Mancation hit the road for it’s fourth installment.  This year featured a never before seen 7th member, Tim’s nephew and bad-assed rock rider Jeremy. Another change for this year was the addition of a 4th day.  Everyone could get away on Thursday.

The regular crew:  Tim, Mike, Wes, Doug, Scott, Guy.

We hit the road later in the year than usual, an Oct 13 Thursday getaway.  The weather was terrible, it rained hard all the way up north. And yet, when we floated a five mile section of the Flambeau, just north of Park Falls, the rain relented and while it was a tad gloomy, everything went fine. There are no photos of this event.  From there we rolled to our cabin via Hwy 77.

We once again stayed at our small cabin on Lost Land Lake. It’s hard to pass up the Hayward area, with its proximity to CAMBA (Chequamegon Area Mountain Bike Association) and it’s 300 miles of trails.  Being so late in the year, the scene was much different than the warm glow of autumn, resplendent with trees in full color.  Every leaf was down on the ground this year.  The temps were colder.  The wind howled.

First night’s repast was Mexican by Chef Hankard, who also mixed up some high quality, natural ingredient, completely deadly margs for the group.   The margs were concentrated enough for one senior member of the group to take the next day off, nurse his sore ribs, and go shopping.

Friday breakfast featured Jeremy’s Outstanding omelettes.  Rave reviews by all.

Friday’s ride was reportedly tough, with the wet, downed leaves causing visibility problems and slippage.

Friday dinner was out. We kayaked over to the Lost Land Lake Lodge, had a boatload of fish, watched St. Louis take it to the Brewers in what was becoming a familiar beatdown. Paddled home in the dark, heavy winds, threat of rain, no incidents.

Saturday’s weather improved.  Sunny, very cool, very windy. Saturday breakfast was by Tim, who dished up his version of huevos.  Spicing options were “mildly hot”, “smoking hot”, or as one person put it, “Asian hot”.  A few weenies went with “mild”.  Tim was very, very disappointed in them.  No one went Asian.  Otherwise it went down well with the crowd.

Saturday’s ride was not as hard as Friday’s, and the weather was much better.  Sunny, cool, windy but no problem with that in the trees. The best part was that the leaves had dried out. The crowd breathed a sigh of relief when a “certain delicate person” finished without crashing, bleeding, or requiring a stretcher. Kudos to Jeremy for flashing Wallstreet without a second thought.

Here’s pictures of the cabin and some from the ride.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday dinner was some awesome wheat free pasta and killer sauce.  Who did that?  Wes?  Great salad.  Our own organic farmer Scott made every meal better with the addition of fresh and varied produce.  Saturday night was the only calm night, perfect for late lake kayaking and sitting around the fire.  Or sleeping around the fire in an ice encrusted sleeping bag, as Scott would have it.

We all noticed that Scott doesn’t seem to need a coat.  What’s with that?

Sunday breakfast by Scott, an explosion of vegetables in a potato dish, eggs, bacon.  Delicious.

We broke camp and headed home, stopping for a five mile float on the Namekagon.  Clear weather, again very windy.  This section of the Nam is very scenic, and there was plenty of water.  Pictures from the float:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rejected pics here:

 

 

 

 

Post trip assessment:

1) We need to get our butts up there a week or two earlier

2) It is hard to ride on wet leaves

3) We need a bigger cabin

 

The Goode Family hooked up for this Very Special Occasion of Dave and Nancy’s 65th Anniversary in Minocqua, WI.  Specifically, a very nice house on Squirrel Lake, five miles west of town. In attendance – Dave, Nancy, Paula, Roger, Jeremy, Eileen, Madeline, and Tim.  Here’s a look at our digs.

(Click pictures below to see slide shows.  Note – slide shows use Picasa Web.  Mouse down to the bottom to see controls that can change the speed of the slide show.  Hit “pause” to manually control the speed. Hit <esc> to see a thumbnail view.)

 

 

 

 

We paddled Squirrel Lake on the first morning.  It’s a big lake.  Conditions were close to glassy.

 

 

 

 

 

A few of us hiked around the neighborhood.  An old, not functioning resort named Squirrel Lake Resort was at the end of the road.  A few cabins were being used by the family of the original owners, the rest were more or less “returning to nature”.  Beyond this resort, the last thing on the road was woods, and the dam at the end of Squirrel Lake.  Squirrel Lake became Squirrel Stream at that point.

 

 

 

 

 

As is the Goode habit, we ate ourselves sick morning, noon, and night. It was a dark day in family history when somebody signed up for Costco.  A special cake was just the ticket on the night we celebrated the “65th”.

 

 

 

 

 

A typical fishing day at the Dam

 

 

 

 

 

The Hankard family was up at their yearly YMCA Camp Nawawka camp out this same week, and as it turned out, they were not very far away. We rolled over for a look.  It is sweet.  Nice cabins (esp the Island cabin), interesting lake with super clean water, and an undeveloped shoreline.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Mancation madness.  Attendees:  Mike, Guy, Doug, Wes, Tim, and newbie Scott, replacing Derek (poor guy).

This affair has settled into a comfortable rut.  It goes like this: We book a cabin on a scenic lake up north.  We dial up, and we get, fabulous weather.  We bike cool routes through the woods, we run rivers.  We party-float out on our lake late at night, thoroughly shattering the peace and quiet that other denizens of our lake thought they had a lock on when they bought in. We stay up even later and throw our lit up frisbee in a black hole of darkness until most of us are injured.

This year did not see even a slight deviation from this template.  The temps were in the mid 70’s in the day, cool at night.  Leaves were turning nicely.  Not a drop of rain. The script was followed to the “T”.

One of these years we’re going to go up there and it’s going to be sleeting the entire weekend.

Great food was had each night.  Mike ran lead with a Mexican motif on Friday, employing some of Tim’s Famous Green Verde.  Tim did clean up in an attempt to avoid being Totally Lame after Mike’s tour de’ force. Guy took breakfast lead on Saturday morning.  Eggs, bacon, potatoes.  He knows what we like.

Wes was Iron Chef, Italian Division,  on Saturday night. Scott dished up some homegrown greens that of themselves provided most of us with the majority of vitamins we’ll ingest for all of 2010.  Doug was the man on Sunday morning, with Breakfast Burritos, a big hit.  Tim again cleaned this up.  Thanks for opening 3 cans of beans, Doug.

Our cabin was on Lake John, near Lakewood, WI.  Here’s some scenes of the cabin and the lake itself, taken over the weekend.

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We(*) rode the Nicholet Roche Mountain Bike Trail on Friday, before checking into the cabin. It was reputed to be a tough ride.  Ask Scott more about that.

The trees were ablaze in this part of the woods.

(*) That would be everybody but Tim, who managed to drop his disassembled seat post clamp from the back of the car on the way up. It’s not a good idea to ride your mountain bike without a saddle.

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Saturday was  reserved for a sleepy 8 mile run on the Wolf.  Did I mention that weather was perfect?  The Wolf is very, very scenic.

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We headed home on Sunday and stopped at Standing Rocks Mt. Bike trails near Stevens Point for our final event.  This was good stuff.  Almost no one crashed, except Tim (what a jerk), who was riding a borrowed Klein with citrus juicer seat attachment.

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Personal Damages report:

Bug bites !: at least 15 good ones.  Had to be flies. There were no skeeters.

Injury report: left hip on BC#1. Both shins, both arms, and a bloody thumb on over-the-front BC#2.  Crushed fingers on account of a few guys who throw the Frisbee way, way too hard. Broken glass in finger from picking up broken beer bottle.

Equipment failures: one seat post, one bike light in the drink, one Pyrex dish. (quote of the day, right before “the shattering”:  “Oh, those Pyrex dishes can take jut about anything!”)

Hangovers: yes.

Miscellaneous injury of note:  One fat lip for Mr. Wilson.  It happened in the dark . . in his room . . . late at night.  The one he shared with Mike.  Don’t ask . . . don’t tell.