Posts Tagged ‘lake place’
Three Biketeers
Day two of Paul’s, Randy’s, and my biking-instead-of-golfing adventures up at the lake place was a grinding success. Did I say grinding? I meant grand success. Honestly, the conditions were better than average, practically superb for the combination of riding we had in mind. My only issue was that my legs felt odd at the beginning of the day and as the afternoon progressed the muscles kept threatening to cramp up.
I’m guessing I taxed myself a bit too much on our opening day gauntlet of rocks and roots navigating the Makwa trail. Instead of allowing for a day of recovery, we three biketeers set out midmorning for some smooth riding on the road bikes. Once again, I demonstrated my penchant for having my sense of direction reversed.
My intended route would have basically formed a rectangle on the map but I missed one turn while rolling along and chatting with the guys. Remaining oblivious at the time, I was surprised to reach a “T” with McClaine Road again, which we had turned from miles before. Our route had circled back.
Knowing I’d missed a turn we reversed direction and backtracked. I was mistakingly looking for the Chief River Road I wanted on our right. When we came upon it –and of course, it was farther away than I thought it should be– I discovered my sense of our position on the planet was backward again and it was a left turn, not a right.
The rest of the road ride was without confusion and we enjoyed a triumphant return to Wildwood where we found the sign was showing a new skew of its own.
We switched to our off-road bikes again for the afternoon and I finally got my first exposure to the CAMBA trail loops by the hospital, appropriately named, “Hospital Trail.”
It lived up to the reputation I had heard for a couple of years that Hospital Trail would be much more to my liking. Sharing a variety of the fun features of the more aggressive Makwa trail near us, the Hospital trail in Hayward offers a few loops that meander through a nice section of pine forest. There are a fair number of hairpin turns but it has far fewer sharp changes in elevation or complicated rock obstacles and almost no tree root hazards.
It probably shouldn’t have been as taxing on my aging leg muscles as it was but for the rest of the day I found myself tetering perilously close to having my quads and calves seize up at one wrong move.
Pickle juice, I was told. No, I erred by asking for a scoop of two different flavors of ice cream from West’s Dairy. The serving size in the cup could have fed a family of five. I ate it anyway. Raspberry Delight with Mint Chip.
It’s what a biketeer would do!
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Any Day
Lately, I have noticed I am experiencing a pang of underlying guilt over not being fully aware of what day of the week it is. It is commonly expressed that the absence of a work schedule in one’s life will bring about this phenomenon of losing track of the days. It’s truly a luxury to not know. I feel rich beyond my means when I find myself basking in the gentle breezes through the trees at the lake on a Sunday evening when the majority of weekend vacationers have returned to their homes.
There were days throughout my years of gainful employment when I suffered under the pressure of showing up day after day for the grind of my multiple different day jobs. At the same time, I found myself rather well-suited to such a routine of scheduled days. I mostly looked forward to seeing people and tending to whatever business situations required attention.
I wasn’t very fond of being told the toilet wasn’t working in one of the restrooms, but most other issues were useful fodder for doing what I had been hired to do. It’s a bit of a shame that some issues continue to show up in my overnight dreams. Saturday night it felt like I worked hard all night long through multiple dreams. I was trying to train a new employee while simultaneously attempting to cope with other side issues and periodically straining to figure out why I was back at work again after having been gone for so many months.
I found myself semi-lucidly questioning the dream whenever I surfaced toward consciousness through the night and then regretting when a return to deep slumber brought the same dream back to right where it had left off.
During my working years, I had moments of envy for the people I knew who no longer noticed what day of the week it was, but I don’t recall ever begrudging them that luxury. Now that I have achieved that same privilege, I feel bad about celebrating it when so many others still have to log their time.
Facing the undeniable shared challenges of showing up on the first day of the work week. People compare stories of what each other’s weekend entailed and commiserate over the concept of a week ahead. Then, the survival strategy of lauding the midweek milestone of “hump day.” Finally, the thrill of reaching the last day of the week with its lure of soon-to-be-reached days away from the job.
This morning is simply another “any day” of the week for me. Cyndie will be staying up at the lake longer this week and I am driving home today with her mom. I’ll be on my own for a few days at Wintervale before heading right back up on the same day that Cyndie gets a ride home with a friend.
We’ll be like ships passing in the night on any old day of the week.
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Superb Escapades
Superlatives. Yesterday was as wonderful as the day before and served to amplify the pleasantries we enjoyed tenfold. The weather helped to accommodate anything and everything we found to do, including replacing an ailing screen door.
It looked simple enough until the door Mike and I picked up at the lumber yard in Hayward proved to be an inch taller than the one we were replacing. It appeared the old one had been cut down to fit so we borrowed a circular saw and did the same thing. After much searching, we found an old can of still viable stain and successfully completed the unplanned project.
We also received new insights about our trees from an arborist whose services were enlisted to analyze the health of trees around the group of properties that form the Wildwood Lodge Club, of which Cyndie’s family are long-time members. Near the end of winter last year there was a storm that brought down a lot of big branches and a few trees. The size of some of the limbs was enough to inspire seeking professional advice.
Between those events, the day allowed for paddle board and kayak excursions, we swam and sunbathed, and played a mini-tournament of games. Horseshoes, ladder golf, corn hole bag toss, darts, cards, and an encore round of “Fishbowl,” the triple-game of Taboo, Charades, and Password.
On a walk around the property, we twice enjoyed a close encounter with a doe with three very young fawns. They did not stray far after we came upon them the first time such that we found them again, a little further along in the woods where they were munching on ferns.
Cooking dinner on the fire was so good on Friday that we ended up doing it again yesterday.
Today will be a smidgeon less superlative as we adjust to the early departure of our friends, Barb and Mike as they head back for time with their grandkids this afternoon.
Superb, nonetheless.
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Nature’s Best
Stormy skies can be a scary thing for some people but rainclouds also provide the backdrop for one of nature’s best spectacles. The weather pattern yesterday was a little chaotic with many periodic episodes of rain rolling by amidst hours of otherwise sun-bathed summer scenes.
It was the perfect recipe for a rainbow and that is precisely what we got.
Another highlight of the day involved multiple viewings of videos captured when Joni Mitchell surprised the world by showing up at the Newport Folk Festival. What a triumph at 78 years of age, after her brain aneurysm in 2015.
Joni is another one of nature’s best.
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Not Kidding
I wasn’t kidding around when I described the drama of my getting stung on Tuesday. Whatever it was, there is a chunk of flesh missing from the middle of the large inflamed area on my back.
This is how it looked last night, over 24 hours after the bugger got me:
I should probably have been researching anti-venom or something. On the other hand, maybe it will give me a super power. I mean, a new super power, different than the other ones I already had.
Cyndie suspects it could have been a horsefly bite. I’ve already been bitten on the back by a horse and that didn’t give me any new senses. I’ve never experienced this reaction from a horsefly before and now I’m thinking I don’t ever want to experience it again.
As luck would have it, I can soak my back in the lake for a few days again, starting this afternoon. Due to Cyndie’s good sense to plan well in advance, she locked in multiple weekends with our house/farm sitter throughout the summer that have us up north two weekends in a row this month.
Actually, I will be enjoying three weekends in a row because I plan to join two of Cyndie’s brothers and a bunch of their golfing pals in Hayward the following weekend. I will be biking with anyone who chooses to skip one of the rounds of golf, most likely in the woods on my mountain bike. No battery to save me on that machine.
That would be a good time for the insect bite to give me a super dose of extra stamina and climbing ability. On one hand, I hope the residual effects of the wound are long gone by that time, but on the other hand, I could use all the help I can get when pedaling the off-road bike on the hilly trails in the Chequamegon National Forest.
This weekend we are driving up with Cyndie’s mom and will meet our friends, Mike and Barb Wilkus for a few days of water worship and good eats.
Further progress on the driveway shoulders will have to wait.
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Staying Longer
There was a lot of energy this weekend among a large number of visiting guests who happened to be between the ages of newborn to 14. Suddenly, by late afternoon yesterday, everyone had left to return to their homes. It was Sunday night and Cyndie and I didn’t need to go anywhere. The immediate surroundings suddenly took on an entirely different ambiance with the change from squeals and giggles to nothing but ripples on the lake murmuring against the shoreline and the buzzy fluttering of hummingbirds outside the deck door.
As glorious as it is to experience the community of families that are Wildwood, it is a priceless privilege to know the serenity of this place when we are able to be here alone in the unrivaled north woods environment.
We only stayed one night longer than everyone else. This morning we will drive home to spend a few days at our other paradise.
Counting our blessings all the way.
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The Race
As unlikely as it seems, one current feature for me of being up at our beautiful lake place is the access to television channels we don’t receive through our antenna at home. The Tour de France bicycle race is of most significant interest to me this time of year. Yesterday, we lucked out with an incredibly dramatic series of race moves in the mountains during stage 11 of the race.
There was a classic series of attacks on the leader in the yellow jersey, Tadej Pogacar, by riders on the Jumbo-Visma team that forced him to expend extra energy to respond to each sprint. By the time the riders reached the last monumental climb, Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visa rider who was 39 seconds behind the leader at the start of the day) seized his opportunity for the ultimate attack on the yellow jersey at about 5km from the summit finish on col du Granon.
Not only did he make up the 39 seconds to claim the yellow jersey, Jonas put 2’22” of time between himself and Tadej. That’s HUGE!
This morning, my broadcast access to stage 12 is going to be time delayed, so I will avoid the news and watch the taped version in the afternoon to preserve the excitement of what happens today. After the monumental effort yesterday in the mountains, it is hard to imagine how these riders get any decent sleep and then get up and compete at the same level for another grueling mountain stage, let alone for all 21 stages of the race.
I plan to take a leisurely stroll on my bike this morning and then watch the racers do battle from the comfort of the couch this afternoon.
Last night we were treated to a gorgeous moonrise over the lake. Cyndie stepped out to capture a picture of our view.
We are having a wonderful time. Wish you were here!
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Gone Again
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Guess where we are now. Here’s a hint:
There is no lake in that photo but the lake place is where we are.
Yesterday morning, while the excavators were picking up where they left off the day before on ripping up the old driveway asphalt, I was rigging up the bike carrier on the back of Cyndie’s car. We drove over the freshly dumped gravel until we reached the backhoe at work and then took to the grass to get around it.
Two and a half hours later, we were up in the north woods.
Wasting no time, we walked our mini labyrinth in the woods, had lunch, went to the beach, swam in the lake, I took a cursory spin on a standup paddleboard, played a card game on the deck (CrossCrib!), and binge-watched the end of season 1 of Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon Prime while eating dinner and later, ice cream for dessert.
We are definitely up at the lake.
I gotta say, Clarkson’s Farm has totally swallowed my brain. I think it was really well produced. I only knew Jeremy Clarkson in passing, by way of having spotted him when channel surfing past episodes of the Top Gear or Grand Tour programs he co-hosted. After getting to know him as a bumbling novice farmer with money to burn, I can say my impression is very mixed. Part of me definitely likes him. All of me doesn’t like parts of him that come across in this humorous documentary series.
However, the supporting characters in the adventure are wonderful and the challenges represented are completely relatable. It definitely throws me back to all the firsts we’ve encountered when taking on the care of animals and management of rural property. Our situations are muted in comparison to his dealing with 1000 acres and growing crops using all manner of agricultural machinery, but plenty of the sentiments are familiar.
I think back to my not understanding the terminology of components of a trailer hitch, trying to figure out how to rake hay into windrows using my diesel tractor, or raising chickens with zero previous experience and I feel like Clarkson’s Farm could just have easily been Cyndie and John’s Big Wintervale Adventure.
All we needed was a top-notch camera and sound crew on hand 24/7 to record it all.
Actually, I’m really glad that never happened.
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Wonderful Time
We are having a wonderful time at the lake with family. Wish you were here.
That’s Elysa’s dog, Diesel chillin’ on the couch with me while I read the digital version of the StarTribune newspaper. The rest of the day consisted of waiting out a rain shower playing a card game; doing a little more tending of the mini-labyrinth pathways; building a jigsaw puzzle while waiting out the second rain shower; catching a couple episodes of Ted Lasso to expose the show to more family members; squeezing in an hour-long bike ride around the lake; enjoying grilled burgers for dinner; ending the day with more card games that included the entire household.
It’s been good to have a break from full-time animal caretaking at home but we miss them and frequently find ourselves wondering how the new sitter is getting along with all the challenges.
I’m not sure that I am fully absorbing the depth of pleasure we are experiencing in not being constantly responsible for walking Delilah or feeding and cleaning up after all the animals at home.
Being up at the lake with family really is a wonderful time, for multiple reasons.
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Early Getaway
This weekend being a three-day federal holiday weekend in the US for Memorial Day, we made an early escape from home life yesterday and drove with Cyndie’s mom up to the lake place.
As in:
and
We have a recently hired house and animals sitter who is spending her first span of time actually living in our house. Up to now she has been making brief visits to walk Delilah or feed horses in the afternoon while we were away for a few hours. This is the real McCoy now. We are hoping she has a trouble-free few days.
That means we are able to experience some precious time freed of the usual home responsibilities and it feels like it’s been a long time since we had this kind of break. I’m really looking forward to it.
We jumped right in with our favorite, Coop’s pizza for dinner last night. That feels like being at the lake. It being the traditional opening weekend of the summer, there will be plenty of chores to do, but they never feel as much like work when you are doing it with so many friends and enjoying the lake scenery.
Did you notice the geese swimming in the photo above? In the off season, wildlife likes to behave as if the beach belongs to them. It will take a few consecutive days of human activity for us to reclaim our turf and encourage the beach loving animals to choose the less populated miles of shoreline on the lake for their own.
I was able to fit my bike in the back of Marie’s Kia Sorento for the drive up so I’m hoping to sneak in some hours of cycling north country roads while we are out of sight from all the lumberjack work and mowing, trimming, and compost turning that needs to be done at home.
Thanks to our early getaway, we have a spare day before Wildwood Work Day commands our attention. I’m hoping to soak up each precious moment and slow down the perceptions of passing hours so this departure from our usual routine provides maximum benefits.
All this is in contrast to the jarring blemish on our nation’s souls as more blood has been spilled in another senseless mass shooting. Problem analysis from politicians and talking heads without a glimmer of preventive action just serves as salt in our wounded hearts at this point.
There is little reason to believe the formula that feeds this national disgrace will ever change for the better, despite the majority of citizens clamoring for positive action to control access to assault weapons.
I wish we could all make an early getaway from guns and violence.
Hug someone you love and count your blessings for each day you survive without falling victim to some lunatic shooter.
What an embarrassment for the U.S. of A.
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Relative Something 