Jay Richards

When my dad said "I don't know if I have ever seen waves on the lake like that before" I knew it must of been windy. I was inside the lodge and went down to the dock and it was crazy. The wind was blowing good in the morning but a shear came through that was just ripping things apart. You could hardly see to the other end of the lake the wind was just peeling the water off. The trees were swaying back and forth big time. We had about 15 min of at least 50mph gusts. Next thing the power went off, just before we served the big Scan Smorg. The food was all set so it wasn't a problem to serve and the group that was here liked the candles. After we served, my dad and I walked around and just in the start/finish area alone there was at least four trees down and branches everywhere. I spent a hour just in the finish area alone. At 11am, Jonell, my mom, Jake, Jack, Jens and I walked the first two miles of the course just throwing sticks and deadfall off. My dad was running the saw elsewhere. It took close to 3 hours just to do that. Afterwards Jens and I went out with the chainsaw and I cut the trees in those two miles. All in all, it took about 6 hours to clear 2 miles. Early evening Jake and I rode a lap and it took a hour and a half to get through, stopping and throwing off gunk. There are about 30 trees that need to be chainsawed and tomorrow my dad and I should be able clear them all off. The power was still off late afternoon so I fired up the old wood sauna and after using the new Argentenean grill to make supper, the boys and I went over and got steamed up. I had the sauna going last night so it didn't take long to get up to 200. We all jumped in and it was a blast. Nothing feels better. That old sauna is getting torn down this summer and a new one will be built in its place.

Bruce said he went down to Mankato today to cover the mtb race there but they called it. Bummer. That happened to me one year, drove all the way down there with the family, spent the night, rained like 5 inches and they cancelled.