Month: September 2014

Can it be seven years?  Mancation is showing it’s age and the effects of pestilence and injury.  Last year I didn’t make it – some horrid bug laid me low.  I heard after the fact that Scott came, then laid around on the couch, ill.

This year the our numbers were further decimated.  Wes was suffering from his 8th or 9th concussion and a broken collarbone.  Jeremy had a shoulder and ankle injury, combined with sleep deprivation from working 70 hours a week.  Scott also bowed out.

So it was down to Mike, Doug, Guy, and Tim.  I think that Mike and Doug are the only ones who have never missed a year.  Guy is a close second, having missed only one year, maybe?

No one planned a damn thing this year, we were so up in the air, so at the last minute we decided to eschew a cabin and just camp. Hartman Creek fit the bill:  close at a mere 100 miles, with biking and boating nearby.  I hauled my camper up to stand in for a cabin.

And it worked to great effect.  The weather came and went.  It was cool and it rained at night. Despite the late date, the skeeters were out in force, so for three nights in a row we partied it up in the camper.  Ranger Betty came around one night and had her pistol half out of the holster before we turned it down, just in time. (Later she told me she actually didn’t hear the music at all,  just Doug – all the way back at the Ranger shack.)

Final tally: lots of mountain biking.  Hartman has enough of it to make it worth going that way.  One lake float, two river floats: the Little Wolf (aka River of Crashing and Bashing), and the Mecan (River of No Worries.)  Lots of music and good food.  One swollen lip, one cracked boat.  And the distinction of “lowest cost trip ever”.

Here’s the pics, in one big chronological schmear.