“It’s only at times like these that I find myself saying, ‘Can I borrow your automatic eye pencil?'”, said !Bob as we put the finishing touches to our pirate costumes. Bean gave me a headscarf, and I cunningly drew on an eye-patch in black eyeliner. When I closed my left eye, my costume was complete. My eye-patch was continuous. When I opened my left eye, I looked fairly ridiculous. After a hard week of training, I was very ready to get involved in the mayhem of a pirate rampage. I had packed my ice chest with cider and supplies, and had foolishly packed my wallet, mobile phone and digital camera. It hadn’t occured to me that the 12 bottles of cider might cause the ice-chest to sink, even if the nasty WalMart ice-chest was waterproof. Pirates never used to have to worry about keeping their electronics dry. Gold was waterproof.
Arriving at Town Lake for the first time, I was struck by the natural beauty of this dammed section of the Colorado river. Right between the freeway bridges was an expanse of clean fresh water, surrounded by trees and populated by turtles, paddle-steamers and kayaks. And I was also struck by the natural beauty of the rampaging pirates – each with a splendid costume, and with plenty of booty. The aluminium canoes were launched, my ice chest accompanying myself and my first mate !Bob. The armada of three pointed hats, Jolly Rogers, frilly shirts and cutlasses set off, and the booze started to be passed around. A smidgen of sun screen may have been applied to fend off the radiation from the mid-day clouds. Pirate Rodney, who had returned from three years in the jungle was particularly well equipped with a supply of flasks containing potent blends of grog.
“Try this one. It’s like a citrus punch.”
“What’s in it?”
“Mainly rum to be honest. With the juice of a lemon. And then have a cup of this.”
“What’s that?”
“Yerba mate.”
“OK.”
“Are you buzzing?”
“A little.”
“Well try some more. It’ll help you paddle.”
“It’s very hard to sink these things.” Someone was heard to say, blessing our voyage with optimism bordering on recklessness. Our first port of call was Clyde’s Island – a small patch of land where an otherwise homeless man with a canoe had been found on previous rampages. Clyde was a true pirate, and rumour had it that treasure (in the shape and form of June’s skimpies) was buried there. We approached the shrubs surrounding the thirty foot island that encircled a bridge support, and a few brave souls touched down to discover a nesting swan. We evacuated the island as quietly as 20 drunk-ass pirates fuelled on yerba mate could, to leave the swan in peace, and headed for the shore at which the Austin Marley Fest was being held.
No canoe was left un-terrorised. “Aaaaarrrr!” was yelled at anybody within earshot. We tried to encircle a few Geordies in their canoe, but the British Navy proved too wiley for the pirate horde – they paddled away very quickly to shouts of, “Northern monkeys!” and other such taunts. It was about this time that I realised how good shouting is. Drinking and shouting together are an awe-inspiring combination. Apart from brief pauses to breath, and to drink, I don’t think I stopped shouting for about two hours. Perhaps in part due to the shouting, none of the pansy-ass hippies at the Marley Fest would approach to receive our food donations – the event was for charidee, and the pirates had pineapple chunks to offer. Kind of like the Robin Hood thing on water, if you will. Only with a slingshot in place of bows and arrows. The idea of using the slingshot to propel the food donations into the crowd of hippy rasta pansies was quickly quashed, and the tins were set down in a pyramid on the banks.
The sun was out, I was shouting, and deliriously happy. !Bob must have got sick of me saying, “Isn’t this great?” every five minutes, but if he did, he didn’t mention it. It could explain his suicidal actions that followed. We saw a cruise ship making swift progress past us at a distance of about fifty feet. !Bob is big and strong, and I used to row with seven big strong men, so was used to being towed about in a boat. We decided to attack the cruise ship. We made good speed, ramming speed in fact, and miraculously managed to approach the vastly more massive boat on its port side at an angle of 45 degrees, still moving forward. !Bob demanded alcohol from the passengers, and beer was sprayed in his general direction, him being at the bow of our canoe. By this point the cruise ship was still churning forwards rapidly, and we ended up heading into its stern. Into the thrashing jaws of the paddle wheel which churned at the back. Time froze as I saw !Bob getting closer to the rotating drum of paddles, each keen to be the one that tore him downwards and sent him to Michael Nesmith’s locker. (Michael Nesmith was the Austin-based Monkee, so replaced Davy Jones in local pirate vernacular).
Somehow, our canoe veered starboard and !Bob was saved, my heart beating all the faster. Other canoes caught up, and we described our lucky escape and partly successful pillaging. In the general hubbub of parallel canoes, we managed to almost tip over our canoe. We tipped it sufficiently to allow some water to enter, but someone in another canoe managed to force the high side down. We had taken on the first water of the afternoon, and this was a trend that continued – as the sun strolled across the sky we gradually sank lower and lower in the water.
We set ashore, and partook of more rum, more cider, more everything. I secured a berth in another canoe for my ice chest of valuables. And my sun screen, sunglasses, and cider. We claimed the land for our own, and headed back onto the lake. To the dam! I honestly can’t remember how, but I very nearly managed to tip up the canoe carrying my ice chest. !Bob and I paddled off, tearing ahead of the opposition, flying with the wind. My ice chest returned with two pirates to the rental shop, unbeknownst to me, and I paddled on oblivious. More pirates arrived to replace the fallen. The slingshot was deployed on tennis balls we found. The complex physics problem of getting three people in three canoes to fire a ball without tossing one member into the lake was finally solved. But not before Ellen fired herself out of the canoe in the opposite direction to the ball. She needed to pee anyway. A basking turtle – a female Texas slider – was allowed to heat up in Rodney’s canoe. It was also allowed to urinate over everyone who came to see it.
“Peeing is it’s defense mechanism,” explained Rodney, making sure that all were subjected to a stream of its defence, before releasing it.
Bliss emasculated me by stealing my oar. Despite knowing how unstable our canoes were when someone stood up in one, I decided to strip off the majority of my pirate gear and jump into the water to retrieve it from the receeding canoe. The three people who saw me attempt a drunken front crawl were convinced I was drowning, as they haven’t seen the way I swim, and hurried to my rescue. I was given back my oar, and was now free to bake in the sun, in a canoe I managed not to completely submerge when I climbed back in. I never saw the borrowed bandana again. It had perhaps still been on my head right up to the moment I jumped in.
The pirates regrouped several miles away. I really mean several miles. The wind was blowing us merrily merrily merrily merrily in our drunken fighting and shouting. Another paddle-steamer approached, and this time we had numbers and location on our side. We barricaded the lake in front of it, but the captain managed to swerve at the last moment, and get past the northern tip of our lakeblock. Three canoes gave chase, and though ours didn’t catch the cruise ship, and one canoe was slowed by Captain Morgan answering his mobile phone, one did, and latched on to the side of it. The cruise ship apparently didn’t have a liquor license, so was released by the canoe, and allowed to go about its business.
The next regrouping was on a sheltered boat launch. The ingredients for the pirate stew were more liquor, some nudity, and beef jerky. As part of the landing effort, the first canoe of the day was capsized. The scurvy dogs responsible hooted and staggered ashore, pointing at their accident. If only my camera hadn’t been sitting in an ice-chest several miles away. Eventually, we set off, paddling into the wind as hard as we could. !Bob and I made a point of trying to paddle faster than everyone else, which left us tired and unable to do much shouting. The sun stroke may have been a factor, it was hard to tell. We were focused on paddling and looking for slack water to run faster through. Apparently we were weaving, very much like drunken pirates. We didn’t notice. On the final bend before home, a canoe was sunk again. No-one was sure what kind of manoeuvre was being attempted. One pirate had already abandonned ship, the other two remained sitting in it as it sunk. Finally the taller of the remaining pirates announced with his neck protruding from the lake, “I’m still in the canoe. I’m just standing up now.”
It was a miracle that we managed to get all of the canoes back to Zilker Park Rentals. Costumes were somewhat dishevelled on our return – mine consisted of sunburn and a pair of shorts, my eyeliner eye-patch long rubbed into my face. But I was reunited with my ice-chest, camera, phone and wallet. !Bob and I had both been in the lake several times, but our canoe had remained afloat. We had collectively captured a cruise ship, extracted booty, and we had taken a hostage. We had sung songs about eating babies, and harangued all and sundry. Shipmates had been rescued, and an island had been claimed. The pirate rampage was a storming success, but it was not over. We then went ashore with our booty, and made haste to the city jail to break out our imprisoned brethren before sacking the city of Austin and getting tattoos and big gold earrings. Well, we went to get some Mexican food at any rate, and I realised that I’d spent six hours in the sun without water, and was practically incapable of speech other than to say, “Combo meal. Chicken. Yes. Water. Please.” and “More water please.”
And then I remembered the cider in my ice-chest, and after victuals and a brief respite, the evening started. True, much of the evening involved squeezing aloe from plants onto my parched skin, but even pirates have to nurse their wounds from time to time. And I got to look at my photos.