It’s an old joke.  The two best days of your life are when you buy a boat, and when you finally sell that boat.

So I got myself a boat.  I took the plunge, which is not necessarily the best turn of phrase I could have chosen.  I live in a condo right on the Hudson River, and can see the river from pretty much every room in the house. It seemed crazy to live right there on the water without being able to take advantage of it. So for the last year or so, I’ve been determined to get myself a boat.

Imagine it.  A boat docked right outside my condo, literally a two-minute walk from my front door.  Beautiful Saturday afternoon, we pack a lunch, invite some friends, take a spin around the Hudson, maybe even take it into Manhattan for dinner and avoid the traffic.  So cool!

Now, I should point out one minor flaw in my plan. Namely, that I know nothing about boats.  Literally, nothing.  I don’t even know how they don’t sink, big heavy things sitting out on the water. Something about buoyancy, I’ve heard, but to me it’s magic.  I don’t know how planes fly, either.  Honestly, I don’t know anything.

You know how in the movies people travel back in time and they’re able to take advantage of their superior technological knowledge to get rich or whatever — like, they can make gunpowder or cure illnesses and stuff like that?  Well, if you sent me back 200 years into the past, I’d be totally useless. I’d be all like, “hey, there’s this thing called ‘electricity’ and we can use it to power our houses,” and then people would ask me to explain how it works and I’d basically tell them that you plug cords into outlets in a wall and there you have it!  Electricity!  SPOOKY MAGIC MAN FROM THE FUTURE!

You’d pretty much have to send me like a thousand years in the past for me to have any sort of technological advantage over the people from that time.  Maybe all the way back to the cavemen.  I’m pretty sure I could kick some real ass in a caveman society — the wheel, fire, washing your hands.  I’d be the king of the cavemen.  Otherwise, totally useless.

Anyway, back to boats. I know nothing about them.  I’ve ridden in them, and probably driven piloted a few over the years, but most of my boating memories involve all the times I’ve broken propellers.  I break a propellor virtually every time I take a boat out, on rocks, sandbars, human flesh — basically whatever gets in my way.  It’s actually deeply hard-wired into my genes: my dad used to take us out on boats down in Florida, and pretty much every trip involved us all getting out and trying to push ourselves off a sand bar.

All that said, I’m getting a boat. I figure that things will be different now that I’m all grown up and all.  I have enough free cash to cover the cost and the myriad expenses that I expect will pop up. And I’ve heard that boating on the Hudson is pretty easy — deep water, no sand bars, clearly marked waterways, etc.

But the real reason is that I just want one.  I’m a grown man, I make a good living, and if I want to throw away some of my money, well, then, I’m just going to do it.

See you out on the water!