Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Real Joy
We are up at the lake for our US holiday weekend closest to Independence Day and large numbers of family are in attendance. That makes for special times. Even though the earth is shaking in California and stupid statements fly in Washington, D.C., our attention is localized in the here and now.
Last night the cousins and friends gathered around a table for a rousing game of “Catch Phrase” which blossomed into a classic manifestation of unbridled joy.
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It’s as much fun to watch as it is being a contestant.
Today, the seven families of our Wildwood Lodge Club will congregate at the lodge for a flag raising and National Anthem followed by a parade up and down the driveway. Then, the games commence. Fierce competitions of coordination and silliness between teams labeled “bats” and “mice” as we toss balloons, kick shoes, and gobble watermelon.
Next, there will be a massive community feast in the lodge and maybe a few fireworks after dark.
Laughter abounds throughout it all.
Extended family, and friends and neighbors who have always been close as family, sharing time and activities together in the glorious lakeside summer sunshine.
Even though there are harsh realities in the world, moments of our freedom and independence can be celebrated among smaller communities who know how to show love to others and be loved ourselves.
We are very lucky, and I absolutely cherish these times when we get to be at the lake with the people who know us best, experiencing real joy and sharing so much genuine love.
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Passing Time
Just like that, another day is gone. Independence Day is over. The weather at the lake was a mix of perfectly summerish and occasionally rainy, and I didn’t do much beyond wallowing in the luxury of the fact it was a day off from the usual routine.
I played some guitar, read some, napped briefly, played cards, and eventually helped inflate some Rave Sports water toys.
Passing time with no agenda.
Almost as if there was some meaning to my doing so.
If there is, I’m successfully remaining oblivious to it.
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Starting Early
Cyndie and I left for the lake after I got home from work yesterday. We had no idea that Wednesday night the 3rd of July would be the time when towns would hold their fireworks shows in Wisconsin.
It seemed to me that traffic was flowing fairly well for the night before a holiday that was providing a 4-day weekend for most folks. Maybe the people who were going to be out of town had already left. We only ran into two backups.
The first one was at a roundabout, of all places. The very system that was created to minimize congestion at an intersection was not achieving its potential when we arrived. There was no zipper merging happening because someone in our lane was intent on waiting until no other cars were anywhere in sight before executing their right turn.
The second backup happened as we approached Shell Lake. Several hours before darkness was to arrive, officials had already closed Hwy 63 and were detouring traffic through town to create a safe zone for the fireworks show. We didn’t wait around to see the spectacle. It seemed a day early to us, but maybe it had something to do with the holiday falling on a Thursday.
We stopped for dinner at a local diner/gas station that won our hearts after our first visit there last year. In this case, the second time wasn’t the charm. It seemed so dang impressive the first time we ate there. Last night, our experience was surprisingly underwhelming.
It’s all relative, I tell ya.
Makes me want to try seeing things with the joy and wonder of the first time, regardless of how familiar it may have become. I’ll have a good chance to practice this over the next few days. We are up at Wildwood for the annual 4th of July festivities, including the long tradition of games between the “bats” and “mice” teams.
Water balloon toss; shoe kick; watermelon eating contests; relay racing.
We’ve been through this routine so many times, it is easy for me to become jaded over it. When it was still fresh to me and I was much younger, I was so moved by the experience that I wrote a song about it. The excitement has faded as I have aged.
This year I have a new goal to look at the weekend with the wonder I felt the first few times I came up here and to send a lot of love to all who show up to participate. What’s the worst that could happen? I might have as much fun as the year I wrote that song.
Go, team, go!
Happy US Independence Day everyone!
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Look Closer
Just as soon as I go spouting off about there being few raspberries on our bushes, I discover that I was wrong. While mowing the lawn yesterday afternoon, I noticed the potential bounty that Cyndie was referring to the other day. Closer inspection revealed a good number of future berry blossoms developing on bushes in a variety of locations around the yard.
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The fruit might be ripening later than usual, but it does appear that there could eventually be a similar yield to last year’s big volume. That would be a real treat.
I rushed home from work yesterday to mow in order to be free to head to the lake this afternoon for the annual weekend of 4th of July games at Wildwood.
As I mowed past the fence-post where our rain gauge is mounted, I noticed an inch of water collected there. Our yard is an interesting mix of spots that are very wet and spots that look like they are starting to get too dry. Why is it always one or the other extreme around here?
Delilah will stay home this weekend with Maddie, who is caring for our animals while we are gone. There will be a full house up at the lake, and plenty of neighbors will bring their dogs, so we are going to simplify our visit by leaving Delilah behind.
I hope there won’t be too many fireworks popping off while we are away, so Maddie won’t have to endure the endless barking that Delilah does in response to the sounds. Of course, there’s always the possibility that the dog will behave like a little angel when someone other than us is taking care of her.
That kind of thing has been known to happen… However, I won’t be holding my breath in anticipation.
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Latest Observations
Okay, I admit it. I am officially getting old. In the good ol’ days, my lovely wife luxuriated in the summer heat while I sweltered. We rarely turned the air conditioner on, preferring to let all but the most humid of summer days fill our living quarters for her comfort.
It’s no longer like that today.
I walked in the door yesterday and immediately sensed she had turned the air conditioner on again, after we had opened up the house on Sunday night. It was cold enough for me that I needed to put on long sleeves.
I am now the one who gets cold while Cyndie is too warm.
It reminds me of the decorative flowers Cyndie planted around the grounds. The petunias appear to be perfectly happy, but the marigolds haven’t changed since they were put in our soil. Maybe the marigolds were old.
Or maybe it’s just been too cold for them.
Last weekend was basically our first real heat of the summer. Progress for many of the growing plants around here is looking rather stunted, now that I think about it.
The old saying, “knee high by the fourth of July” is just not happening this year. Fields that did get planted are all maturing just about as fast as Cyndie’s marigolds.
Our wild raspberry bushes looked like they weren’t going to bear fruit at all until just recently. I haven’t seen it for myself yet, but Cyndie says they are just starting to blossom with hints that there might be a lot of berries. I love her optimism, but I fear the amount and size of berries are more likely to be less than impressive, given the stunted growing conditions.
Maybe I’m not getting old. It’s probably just the type of weather we’ve been having.
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Recovery Day
After an incredibly full day on Saturday, yesterday was a blink of doing next to nothing and seeing the minutes on the clock disappear just as fast. I don’t understand how that works.
The morning dawned with a gusting wind just ahead of a very dark thunderstorm, which forced Cyndie and me out of bed to race around picking up things that had been left outside at the end of the celebration evening. Once things were in order, Cyndie offered me the choice of going down to open the coop and feeding the chickens or going inside to feed the dog and cat.
I felt like feeding Delilah and ‘Nita required less thought, so chose that option. Seconds later, the rain began to pour down. Cyndie got soaked.
Two storms moved over us yesterday, but neither seemed particularly threatening. However, after the second one, Cyndie discovered that the top of one of our big oak trees had snapped off and was tipped down across the shortcut trail to the barn. I refused to take a picture because there was no way I could capture the actual detail of what happened. It’s too big. There’s no angle to show the actual size. It’s in the middle of so many other trees you can’t discern which leaves are which.
That never stops Cyndie.
Dealing with that new calamity will have to wait. Yesterday I squeezed in a nap and slowly chipped away at rediscovering order and routine from the aftermath of Saturday’s big event.
Let’s relive a couple of fine moments again…
I knew that we would continue straight on that road, but was all too happy to pause while the details were confirmed. At least I didn’t call for a wrong turn at this junction.
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It was a very happy birthday celebration and it was a great honor to be able to share it with my treasured friend, Paul Keiski.
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Epic Ride
It started out nice enough at six in the morning yesterday. Five riders rolling through Paul’s Linden Hills neighborhood, fresh and ready for the symbolic 60-mile bike ride from Paul’s house to mine. None of us had asked for a day with a heat index at or above 100°F.
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But that’s what we got. I’ll just say this: it was the kind of heat that saps your energy while you are just sitting there, let alone intensely exercising. I’m not going to mention the error in judgment I made in the last miles near home when I said to go right when we were supposed to turn left.
I blame it on oxygen deprivation. I plead insanity.
On the good side, it was brand new pavement that rolled smooth as silk.
We paused in Prescott, WI for refreshments and the ice cooler turned out to be a treasured perch.
At one point, Paul stepped out of the Holiday Station store and gushed, “Have you been in the beer cave?”
Three of us hustled in to check it out. Oh. My. Gosh. There was a temperature drop of about sixty degrees. I thought, “This can’t be good for me,” but it sure was refreshing. We walked around the stacks of bottles and cans for a while and dropped our body temperature a shocking amount.
As I stepped out of the cooler, I asked the attendant, “What do we owe you for ten minutes in the cooler?” She just gave us an odd look and shrugged us off.
We finally arrived at Wintervale in the waning moments before almost 100 guests were expected to start arriving. I’d share pictures with you here, but I didn’t take any. In fact, even though I don’t drink any alcohol, most of the afternoon and evening is pretty much a blur. Hours passed like minutes, I barely had a chance to complete a thought in conversation, and I had a wonderful time basking in the glow of love bestowed upon me as one of the birthday boys.
Thank you to all who showered us with love yesterday. I’m feeling particularly blessed and looking forward to laying low today in recovery from riding for hours in humid heat and finishing the day with a massive dose of social interaction.
I’m almost feeling my age this morning.
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Party Day
It’s the big day! I’m gone biking by the time you read this, with Paul and three friends, Dan, Bill, and Brad, on our way from Minneapolis to Wintervale for the gala celebration of Paul’s and my 60th birthdays.
We’ll have 60 miles under our belts and be ready to party before guests start to arrive, if all goes as planned. The only thing I forgot to bring with me to Paul’s house yesterday was my water bottles. Luckily, they had a couple I could borrow.
We are hoping to ride early to beat the expected heat. Happy 60th to us!
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Celebrations Begin
I think I’ve mentioned before that birthday dinners are a staple tradition in Cyndie’s family, and we doubled up yesterday, dining out twice. Barry and Carlos were sweet to travel all the way from Boston to help celebrate my big 6-0 milestone, and Cyndie brought them directly from the airport to take me out to lunch.
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Salmon salad! One of my favorites that won out over fish and chips.
For dinner, the whole crew, minus nieces and nephews, met downtown in Minneapolis on the rooftop of UNION Bar & Grill. As the sun dropped below an adjacent building, they rolled back the glass roof so we were able to dine under the evening sky.
Festive!
Thank you to Barry, Cyndie, Steve, and Sara for contributing photos!
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My Turn
Today it is my turn to join the club of 60-year-olds. Sixty years ago today I showed up as the latest addition to the Hays clan. Luckily, we tend toward not remembering our moment of arrival, but I bet I was kicking and screaming until that warm blanket swaddled me tightly. By my calculations, I have just completed a third stint of becoming a twenty-year-old.
I’m pretty confident that I am twenty years smarter than I was when I reached forty.
I will always remember the spectacular celebration of my fortieth birthday, because my life-long chum, Paul Keiski, and I combined our adjacent birthdays with a plan to thwart our wives trying to hold a surprise party for us. We announced a plot to do a nighttime 40-mile bike ride figuring nobody would be crazy enough to participate.
Turned out there were a lot more crazy people than we accounted for, so a fabulous group night-ride became an annual necessity for years after. That night when Paul’s birthday ended and mine started, we decided we had each ridden 20 moonlit miles by that point, so together, forty had been achieved.
Now, twenty years later, we gave in and let our wives plan a celebration event. I fear it may dwarf either of our weddings in terms of their efforts to prepare food, beverages, and entertainment for a wedding-sized guest list.
Once again, Paul came up with the perfect antidote for too much party. This time we are going to do all the miles.
Turns out, the distance between Paul’s house and Wintervale Ranch, location of the joint-birthday gala, is sixty miles. He suggested we ride our bikes to the party.
Count me in!
Pedaling from the biggest city in Minnesota to our country sanctuary is symbolic in more ways than just the mileage for me. Joining Paul for the journey is icing on the cake.
It is a precious treat to be sharing the process of aging with a pal to whom you’ve been connected since grade school.
Happy Birthday to Paul (yesterday) and me (today)!
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