Posts Tagged ‘friends’
A Narration
One of our trails that DOESN’T need mowing.
While Cyndie was in the cities providing training for others this week, I was occupied with my usual duties at the day-job. Yesterday’s commute home was smoother than usual for me, probably related to the fact I’d left an hour early to get home and mow the lawn.
We are headed out-of-town again this weekend, only this time we will be visiting George and Anneliese in Princeton on the occasion of their matrimony. Have guitar, will travel.
That means I need to get the weekend projects done in advance.
The lawn was an interesting combination of shriveled brown remnants of grass and a thick green carpet of maturing crabgrass. More often that desirable, it was also a wicked source of dusty dirt sent airborne in an exploding cloud by the three spinning mower blades.
The weed growth sprouting from cracks in the old asphalt of the driveway had started to get annoyingly tall, so I even made a few passes down the middle of the pavement with the deck set as low as it would go.
At the same time, I had an insight that the miniature berms we built up around the uphill portions of the paddock fence line, do not need to be completely ignored by the tractor. With the deck lifted to the highest setting, I steered one wheel up on the high point of the ridge and rode along the length of it.
Whaalaa. It no longer looks entirely neglected. We usually use the power trimmer to cut those ridges, but over a long enough interval that the grass gets outrageously tall and looks absolutely neglected. Why didn’t I think of this before?
When all of our grass had been cut, I parked the tractor outside to be cleaned. A little compressed air did wonders on the layer of dusty dirt that was clinging to every surface. I blew it all airborne, one last time, where most of it had a final chance to end up clinging to my clothes and skin.
When I came in the house, Pequenita was so happy to see me, I thought she might give me a tongue bath.
It took a shower to scrub off the grimy silt that had coated my pores.
Cyndie arrived home with another glowing report of amazing experiences from her day. She was so amped up, especially for someone as fatigued as she was, her narration was delivered at top speed. It was cute.
Today, only two sessions to go for her, then we hit the road.
We are really looking forward to seeing George and Anneliese again, and we are excited to see their newly built home.
Walker Farms, here we come!
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Partly Smoky
Cyndie and I drove up to the lake last night. It was a long day in a car for her, because she started the day yesterday up at the lake. She had gone up on Wednesday with Melissa and daughters, in an original plan to have me drive up to join them Thursday night, but that changed when a memorial for Charlie Weller was announced for Friday.
Charlie was the husband of Cyndie’s close high school friend, LuAnn (Miller). The revised plan had Cyndie riding home with Melissa and the girls yesterday afternoon, taking a moment to freshen up from beachwear to something more appropriate, driving us through afternoon traffic to Eden Prairie from our house, and then heading back to the lake from there, after paying our respects.
LuAnn and Charlie were dating in high school, not long after Cyndie and I had begun our relationship, so my memories of Charlie are wrapped in fragments of events that I haven’t thought about in decades. Even driving on roads in Eden Prairie, now approaching only six years distant from when I drove them almost every day, was feeling a little fractured.
I had to ask if we turned right or left at the intersection by the House of Kai restaurant to get to the funeral home.
In our haste to pull off this plan, we left out one pertinent aspect of determining the optimal route back to northwestern Wisconsin. I was tempted to try the old way we always drove when our kids were little and we regularly made the trip on back roads, but construction and traffic made the city portion an unwanted annoyance.
We paused for dinner at Jake’s to give traffic more time to thin out.
In the end, we chose to skirt the metro area on 494 and head up toward Stillwater to cross into Wisconsin on the new bridge. The resulting country roads we picked provided a rich reward of light traffic, gorgeous rolling hills and spectacular scenery.
We chuckled over the MPR radio weather forecast of “partly smoky” from the many fires burning out west, but when changing stations to our old favorite WOJB as we got far enough north, we heard the same phrase used again. Maybe it is an actual authorized weather service term.
It sure made an impact on the setting sun. It was looking dusky a lot earlier than the actual time of sunset. I held up my phone through the open top of Cyndie’s convertible at 7:52 p.m. and experimented with capturing it at 60 miles an hour.
Then I tried zooming in. It looked like a cartoon drawing of the sun.
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The optics of my iPhone seem to have added special effects without my input. Yes, that’s the sun glowing through the smoky sky.
Between the funky looking sun, my grasping at recollections of interactions with LuAnn and Charlie back in the 1970s, and finally, unexpectedly stumbling upon a portion of our old back roads route, but from a different point, my mind was feeling partly smoky.
“We’ve been here before…”
Yes, we have.
And now we are up at the lake again this weekend.
Ahhhhh. I remember this.
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Now Ten
I didn’t hear anything from Cyndie yesterday, before she headed to the lake with Melissa and her girls, so I’m guessing there was no sign of what happened to our two missing chickens. Now there are ten.
Before Cyndie left, she was very industrious and constructed quite a netted courtyard around the coop for the chickens, so they weren’t confined to quarters all day after all.
The second I got home from work yesterday, I hopped on the lawn tractor to mow all our grass, so I didn’t even chat with Jackie for more than a brief moment to make a plan for Delilah. From the looks of things, I’m guessing she probably assisted in the installation of the coop fencing.
While I was mowing, she headed off to her night job at a local pub/eatery until closing time, so it was just me tending to all the animals, getting them tucked in for the night.
It was a gorgeous August night. It feels a little like nature is at a plateau lately. Even while putting conscious effort into focusing on the immediate moment, there is an unmistakable hint of summer’s end teasing of what comes next.
While walking one of our trails through the woods, I noticed the view through the trees is already opening up beneath the canopy. The late summer shade of our forest has brought an end to many of the lower plants that had started out strong in the early season sun.
That shade provides valuable air conditioning which takes the edge off days like yesterday, when the heat index was climbing into the 90s. It felt a lot hotter while I was commuting through the cities on the steamy pavement than it did when I finally arrived home.
Ahhhh. Living in the country. Huzzah!
It’s a real blessing. But you do have to keep an eye on your chickens.
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Machine Ghost
I don’t know what it is about this place, but my laptop is showing mysterious behaviors when I try using it up at the lake.
It doesn’t make sense to me that it is related to the internet connection, because the symptoms appear so hardware related. It’s as if the touchpad is getting repeated input, despite not being touched.
Maybe it is picking up electrical interference from something here, but I don’t know what that might be. It’s happened in different rooms. Once it starts, relocating doesn’t seem to help. Shutting down and then rebooting sometimes works for a short while, but not dependably.
The phone hasn’t been affected, so I am finger-poking the screen to create this post.
We sat around the fire till late last night and saw stars in the sky, but this morning dawns with a foggy overcast. I need to knock sand off my bike and pack it in the car for the trip home early today, hoping I can get there with time left for the weekend chores I skipped out on with this unexpected getaway.
The many laughs have been well worth the modifications to my routine.
I’m looking forward to getting the laptop back home to see if normalcy returns like it did last time it showed this spooky behavior up here. What are the odds the ghost will travel all that way just to haunt one specific machine?
Don’t bother answering that. It was mostly wishful thinking on my part.
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On Schedule
The first egg appeared yesterday!
Right on schedule, per our calculations. Melissa and Sarah were visiting and Cyndie took them down to check the coop, just in case. The fact that they were present to witness the occasion was fitting, in that last year they were all up at the lake together when I reported the appearance of our first egg from that flock.
The Williams girls are our good luck charms.
The chickens were being very social while the ladies played a few rounds of ladder golf on the driveway. Instead of being intimidated by the flying obstacles, the birds took great interest in the colorful orbs.
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Maybe they thought the golf balls looked like eggs.
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Photo Review
There were so many highlights of our weekend at the lake over the last three days that I am simply going to fill today’s post with some of the images depicting different moments from our adventures.
We were out visiting artistic retail shops in quaint Cable, WI, on Friday and decided to make the short drive further on to see the abandoned resort, Telemark Lodge.
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Peeking in the windows, we noticed head-height smudges on the glass that showed we weren’t the first ones to do this exploring.The facility had been through multiple bankruptcies and left abandoned for years. It looked like someone chained the doors and just walked away, leaving everything as it was.
It was intriguing to see the level of incidental decay of portions of the roof and fascia, the hazardous looking green of residual water in the pool, and the weeds growing through every crack in the concrete walkways.
We got out onto the lake, where the view back toward the empty beach looked like a resort with beach chairs prepared for the day ahead. A walk down the driveway provided a chance to glimpse the juvenile bald eagles perching on branches beyond their nest.
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Flight can’t be far off for these two.
On Saturday afternoon, we got out on the lake for a short happy-hour cruise.
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It was a fine weekend for boating. Back on land at dinner time, the Wilkuses provided pork chops for the grilling.
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Feasting is a regular opportunity with Cyndie’s family. Barb and Mike fit right in.
After dinner we gathered with company around the fire to enjoy the sounds of a wedding reception a few properties down the shoreline from us.
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Unfortunately, the sound didn’t travel our direction, and we barely heard a note.
Not to worry. We put on our own music and lingered long around the mesmerizing visual of burning wood.
It was a picture-postcard perfect summer weekend at the lake with friends and family that I’m hoping will linger in my mind for many days, despite returning to the responsibilities of day-job and home chores.
Home life is what makes going to the lake that much more special!
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Relishing Serendipity
Maybe it was related to our pending departure to the lake with our precious friends, Barb and Mike, that had me feeling particularly giddy, but when additional serendipity iced my cake, I was moved to relish it to the fullest.
Several times this week, we were striving to match schedules with the auto body shop to apply some last touches to conclude, once and for all, the repairs related to my deer incident. It took three more tries than it should have, but yesterday they completed the task and I was on my way to pick it up.
On the drive, I received a call from the hardware store surprising me with news that our trimmer repair was already completed. I would be able to pick it up on my way back home, saving an extra trip.
That eliminated the immediate concern over deciding whether to buy a second trimmer, or not. Another occasion to add to my history of delaying decisions long enough that an answer ends up materializing all on its own.
Now, if all has gone according to plan, this morning we are up at the lake for the weekend again. After the last two visits, when the internet connection was unusually dubious, I have chosen to fall back on my old vacation mode of scheduling a few “Relative Something” posts in advance.
My car is done, the trimmer is repaired, the hay-field is getting cut, and we are off with friends for the weekend.
I am relishing the blessings and last evening’s serendipity to the fullest.
Here’s to practicing the art of soaking up the joys available in the everyday.
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Intentional Community
Wow. Similar endings in both World Cup games yesterday, in that, the final results were determined by penalty kicks. I only got to see parts of both games, due to a special meeting of the Wildwood Lodge Club association members in the morning, and then our trip home in the afternoon, but what I saw was highly entertaining.
There is some work needing to be done to maintain the soundness of the aging lodge building up at the lake, which will require significant financial commitment. At the same time, after over 50-years of existence, the association is facing the aging out of the first generation. Financial burdens are beginning to fall on the multiple sibling families that make up the second generation members.
We are facing some big decisions as an intentional community, about what the six expanding families’ long term wishes and dreams are for the future of this communal vacation paradise.
I walked portions of the property in the early morning on Saturday and captured the some of the quiet beauty.
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I’ve written about Wildwood before, but to summarize for newer readers, it is an association of now 6 families that share a central lodge building, play field, tennis court, gorgeous beach, and boats. When the old fishing resort was purchased by 11 families in the 1960s, it was a number of small, mostly primitive small shacks surrounding the main lodge.
Moms and kids would spend most of the summer there, with dads coming from the Twin Cities for the weekends. Families would rotate cabins throughout the summer and often dined communally around the main fire pit in the central “triangle” on their peninsula of Round Lake.
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In the 1980s, when the member numbers had dropped to seven families, the maturing clans elected to split the property into separate plots in order to allow for enhancements to the living accommodations, while also providing equity for the investment by individual families.
Meanwhile, all the traditions and celebratory community activities from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and for a decade or so, New Year’s Eve, played out with emphatic zest.
It was intentional community at its best. Kids and dogs, and all the good and bad that happens with outdoor space, a lake, and time, became the joys and concerns of all. With this precious group, there were always a lot more joys than there ever were concerns.
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Saturday, in celebration of the mid-week 4th-of-July holiday this year, we broke out the red “bats” shirts and the blue “mice” shirts to split the community into two arbitrary teams for a mostly typical array of challenges for dominance.
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There was a relay race, water-balloon toss, three-legged sack race, shoe kick, watermelon eating contest, and finally, a water scrum to move a greased watermelon across the opponent’s line.
The day of games was topped off by a grand feast in the lodge for dinner, all prepared, served, and serviced by a combined effort of member families, kids included (to varying degrees of success).
Now the community is needing to address what the next version of Wildwood Lodge Club might be?
There are many variables involved, and few, if any, right or wrong decisions to be made. That presents us with a significant challenge.
If Wildwood is to remain some version of its former self, it will involve a big commitment from all the members.
In my mind, big commitments are what it takes for “intentional communities” to survive and to thrive.
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Trip Photos
The 2018 Tour of Minnesota is in the books. It is not unreasonable to say that everyone who participated had as many unique experiences as we did shared ones. We all come to this ride from different perspectives. There is a wide mix of experience. Some have never ridden a multi-day tip before, and some haven’t ever ridden with a large group.
Many riders on the Tour of Minnesota have done this ride together for decades. My perspective about this ride comes from having done it around twenty times, but is limited to having no other multi-day group ride to which I can compare.
I figured out this year that we could use negatives to describe it thusly: The Tour of MN is not TRAM, not BAM, not RAGBRAI, etc. It also occurred to me that we could flaunt the ride as an eco-friendly vacation, in that, we (most of us) park our cars for a week and human-power our way around the state.
At the end of the ride, participants are invited to submit up to three photos from the week for a contest. I picked three from my collection, but quickly realized there were many other shots deserving attention, so I am tossing them out for you to judge.
I hope they help you imagine what my week was like…
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I am always amazed by the visual of our onslaught of bicycles showing up in unexpected locations where riders seek out any-and-every vertical surface to support our machines while we pause to eat.
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This image of Steve is one of my submissions to the contest. I doubt it’s chances in the judging, since it reveals one of the sloppy, wet realities of needing to reach destinations, regardless the weather.
The reflection on the new wet pavement was too irresistible to pass up. I pulled out my camera, despite the odds it would get splattered by the rooster tail spray shooting up off his tires.
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The covered bridge on the Lake Wobegon trail at Holdingford, MN was a real treat.
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I love the expression spontaneously captured by my reach-around snap of the riders behind me on this stretch of road.
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The Penn Cycle “ambulance” was manned by staff new to our ride this year, and they said they had a good enough time to want to return again next year.
I’m pretty sure we appreciated them even more than they did us.
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New Family
Since the day our friends George and Anneliese moved out to a new home they built in Princeton, MN, our basement “apartment” has been mostly unoccupied. Meanwhile, we have been searching for new sitters to care for our animals and house (needing to replace the services of both McKenna and Shelby, who have each moved away to their next life opportunities) to provide cover for times we escape to the lake place or embark on other exotic travels.
Cyndie advertised our search in two primary locations: our veterinary office in Stillwater, and the University of WI, River Falls Ag programs.
I did occasional scans of Craig’s List for pet sitters, and thought I struck gold when a perfect sounding post showed up just an hour prior to one of my visits. She didn’t want to travel very far, though, and told us we were out of her Hudson, WI range of service.
Then Jackie called. She was in school at River Falls and was hoping to find a room for the summer. Jackie has the horse skills we required and boards her own horse just six miles to the east, in El Paso, WI.
In a cosmic twist we never saw coming, when she stopped by to meet us the very first time, Cyndie recognized her date who got out of the car with her. Marcus is the new farrier who has been caring for our horses in the time since George moved.
When Jackie mentioned to Marcus that she was going to visit Beldenville to meet Cyndie, he responded that he knew a Cyndie in Beldenville. They quickly realized she was the same person, and Marcus came along for the introduction.
Some wonderful synchronicity there.
Cyndie and Jackie worked out terms and a rough schedule, and now we have a new housemate added to our cast of characters.
It has been rewarding to watch Delilah and Jackie’s relationship develop as they spend more time together.
In a very short number of days, Jackie has become the latest new member of our ever-expanding family. It’s a bonus that Marcus knows her, too.
We feel lucky to have met them both, and to have their help caring for our horses. And, in Jackie’s case, our home and other animals, too!
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Relative Something 