So this John Marley. He is a self-declared cousin of Bob

So this John Marley. He is a self-declared cousin of Bob.

Yesterday he paddled the 1 nm to Ad Astra and I bought two huge handfuls of limes off of him for about $3.50 and I gave him an icy cold beer. We chatted for a long while. He is amazingly fit. 52 years old, but doesn't look over 28 except in the eyes.

He told me he would be coming by with Mangos today and I agreed to buy some.

He held out a basket of them, and I said I couldn't eat that many. He smiled and said okay how about 6 for 10 EC. That is $3.50. I said sure, looked through my cash and 20 EC was the smallest note I had. But so what? $7 for 6 Mangos delivered? For sure. I grabbed another big cold beer and wrapped the note around it.

I didn't ask for change or gesture. But John being a great guy started looking around his boat trying to figure out how to make it more fair in his mind. So he gave me 2 more Mangos. We chatted a while longer and said good bye. He paddled a bit and came back and gave me those two large grapefruits. We chatted again and said goodbye again. Then after a short paddle he came back and asked if he could take a bag of trash to shore for us no charge. Sure. Chatted and said goodbye for a 3rd time. This time he was satisfied and made his way at no more than 1 knot against the headwind to return that 1 nm.

Originally posted on Facebook on March 12, 2017.