bedheadchicken

Have you ever been to Lake Mead? It's right by the Hoover Dam about 20 minutes from central Vegas. It's really beautiful.

I went to Las Vegas for the weekend. I stayed with my friend Heidi, who has a big beautiful boat that she has docked at the marina on the lake there. So we took out her on my first day there, went out into the middle of the lake and dove off the back of the boat. It was amazing. There are all these huge canyon walls all around the lake and you feel like you're on your own planet. Pretty.

So later that day Heidi and I are hanging around the marina with her friend Brian, who had a boat in the slip next to hers. Brian was about 60 and looked almost exactly like a skinnier Hulk Hogan-complete with white fu manchu mustache. He had a little speedboat with racing stripes and flames painted on the side and he kept asking me if I wanted to go out and "see how she runs". I declined several times and preferred to sit on the dock and watch kids feed popcorn to these HUGE fish off the pier. I'm talking 3 or 4 feet. Catfish. Carp. Huge. HUGE.

Heidi gets a call from our friend Tina, who is coming down to meet us, but the marina is private, so Heidi has to go let her in.

And I'm left alone with Brian.

"Dude, just one lap around the lake. You GOTTA see how she flies."

Ok. So I agree to one lap. I jump in his purple boat with flames and he hits the throttle and we take off. It IS pretty cool, I have to admit. We were flying over the waves and he was showing off a bit. But you could tell that the boat was his pride and joy, so it was ok.

Suddenly the boat stops. Just stops. My first thought, of course, is that Brian has taken me out here to kill me.

But Brian looks concerned. He turns the key a few times. Nothing. The battery is dead. He turns the key a few more times, a completely bewildered look on his face. More nothing.

After about 20 minutes of looking at the battery and turning the key and looking at the battery and turning the key, Brian came to the same realization I had: we were dead in the water.

"Well, " he said brightly. "someone will come along soon and they'll tow us back."

So we waited. And waited. The sun goes down. The moon comes up. Nothing. It's a HUGE lake and nobody comes anywhere close to us.

"You'd think the tide would have brought us into the shore," Brian mused, breaking our long silence. But the tide didn't bring us anywhere. We were just rocking back and forth out there.

Brian stood up. "Looks like I'm going for a swim" he says.

So he dives in and begins PULLING the boat with one arm and swimming with the other. And he's about 60. So I can't very well stay in the boat, so I jump off the back and push (forgetting to leave my wallet in the boat, btw)

I don't know how long it took us to get back to the marina. Maybe an hour or so. But that was paradise compared to swimming amongst the 4 foot fish around the piers. I've never really eaten fish and I don't know why they felt the need to eat me, but I was bitten around 30 times in the last 30 yards or so.

I climbed up on the dock and helped Brian tie the boat into his slip, walked into the marina and pulled a dripping wallet out of my pants and asked for a beer.

The bartender, without looking up says "You smell like lake."

I was like "Yeah. I know."