- secure year-round parking ($700 value here in the city)
- wireless internet
- health club membership ($800 value)
- pool pass
- one "Spouse Guest Pool Pass" (un-claimed)
- laundry room
- showers & changing room
- 3 haul-outs per year (to clean & inspect your boat bottom- $900 value)
- dock carts (essential for hauling groceries from the parking lot to your slip)
- water (electricity was free last year)
- cable TV
- assistance casting off, and mooring your boat in its slip (if required :-)
A neighbor once calculated what it would cost just buying the Free benefits separately, and concluded half-seriously that we're practically making money by living at the marina.
Must be expensive, right? No, especially remembering that living at my previous marina cost more ... and offered none of the benefits.
-- -- --
I've never used the pool, had my boat hauled nor let my shadow fall near the gym door. But I tune in to the cable channels every day and try to check my e-mail every hour. And of course I use lots of water. Because I'm used to living with those things.
But take a dip in the pool on a sweltering afternoon? Train and work out? Have my boat hauled and the barnacles scrapped off? No way. Sure some of those Free extras sound great ... but I haven't explored the potential because they're new and unfamiliar.
New and Unfamiliar makes me hinky: I don't like change, least of all in my personal routines.
I'm just used to living the same way every day without re-ordering my priorities, so it's enough to know the Freebies are there. Even if I'm not much curious about experiencing some of those extras ... never mind that they're Free, available and included in the slip fee I paid.
Sometimes, I think, it's like the un-used Free gifts we received by accepting Christ; when we left our old habits and familiar routines to move into the Freedom of eternal life ... with the price already Paid In Full.
