Muddin' and Mentoring

This weekend, I got to make a run up to Little Green Lake, near Markesan, Wisconsin. A friend of mine owns a cottage on the lake, and he needed a hand putting in the pier. Me being the guy that I am, I offered to assist. Riding up with me, was my cousin's oldest son. He's a good kid, but I'm working on fixing that.

While the thought is a little scary, I am kind of a mentor to N. He hasn't felt that he can always talk to his parents about some things without getting his head ripped off, so he will call me. I'll try to help him as much as I can, but I often end up telling him how he can talk to his parents about whatever may be his concern. Really scary is the fact that he looks up to me. I can't wait to see what comes about after this weekend.

The ride up is always a beautiful trip, filled with sightings of deer, turkeys, and sometimes cranes. We got to see a huge HUGE turkey that I'm guessing would have been near thirty pounds. Now, I base that estimate on the tom that my brother harvested a few years ago. That bird was near twenty pounds, and this bird was much, much, much larger. We also got to see three cranes, at two different locations. What kind? Hell, I don't know. Big. How's that? I just know that it's cool as hell to watch them flying.

No other sightings to report as we made our way up Hwy. 73. However, once we neared Randolph, we discovered that the road was detoured. "Road Closed To Thru Traffic." I took a look, and thought, "What the hell. Let's try it!"

What a blast! N looked at me with concern as I weaved past the roadblocks, and started making my way down through the construction zone. (Of course, there were no workers there) It didn't take long, and we were totally without pavement of any type... it looked like we were in for a big drop! As I neared the dropoff, I noticed that there was indeed a small incline, so at least it wouldn't be a violent drop.

Some of you have seen my car. It's a Malibu. Not really the best thing for off-roading. But it can suprise ya! It didn't take long, and we were in mud... rained earlier. Some of the muddy ruts were at least six inches deep, and we were scraping the bottom of the car for a stretch of about twenty feet. I didn't think we were going to make it once she started dragging, but the Muddin Malibu made it! We were almost sideways at times, but we did it.

I was laughing my ass off... at least until we started dragging. But N went from being nervous, to laughing so hard that he had tears running! And after some of the looks we got when we emerged from that stretch, he would bust out laughing again. Once we got to the lake, we found out why we garnered so many looks... the sides of the car were covered in mud!

Putting in the pier went rather smoothly, with the exception of the waders. I wear size twelve tennis shoes, and got stuck wearing size eight waders, and one of the other guys wears thirteens, and was crammed into nines. My friggin' toes were killing me. But I didn't have it as bad as the other guy... his waders also leaked! It was a slow leak, so what water made it in was heated by his body heat, but a leak is a leak.

You should have heard when he climbed out of the water onto the pier. It wasnt' exactly a scream, but it was so much more than a yell. He had to lay down on the pier and pull himself up because of the weight of the water. When he did, the water that he thought was warm flowed up and made contact with "the boys!" It turned out, the water wasn't all that warm!!

On the way back, I discovered that I may have created a monster... N spent about half of the ride talking about going muddin' (through construction areas) with his truck. I sure as hell couldn't tell him not to do it! The best I could do was to tell him to stick to rippin' up the back forty at his friends farm. Although if he were to go through a construction zone, he should wait until the weekend when no one would be working. (Obviously) And, if it were a fun ride, he should come back and get me!!!

Heheh.

Posted by That 1 Guy at May 15, 2005 10:18 PM | TrackBack