It was sometime this past Winter when my cousin Jason, then living in NYC, met Siri, a girl from Norway. After talking for some time, they realized they both had roots in Scranton. Jason's mother and Siri's father each moved to Scandinavia after growing up in Scranton. Siri and two friends from Sweden, also living in NYC, Ida and Linsen, met up with Jason and I over President's weekend in Scranton for some skiing, a picnic at Elk mtn, dancing, and black russians with Glenn Miller in the background. The girls each had pink bandanas for us to wear, so we labeled ourselves the pink bandits. It just so happened that Linsen and Ida were each back in Sweden visiting family at the same time that I am doing the same, so it was time for me to see their homes.
Linsen and I drove to Domsten, her village just North of Helsingborg. We were taking her small boat across the sea to Denmark, which was only 20 minutes away. Her family called the boat, the 'Ice Cream' boat, because they used it to go to Denmark to buy ice cream.
It was a hot day, as just about every day in Sweden has been this summer, and we approached the sandy beaches of Denmark. Instead of docking in the marina, we wanted to anchor the boat and swim to shore, as many other boats were doing the same. Linsen dropped the anchor into the water, and I noticed alot of slack on the rope. Having experience anchoring boats in the small and calm Lake Ariel in Pennsylvania, I said "I´ll just pick up all of this slack and tie it down to the boat" essentially leaving very little slack on the anchor. We dove into the water and Linsen showed me the freestyle technique she has been working on every day in Scranton (where she has a ceramics studio for the summer). We swam a good distance to shore, walked around, and then crashed on the sand to lay out. 30 minutes later we started to swim back out to the boat.
"Bösse, I think the boat is floating away" Linsen said, using the Swedish nickname she coined for me.
"Naw, it´s just much smaller than the other boats, so it looks further away than it actually is" I assured her. We continued to swim hard for a few more minutes.
"No, Seriously, I think the boat is floating away" she said, now concerned.
I looked out at the boat. It was very far away. At least a kilometer or two.
"You know what? I think you´re right" I admitted. We discussed swimming as fast as we could to get out there, but there was no assurance that we could swim faster than the boat was floating away, and we were fighting the currents that were closer to shore. We decided we had to pull over a nearby boat and have them take us out there. We swam to the nearest boat, bearing a Swedish flag and a nude woman sunbather. The husband knew Linsen and her family and drove us out to the boat, and 'promised' not to tell Linsen´s father about this. They talked about how the boat could have possibly floated out so far, and said that the anchor wasn´t working. There wasn´t enough slack in it.
We pulled the boat into the marina and bought some ice cream and then some fresh fish for dinner. On the ride back home, one of the propellers on the engine wasn´t working properly, so the boat was tilted 35-45 degrees for the entire ride back. I was leaning over the side trying to balance the boat as lateral waves threatened to knock us over. Linsen wasn't afraid at all, and since she's a licensed pilot, I decided it was relatively harmless for us to be in a boat, as opposed to a plane, with one propeller malfunctioning. Linsen cooked up the fish with a tasty pesto sauce, boiled potatoes, and a Greek salad, and then got the call from her father asking about this strange foreign guy who helped the boat float away.
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