Mandatory Hawkeyeness

The title of this posting and the picture below will speak for themselves. Whether she lives in Nashville or somewhere else, being a Hawkeye is mandatory. Maia's a cute one!

Travis, Jess and Maia at the Lake

This week we have been blessed to have visitors from Nashville and Fort Collins with us. Travis, Jessica and Maia flew into Minneapolis a few days ago and are now ensconced with us here at the lake. Kathie had not seen Maia since March. I had not seen her since January, when she was born, and Great Grandma had never met her in person before. (Watch for an official four generation picture in the not-too-distant future!) I know, I know, we hadn't seen Jessica and Travis in awhile either, but somehow the grandchildren always seem to spark an extra smile or two and some extra anticipation.

Grandma and Maia were enjoying the hanging chairs when I took this picture. I should have maybe waited for a better time of day when the light wasn't shining through the cracks from above, but they just looked too cute together to pass up the opportunity.

Later in the day, Jess and Maia watched Grandma do some fishing from the dock. Maia is sporting a bonnet that Uncle Rob and Aunt Carrie and Cousin Eleanor loaned her.

There is always a game or two of Hand-and-Foot when we are all together.

I made Maia a little paper hat, and she took on a Little Dutch Girl image.

Travis was the last one up, and when I asked him about whether he wanted big or little pancakes, he said, "Surprise me!" Well, I like a challenge, so I did the Mickey Mouse thing and added a face with some blueberries. I got this reaction in response, when I put the plate before him. Later on, he and I went golfing and had lots of fun. Neither of us had a terrific score, but we laughed lots, had some good shots each, and enjoyed a beautiful day.

That evening we went to the Lumberjack Championship event in Hayward. Kathie and I had been to the event before, but this was a first for Travis and Jessica, and I think I've posted about this before, when we took Will and Betsy's families in prior years. There was pole climbing (races) of 60' and 90'. I won't be taking up this sport anytime soon.

Maia, her mom, and her uncle were taking it all in (in more ways than one).

This young woman didn't win her match, but she did avoid hitting her feet. I kept hoping that unlike baseball and the occasional broken bat flying into the stands, an axehead wouldn't come flying our way.

This is the single buck version of sawing. Contestants were from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the USA. States all across the northern part of the US were represented, but most participants were from Wisconsin and Minnesota.

TJ Beaver was throwing out souvenirs.

Uncle Travis and Maia watched, but Maia seems to be unhappy about missing out on a handout from TJ. On the other hand, her uncle Travis is a TJ, so maybe that will suffice.

This is double buck sawing in the master's competition (old guys like me).

Younger men and women competed in log rolling events and in an event called boom races, which involves running across the floating booms (logs tied together end to end but able to roll individually). You can see a boom in the foreground and log rollers in the background.

I didn't get pictures of the chainsawing events. We'll post more pictures of the visit in a few days.

Blueberries

Our good neighbor, Kathy, invited us to go pick wild blueberries with her today. We drove to a timbered area owned by a paper company that had been clear cut a few years ago. This tends to promote blueberry growth, since they do not much care for the shade that timbers provide. These little guys, based on some tasting-during-picking experience, seem to be much more flavorful and sweeter than purchased blueberries. The only downside is that they are small, ranging from about the size of a BB to something like large peas. Here is an example of what they look like. We saw two species intermingled, some the usual bluish color and others almost black.

Here are the girls getting set to start filling their buckets.

Gosh, I have to say it takes a lot of picking of these little things to fill a gallon bucket! It took me awhile to cover the bottom of my bucket and my back was already asking me how long it would have to be bent over. I felt like I hadn't even made a dent in the task. However, I did become more proficient. There definitely are some tricks to picking blueberries. Doing them one at a time is not the way to go. When you can focus on clusters of them and roll, rather than pick, several off the plant at one time, it goes much faster. After about two hours, Kathie and I each had about 3/4 of a gallon of them. I think Kathy, on the other hand, managed to do a gallon all on her own (she is holding my bucket, not her full gallon).

Well, maybe Kathie got 3/4 of a gallon and I got 2/3 of a gallon. She may be more adept at these fine motor skills.

Nevertheless, we'll be having some serious blueberry experiences over the next several days and months (we will freeze some). Blueberry pancakes are definitely in my future, as well as a peach/blueberry cobbler (thanks to Mary Herr), blueberries on cereal, blueberries on ice cream, blueberry smoothies, and whatever else we can dream up. YUM!

The only question that remains for us is, "Why didn't the bears eat all of them before we got there?"

Lost Boats and Rainbows

Like all of you, we have been experiencing very hot weather and lots of humidity lately. In the evenings, we have had occasional storms, including a real downpour last night. During that downpour, I looked out at the lake and saw our boat drifting away! Evidently, a combination of our not cranking it up high enough on the lift, its taking on water that made its stern heavier, and some wind made it slip off the lift and escape its moorings. I ran down and threw a canoe into the water, paddled out to the boat, tied the canoe to the boat, and brought everything back to our dock. Needless to say, I got very wet in the process, and Kathie didn't much like me being out there while there was so much lightening. However, I was too preoccupied to take much of that into account in the moment. Kathie thought she needed a picture of me for some reason.

Awhile later, we were treated to what might have been the most spectacular rainbow or pair of rainbows (and there may have even been a faint third) I have ever seen, although growing up on the farm, I saw some mighty pretty ones. The dominant one gave off amazing color, which I don't suppose this picture captures all that well, but here it is for your enjoyment.

Featuring Kathie

I understand it may be very warm where you are too. We are in a stretch of sticky, uncomfortable days. Thank goodness we can escape to the lower level of our Wisconsin home, where the temperature is quite a bit lower. The heat has not, however, stopped my dedicated fisherwoman from finding bass. A couple nights ago, she pulled in this 17" guy just across the bay from our home.

No, she didn't really kiss it.

Yesterday in the late evening as the sun got low and after the temperature had climbed to over 90º, we had a nice rain shower. (We could still use more rain.) As the storm moved to the east, the low sun in the west lit up the sky in ways we have rarely seen before. Kathie took this and several other pictures of the sky, but I thought this one was especially nice. This picture has not been doctored in any way, and the colors are very true to what we actually saw. The sky and the lake had strong pink hues. It was quite a pretty sight to behold.

Boys Will Be Boys

Before we get to the "boys will be boys" part, allow me to insert this picture of time Betsy spent in the hot tub with Clara and Henry. Forgot to add it to yesterday's posting. She's reading a book, or attempting to, and they had the hot tub full of bath toys. I think this is the first time I ever saw a hot tub with bath toys in it. We had the temperature turned down to make it more like a warm swimming pool, and I think the grandkids loved it.

Now, back to the "boys will be boys" part. You see, we boys, and I suppose girls too, if the truth be told, are very inquisitive about mechanical things, science, gadgets, and the like. And honestly, some of the inquisitiveness or curiosity manifests itself through our having to make semi-dangerous things or having to blow things up or whatever. When I was young, there was a great TV show called Watch Mr. Wizard featuring a man named Don Herbert who showed young people how to do various science experiments at home. (Read about the show by clicking here, if you like.) Magazines such as Boys Life and Popular Mechanics were also great sources for ideas. For awhile, it seemed that litigation made us all maybe too seriously concerned about the safety of toys and such, and the idea of providing information that might lead a young person to attempt something dangerous was definitely tamped down. However, in recent years some interesting books have appeared, including this one:

It will probably not be a surprise to you that I own a copy of the above book, along with others, including Backyard Ballistics and The Art of the Catapult. I have these with me here at the lake, and Henry seemed to enjoy thumbing through them.

Back in Iowa, over the 4th, he wanted to build something in my shop, which of course pleases me. We have done this several times, and I love it that he wants to learn about tools and to be constructive. Anyway, I didn't have anything in particular in mind to build, but we eventually landed on the idea of a small catapult. Then, when we got to the lake, we decided to make a bigger one. So, here are Pete, Henry and I building a Wyvern torsion catapult. In addition to carpentry techniques, I rationalize that this project helped Henry learn some things about physics and history.

Henry and his dad begin by building the base frame, while I cut other parts on my saw.

The torsion part comes from a twisted rope, which we are threading back and forth between the frame and the arm here.

When it is tightly twisted, it acts as a spring to propel the arm. Here is Henry trying it out. He was excited about it, but I was honestly disappointed that we didn't get more distance in the items we launched. (Henry agreed to leave it here, and I encouraged him to think about how to make it work better. So, we may work on improvements next year or whenever he comes for another visit.) We took it down to the dock and launched rocks out into the lake.

Here is Henry posing with each of the catapults we made. He took the small one home.

In the following video, Henry describes these projects.

Another project we did together involved a bottle of Diet Coke and a roll of Mentos candies. You may know about this little experiment, which was described in the Totally Irresponsible Science book. I had heard of this before but had never seen it done. The candies provide a surface that makes the carbonation in the Diet Coke foam very, very rapidly. There are different ways of doing this, including one which effectively turns the bottle into a rocket. We preferred to try the version that turns the Coke into a fountain, though we all feared that we were going to be showered with Coke. The latter point will explain my total lack of gracefulness in the following video as I attempt to back away from the bottle after dropping in the Mentos.

Here is a still shot in case you missed how high the fountain reached. It really was quite amazing.

Henry did some other experiments too, including attempting to blow up plastics bags containing baking soda and vinegar and floating a ping pong ball in a vertical stream of air. Very cool stuff. We had lots of fun, and we haven't even worked all the way through the books yet!

Picnic on an Island

Several of the days that Betsy and her family were here were quite warm. So, we decided to spend part of one of them on an island, where we could picnic, fish, and wade or swim on a sandy beach. Here are two of my darling girls at the island.

Here is another with Betsy, Henry and Clara preparing to wade on the beach.

Meanwhile, Kathie and Pete were fishing. Mostly, it was an excuse to cool one's feet in the water.

Later, there was swimming.

And a picnic.

I included this picture just because I think it is pretty. This little island, called Chipmunk Island, is a very nice spot to spend days like this one was.

Later, Betsy and Pete played some ping pong.

While Henry and Clara watched nearby from their sleeping quarters.

Be sure to tune in for the next posting, where Henry, Pete and I all become little boys and play with what some would consider questionable "toys."

More Fishing and the Spooner Rodeo

Since we didn't bring the pickup to the lake this trip, I prevailed upon my good neighbor, Jerry, to come over and pull my boat to a landing so that I could get it launched. Here are two retired guys from the north woods about to take off for said launching. See the happiness? That's what retirement is all about.

Once the boat was back in the water, we headed out for some non-dock fishing. Clara was pretty excited. I had recently purchased two new fishing rods for grandkid use. One is pink (really) and one is blue, and when you crank the line in on each of them, lights flash around the perimeter of the spool. These are very fancy grandkid fishing rods!

Henry, who had mastered fishing over the prior two years, was eager too.

Here is Clara with the new, pink, granddaughter fishing rod. (The rods stay at the lake for use by whichever granddaughter or grandson might be present.)

Henry quickly caught on to the casting techniques of a spinning rod. He had previously only used a closed-face reel on his special Spiderman fishing rod.

Clara really liked playing with those worms. This does not fit my stereotype of a girl, and that's just fine with me.

She soon hooked another fish.

But, like Henry a few years ago, she seemed most fascinated with being able to watch all the fish we had caught in the livewell of the boat.

Here's Henry with another catch. I believe he caught at least a dozen fish this year, surpassing his prior record of two.

One night, we went to the annual Spooner, WI rodeo. This is a big deal up this way.

Clara and Henry had spotted a pony ride on the way to our seats, so Betsy, Pete and I backtracked with them for a chance to ride a pony. They waited more-or-less patiently for their turn.

Here is Clara on Sparky.

Henry rode Banner.

This was the 58th annual rodeo at Spooner. There was lots of opening ceremony pomp and circumstance.

Then we watched as the bare-back bucking horse competition kicked off the evening's events. This was followed by calf roping, mutton busting (kids trying to stay astride a lamb), and double steer roping. As the evening grew quite late and we all tired, we left before the final saddle bronc riding and other events. It was fun while it lasted!