The Keelhauler and I drove to work this morning. I was headed to the office, and dropped him off so he could get back on the work boat. As we were getting on the highway with our coffee, I asked him, "Name three fun things we did while you were home." He answered, "Rode the Rocket, Rode the Rocket, and... Rode the Rocket!"

The Rocket is a charter boat in Long Beach Harbor. On Sunday, we went down there and when the Keelhauler saw the Rocket, he laughed and laughed, and pulled me toward it. The guy manning the booth gave us $2 off each ticket, and we took our seats in the boat. The name of the boat is actually the Rainbow Rocket, I guess because it's in Rainbow Harbor, or something, and looks generally like a bulked-up cigarette boat, only really wide and heavy, with red vinyl seats and padded bars to hold onto.

The bars turned out to be a good feature, because as soon as we left the dock, I was gripping the nearest one and whimpering as the Keelhauler laughed and played fake-impassioned air guitar along with "Welcome to the Jungle," which blared out of the speaker adjacent to my left shin. "Please stop playing air guitar..." I begged, not because I cared that someone might see him, but because every second that he faked a guitar solo was a second that his eyes were not trained directly on me, affording ample time for me to fly out of the boat and drown in the Rocket's prop wash. The Keelhauler was surprised that I was so nervous, and asked me what I thought was going to happen. "Maybe the boat is going to flip over!" I stage-whispered, trying not to alarm the nine-year-old girl in the next row, who was noticeably NOT crying or frozen with fear.

The Keelhauler held my hand and put his arm around me, and said, "Nothing bad is going to happen!" and then, every time a new great song started, like "Sweet Child of Mine" or "Paradise City"--for some reason, the Rocket playlist is heavy on the Guns & Roses--he would gleefully break into a brief air guitar solo before taking my hand again. He was having a great time, fully enjoying the cheesiness of the ride, and laughing and occasionally yelling, "This is hilarious!"

It was a gorgeous day, and we Rocketed around enormous container ships moored past the breakwater, leaving sailboats flailing in our wake. After twenty minutes, my fear had receded enough so that the tears stopped rolling down my face, and I was able to appreciate the humor of the situation.

We motored back into the harbor to the mellow "cool-down" sounds of "Mr. Jones." I guess the ride operator didn't want his patrons disembarking all hyper and rocked-out from too much Axl, so he inserted the Counting Crows as a buffer.

I would like to stress that there was actually nothing scary about the Rocket, excluding a couple of the other patrons (which is I'm sure how they felt about us). It just seemed for a second, out there on the ocean in this strange, fast boat, that anything could happen, and it took me by surprise.

Star of the day. . .Robert McCloskey