Meet crew members Terry & Will

I would like to introduce you to Lolligag crew members Terry and Will. They split their retirement life between living in Indiana and Naples Florida. Terry and I went to high school together and we have become very dear friends since our class reunion last year. Mark and Will, as our spouses, found that they too have much in common besides being married to us. Will is the perfect compliment to Mark in that he has a funny outgoing manner to pair with Mark’s quiet but very dry sense of humor. We have discovered that together they can install a spiral staircase (including the use of power tools) while at the same time entertain Terry and me with their clever wit and devilish ways.

I have to tell the story that defines what a good friend and Lolligag crew member Terry is. This is a story about Terry’s adventure of getting into our dinghy…The dinghy was fully inflated, but in Terry’s defense, as well as mine since I am the dock/deck/line monkey, I must state that Captain Mark did not have the dinghy sufficiently secured to the dock and I did not notice this until it was too late. Terry steps into the dinghy which then instantly shoots away from the dock and she looses her balance. The next thing I see is Terry totally horizontal with her fingers clutching the dock and her toes curled around the side of the dinghy clinging for dear life…Mark, Will and I are trying to pull her in, but it just is not working due to the angle of her body…her knuckles are pure white and she is being stretched further away from the dock as each second passes…FINALLY, after what seems like ten minutes but I am sure was only about 20 seconds, Terry says that she is going down…and into the water she goes – clothes and all.



At this point I have to add that I know that Terry is a wonderful swimmer as she has a pool both in Indiana and Florida and was on a swim team as a child, so I know that she is in no real danger, besides she is within six feet of the dock, our boat, the dinghy and the boat next to us. The problem is that there is no easy way to get her out of the water. The docks in Chicago do not have ladders (as we are not supposed to swim in the harbor) and while they are floating docks, the water level is about two feet below the dock. So what she had to do was come over to the back of The Lolligag, pull out the stairs on the swim platform and then climb up onto the boat.




NOW, being the good and wonderful friend that I am, I say “Hold on a minute” and I proceed to go into the boat in search of…of course, my camera. I come back out with my camera and proceed to take LOTS of pictures of Terry bobbing around in the water while she, Mark and Will are trying to release the ladder from the back of The Lolligag. It is only at this point that I ask her if she is okay…she states that she is fine. Not having nearly the class of Terry, I unable to contain my laughter while she promptly and very enthusiastically makes a universal finger gesture to me and tells me what I can do with myself. I do, however, have the wherewithal to hand her a dry towel as she emerges from the water. What is remarkable is that not one hair on her head got wet during the time she was in the water. Terry’s hair is always perfect and this just goes to show that no matter what happens good hair always remains good hair…



She is such a good sport that after she dried off and I tied the dinghy properly to the dock, she did agree to go for a dinghy ride around the harbor – we all had a really good time even though she threatened to push me out of the dinghy on several occasions!

As if that was not enough…we continued to torture her throughout the weekend…So off we go to dinner on our bikes…Mark was leading the way and I was bringing up the rear. Because we ride our bikes in downtown Chicago all the time, we forget that other people do not and that it might be a little frightening for them…for poor Terry, this was an understatement…she was terrified as Mark wove our way through city buses, cars and pedestrians…However, through all of this, Terry continues to be a good sport and persevere through all of the obstacles that one can encounter in the Chicago loop while on a bicycle.

Finally, it is time for us to head over to New Buffalo, Michigan.

The seas are totally calm, we get out of the harbor perfectly and we are off…Terry and I then decide that in keeping with the ways of the Sweet Potato Queens (our heroes and role models) that we are going to loll about on the front of the boat all the way across the lake. This is exactly what we do until we get to New Buffalo and this deck monkey has to hop to and get the boat ready to dock. I do this perfectly and all is well. Our friends Kathy and Lee (Scooter and Lucy as well) brought their boat over several hours after us and the six of us just had a wonderful time in New Buffalo. During the return trip on Sunday since Will has become such an experienced deck hand, I relinquish my deck hand duties to him (so that I may have a glass of wine or three).

This time the ride was almost as perfect as the trip over to New Buffalo but the flies were terrible out in the lake. They cluster in huge clumps and then land on anything they see - like two SPQ wantabes lolling about on the front of a boat...