Laundry Day

The marinas we stay in when on vacation or cruising usually have nice facilities. This means there are showers and bathrooms, laundry rooms with washers and dryers and sometimes boaters’ lounges with “take-one, leave-one” book shelves and Wi-Fi. The laundry facilities are usually coin operated and yesterday I went back and forth with several loads of wash. The last time, I had loaded the machine and realized that I had left my bag of quarters on the boat so I asked out loud who would lend me $1.50 so that I could start the machine. A nice gentleman and fellow boater named Dane graciously lent me the money. When I returned for my laundry I thanked him and repaid the loan (with interest!).

I then turned around only to realize that the machine I had used was open and my laundry gone. In this particular laundry room there are signs saying that if a load is finished and you are waiting to use the machines, you may remove the clean laundry and place it in the wire baskets provided or place it on the folding table. Well, my laundry was nowhere to be found… I finally told one of the dock masters who happened to come in that I seemed to have lost a load of laundry. Then the same man that had lent me money earlier jumped up from the chair where he had been in deep concentration with his laptop and said, “wait a minute…”.

When I needed to load my laundry, I had emptied a machine that was finished and placed the laundry in a wire basket. Well, Dane only remembered which machine was his, not what he was washing. So when my load was finished, he just emptied “his” machine and stuck the laundry in the dryer. So there it was; my panties and bras, nice and dry for me to fold. And his wash, still wet, sitting in the wire basket….

We meet new friends every day, but usually not someone who BOTH lends you money AND handles your underwear in the same day!