyle that I've chosen.  He doesn't raise his eyebrows too high when I jet off to the wilds of India or Vietnam alone.  He allows himself to be tortured on new adventures (backpacking in the Ozarks, climbing over mountains instead of around them, super challenging ropes courses that leave you crippled sore the next day, etc.)  He is there for the fun days and worries at night when I'm halfway around the world.  I could go on and on, but I thought I'd share a bit of our Father's Day adventure in which we managed to cram nearly all of our favorite activities into one day, completely on accident.  We win the accidental efficiency prize!

Highlights of the Day:

1) Get up and ready the sidecar for a run to lunch.  Sidecar rig won't start.  We jump it.  Dad's love to jump their kid's vehicles.  I'd say he started the day in standard hero mode.

2) Had our favorite shared lunch of chicken fajitas.  We felt like the animals from the video, If Animals Were Round.  Google it, totally worth it.  

3)  Bike still wouldn't start so we learned how to properly start the engine without the battery.  A rolling start, pop the clutch and off you go!  This was much better than when we did it in traffic earlier in the morning.  No big thing and again with the Dad win.  You have to be open to continuous learning, especially if your Dad is around.  What a blast.  Working battery, who needs one?

4)  Given that not having a battery isn't sustainable, we cruised to Autozone, got out the sweet tool kit, realized we didn't have the tool we needed and went home to take it apart.  This is no Yamaha configuration.  Thank goodness for the internet.  

5)  In the spirit of Father's Day, we took our second of 3 trips to Autozone, and decided to go to the lake while the battery charged.  

6) We loaded the biggest kayak in the fleet, headed to the lake with the dog and a cooler and made for a beach across from the ramp.  Sun, pebbles, Moose trying to remove bathing suit tops while swimming and good jams punctuated the afternoon.  

7) We returned to Autozone to find out the battery could not be revived, bought a new battery, returned home to now try to work in tiny spaces engineered by Russians without a lot of care about convenience and wedged that bad boy in there.  Things could be easier, but who can complain about awkward engineering when your Dad is there to curse with you?  Most importantly, if you get a shake and tots as a motivational snack on the way home from the parts store, you can get through anything.

8)  After a hilarious shuffle of forgetting numerous tools and dinner ingredients between houses, thank goodness we only live 1.5 miles away from each other, we got to cook dinner. We made one of our most divine pizzas of all time, watched the final NBA game of the season and talked about all the things fathers and daughters talk about.

9)  A little pre-Shark Week bonus briefly sucked us in.  So we discussed how scary sharks are.  So scary.

To summarize, we tinkered, rode motorcycles, kayaked, swam, cooked and watched sports.  I can't think of a much better way to spend a day with my Dad.  I wouldn't trade all the exotic adventures in the world for days like this.  

Autozone Selfie...

Sidecar adventures!!!

The secret mosaic project unvieled.  Probably the most challenging, blood spilling and fun project.  

I'm so thankful for my Dad's unconditional love.  What greater gift is there in this world?  Love you Daddo.