This past Saturday I had quite the adventure. The plan was to go fishing with former teammates and Olympic swimmers Ian Crocker and Neil Walker. Ian has a small fishing boat that he keeps out by Lake Travis, just outside of Austin. Lake Travis is essentially the Colorado River, which has been damned-up to create a lake. Currently the lake is around 17 feet below normal due to a severe drought.

We left Neil’s house and headed to pick up the boat. As we arrived I was becoming really excited about getting out on the lake. I grew up sailing and boating on Lake Michigan and absolutely love being on the water. There’s something special to me about being on the water... all my worries and thoughts seem to just (no pun intended) drift away.

Before long I was sitting in the center seat of Ian’s boat with the wind whipping at my face as we blazed down the lake. I had a huge smile on my face the entire time. It was just like when I’ve gone tubing, water-skiing or wakeboarding... I was grinning. I get really giddy and find myself laughing nonstop.

We found a really quiet and desolate cove where we decided to stop and fish. Neil is the expert fisherman of the group. I have done my fair share of fishing but I’m no expert. Ian spent most of his time driving the boat, but also tossed a few lines in the water. I only caught one fish but had several on the line. Neil caught three fish and had several on the line too.

Here’s where it gets interesting! It’s now about 9:30pm. We’re heading back to the boat dock and see one final spot where we want to fish. Neil and I cast a few lines in the water. After a little while we decide to head back to shore, or so we thought. Ian tried to start the motor, it wouldn’t start. The engine was turning over but there was no spark, no combustion. I tend to look at situations from a comical angle and find humor in most everything. When the engine wouldn’t start I lost it. I was laughing like crazy. This kind of made the situation worse because while Ian is tinkering with the engine, he thinks I’m laughing at him. The humor lies in the fact that it’s now 10pm and the three of us are sitting in the middle of a lake, in the dark, and there is basically no one around. The boat launch is probably about a mile away. After about 20 minutes or so Ian changed out the battery, but the engine still wouldn’t start.

I started to think to myself, “We’re going to have to swim this stinkin’ thing back!” We started talking about that possibility and it sounded pretty comical in itself. Imagine three Olympic swimmers out in front of a fishing boat in the middle of the night swimming back to the boat launch. This option was not ideal and I personally did not want to do it. I’m not really a huge fan of open water in general, but if it came to that I would do it. Plus, swimming in the dark could be a little freaky.

Finally a sailboat was quietly going by, about three hundred yards away. So we hailed it down. Luckily they had an engine and gave us a tow. Sailors really are good people. I’m glad we didn’t have to swim the boat back but it would’ve been a funny story. We got home safe and had a ton of laughs... that’s the important part. Try to find humor whenever and wherever you can... it makes everything more fun!