Ahoy, Keep an Eye Out for Rough Water

PASO ROBLES — “Sing to me, baby,” I say. “Show me what you can do.”

The rental speedboat lifts out of the water like a dragonfly--on gossamer wings, zipping across the calm lake. I’m feeling pretty good, off to surprise the kids with this, the last available ski boat of the day. With only me in the boat, it’s soon skimming along at 45 mph. On water, that feels like 90.

“Sing to me, baby,” I say to the boat’s impressive engine.

And with that, the big inner tube I’d also rented flies up out of the bow, catches the sharp edge of the windshield and deflates like a cheap balloon.

Something’s singing to me, all right. It’s the throaty gasp of a $200 toy inner tube.

So I circle back to the marina, get another inner tube from the guy--”I’m going to have to charge you for that”--and head out again for our lakeside cabin.

You know how it is when a day starts badly and you suddenly get the feeling you’re in a bad-luck rut, that this one little piece of bad luck isn’t the only one of the day? Bad luck is lining up for you. Feel it in your gut. Just wait.

“Dad, you got a boat?” the boy asks excitedly when I reach the cabin.

“And two tubes,” I say.

“Yes!”

“One has a hole in it,” I explain.

“The boat?”

“No, the inner tube,” I explain.

Boats, they like to say, are just holes in the water into which you pour money. And kids. Sandwiches. Drinks. A wife or two. Four kinds of sunscreen. Towels. Cameras. A change of clothes. A radio.

By the time you put all that in the rental boat, there is little room for the guy who rented the boat. I step into the boat and stub my toe on a ski.

“You OK, Dad?”

“Never better.”

Because, like Jesus, I am never better than when I am on the water. Never happier. Never more away from things.

Even sober, I don’t feel sober. Step onto a boat, and you get that two-drink feeling without the two drinks. Every hour is happy hour. That may be why, in those summer blockbusters, the shark always wins.

“Someone untie the ropes?” I ask.

“Sure,” says the boy, in an act of volunteerism rarely seen on land.

“I love boats,” the boy says.

And soon we’re out on the water, our sun-kissed crew of summer travelers, two families up on Lake Nacimiento for fun, fresh air and a little skiing.

“You don’t want to wake-board?” the boy asks.

Few things race my heart like water-skiing or tubing, but the wake-boarding fad hasn’t really found me yet.

Far as I can tell, wake boarders stand upon a board and across the boat’s wake like an out-of-control driver over a median, going airborne, then crashing hard and inelegantly.

The slalom skier, meanwhile, turns a smooth apostrophe in the glassy lake, sending curtains of water 30 feet high. If wake-boarding is the Backstreet Boys, slalom skiing is Fred Astaire.

“You’re not going to wake-board, Dad?” my daughter asks.

“Maybe later,” I lie.

I’ve tried wake-boarding. In Tahoe last summer, the boat pulled me underwater like an 80-gallon drum. Submerged, I passed more water than Hoover Dam. Algae began to coat my teeth. A bluegill swam up my nose.

“This isn’t working,” I began to think after 15 seconds under the frigid lake.

“You OK, Dad?” the boy asked when my body finally surfaced.

“No,” I said. “But I caught a nice bluegill.”

Like many master criminals, I have the aural awareness of a werewolf. I can hear a scream before it leaves the lips. I can hear a siren before the cop does.

“Oh, Lord, he’s coming for us,” I say.

“Who?”

“The ranger.”

Just past Christmas Cove, the ranger begins to chase us. Puts on his flashing blue light and whoop-whoops the siren. Everyone on the little lake pauses to watch.

“I’m pulling up along side you,” the ranger announces.

And I think: “Finally, they’re going to arrest my kids. Finally.”

They’ve been asking for it, my kids. The way they slurp their cereal. The way they attempt to talk to me when they’re brushing their teeth. Especially the way they leave junk all over the house, despite being warned repeatedly by exasperated parents, sore-backed and aging.

“Does that belong there?” you ask a kid repeatedly. Repeatedly, the kid will say, “yes.”

“See your license?” the ranger says.

For some reason, he’s talking to me.

This is surprising because there are other, bigger crimes happening everywhere and in broad daylight. For example, Ethan Hawke is publishing a big-time novel. This fall, Deion Sanders will be a regular on NFL pregame shows on CBS.

Worst of all, I have this brother-in-law who’ll pour ketchup all over a $20 piece of steak. Been doing it for years. He’s a serial killer of sirloin, this guy.

Point is, stuff that should be stopped is rarely stopped. You want crime? You should see what they’re charging me for this ski boat.

“Can I see your license?” the ranger says again.

The infraction? The boy and his buddy Matt were dangling their legs over the back of the ski boat in a way the ranger ruled dangerous. Fair enough. I would’ve guessed a warning.

“You ever give warnings on something like this?” I ask.

“Zero tolerance,” the ranger says.

Zero tolerance. Usually, I’m all for it, especially when it involves someone else.

Of course, the cynic in me says that this ranger is preying on tourists, that he zeros in on rental boats because the locals would give him more grief.

Besides, the only green in these sun-parched hills is from all the cash we’ve spent in the past week.

But that’s the rationalization of a rich man, the kind I abhor. I bite my tongue and take the ticket.

“You can call this number here on the back,” the ranger says.

“Thanks.”

“Sorry, Dad,” the boy says as the ranger pulls away.

“Who knew?” I say, poorer and a little wiser.

After a moment, the chatter returns to the luckless SS Minnow, our jinxed but happy rental vessel.

“Dad, where’s my towel?” the little girl asks.

“Mom, where’s my sunscreen?” her friend Hannah asks.

“Who ate my sandwich?” I ask a boy with a mouthful of bread.

And, slowly, our little summer voyage resumes.

Chris Erskine’s column is published Wednesdays. He can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.