If you follow the high-performance powerboating world, last weekend was the best—and worst—kind of rollercoaster ride. Photo courtesy/copyright Jay Nichols/Naples Image.
Whenever we have family dinner, we play a game called “Highs and Lows” in which each person at the table—even a guest—is required to give one high and one low for the day. If you don’t have a low, you always have the option of giving two highs. If you don’t think you have a high, you better find one. Or you don’t get fed. Those are the rules.
As you’d expect in a household with two middle-age adults, a rambunctious 13-year girl, an 18-year-old college-bound young lady and a 22-year-old college graduate who’s working a good job in San Francisco and saving hard to get out of his father’s suburban home, the highs and lows run the gamut. A high can be as simple as “sleeping in this morning,” just as a low can be as simple as “waking up this morning.” Or they can be more complicated. Though we tease each other without mercy during the game, there’s no judgment. It’s about communicating and bonding as a family.
This morning, I found myself playing my own little game of highs and lows as they related to covering a pair of high-performance boating events last weekend. My low was—far and away—an accident Saturday during the Buffalo Poker Run that left local marina owner Chris Overkamp in stable but critical condition. That the accident came just a few weeks after the tragedy that claimed four lives the day before the Pirates of Lanier Poker Run in Georgia made reporting on the Buffalo event that much more saddening and maddening.
and then