Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

Ride, part 1: A two-part adventure, Mr. Toad’s wild ride started after we left the harbor by the Dalyan river. The Captain’s mother (our cook) gets seasick, and always comes up on deck when we move. Today the wind was up. Her face started to look alarmed when she spotted the first white-cap. Soon there were many more. The boat bucked like a mechanical bull and we were all riders, some unwillingly. Leon was whooping and laughing like Slim Pickins in Dr. Strangelove. I had no problem with my stomach, and was not anxious at all even when the table, chairs, cushions, and candles slid across the deck. (We caught everything.) However, when a big wave washed across the front deck, even I gulped down a small scream. When we finally made our ‘safe harber’ – an idlyic Asher Bay – Leon cried out, “God, that was fun!”

The respite: Asher Bay is full of interesting seacaves, but we were all too shaken to go for a swim. Instead, we ate our crab and fish dinner back on the boat in the moonlight, and had much to remember about the day. Tonight is the Captain’s birthday; he’s 39. Jim and I present him was a Minnesota t-shirt which he immediately puts on. Mark and Beth give him a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge, which he and his mother really liked. All of us sit together and sing “happy birthday” in both English and Turkish, as a five layer chocolate cake is brought out. We feel like family. Life is good.

Ride, part 2. The Captain had said last night that we needed to leave the harbor before 9:30 a.m. as the sea gets choppier later in the day. At 5:45 a.m., we hear the engine starting and realize that the boat is rocking, even in this sheltered cove. All the rest of us are up on deck; I decide to get dressed first. It was a weird feeling. Our portholes were closed and latched, but the water level often reached the middle of the porthole. I was tossed about a bit, and it felt to me as if I was inside a washing machine, looking out! Once again, I positioned myself at the rail – better view of the ride – and held our cook’s hand. While choppy, it wasn’t as bad as yesterday. I think about my young grandparents crossing the Atlantic, and have a much better appreciation of what that journey had been.

We moor at last next to a ruin standing in the water nicknamed Cleopatra’s Bath. That’s when Jim christened this part of the trip “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.”