We enjoyed our time at Newport Beach and Balboa Island. That area is a city of canals lined with multimillion dollar properties and boats; a never-ending panorama of lovely architecture and flowering plants and trees. I don’t know if I could live here, but it’s sure a nice place to visit for awhile. The community has many public docks that make going ashore easy. I admire a place that provides these kinds of amenities to the public. It’s almost like they welcome you to come here!

Way back in Channel Islands Harbor we noticed that most of the homes in that area came complete with one of those little Duffy electric boats. I’ve seen those at the boat show in Seattle and was always a little confused by them. Who owned such things? Where did they use them? They seemed quaint and a little bit boring. But down here in canal cities, they make a lot of sense. They are one step up from a nice dinghy with their weather-proof enclosures; like little floating sunrooms. They are adorable. People have dinner in them, go out together to the ‘dock and dine’ establishments, have small parties in them, and generally use them as easy and comfortable transportation along the canals. You kind of need something like that here, so I would hope that if you spring for one of these 15 MILLION dollar homes all crammed up next to each other, you’d get a little Duffy boat free with purchase.

This one is ‘Take Me Ohm’.

I can’t see this little Duffy’s name, but do you notice how their big powerboat matches their house? Man. That’s something. I’d like to see the towels and linens in this place. 

At least half of these boats have names that allude to their being electrically powered. We are always entertained by boat names and these have given us a lot of amusement. We saw “Ohm 4 Now”, “Tres Ohmbres”, “Pacific Current”, “Watter Dance” and so many more, some more clever than others. It’s almost like the Duffy boats without these electric names had been left out of the club.  I think if I had a little Duffy boat I might be tempted to name it something like ‘Ohmer Simpson’, or ‘Joule of the Nile’, or maybe ‘Current Sea’.. Get it? Perhaps Mike was less amused by these little plays on words than I was. He would name his ‘Nicholai’s Revenge’. You might have to look that up to understand it. (As an aside, he also named our Hydrovane ‘Carly’, after Carly Simon who wrote the song ‘You’re so vane’. You see how he rolls?  He wants you to have to dig deep for your chuckles. Sometimes his associations are too loose even for me.)

Our chosen stand.

While in Newport Beach we had to pay homage to the TV show ‘Arrested Development’ by seeking out a frozen banana stand on Balboa Island. Our kids can beat just about anyone in ‘Arrested Development’ trivia, and if that’s not something to crow with pride about I don’t know what is. We found two ‘original’ frozen banana stands and went with the one that most closely matched Mike’s shirt. We ordered the classic frozen banana covered in a chocolate flavored shell and rolled in crushed nuts. They were delicious. Both stands have been around for decades because, you know, “there’s always money in the banana stand”. [vsw id=”04SLXwjJvqg” source=”youtube” width=”425″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”]

MMM. Frozen banana with chocolate and crushed almonds. Pretty nifty!