June 2008

"How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will always remain young. It will never be older than this particular day of June."
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

We spent most of the month of June recovering from our trip to Switzerland in May. One Saturday, our friends Dan and Valerie invited us to do some paddle-boating on the Vltava river. We'd been in Prague for 18-months and had yet to give it a go--even though we'd seen countless tourists paddling around each and every day during the warm months--so of course we happily agreed.

We met them at the docks and rented a boat for an hour. It was a wonderful summer afternoon, the sky was clear yet it wasn't too hot. The river was calm with only the occasional tour boat taking people along the mighty Vltava to the Prague Zoo. Time for one of those "magic moments" right?

Wrong.

Quick--what's the dirtiest toilet you've ever seen? My top three: 3) at the Maverick's gas station in Heber, Utah in the summer of 1983, 2) at the bus station in Monterrey, Mexico in the summer of 1991, and 1) between the Legionnaires and Charles bridges in Prague in the summer of 2008.

What is it about summer and human waste that doesn't go together? Maybe it's the heat, I dunno, but if you've ever experienced the "joy" of paddling around in a large dirty toilet you'll understand what it was like for us that day. Melinda chose to keep her head up, as to avoid looking at the water, but I couldn't resist. The water was chocolate-brown with all kinds of trash floating in it--paper, plastic bags, wood chips, feathers and even the occasional dead rat. Who wants lunch?