Turn Right

It is said that life is to short for regrets, so regret nothing and live life to the fullest. I have found no truer a phrase than this. Since a young age I realized that life is fragile and ends instantaneously and after all is said and done your left with memories and what if's. Many experiences have shaped the way I perceive the word and modeled my life after, no better example would be the annual Laughlin trips my family takes.

The summers that my family spends in Laughlin, Nevada are some of the most memorable to me. Growing up it was a rare occasion that allowed me to spend time with my relatives. After my fathers second divorce he became more outgoing when it came to being together as a family which meant I was able to be with my relatives not only on Christmas eve. It's a trip that family, even from across country plan for.

The first trip is the only trip that was and forever will be permanently engraved in my mind. In late April the trip began, my older brother and I were herded into the truck before dawn broke. It was a four hour car ride in a truck that had horrible suspension and the faint smell of spoiled milk; no doughtily from either me or my brother's doing at one point in time. The air-conditioning was working which in and of its self was a miracle, but the radio was non existent. Calling "shotgun" when up against my brother is utterly pointless; as many years have proven, so as usual I sat in the back with little to no leg room, pressed firmly up against the wall from the mounds consisting of a very large water cooler and miscellaneous luggage. My father and brother decided to sing; horribly I might add, to this one CD of Billy Joel. It felt like some sort of cruel punishment to the point that I could only take so much of this ear bleeding interpretation on Piano Man. Sleep was my only escape from the madness in the car.

Once we reached Laughlin and parked at the hotel my body was not prepared for the realization it was about to face. Leaving air conditioning and stepping outside into this "oven" made me question the sanity of anyone who happened to be living out there. After a few more hours of trekking through the labyrinth of slot machines and breathing in enough second hand smoke to make me question whether or not I would become addicted, we arrived to the elevator. Something that seemed to capture my attention was how the floor numbers progressed; it went from twelve to fourteen, only later did I realize this might have been a sign for events to come. Level fourteen was our floor and once we arrived at our room we dropped off everything except item that we need at the lake. It was a swift motion as we scurried back to our truck and left to the lake to launch our watercrafts.

My dad had recently bought two watercrafts under the assumption that each year he would upgrade. Though the thought was noble gesture, they were still ten year old pre-loved models that would go no faster than twenty-five miles per hour. None the less they were two more watercrafts than we originally had. We arrived at Telephone Cove, the dusty plot of land that my family's been commuting to over the years. The water pleasantly surprised me; it was ice cold and crystal clear, nothing of what I have previously imagined. After unpacking and launching the watercrafts, both my brother and father drove me around this massive lake that seemed to go on forever. Legally I was a little to young to actually ride one by myself, but my father allowed me to finally drive one alone. Being that I have always been taller and never quiet looked my age, over the years my father has aloud me to experience many things that I would have missed out on because of my age. After an intense lecture on the dangers of driving them; "They don't have brakes," was the phase my dad seemed to want to drill in my mind as he felt the need to repeat it every second sentence.

My father, still being hesitant, decided that he was going to go out with my brother and me. He borrowed a watercraft from my uncle