Pirate Swing

My brother-in-law is MacGyver. He can build or fix anything. When he got back from Aruba with my sister and my nephew a few weeks ago, he told us of this great rope swing they played with on a replica pirate ship. A pirate swing, if you will. They had a blast doing it, even if they couldn't quite get the backflip off the swing down pat.

So we are sitting around in their backyard a couple of weeks ago and he's looking at the trees in their back yard overlooking their pool. Now, imagine this...the in-ground pool is surrounded on two sides by a three-foot rock wall. Over that wall on one end is a wooden bridge. Beyond the bridge is a koi pond with a three-level waterfall about 12-feet high cascading into the pond. And a thick layer of trees envelops the whole thing. It's like swimming in a rain forest.

So my brother-in-law takes this all in as if for the first time and sees it. A rope swing from the bridge by the koi pond into the pool. And he's off to the garage where he just happens to have some industrial strength rope lying around. The kind tug boats use to pull freighters and ocean liners. After a series of complicated maneuvers using lighter rope and some weights, he gets a rope swing rigged up. From at least 30 feet up in the trees!

It took him a couple of weeks of tinkering to perfect it all, but he's finally got it down. Now weekends at their house are spent soaring through the air before splashing down in cool water. It...is...heaven!

And one of my nieces, the littlest peanut of them all, was brave enough and light enough and athletic enough to pull off the scary back-flip that seems to elude the rest of us. She went swinging through the air and flipped over about 8 feet over the water while screaming with joy. Accomplishing what her older male cousins were too afraid to even try. She rocks so much! As of right now, only she and my brother-in-law have pulled it off. But there are a still a few precious weeks left in the summer.

Me? I was happy just perfecting my cannonball.

Source

OK, we weren't jumping into a pristine lake with mountains in the background. But it kinda felt like we were.

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Note: Remember to play the Badgerdaddy Trivia Challenge every day. Pure joy.

They were ever so sad

They were ever so happy, they were ever so sad
to grow old in a new world through good times and bad
all the parties and weddings, the ceilis and wakes
when New York was Irish, full of joys and heartbreaks

I remember a traditional that Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers used to perform.  I can't find a video of it, but it goes a little something like this:

Ahem ahem

Me mother's gone to Church

She told me not to play with you

Because you're in the dirt

It isn't because you're dirty

It isn't because you're clean

It's just because you've the whooping cough

And eat margarine.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. And I spent all my money on whisky and beer.