Sunday, April 17, 2011

Sunset Get-Together in April - Taking to the Water

"We get to it when we get to it."

That sums up the various ways we answer the question of
"when are we going to row to Captain Jack's".

After we catch up, eat, sing a bit, and take some group photos,
the whole group climbs aboard the boats and rows to a restaurant and bar known as "Captain Jack's". 
  
Keeping a strict schedule might work well for wedding planners and air-traffic control towers, but as gondoliers, we like to go with the flow this one night.
If you're a gondolier in one of Southern California's active gondola services, you'll understand it when I say that
"when it comes to rowing, we live by the schedule".

Clients book cruises at definite times, the gondolier must leave the dock on schedule if at all possible, and in many cases, needs to return his boat in time for it to be prepared for the next cruise. We're not Musolini's railroad management department, but we do watch the clock.

I think one of the things that's nice about these get-togethers is that we don't have to look at our watches. If there are enough people there,
and everyone has eaten, we take a group photo and climb aboard the boats.

And we get to it when we get to it.

Here's a brief clip taken during the "climb aboard the boats" part:

Next, we take to the water and row off into the night. Some boats are more lively than others. On my boat this time around, we were yucking it up about Charlie Sheen, and then we came upon the bridge where the singing takes place.  There's not much to see in the video, but you'll hear the singer come into range.  At some point, someone says "Shhh, someone's singing".


the singer turned out to be Eric "Enrico" Bender from The Gondola Company in Coronado, near San Diego.
During the "pilgrimage" part, it's not unusual for someone to break out in song under the bridge and surprise everyone.  This time around, it was Eric. 
Later on, he sang this one:


Bravo, Enrico!

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