My extended period of absence from blogging was due to a fairly simple explanation. I was burnt out. Not from blogging or writing in particular…just I think everything that has come and gone over the last while; including the show, the house, my classes and all of my other endeavours just caught up with me. My existence for the last week has been get up, go to work, come home, lay on sofa until bed. I had nothing in me to force myself to drag myself into the office and start writing on the surprisingly long list of projects I have lined up.

Then the most wonderful thing occurred. I had a weekend away from it all. My buddy Ted was invited up to his friends cottage for some snowmobiling, and they made it a point to extend the invitation to me as well. I was forced to turn down the last three invites due to projects on the go, and this time – with the total blessing of Melanie, I was free to do what I needed to with my time. So, last Friday afternoon, after only working a short day followed by a couple hours spent with my lovely spouse, I drove up to Teds place where we met up with Craig. After packing our stuff into Craigs GMC 2500 Diesel Pickup and Teds Kawasaki onto the trailer, we headed off for the cottage, which is about 20 minutes away from Harcourt, Ontario.

Two and a half hours later, after a couple pitstops, and a convoy hookup with fellow cottagers Rusty and Bubba (Rob); we found ourselves at the farthest point that the truck could go – about a ten minute ride in. Rusty and Bubba were able to drive their truck in most of the way, which helped a lot…we were able to throw our gear into the back of their truck to lighten our load. Original plan was that I was going to ride in with Ted…but then we met up with some lovely lasses who were cottaging across from Craig’s. They were heading out for the night, and wondered if we wanted to take their snowmobile in for them. This saved them from having to lock up the machine at the crossroads, and I suddenly had my own machine to use on the trip in; a fact which lit up a bright grin on my face.

The ride in was a blast. It had been a few years since I had been able to do any serious riding on a snowmobile and I loved getting back into it again. The feel of the engine, the bumps and weaves and turns…I could have just kept going for hours. But, as it was now nighttime, I didn’t own the machine and cans of alcohol were beginning to call my name, I resigned myself to just getting our equipment to the cottage.

We did have a couple setbacks at this point. The road was not completely cleared to the cottage, so we had to move everything the rest of the distance by sled and by hand. Also, Teds machine, which had been working just fine at his house, decided that it required breaks every couple of minutes lest it go on strike for good. This exercise took well over an hour. Not because there was a lot of stuff or anything. It was mainly because the beer fairies were screaming our names and apparently nobody else was willing to wait until we unloaded everything first. I actually did three trips on my own, practically snapped my own foot off in a bad ankle twisting and gave my wife a quick telephone call before rejoining the gang at the meeting point. They’d already had at least 3 or 4 beers each, and I needed to begin catching up.

Now, honestly…neither Ted nor I got anywhere near matching the rest of the guys drink for drink. Hell, no living, sentient creature should. No word of a lie…Ted and I finished a 24 of cans between us around noon the next day. The three others finished off 142 bottles between them (for my fellow Canadians doing your math in factors of 24, there was one bottle broken and one was mysteriously missing) just a little past that.

Around midnight, I cooked a quick dinner so that we didn’t all perish…chicken wings and jalapeno poppers on the BBQ (works great on the top rack!). Standing on the deck, staring at the stars and the gorgeous moon,feeling the light chill of the night, I realized that I already felt better than I had in a few months. It was like all my stress was washing away.

Continued later…..