Rick’s Rants and Raves

Sailboat rentals: $20/hour for a sunfish, $45/hour for a flying scot
Sailing lessons: $35/hour for one person, $50/hour for two (includes the price of the boat).
Lesson: for only 5 dollars more, I can pay an instructor to take Anne and me on a boat ride. Sweet.

Bocce is not lawn bowling. Theo and I played bocce and were told that we were playing on a bowling lawn and that our bocce balls might damage it. “Lawn bowling is a more sophisticated game.”

$250 for camp for two kids works out to $5/hour for “babysitting”.

Taking pictures of bats is challenging, at best.

A freshly charged set of AA NIMH batteries lasted almost the whole week in the camera, taking about 200 pictures. When the “low battery” indicator comes on for rechargeables, it really means “Change them now!”–3 minutes of video shooting later and they died.

We spent approximately $170 for food for 5 people for the week.

Sunset over Chautauqua is very nice from the Miller Bell tower pier.

Very few people at Chautauqua have ever heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I did my best to evangelize.

Alcohol is now being sold at a couple of the resaurants on the grounds. However, there is no bar service.

Chipmunks are cute.

Purple martins will noisily attack a hawk. And chase it away. And dive-bomb it.

Our kids are now old enough to go to the playground unattended.

The house we are staying in has adult bikes we can borrow any time. We don’t need to take our own, just the kids’.

Communication is the key to a successful marriage.