The Cabin

I disappeared for a week. I only now have recovered my mental faculties enough to write about it.

Behold!

My sister married this awesome guy whose family has a cabin near what feels like nowhere. So last Saturday my fam in Syracuse catch up with me in Buffalo and we together finish the trip to the deep north reaches of southern Ontario.

My sister, her hubby, their son.
My brother, his wife, their 2 kids.
Myself, my better half, and our +1.
Zero cell phone reception.

Day 1:
You'd think a 5 hour drive would feel like 5 hours, but it just didn't. It was a small cabin that *might* fit us all, but a tent housed my sister. An eclectic outhouse served more than just 2 needs. I still work nights. I tried to stay up as long as I could to push through it, but wound up falling asleep by 4PM.



Day 2:
This left me waking up at 2AM needing a serious oil change. I had aquired an obnoxiously bright flashlight, which was more than useful because I couldn't go by the glow of the local metropolis. There was none. Bored and alone, I hit the dock thinking I'll just chill on the boat.

!!!STARS!!!

Look, I look up all the time at night, but what I'm used to seeing is more of a smear of light blanketing the sky. This was like that smear had condensed down into a billion tiny points that couldn't make up their minds as to whether they were shining or not. For the win.

Later:

I'm on a boat! Exploring the area surrounding this tiny cabin and the small lake it sits on is more interesting than I thought. There was much swimming that morning. It also keeps raining on and off. I still fall asleep early, but not so much.

Day 3:
I wake a full hour later than the day before. I decide to get in the kayak and push myself out to the middle of the lake so the trees on the edge don't obscure my view of half the sky. Getting away from the shore is easy, and the sky is giving me vertigo. Then I realize just how dark it is, and I can only tell where the dock is because of the faint surviving glow of a solar light atop the steps leading to it. This is the point where I realize that I'm not terribly comfortable with being in a tiny little kayak in the center of a lake in near complete darkness while nobody knows I'm out there. Back the the speedboat.

This time my brother joins me on the boat.  A jaunt into town. I need junk food. Still thinking this is awesome. It still is. Everyone kinda swam themselves out. My better half disappeared on a Kayak for a couple hours. (As an aside, this is why I'm glad we don't live on some futuristic space station)

Day 4:
I wake up that morning deciding to see how far out in the lake I like to be. Without a boat. The sun is up, so I'm ok with this. The answer: not very far.

I'm on a boat! (This is where someone lost a bet because I said this out loud) I'm also behind a boat, going very very fast. My first time tubing, the material holding the tube to the boat ripped, so instead of pulling me across, it pulled me down. Very fast.

That hurt.

Every orifice on my head screamed in pain, but calmed in minutes. An hour later, it was just my ear. My hearing was muffled, and it hurt worse than when it first started. Three hours of this. It calmed, then faded. To this day if I pay attention I can still feel a twinge in my right ear.

Day 5:
I woke up that morning and went fishing. I caught nothing.

Later that morning, my brother in law shows me this spot where a school of fish hang out under a dock. I caught 4 little guys. MAKE NOTE, WORLD. This was the first time I ever caught a fish. Now that I have, the thrill is lost.

I'm behind a boat again. New tube, no fear. Tubing has this bizarre exhilaration to it that comes with knowing that you're riding an air filled piece of plastic at what I could only guess was 30mph (oh wait, 48.3kph. We *were* in Canada, you know). Of those of us that went tubing, only my brother and I did not fall off. I suppose holding on for dear life is genetic.

It was also someone's 4th wedding anniversary. So I got her a bear!

But that's another story.

The rest of the week is kinda muddled in my head right now. Something about more rain, a broken exhaust pipe just before the trek home, and a fever of 102.6 pushing me into some strange delirium. (No, not the awesome band from Vancouver)

I'm out.