Give me all your fries

Today I took paddle-girl on our "date" to the paddle club pot luck. I brought a bunch of my turkey rollups in gravy. These were a resounding success, though I did take a bit of good natured ribbing about them not being proper beach food. It was not a great day for a beach party. The temperature never got much over 50 and it was overcast and threatening to rain, fortunately it didn't.

I picked her up in my car at about 10 in the morning. I had the top down, and the windows up with the heater on. She was waiting for me outside of her house. "This is your car?" she asked, with a bit of disbelief.

"Uh, yeah. I can't haul the boats around on it so it's not really practical - but it's really nice. You want the top up?"

"Naw, keep it down. Wow this thing is great." I had pre-warmed the passenger seat with the seat heater. She got in. "Oh, wow - heated seats. I love this. I thought you were poor. You drive that crappy truck and have a cheap boat. I bet you get a lot a girls with this car."

You know, it's weird. I never thought that girls would pay any attention to cars - I always thought it was a guy thing. But girls really do notice this ride. If I had any idea that driving an expensive car would actually be a chick magnet I would have bought one sooner.

Anyway, paddle girl was bringing jojos (fried potato wedges) as her dish to the potluck, and asked me to stop at the local Safeway to pick them up. We went to the deli counter. She told the guy behind the counter "Gimme all your fries." There must have been 4 pounds of them. We took them on a deli tray with a couple of fist fulls of ketchup packets.

"I though this was supposed to be leftovers?" I asked her "What's you do for Thanksgiving?"

"Cheeseburger." She shrugged.

"Not even a turkey sandwich?"

"Naw, just me and my roomates. We need the time to study, not cook." I had long ago forgotten the pressures of carrying a full load of classes.

We arrived at the potluck just as food tables were being set up. The beauty of this arrangement was soon obvious. There are a bunch of club members who are older and do to whole thanksgiving thing, and have a ton of left overs. And there are bunch who are college athletes, with no money and voratious appetites. The kids get fed and the older folks don't need to eat turkey casserole for a week. Win-win.

Maurizio showed up fashionably late, bringing a couple of cases of beer in a cooler. He put the cooler next to the food table, extracted 2 beers from it and made a bee line for Brad. Looks like the two of them will be a couple, if Maurizio has his way.

Debbie sat down with paddle girl and me and proceeded to gossip about folks that she worked with and folks in the paddle club. She quite acted like she was talking with a couple of the girls, which I found amusing. But paddle girl seemed to be annoyed.

Even though this was not a paddling event, some of the guys brought surf boats and were out playing in the waves after lunch.

The event lasted well into the late afternoon. Paddle girl and I headed out about 4 in the afternoon, as the sky began to darken. She was uncharacteristically quiet as we were headed towards Santa Cruz. She is usually quite cheerful. I though something might be wrong.

"Can I ask you a personal question?"

Whoops, I thought. During the day there had been nothing "date" like at all about aour outing. While I am truely flattered that a 20 something college girl might be interested in me - a romantic relationship with her is not what I want. "Sure" I replied to her query.

"Are you gay?"

I tried really hard not to laugh - and almost succeeded. She had been talking with Debbie.

"I mean, you told me about big boobs, and your runaway bride - but, I mean you could have been talking about guys."

"Do I seem gay to you?"

"Well, no, but you can't always tell."

"Good point. No, I'm not gay. I've always had a real weakness for women. My buddy Maurizio, however, has always had a weakess for men. Anyway, at the club meeting last week Debbie started talking to me to find out about Maurizio. Sometimes I'll let girls think he's straight - for the occasional humorous outcomes, but I told her he was gay. She just assumed that since I was with him I was gay, too. That it rubs off somehow. I never corrected her."

"Oh, good." She seemed quite relieved at this. "Hey, you want to pull a dawn patrol tomorrow?" I need to get some more hours on the water.

Oh, no. I really don't want to get up that early. "Can we make it morning patrol?"

"Sure. 8:00?"

Much better. "OK."

"My car's still being worked on. Can you pick up me and my boat?"

I do need to keep from getting entangled with this girl.