Haste to the Wedding

I attended a beautiful Spring wedding today, in the capacity of a paid musician in a SportKilt, in the company of other Irish musician friends. We treated the large wedding party to ~30 traditional Irish tunes featuring Uillean pipes, blackwood flute, and fiddle, to my rhythm guitar and occasional tin whistle.

The ceremony took place on the west shore of Lake Santa Fe in Earlton, Florida. The groom, a salt and pepper haired professor of Architecture at the University of Florida; the canny lovely bride, a considerably younger, buxom, animated Cindy Crawford look-alike dare I say trophy wife. The bride arrived from across the lake via motorboat. But it was no ordinary motorboat, it was a 1940's vintage Chris Craft mahogany boat with cedar interior and inboard 357 Chrysler engine.

The gig went well; good food, engaged and appreciative company dominated by architect faculty members and their pretty-people retinue, and it paid $100 each for the musical effort. Highlights of the lovely afternoon: The sunlight filtering through the oaks and pines; remembering my own wedding vows in anticipation of the Clog-wife's and my first anniversary in June; and the ride in the vintage mahogany Chris Craft Holiday, similar to this one, and very much like this one. The evening was coming on and the cypress trees fringing the lake were illuminated in the evening sunlight. I was in boat-heaven. In fact I'm still *there* now, and must cut this post short so I might daydream about it just a bit more.

[Personal disclosure: For years I have dreamed of owning a vintage mahogany boat. Today's ride on Lake Santa Fe strongly reinforced that dream.]

Coincidentally, my 2 brothers and I have exchanged photos and comments about mahogany motorboats for 2 weeks now. Today's surprise ride in one seems like an omen to me. Hopefully, I'll soon post a photograph of the occasion. One day, this site will record my purchase of one of these fine old craft, and the exhilaration of my first spin in one.