The Fun Of The Journey

By Author: Arsenalo
Total Articles: 116
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When I was young I wanted to own a sailboat. When I got older and a little wiser, I revised that wish: I wanted a good friend who owns a boat. When I moved to Long Island a few years ago, that wish came true. Captain Bobby invited Patty and me onto his 32-foot Catalina Cruiser and immediately earned a place in our hearts. (That he said the wind power two English teachers would lend the craft offsets our weight is forgiven—though not forgotten.)

Since then, we've sailed many times through Cutchogue Harbor around Robins' Island, or past Greenport and Sag Harbor to Easthampton. We even sailed once for Block Island, but dangerous winds and 10—12 foot swells turned us back into a safe harbor.

Most of the time when we're sailing, we're enjoying ourselves, cooling the sun's heat with the salty spray from water rushing under the bow Tag Heuer Replica and around the amidships, watching the quaint shore-front towns go by, and passing the time with friendly chat and good-natured teasing. Sailing also has real consequences. We've ...
... learned from hard experience to duck when the boom comes about, and once during a friendly race with Capt. Bobby's cousin we learned not to trim the jib too tightly or it rips, badly. The sound is like the world's largest man splitting his pants in slow motion into a megaphone, and it's followed by sobs (jibs are expensive).

On calmer sails, now and then a motorboat will overtake us and send us rocking in its wake. One of Capt. Bobby's friends—a "stinkpot" boater, as he calls him—teased us as he went by. "I could make five trips around this harbor in the time it takes you to make one in that blow boat of yours!"

What Capt. Bobby understands that the motorboat captain doesn't is that for sailors, the quality of the journey matters at least as much as the destination. Motor boaters engage their engines and arrive at their destinations quickly with minimum fuss. Sailors, however, manipulate the sails to harness the wind, arrange the ballast to ensure a secure vessel, and tack back and forth, forging a crisscross path through the waves. They arrive at their destinations as a result of equal amounts of wind power and personal effort. The motor boater and the sailor both get where they're going. But the sailor's journey is more meaningful.

Let the sailboat on the cover of this issue remind you to take some time this summer to enjoy your journey as an English teacher. We should certainly take pride in our accomplishments and feel the satisfaction that Omega Replica Watches can come only from having helped students succeed. But we should also look back on a journey we thoroughly enjoyed: all the great books and films we encountered, the fulfilling writing we shared, the language and culture we explored, the intellectual curiosity we indulged.

Let others make more money or have a little more extra time on weeknights and weekends. We get to teach English.