Year: 2010

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.

Bark River Float

Goodes and Walls decide to float the Bark.  Our original plan was to float the Upper Dells of the Wisconsin, but there’s been a lot of rain.  Many areas of Wisconsin are flooded or under watch.  We noted the water flow, measuring ominously at 6 times the mean, and the admonition in our “Rivers of Southern Wisconsin” that this section of the Wisconsin can be “dangerous at times”.    This, we said, could be one of those times.

So the Bark River it was.   The wind was absolutely howling.  When we dropped a bike at the take-out on the Rock River, waves a foot tall were being pushed upstream, creating the perfect illusion that the river had reversed course.  We put in 6 miles above Ft. Atkinson.  The float went well, although the Bark is wide enough to lack total protection from the wind.  We were duly battered, the worst of it occurring in the last half a mile on the Rock, pushing directly against the gale.  Kudos to Cathy, a newbie kayaker who braved the elements in fine fashion.

Still, it was a good time, all in all.

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September Hailstorm

A typical nighttime thunderstorm gone terribly noisy.  This one started like any other, then built in intensity. Random loud, metallic plinking noises woke us up.  It took a minute to figure out the source.  Soon enough, hail – big hail – came down in sheets.  The noise was deafening.  It probably lasted for about 10 minutes.  We went outside to survey the scene near the end.

We were thankful our cars were in the garage!  Many, many automobiles in a wide area around us, including some belonging to friends, were battered.

Our roof has not yet been inspected, but it’s probably going to have to be replaced.

(It was, along with every single home within a five mile radius.)

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