Celebrating a birthday on the ice

Pic: Nikolai, tying a hook on the line. 

By Allan Olson

In our world, every week is crazy, and occasionally the weekends are even crazier. This past weekend was one of those. I kept asking my wife what she wanted to do for her birthday, and her final answer was she wanted to go fishing. We set about figuring out a way to make it happen. The kids had a long weekend off from school, but Saturday was busy for Nikolai and I had an interview scheduled for that day as well, so we decided that we would head of Lake of the Woods late Saturday, spend Sunday in the fish house, and return home Monday.

On Saturday morning I headed to Nevis for the Robotics Zero Day competition to check out the completed robots from our team and the various other teams. The competition was crazy. The beauty of this event is that it provides all the teams an opportunity to see what the other teams are up to, as well as a chance to realize some things they might need at a competition that they otherwise wouldn’t have considered. That afternoon we were back at the office where we met with the SheSquatcher – Female Big Foot hunting team. We visited with them for about an hour for a future story. We finally got home after 4:30 p.m. and I started unpacking one vehicle and packing another. We got on the road at about 5:30, with my wife at the wheel and Nikolai riding shotgun. I volunteered to sit in the back to help Abigail with homework. We were working on limited daylight, and ultimately completed four problems in the dark and had to use the light of my phone before I finally said, “We’re done!”

We reached our destination sometime after 8 p.m. – my mother in law’s place. She was at one of her grandson’s last hockey games of his high school career. When we arrived, we found my niece babysitting three of her cousins and three other kids in a small apartment. This was not my idea of a good time, so we ditched her with my kids, too (after Nikolai put on a movie), and headed to a restaurant where we met my wife’s brother and his wife and they enjoyed some adult beverages. I stuck to my usual liquid of choice – water. We got back to the apartment sometime before midnight to find our kids asleep, along with the other nieces and nephews, and the extra three kids gone, thankfully. Otherwise I think I would have tried to find somewhere else to sleep, because there would have been no room at this inn.

I got up on Sunday morning and headed to the grocery store. My wife hadn’t made any plans for any certain time for us to leave for fishing, but I had. I grabbed cereal, milk and a couple snacks, and returned to get the rest of the crew. I wanted to go fishing. We stopped at Adrian’s Resort for a road pass and bait, and headed out onto the big frozen pond – after making a brief stop at her sister’s for some equipment. Due to the recent warm weather and all the traffic, the ice roads were a mess and very rough. There was standing water all over the lake, and if I wasn’t confident of the amount of ice out there, it would’ve been a little concerning.

Once we arrived at the nice warm fish house, we started getting kids set up. I had some breakfast (cereal in a cup), and then I had to leave again. Our nephew had driven out from International Falls just to go fishing with us, but his car was not “ice road worthy” – especially in the condition the ice road was in today. Out of curiosity, I set my watch to see how long the round trip would take. With the slow-going and slower traffic pulling big expensive houses, it took 41 minutes to get back to the mainland (traveling less than 10 miles) and just over half that to get back, as the roads had received some care in that time plus I didn’t have any slow traffic to follow.

After my nephew and I got back to the fish house, I finally started to fish. As it turned out, I could’ve just as well left my line out of the water – I didn’t get a bite all day. My wife landed two very small ones, and Alivia landed one even smaller. That was it for the day for all of us. We put a variety of hook colors, shapes and designs down the holes, but not a single one worked well. We left at 3 p.m., giving up on the fishing adventure for this time out.

We dropped equipment off back at my sister-in-law’s house and headed back into town for the evening, where we enjoyed a nap, a meal and some birthday cake. It was probably the first time my wife has been able to celebrate her birthday with her mom in about 18 years. The evening was spent visiting and playing cards before we all crashed pretty early. It was a fun weekend, even if we didn’t catch any fish.

I will probably be watching wrestling at the high school this coming Saturday, and depending on the weather, I might get the opportunity to go out and find some geocaches on Sunday.

Please remember to watch out for the buses that are carrying our most precious cargo. Also snap a photo or two to preserve a lifetime of memories. Thanks for reading, and have a great week! Feel free to drop me a line at cltimes1@arvig.net or stop by the office for a visit.