Early Morning Rendezvous

Ian sent this story about his morning routine at the lake:

There is a lake in my neighborhood with a private beach and a boat launch for kayaks, stand-up paddle boards, paddle boats, etc. When I was younger, I liked to do some late-night kayak rides and skinny dips. As I’ve gotten older, I found it harder and harder to stay up late enough to skinny dip when no one else was around. Sometimes, I would wake up early to get in a quick swim as the sun rose.

One nice thing about the latter part of summer is that I don’t need to get up as early for my early morning swims or kayak rides.

One Wednesday morning, I ran into a neighbor lady named Natasha who had come to use her SUP before work. We didn’t know each other well, but we decided to cruise around the lake together and really enjoyed getting to know each other. We ended up meeting a few more times over the next two weeks for our sunrise cruises.

One morning a few days after Labor Day, I was running a little later than normal. When I got there, Natasha was already in the water swimming. As I said hello, I noticed Natasha’s clothes in a pile on the beach, including a bikini top and bottom. “Oops. You caught me,” Natasha laughed when she saw me looking at her clothes. “As long as you are here, why don’t you join me?” Of course, I took my clothes off and jumped in.

Natasha confessed to me that she usually liked to go skinny dipping before she took a ride on her SUP in the mornings. However, since she didn’t know how I’d react, she didn’t bring it up. I laughed and said I had been wanting to skinny dip as well, but I didn’t want her thinking I was some weirdo. We laughed as we swam around and watched the sun rise.

We were able to get in a couple more skinny dips in together before the weather got too cold. The swims and paddles around the lake were a great way for us to get to know each other.

Thanks for the memory, Ian! May you have many more summers full of such memories!

-Jen