Captain Jed

Today the weather is beautiful. In one week we will be flying out of here. I'm getting pretty excited about seeing my nephew and his wife and their children. I know that we are going to have a good time. Kristin is a little frightened (not the right word) about the unknown, of traveling to the islands without Jed being with us... I do know that Jed would want us to go and have a fun, relaxing, laugh a lot, time. I know that he would be thrilled to see Kate and Russell, and their children. As usual the hard part will be getting there. I know that Jed loved the islands. Jed liked being on boats. Every year down at the river, Susquehanna yacht club, takes children from Hershey hospital, and takes them out on their boats. They fish and swim and cruise around in the boats. This really was started because of Jed. Dave Leiphart, who used to work with Kristin and I belongs to the yacht club. One day he said that the club would like to do something for the kids. He knew that Jed had been fighting Leukemia for some time. Kristin gave Dave the names of the people that he needed to talk to to get boating day started. It was and is a huge success. I think that it is going into its sixth year. The people from the yacht club are awesome. I think that Jed has been there three times. The first year we had a great guy take us around the lake. Unfortunately I don't remember his name. The next two times we went we rode in Daves boat. It is an awesome Bayliner boat. It is about 30 feet long with a cabin. New it would cost about $80,000. The first thing Dave did was ask Jed if he wanted to drive the boat. Jed, as always, had no fear what so ever. He got right behind the steering wheel and steered the boat. The funny part was Dave just left and went down in the cabin. Jed was all smiles. I was the one worried. I kept and eye out for anything we might hit. After about ten minutes I noticed that there was some logs floating in the lake right in front of us. They were about 200 yards ahead. I didn't tell Jed to turn the boat because I don't know the lake like Dave does. There is a lot of rocks in the lake. I finally told Dave that he should probably come up for a minute and take a look. He did and steered away from the logs. He said that we definitely did not want to run over stuff like that. After that he went back down. It was an awesome day. I know that Jed had a blast. Jed and Dave were the only ones who drove the boat that day. On the way back to land Jed wanted to run the boat faster. Dave had to tell him we couldn't, that it would not be that safe with all the other boats. Besides it cost a fortune to run any boat. A boat that size is crazy. The yacht club pays for everything. The last time Jed went was a couple of years ago. He could have gone every year but he said that sense there is only limited spots on the boat and he had already done it three times, that he wanted the other kids to do it and have fun. I know that he really enjoyed it. Thanks Dave and thanks to the all the people at the Susquehanna yacht club. You guys have made a lot of kids happy. Some of those children are not with us physically anymore. Anyway it won't be long until we will be boating again and Jed will be right there with us. Goodnight