Hi, I don't have any pictures right now, Faith took Dylan to school and my camera is in the van. I just wanted (and Faith wanted me to) share this story about why I hate Curlew Lake. Curlew Lake is a huge lake about 7 miles from town, there's a state park there with a beach and swimming area, and it's close enough to go there for an hour or two to go fishing if you don't have a whole lot of time. When I was in Job Corps we used to put the docks in the water in the spring right after the ice melted off, and it was also the time that the new people in Forestry got introduced to our tradition of chucking new people in a freezing cold lake. I threw somebody in that didn't know how to swim, so I got to jump in after them and pull them over to the dock. Then Todd, the instructor, threw me back in the lake once I got out. Then he made me work the rest of the day in wet clothes and near freezing temperatures. We usually let the new people sit in the van with the heater on once they get out of the lake, but apparently I needed to be taught some sort of lesson. The last time I was there Dylan hooked me in the leg with his fishing pole and then took off running and crying when I yelled "OW!" He was still holding the pole, which meant I had to run after him trying to get him to stop, or risk having the hook rip out of my leg. After that fiasco was over with we discovered the battery in the pathfinder was dead, there was no cell coverage, and we were the only people in the state park. Luckily somebody showed up and I was able to convince him to give us a jump. That was two years ago, I haven't been back since. So, as you can see from previous experience, I really don't enjoy the time I've spent at Curlew Lake. Today, however, I made the ill-fated decision to take Dylan fishing for a couple of hours before school started. So we load up, head to lake, get the fishing stuff out of the van, and the sliding door won't shut, it won't even move. So I start looking at it and notice that the roller on the back of the door has popped out of it's track. I apply a little force to the door to see if I can get it to pop back in, and starts sliding closed. I think "Oh, cool." Then it falls off. Completely. It's laying on the ground. Dylan and I stand there in silence for a few moments, then Dylan asks "Dad, what are we going to do!?" Then I started laughing, because Dylan really looked like he was ready to start crying, and I couldn't deal with a sliding door lying on the ground and a crying child at the same time. So Dylan started laughing too, and he went to got throw stuff in the water while I attempted to fix the door. Which I wasn't really able to do. I did however have 50 feet of rope in my back pack, so I got what parts of the door into their proper places I could, then wrapped 50 feet of rope around the van and tied the door on. Then we went fishing for an hour or so. Didn't catch any fish, but I've never caught a fish at that stupid lake. So, we get ready to head home, and start thinking about how many ways my awesome fix can totally fail on the 7 mile trip home. And fail it did, but luckily before I even got to the highway. Now, when I tied the rope on I looked underneath to make sure the rope wasn't going to get wrapped up in the driveline or something, saw that it wouldn't, but did notice that the rope going across part of the exhaust. As the tied on door plan was at that time my only plan, I was just hoping it wouldn't burn through the rope. It did, but as I said, luckily it did it before I had even made it back to the highway. So, with a little reconfiguration, I ended up with the rope wrapped around the door, coming inside the van, and tied off to the drivers seat. I made it about 200 yards at 20 mph on the highway before it became obvious that wasn't going to work for much longer, the rope was sliding towards the front of the door and the back of the door was opening wider as I drove. So I pulled over, took the door all the way off again, and started looking at how the stupid thing was supposed to go back on. I did figure it out, there was a piece at the back of the track I had to take off, then everything slid back in. I haven't tried opening it again, I'm not sure if I will try. We'll see. So anyway, I got to thinking about how everytime I go to that (insert bad word of choice here) lake, something bad happens to me. Which led me to the realization that I hate that lake, and I am never going there again. I'll drive the extra half hour to get to the other lakes around.
P.S. I tried the door, mainly becuase Faith didn't think I should, it works. I'm awesome.
We went fishing on Sunday up at Swan Lake. We started the day with 4 working fishing poles and ended the day with one working fishing pole (mine). The one Dylan has in that picture is one of the collapsible ones we bought the kids this year. The reels on them both failed about an hour into fishing, so Simon and I took turns with mine with close supervision while he was using it, and Faith and Dylan took turns with Faith's, with no supervision of Dylan while he was using it, until I looked over and asked "How long has be spinning that reel backwards for?" The reel was a complete mess on the inside when I took it apart, so we were down to one fishing pole.
And I caught this fish with it. This was actually the 5th fish I caught, but the only one that was big enough to be worth keeping. There's no minimum size on the fish you can keep in the lakes here, but this fish is about 10 inches long. For those of you who may not see Simon and Dylan a lot, you probably don't realize that Simon is wearing a shirt of Dylan's in this photo. Here's the reason: After the kid's reels quit working, they decided to go play up the hill from the shore. Simon came back in a few minutes and said "I have poop on my shirt. I think it's human poop." After some question and answer we were able to piece this story together. Simon has a little notebook he won from the arcade at the bowling alley we went to on Saturday. Dylan was playing with it and for some unexplicable reason (fecophilia maybe?) set the notebook down in what was reported to be human poop. Simon picked up the notebook and wiped it off on his shirt. End of story. It took us about 20 minutes of questions to get that out of Simon and Dylan. I told Simon he had to take his shirt off, at which point Dylan gave Simon his "extra" shirt he was wearing. Why was Dylan wearing and "extra" shirt? I have no idea. Anyway, I caught a few more fish after this one, but only kept 1 other.
Fishin on Monday. The dock we're on moves quite a bit and the kids were worried it was going to dump them into the lake, so they decided to wear life jackets. Just on the other side of the lake was a dead tree with an osprey nest in it and some hatchlings that were screaming and the mom and dad were fishing and bringing food to the hatchlings. We never got to see them catch a fish, but they would take off to the other end of the lake, and come back and the hatchlings would pop up and they would sit on the edge of the nest for second then take off again. It was pretty neat, I tried to get a picture of it, but was never ready with the camera when they came back. It started thundering and lightning soon after this picture, so we headed home and watched a movie while the storm passed, then piled a bunch of sleeping bags on the trampoline and the kids had me throwing them on to the pile from as I could lift them. I also convinced Dylan to try to learn how to do a backflip. He almost did one, but hurt his ear on something when he landed, so he quit trying after that. It was pretty cool. I'll have try to get a video of his acrobatic feats, he can run at our foot stool, put his hands down on it and kind flip over it, it's pretty neat. That's about it for now, please read the post below to hear about my morning adventure.
