Mancation 3.0

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.

Tour de Trempealeau #2

Tour de Trempealeau 2010

This is the 2nd annual Tour.  Trempealeau County is a road rider’s paradise.  Fabulous scenery, high quality pavement (mostly), and traffic volumes so low as to make one laugh.  Our intrepid riders camped in Perrot State Park, one of the more interesting state parks.  The Trempealeau Hotel is nearby and features fine dining, a nice bar, and great views from its deck. Honorable mention goes to Sullivans, the other Trempealeau restaurant.  We ate there one night – everyone ordered the pan fried Walleye, and it was the best Walleye ever.

In attendance this year:   Tim, Eileen, Guy, Ann, and Sam.

Click on thumbnails below to see more Photos.

 

Scenes from camp

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There’s a nice canoe loop right out of Perrot.  It takes about an hour to get around it.  Water levels were high, there was some current in here to fight.

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We drove to Ettrick to begin our first day’s ride.  In the morning we rode “Loop #6”, a 29.5 mile loop that took us through Blair and Hegg. Note: County Road’s “S” and “C” on the second half had a lot of gravel and tar.  It was a somewhat dirty section, and smelled bad too! This was the only bad pavement we saw.

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The second day’s ride began in Independence. We rode Loop #7.  Right when we parked our cars, two locals went by us with a boat on top of their car, no straps or anything holding it down, just the two of them holding it out the window with their hands.  They were armed with a bow-and-arrow type fishing rig, for carp.  Their paddle of choice was a shovel.  (Nice.)  Loop #7, called “Ride with the Eagles,  is one of the best in the county and features “the longest continuous ridge top” of any of the county rides.

 

 

The last day’s riding began in Dodge –  Loop #15.  The section along River Road that parallels the Trempealeau River is particularly sweet.  Check out the bluffs along this road!  The Wilsons headed on home after the morning ride.  Tim, Eileen, and Sam drove up to Arcadia and pedaled loop #7, again

 

The Hankard family came for one night of camping.  They snagged a sweet walk-in site.  We sat around their camp fire that evening and got pretty much savaged by skeeters and biting flies.  Their whole crew kayaked the local canoe trail, and they also rode bikes.  Later, Mike did the canoe trail again with Tim and Eileen.

 

Most of us walked up to the top for the view:

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Mancation #2 – 2009

Guy, Mike H, Doug, Wes, Derick, Tim

Cabin on Long Lost Lake, 20 miles outside of Hayward.

The main event – mountain biking on the nearby Camba trails.  After that, kayaking on the lake, fishing, and laying around the shanty.

The weather was absolutely superb until the last evening.  A front blew in, the temps dropped.  By morning it was cold and the rain was steady.  We had planned to float the Flambeau on the way home, but the crappy weather combined with a dangerous looking thunder cell moving our way talked us out of it.

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Sylvania Lakes Camp with Davie and Tommye

August trip, great weather.  One portage in to our camp.  Day trips to other lakes.  I hauled my kayak in to the first lake, which I’ll never do again.  Those things are a nightmare to portage.

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