Best Day Ever, Part 1

I was reading the latest National Geographic magazine the other night and came across an amazing picture.  The article was talking about whale sharks, and the picture was a man who had just jumped into water filled with these enormous sharks.  It turns out that the man was a local police escort who was so excited to see these sharks following the fishing boat that he just dove in.  The man has the biggest grin on his face as he's reaching out to touch this fish that is literally the size of a bus.  My brain decided that the title of this picture should be "Best Day Ever".

I was also recently talking to my therapist, Morry, and we were talking about leaving some sort of record for our loved ones.  Putting these two things together, I've decided to leave you all with some of my "Best Day Evers".  This will definitely be an ongoing series, as I've been fortunate enough to have had quite a few of these sorts of days.

First up is a day that might have appeared to be miserable, but is one that I will never forget.  This day was one of the days that Shepherd, MI was having their annual Maple Syrup Festival.  HB and I had only been dating for a month or two.  The weather was pretty abysmal.  The festival falls on the last weekend of April every year, and it's either sunny and 75, or raining and 40.  This particular year it was the latter.

If you've never been to Shepherd, it's a tiny town, and the festival is really the only thing that goes on during the year.  They take it pretty seriously.  Everyone in town has a garage sale, and at the high school, they have an all-you-can-eat pancake and sausage dinner.  For a guy who likes food, this is great, the sausages are homemade, as is the fresh maple syrup.  HB and I met Mitch and Wayne there to pig out on the delicious lumberjack fare.  The plan was then to walk around and go to the garage sales.  Also, on the other end of town, they bring in a small carnival, mainly with rides and games for kids.

After we had our fill, we decided to head out for the garage sales.  It was about this time that the sky decided it would be a great time to rain.  Hard.  We all walked around, still engorged from our delicious lunch, but most of the garage sales had closed up until the rain passed away.  We decided to make our way over to the carnival on the other side of town.

Shepherd is not large, so the walk isn't too long, but we were mostly impeded by the slowly flooding streets and sidewalks, not to mention the Little Salt Creek, which we had to cross with it's water slowly rising to near over-flowing.  When we did reach the carnival, it was as you would expect a carnival in the rain to be.  Everything was closed down, and there was mud as far as the eye could see.  We walked around and splashed in the mud, and it was fantastic.

By the time we decided to leave HB and I were soaked from head-to-toe.  I was an idiot (big surprise there) and didn't bring a jacket, but HB, being chivalrous, convinced me to take her jean jacket.  We walked back to her car, and then proceeded to have another adventure by taking just dirt roads back to Alma.  We got back to her parents house, dried off, and fell asleep watching a movie.

This was one of my best days ever.