Cuba Week refers to the Birch Island vacation that our families have had on an annual basis since 2002 give or take a few years. The attendees this year were: Simpson camp: Ani, Serena, Camilla, Mom, Miki, Victor, Lucas and me; Lyman cam: Katie, Carlos, Lucy, Henry and Sally; Tucker camp: Bradley, Allison, Clea, Pamela, Carlos Castellanos, Lila Ouimet (Sandra and Dave Grierson were there for the first night). Attendees who have participated in the past but didn’t come this year were: Ricky, Sophia, Dad, Elena, Julia, and Kristen.

Saturday: Arrived at Fay’s Boatyard, unpacked the car, then Miki and I went to do food shopping at Hannefords. Dinner was at the Lyman camp, Freddie Day stopped over with his two year old daughter Avery. I hadn’t seen Freddie (now called Fred) since before his daughter was born. He was very watchful and attentive to his daughter and still managed to appear relaxed. I told him (publicly) how I thought he was doing a great job at being a father. Later that night Jonathan Forbes stopped by with a guitar and Carlos took out his guitar and we had a jam session. We sang a lot of Beatles songs because that’s what Carlos knows how to play on guitar although he’s pretty good about learning other music. When we played Ripple by the Grateful Dead, Serena and I took turns alternating on the verses and we both sang the refrain together and it sounded great. Serena and I did a rendition of the Jefferson’s theme song in acapella with me on lead vocals and Serena doing backup vocals and clapping. Allison requested "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" and I tried to sing it but it was not a good performance because I hadn't rehearsed it in a while. Carlos played Guantanamera and I improvised some lyrics in Spanish using a lot of Spanish curses.

Tom Thomas came over to the Lyman camp late at night and Carlos, Tom and I smoked a cigar on the cocktail terrace and talked about boat propellers and other boat engine topics. I walked back to the Simpson camp without a flashlight and it was very challenging because there were no lights left on at the Simpson camp and it was a dark night. When I got to the main path I used the overhead electric wires to guide me. I knew when I made it to the tennis court because I felt the fence. Then I made it past the chapel by feeling the pews, then I made it to the Simpson camp. Miki also struggled coming back by herself from the Lyman camp that night, but she had a flashlight. She went to two different camps thinking that it was the Simpson camp before she made it back.

Sunday: While we drank our coffee, Mom, Victor, Lucas, Serena and I had a good discussion about the concept of Priustown. At one point I got choked up and had to excuse myself from the dining room table and go into the kitchen for a moment, but I collected myself, returned to the dining room, and finished the conversation. A little later Miki and I played tennis. We were even in the beginning (the score was 3 to 3), but then Miki got tired out. Henry joined us and we trained him to be a ball boy using hand signals, but after 15 minutes he lost interest and left us to our game.

Ziggy the dog was annoying me. He was constantly trying to steal food and succeeding. He was barking excessively and wouldn’t stop so I scooped him up, carried him to the end of the Simpson dock, and threw him in the lake. He came up from underwater quickly and it was one of the rare times that he swam. He only swims when I throw him in the water. I admit that I may have traumatized the dog by throwing him in and ruined his ability to enjoy swimming, but we’ll never know for sure. He swam back to the lake shore and easily got out.

I took the Sunfish out for a sail. At first, the wind wasn’t very good but once I got far enough away from the island, the wind picked up and I had an enjoyable sail. I practiced doing a figure eight and I jibed it several times. There was a Hobie Cat catamaran that was going much faster than my boat and when they passed close by I noticed that Richard Thomas was sailing it and Debbie Hanover and her two kids were on board. A little later they capsized the Hobie Cat and had trouble righting it. Richard later told me that Debbie had control of the boat when they capsized.

This year we made some changes to the food situation. In the past, Mom has been in charge of bringing most of the food and cooking most of the meals so in an attempt to alleviate some of her workload and spread out the work and expense, I tried to plan the meals with four things in mind: simplicity, waste reduction, COVID-19, and thriftiness. We were relatively successful on all fronts. One dinner was handled by Miki, Ani, Carlos, Mom, Bradley and me. I did a lot of the shopping (Mom did some too). We broke the shopping into two trips, one at the beginning of the week and one mid-week. We needed to feed 9 people everyday for breakfast and lunch and 19 people for dinner (or more depending on whether or not people from other camps were invited). I was responsible for Sunday night’s dinner. Liz and Jen joined us with Layli and Eli. I made cheeseburgers and a green salad. Miki helped with the green salad and I reciprocated on her night. Bradley and Carlos walked me through the barbecuing of the cheeseburgers because I am inexperienced and they came out great. It was the first time I had cooked a dinner during Cuba week.

I took the kids on a moonwalk that night. A moonwalk is a Birch Island activity invented by me that started with the idea of imparting wisdom to the kids. I’ve done it for the last 10 or 12 years. The format is that you get as many people as possible to join in. All ages are welcome. It has to be dark out so that you can see the night sky. Most people are equipped with a flashlight. You start the walk by going to a first location to look at the moon. Sometimes it’s the main dock, sometimes it’s the bridge. On the way to the first location you stop in the middle of the trail and tell everyone to shut off their lights and at the count of three everyone has to be silent and listen to the sounds of the night. You count to three and then see how long people can stay silent. It’s a kind of meditation. After the silence is broken you ask the kids what they heard. After you talk through the answers you proceed to the first location and look at the stars, the planets, heat lightening, satellites, clouds, and the moon if they’re visible. I typically point out the Big Dipper, and describe how to use the Big Dipper to find Polaris. I sometimes point out Cassiopeia and I look for easily identifiable planets like Mars, Jupiter and Venus. We often see satellites and shooting stars which are actually meteors. We once saw a series of lights way up in the sky that looked like a small train which I think were a group of satellites being released into orbit. Richard Thomas has seen the Aurora Borealis from Birch Island. Then you lead everyone to the chapel and I give a speech at the podium. The topic should be something that you wish you had known when you were the age of the kids in the audience. You make it as interactive as possible soliciting opinions from the kids in the middle of the speech. Sometimes you let the kids come up to the podium to speak. In the early years Carlos and Bradley took it upon themselves to become the “Scare team” whose job it was to scare everyone as much as possible and disrupt my speech at the chapel. This night’s moonwalk was attended by Lucy, Henry, Clea, Pamela, Layli, Eli, Lucas, Victor, Serena, Bradley, Allison, Ani and me. On the way to the bridge Layli was telling me about my moonwalk speech from the prior year. I had told them that when adults say, “you’ve grown so much since the last time I saw you” they’re just trying to make conversation with you, but there isn’t a great response to that comment so it sort of backfires and you’re left standing there awkwardly with nothing to say. We got to the bridge and it was an overcast night but the moon was ¾ visible through the haze. It was a hot night, but at the bridge there was a strong refreshing breeze. I broke from tradition and did the moment of silence at the bridge. Henry was having trouble being silent. I then led a sort of meditation where I told everyone to point their faces into the wind, then after 10 seconds I told them to turn their heads 90 degrees so that they would notice the difference in the sound of the wind with your head in different positions. I asked what they heard and people said, “the wind,” “the waves hitting the rocks” and “Henry.” Then we walked to the chapel and I gave a speech about noticing nature that I prepared in advance and rehearsed. The idea is that most people see the sky but are not amazed by it because they don’t focus in on it, but if you focus on it you can tap into a fascinating world of natural phenomenon like the stars or the colors of a sunset. The same is true with looking at a view or a plant or a bug. I brought up an example of a bug that Clea had pointed out to me the night before, a hummingbird moth. I had never seen one. I brought up the aurora borealis and Clea offered some very technical information about it that she had learned from an educational television program. I was a little flamboyant at the podium. At one point I told everyone to shine their light on me and I did a silly dance. Over the years some of the best moonwalks were the time when I taught the kids how to trespass in the dark (we went to the no trespassing sign on Steamboat Island, but Victor and I were up in the front, and most of the others hung back at Blueberry Island, so I told Victor to wait at Steamboat Island by himself while I went back to get the others, when I got to the others who were about 20 yards away on Blueberry Island, Victor decided he didn't want to wait by himself so he pointed his flashlight at us and started walking toward us, at which point I yelled in a startled voice, "It's Mr Stoner coming to yell at us, everybody run!" which started a stampede, when Victor saw us running away he ran too which made it appear as if Mr. Stoner was chasing us, which made everyone run faster, including Dad, who almost knocked Camilla down when he was passing her at a fast clip on the trail) and the time we jammed all the kids into the bow of the Brett Virginia at the boathouse in order to scare the “Scare Team,” the worst moonwalk was a speech that I made about the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (too long according to the feedback).

Monday: In the morning while we drank our coffee Ani, Camilla, Serena, Victor, Lucas, Mom and I had a good debate about whether it is appropriate to take down a statue of Christopher Columbus or any other controversial figure. Mom got upset because she thought that I was attacking her and stormed off the porch in anger which was too bad because she missed most of the conversation.

Later in the morning, I swam around the island. I always do this at least once a year. I used to do the crawl but since I injured my rotator cuff I’ve been doing the breath stroke. When I got to the Fagan camp Pete Fagan was in the water with Camilla, Victor and Lucas. He had two e-foils and he was letting each person try one e-foil while he rode the other alongside giving instructions. An e-foil is essentially a boogey board with a propeller underneath, a joystick strapped to your wrist is used for the throttle. I wasn’t planning on trying it but Pete urged me to try it so I did and I was unsuccessful standing on the e-foil. Camilla, Victor, Lucas, Katie and Liz were all able to stand on the e-foil. I prefer activities that do not require battery power or an internal combustion engine. Also, I think I may have a mental block with anything that looks like a surfboard.

In the previous year I had helped Carlos build a new tall shed at the Lyman camp. We had made a last minute decision to put some windows on each side of the shed it would be a good source of natural light and we found some old glass that we could use for this purpose. The glass panels that we found were replacement panes for the house windows. I got permission to swap out the transparent glass for stained glass, because we have a lot of stained glass in New Jersey. Before coming to New Hampshire I cut three pieces of stained glass to the same size as the window openings and brought them up to Cuba week. Another waste reduction innovation was that instead of buying water in plastic containers for the Simpson camp for the week we agreed to walk over to the Lyman or Tucker camp with empty pitchers and fill them with water from their camp’s because they drink lake water that they run through UV water filters. We needed to refill the water so I asked Lucas to help me carry water and went to the Lyman camp. When we got there and started filling the water I realized that the filtered water came out slowly so while I waited, I looked to see what could be done to install the stained glass in the shed. All the tools were in the tool shed so Lucas and I installed the stained glass. It wasn’t straightforward because of the 3 pieces of stained glass that I brought, one of them broke in transit. One of the two remaining intact pieces was the backup piece which was not very square and it was not wide enough for the window opening. I had to cut a piece of wood and add it to side of the window opening. Lucas was very patient and very helpful throughout the job. I taught him how to work the drill to take out screws and put them back in. It took us about an hour but we got the stained glass in both windows and the result of our labor was well received by Carlos, Katie and Sally.

Tuesday: I got up at 6:15am and went rowing: Tom Thomas first lent me his Alden Ocean Shell boat for rowing back in 2017 and taught me how to rig it. Since then I’ve done some long trips including going to Locke Island, going to Stonedam Island, and going around Long Island. This week I decided to explore the narrow gap between Mink Island and Mark Island. Before the trip I slathered my head with sun block, put on my bathing suit, a T shirt and socks. Socks are very important because on my first long trip to Locke Island I wasn’t wearing socks and the Velcro straps cut into the tops of my feet. I also brought a life jacket but I took it off half way through the trip because it was impeding my rowing. When I got through the Mink Island/Mark Island narrow I was feeling pretty good. The boat was working well. The seat was not coming off the track as it was accustomed to doing in previous years especially when the water was a little wavier. The water was totally calm. The sun was strong, but I had the sun block on although I was dripping with sweat. I decided to go around Mark Island and after that I decided to go around Bear Island. I had some blisters on my hands when I got back. After I got the shell up on the dock I jumped in the lake and it felt so good getting in the water. I discovered that one of the clips that holds the rowing seat on the boat flew off and was lost. When I got home I ordered a new one from Adirondack Rowing and shipped it to Carlos ($25). The thing about rowing is that the better your technique, the easier it is so it is rewarding to focus on improving your technique.

I was talking to Lucy, Henry, Clea and Pamela at the Tucker dock. I was telling them that they could call me “Uncle NO,” because when they asked permission to do something that was harmful to their physical and/or mental health I could always be counted on to respond “No.” They started asking me hypothetical questions to which I would shout the response, “No!” Henry got a little carried away. I warned him that if he didn’t settle down I would have to throw him in the lake. He came up from behind me and bonked me on the head with a swimming noodle. I jumped up and chased him. He ran to his mother and grabbed her leg. I pried him off, picked him up and threw him in the lake. It was a little shallow where I threw him and when he came up he started crying. I don’t know if it was because I startled him or because he hit the bottom of the lake or both. I apologized to Henry for throwing him in the lake.

Wednesday: Lucas, Carlos, Serena, Camilla, Victor, Ani and I met at the boathouse at 9am took the boat to mainland, drove 55 minutes to Mt. Tecumseh and summitted it. Its height is 4,003 feet above sea level and there is a chance that its official height will be changed to below 4,000 feet when it is measured again. It was a pleasant 5 mile roundtrip hike. We saw a garter snake on the way up. We had a picnic at the summit and enjoyed the view of Middle Tripyramid, North Tripyramid, East Osceola and Osceola. Victor was upset with me because he didn’t like using up one of the days on Birch Island to do the hike. It was the first White Mountain 4,000 footer for Ani, Serena, Camilla, and Victor. It was my 36th White Mountain 4,000 footer, and it was Lucas’ 7th. Carlos has done two others with me. On the return trip I shopped at Hannefords for the food shopping for the 2nd half of the week while the others waited for me at Sawyers and had ice cream.

That night Lila Ouimet showed up with her dog Tucker the collie. There were six dogs at the Lyman camp dinner that night: Albert, Willy, Ziggy, Tucker, Ruby, and Odie, and there were two cats Nino and Maui. Katie cooked a Thai chick pea and coconut meal. I was so hungry after the hike that I had several servings, but then my stomach got upset so I had to rush back to the Simpson camp to use the outhouse. The Simpson outhouse is my favorite outhouse. The only people who have used it during Cuba week are Ricky, Carlos (my brother) and myself (it’s an elite club with membership requirements that are straightforward). The outhouse has a crescent cut into the front door. There are two seats inside each covered with a wooden lid. The interior walls of the outhouse are decorated with Gary Larson cartoons, a few Norman Rockwell prints and the back wall has a poster that has photographs of about 12 of New Hampshire’s finest outhouses. There is a resident spider whose body is about the size of a quarter. Each time you use the outhouse the spider is often in a different location. I like to find him before I sit down. To my knowledge the spider has never attacked anyone. I always use the outhouse with the door wide open, otherwise there’s not enough light. This year my eyesight had deteriorated so much relative to last year that I wasn’t able to read the small font size of the Gary Larsen cartoons in the dim light of the outhouse. The last thing you do before leaving the outhouse is to go to the corner where a small shovel and a container of fireplace ashes are kept. You pour some ashes over the pile and then cover the beveled hole with the lid.

Thursday: after breakfast we did a group row over to Less than Zero (aka Aurelio Island). I was in the stern of the Simpson’s Mad River Canoe and Lucy was in the bow. Mom was in a kayak. Mom needed help getting into the kayak at the Simpson dock so I helped her in and adjusted the foot pedals for her. It was Mom’s first trip to Aurelio Island and she was proud to have done the trip at her age. Ani, Serena, Camilla, Victor and Lucas were each in their own kayaks. As the eight of us rowed over we came across six or seven boys rowing in the opposite direction from Six Mile Island toward Birch Island and when we passed them I yelled, “Oar propelled boats rule!” When we got to Aurelio Island Lucy explored the island (it was her first time there), the rest of us swam in the lake, and some of us swam around Aurelio Island. On the return trip we sent Mom ahead of us because she was a slow rower, but we waited too long to leave and Mom got to Birch Island before we did so she went to the lagoon where she was able to get out of the kayak by herself. On the way back I sang a few verses from Under the Bridge. Over the years we’ve done some really fun long trips on kayaks and canoes in a large group. Some memorable ones were overcoming rough waters with Sophia, the trip to Trexlers when we got caught in the rain far from Birch Island, and the trip to the Forties to the East of Camp Island. We’ve gone to Aurelio Island several times.

Clea painted a flower with finger paints and she gave me the flower painting. I was touched.

The Lazer hadn’t been used in 2 years. There was no wind, but I asked Bradley to help me rig it and he complied. After we finished rigging it there was still no wind so I asked him if I could borrow the wooden oar from the Brett Virginia so that I could use it to propel the boat if I got stuck on the lake with no wind. He reluctantly lent me his oar. I rowed the Lazer out of the boathouse lagoon. When I got out on the lake I noticed a menacing dark cloud over the island. Pete Fagan was bringing his motor boat in and he called out to me that he thought that if I tried the e-foil again I would be able to stand up. The wind started to pick up so I started going around the island counterclockwise. When I got to the Hanover camp it started to drizzle. By the time I got to the Broad’s camp the drizzle quickly turned into a massive downpour. It was a squall. Soon there were high speed winds ripping over the lake and I capsized the boat. I righted it then capsized it again almost immediately. After the third time I capsized it lightening started shooting out of the sky. I capsized the Lazer 5 or 6 times (three of those times I turtled the boat). Every time I righted it and got in, I looked down at the sign on the leg strap in the middle of the Lazer that says “Sail with Intensity” and I thought to myself that this is too much intensity. The first two times I capsized the boat I managed to hold on to the oar. The third time I capsized it and righted it, the oar was gone and after righting the boat I quickly started to accelerate when I spotted the oar floating in the water so I steered toward it and snatched it out of the water. The fourth time I capsized it the oar disappeared. Some of the people on the island saw what was happening. Three people from the Shed camp including Claudia Shed came to the Simpson camp to ask if I needed to be saved. A group of 6 people assembled on the Broad’s dock to watch. My son Victor yelled for me to come back in. The squall passed and the wind died down so I decided to go around the island but we could still hear the thunder claps so when I shouted my intentions to the group on the Broad’s dock Liz told me to bring the Lazer back in and I complied. I told Bradley I lost his oar and we searched for it (Bradley on his paddle board, Ani in the Kayak and me swimming), but we couldn’t find it. Carlos said that it turned up broken at Sandy Beach a week later. It cost me $33 to replace the oar. It was an embarrassing, pathetic sail but it made for a good adventure.

There were two birding highlights for the week. A song sparrow repeatedly showed up on the lake side of the Simpson camp in the morning and sang its song, and as we were passing Glendale there was a sign in the water that said “Caution, Loon Chicks” and near the sign a saw an adult loon with two juvenile loons.

I quizzed Lucy and Henry on why Lake Winnipesaukee Islands were named the way they were. She guessed many of them. I taught her the reason for "Five Mile" and "Six Mile Island." There were some I didn't know, like Locke, Welch, and Mark, and then Rattlesnake Island was controversial because there were two theories: 1) someone saw a rattlesnake on the island, and 2) the island is shaped like a coiled up rattlesnake. I thought it was the former theory but most people believed it to be the latter theory.

Friday: During the week I went two or three times to do some diving off the big posts at the end of the main dock that are 8 or 9 feet over the surface of the water. People on the island meet at the main dock at 2:30pm each day because that’s when the mailboat comes. There is a tradition to jump or dive off the posts after the mailboat pulls far enough away from the main dock. As the mailboat pulled away I was up on top of one of the posts ready to do a dive and a tourist from the mailboat shouted to me to do a triple lindy. I shouted back that I didn’t know how to do a triple lindy but I could do a double lindy. When the mailboat was far enough away I did a back flip with a twist. I am also still able to do several dives off of those posts including: front flip; swan dive; inward, back dive, back flip, can opener and half gainer. The half gainer is getting more and more difficult as I get older and one time that I tried it I came close to landing it flat on my back. It didn’t hurt, but it scared some of the people at the main dock including me. As I get older it’s also getting harder to climb up onto the posts. My favorite dive is the can opener because I can aim the very large splash and soak an unsuspecting, dressed person on the main dock who inadvertently wanders to close to the dock’s posts. While at the main dock that week I talked with Jim and Sarah from the Day camp, Richard and Marcia from the Thomas camp. I met Anne and her husband Ned who were renting the Oldham camp. Anne is distant relative of Bradley’s and her mother grew up going to the Day camp. On Friday, Debbie Hanover came to the main dock on a paddle board and I splashed her with a can opener.