Return To Earth, Return To All That's Normal

What a weekend. Totally what the doctor ordered. The drive up was pretty uneventful. I stopped at Lynn and Doug's house on the way up. Turns out my youngest cousin, Taylor, got chickens. So they now have eight little chicks running around. Spent some time playing with them and harassing my cousins before jumping back on the road. I got to the cabin around 1 am, and started getting the cabin back to running order. Turn on the water, water heater, air out the rooms, stuff like that. Shortly after I crashed. On Thursday my grandparents showed up and we got the rest of the cabin going. Hung out with them for a while and then a little after dinner my parents showed up with Kodi. spent the rest of the night relaxing. Friday, again a lot of lazing around, until around 8 pm when my aunt and cousins showed up. Then all hell broke loose. The oldest, Ryan, didn't come, so the middle, James, brought a friend along, Tristen. They all started running around and being crazy kids while the rest of us had a bonfire. I finally went to bed around 1. Could not sleep at all that night, so ended up getting up at about 6 am. My grandparents were just getting up, so we hung out on the deck enjoying the quite and then I helped them make breakfast. After breakfast, my mom and grandpa went out fishing for the day, and the rest of us went into town. On the ride in, James really wanted to listen to Gogol Bordello, so we listened to that, and got both James and Tristen hooked :-P. Looked around Main St. Hayward for a while, and then made the journey back to the cabin. It's about a 15 minute drive, again filled with Gogol. A little after we got back, my mom and grandpa got home with their fish, so we fired up the grill and had a nice fish fry. Was pretty good too, since I don't like fish. But there's something about fresh caught walleye that I like. Had another bonfire that night, and I went to bed rather early, since I didn't sleep much the night before. On Sunday we went golfing. Well, they went golfing, I just rode along. My back still isn't very good, so the last thing I want to do is twist and bend a lot. Normally I love to golf, so it was rather sad. But we all had a good time nonetheless. After wards, we went to a great little tavern for lunch and had some really good burgers and pizza. It's my mom's favorite place to go. She claims they have the best pizza and onion rings. That night we had another fire, and then played some gin. We have a tradition of playing gin with everyone when we're all there. So it was 5 people per team, and surprisingly, Tristen, who had never played the game before, was the best player and our team won. It's a pretty cut-throat game with us, so there were a lot of harsh words being thrown around. After that we all went to bed. Monday was kinda sad, because it was our last day there. But we made the most out of it and spent the day out on the lake. Normally we would go out everyday, or close to it, but out schedule just didn't allow it this year. So we cruised around the lake and stopped at a sandbar to let the kids and Kodi go swimming, which they all enjoyed. Once we got back, we started the long battle of packing everything up again. After what seemed like hours, we had everything loaded up and we took off, leaving my grandparents up there for the week. Again, pretty uneventful drive home, just battling traffic. Normally I would have left later to avoid the traffic, but I wanted to get home and go for a bike ride while there was still light. After unloading the truck, jumped on the bike and rode around for an hour or two. Then I was really beat so I went to bed pretty early.

Tuesday, I had a chiro, and that was it. Just hung around the house, and then played a round with Paul. Went for another ride that night, and then turned in. Pretty boring.

Wednesday, I find a package at my door. My new headlights! After my accident, the brackets got damaged, so after looking online, found that it was only an extra $20 to get projector headlights instead of the stock ones. So I called Paul and he came over to help put them in. The high beams didn't work right, but we ran out of daylight so we left it for today. Headed up to the BP and hung out with Aaron for the rest of the night.

Today, I woke up early so I would have time to fix the lights before band practice. Paul came over, and after spending a long, long time on the phone with the company, got it figured out. Now I just have to wait for the sun to go down so I can double check the brightness of the lights is right. Biked over to band practice, and tried to get into it, but all of us were tired so it wasn't a very productive practice. After about 2 hours we called it quits, and I biked home to eat dinner. And now here I sit.

One of my grandparents friend's died this week, so they came home from the cabin early. Which means the cabin is open. So what would one do with nothing to do and an open cabin? That's right. Go up. So tomorrow evening/night I'm going to drive up there again. I tried to get someone to go with me, but since it was short notice, no one could. So I'm going up by myself, which is also nice. I like having some time to myself where I can do what I want, when I want. Although, it would be nice if Gabey lived here, so he could come up with me like he wanted to last week. Sorry buddy. So I probably won't be on for the next couple of days. My phone internet is kinda weird. I can check the blogs, but I can't post or comment. Oh well. I should enjoy nature, right? I hope all of you have a fun, safe weekend, and I'll talk to you when I get back.

-Kevin

The view off one side of the deck



The view off the other side



A view of part of the lake from the pontoon



Fire!



I realized I talk a lot about my band, but you guys have no idea who or what we are, so here is a rather poor quality video of us playing a song I wrote entitled, Anthem, from a few months ago. It has changed some since then, but it gives you a general idea. Right now, it is the only instrumental we have, but I don't like our singer, so I'm not going to post one with him.