As I've written before, Al loved to have fun and was pretty good at making his own if there wasn't any already in sight. That skill served his desire for entertainment well, even as it occasionally exasperated others. Some of my more exasperated moments came as a direct result of Al fulfilling his retirement dream of owning his own boat.
I can remember him calling to say he had bought a boat which turned out to be a used Bayliner 2155 21" cruiser with trailer. My father and I went to see Al's dream and Al gleefully showed off his first command -- Captain Al had been born. He even had a captains hat with the golden scramble eggs. It didn't phase Al that he didn't know much about boating or safety regulations. What mattered is that he had his ticket to fun in the sun on the Mississippi River.
It was love at first sight when Captain Al found his Bayliner and he adored the vessel over the years he owned it, though maintenance was far from his strong point. It gradually faded from its initial glory, as he didn't have enough crew to regularly swab the decks and Al was slowing down a lot. We ended up assisting him on that and my dad did most of the maintenance work, especially during the spring and autumn when the Bayliner was either coming out of storage or going into storage.
While Al may have been slowing down physically, there was one thing he always liked: moving at high speeds. Fast cars entranced him, but were a little scary for him personally. But the river looked open for miles upon miles and there he could race the wind. At least until his deteriorating eyesite scared him one too many times. More than once he had me get the Bayliner planing at high speed and enjoyed the ride, his face red from the wind and laughing gleefully the entire time.
On that image, I'm going to finish, for his various adventures on water require their own entries into the log.
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