4 August 2012

 

Let the record show that Katy did say, at least five minutes before calamity struck, “Doug, I think this is a bad idea!”  But that’s getting ahead of the story.  Katy and Alex arrived just before midnight, as expected, except that I had fallen asleep on the dinette settee that makes into a bed, and failed to hear them arrive.  Consequently, we somewhat surprised each other as they came though the main cabin door.  After dragging them out to see the walkway all lit up, we retired.  Early this morning Alex and I arose and Katy was induced to crawl out of bed.  After a quick breakfast, Alex got to indulge his pyromaniac fantasies while Katy and I used the Ranger to drag load after load of brush from the woods over to the bonfire site.  Having removed all the readily accessible brush piles by 11 o’clock, I figured I could snake the Ranger down the hill a bit further to retrieve a collection of limbs that were a long trudge from the lower “driveway”.  That’s when Katy let me know her opinion of the idea, forthrightly and directly.  Being overconfident and stupid, I ignored her advice until she yelled, “You’re on a rock!”, and the Ranger stopped moving.  “On” a rock was hardly an apt description.  I had backed up over an 850 pound (by later measurement) Leicester nugget and the truck suspension (and later the driveshaft) were firmly joined to granite.  That truck weren’t going nowhere without some serious machinations… which took the next four hours and every word in my sailor’s vocabulary (uttered silently, of course, in deference to a young lady’s sensibilities).  Have you ever had a truck fall off a jack while you were underneath it?  Katy yelled in the nick of time and then learned that, although her father-in-law is 62 years old, he can move with alacrity then properly motivated.  Wouldn’t have been so bad if the truck had toppled sidewise just once, but it happened four times as we raised the rear end, laboriously, using two jacks and makeshift cribbing, into the air so that the critical underside components were high enough to drag the rock out from underneath the truck.  In the process “we” (I seem to have gotten a mouse in my pocket while crawling around in the dirt) managed to poke a hole in the right rear tire.  Once again, Chris Thiel’s air compressor saved the bacon, as we could inflate the tire (very temporarily) when it came time to finally drive the Ranger away from the disaster site.  Then it was time to prepare ourselves (lake cool-down followed by cleansing shower), campfire, and food (BBQ chicken, homemade baked beans infused with campfire cooked hot dogs, Kingsley’s corn, garden salad, brownies right out of the oven topped with Ben & Jerry’s Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch) for the arrival of Marty & Merry (bearing gifts (plural) of wine that somehow all disappeared before a most delightful evening was adjourned.  After dark, Katy (lookout), Alex and I took Hopea Kanootti for a spin around the lake.  When we returned dockside, Katy and Alex most generously tackled the voluminous dinner dishes while I enjoyed, yet again, the calming waters of Fern Lake.