Generosity

I’ve always been a pay it forward kind of guy. I love helping my friends out and I love to build community. Every once in a while I ask for help, and every time it’s hard. I don’t fully understand why, but I do know that I am distinctly averse to receiving generosity. This past week has been a learning experience for me. It started, I think, when the lights started to flicker. We nursed our failing batteries all the way across the South Pacific but when we got to Bundaberg we just let it go. By the time we arrived in Brisbane they were near dead. Then a few nights before Christmas, when Ceildyh was over for dinner they died for good. We were eating and making merry and the whole boat went dark and silent. I switched us over to the starter battery and we finished the night with light (but no music). The next morning Evan called to let me know that he could help out with some old (but hopefully not as dead as our batteries). Then the sink fell in… ...

There has been a rash of theft in our marina lately. It started with a bunch of fishing gear getting stolen off of some power boats, but this Saturday I found my bike had been stolen. This kind of thing can really make you question the quality of the average person… until you come back from your errands to find an annoymous gift in your cockpit. We think one of our friends down the dock left the toy castle for the kids. They had a ball playing with it but agreed that it wouldn’t fit in our boat. The next morning Ruby and Olive raced down the dock to return it and were perfectly delighted to put it back aboard Gemini. ...

After getting situated in our hotel room, the first order of business was to get a couple of motorcycles so we might regain a modicum of control over our adventure. Dad had an aesthetic interest in the Royal Enfield. So we asked our host if he could arrange such a thing. After a little back and forth on the details he went off to see what he could do. A few minutes later he came back with the details and within 30 minutes we were staring at two of the most beaten up bikes left in India. The first Royal Enfield bikes were built in India in 1955, and I suspect that ours were from the first batch. ...