Hours of Daylight – 15:38

We’re now 7 days from the summer solstice. Yesterday seemed to go on forever. More on that in a moment, first i want to say that i now have two items in my wallet i never expected to have. The first is a Minnesota driver’s license, the second is a non-resident Wisconsin fishing license. Hmm, a Minnesota license, a Wisconsin fishing license, i’m riding a motorcycle that was designed and built in Wisconsin (the very first motor vehicle i’ve ever owned that was made in America); i must be going native.

So, yesterday was the day that woundn’t end. It began for me at 4:30am when the cats started rampaging around the apartment and would not stop. I reluctantly got up, fed them, and waited for Annette to log in to iChatAV so we could have our morning vid conference.

After cooking and eating breakfast i realized the time: 7:30 in DC, she would have to be down at the conference already. She must have woke up late and didn’t have time to log in.

I checked the weather (it looked great), put on my motorcycle boots, stuffed some wadded toilet paper in my ears and lit out for Stillwater via route 36. There are stretches of 36 where the speed limit is 65… which the light Sunday morning traffic largely ignored. So, yes, no windshield, no face mask (just goggles) i blasted along with the cars at 75 miles per hour.

I rolled into Stillwater with the town still asleep, rolled on through to the end, turned into a parking lot, turned around and headed back the way i had come. Four or five minutes after getting to the town i was rocketing back towards The Cities.

About an hour and a half later i rolled up in front of the apartment, parked the bike and shut it off. I got up and walked around. I’d been on the bike, solid except for traffic lights, for the whole time. I was surprised to find nothing was sore. I did have “buzzy hands” for a while afterward, but it was mild. I consider the ride a complete success.

After only a few moments sitting down Scott sent a text message saying fishing was on and i should come out whenever. I gathered up my kayak hat, bullfrog sunscreen, some food, fired up the van and headed back towards Stillwater.

After running some errands (the last of which was my purchasing the aforementioned WI fishing permit) we loaded Scott’s van with the obligatory beer (Leine’s Northwoods lager), food, and hooked up the little trailer with boat and headed North a few miles to Cedar Lake. Finding the public put-in was a bit of a challenge due to Cedar Lake being a fairly “exclusive” lake. Nobody who owns lakefront property wants a public put-in next door. Of the two marked on the map we managed to find one on the North shore of the lake, did some quick prep work, and waited our turn to launch.

After only a few minutes waiting for others to launch Scott rolled the van down the ramp, i cut the boat loose and walked it around to the non-ramp side of the launch, he parked the van and joined me in the boat and we were on our way.

Cedar is a small lake, but big enough to have several floatplanes, one of which, a nice Piper Cub, was out and about practicing landings. We watched boats, planes, and people go by while lazily casting and retrieving lures. I managed to lose two of Scott’s lures when the bail on my rod prematurely snapped shut after i cast. I also managed to catch a fish! Unfortunatly it got away when we tried to haul it into the boat. So, as Annette quickly pointed out during a phone call later in the evening, all i managed to do was torture a fish.

After about four hours of lazy fishing under a picture-perfect-puffy-cloud afternoon we fired up the big 8hp engine and puttered around the lake for a while before returning to the put-in.

About two hours and 54 miles later i was back home where i’d begun the day some 13 hours earlier. Aside from the poor fish i’d hurt for no good reason and all the hydrocarbons i’d burned (in FOUR different vehicles) it was a wonderful day.