A Foray Into The Great White North

I’m back from my yearly Christmas excursion to Minnesota, and I’ve got to say that it was colder at home this year than it’s been in a LONG time. In fact, the last time it was this cold in MN was the last winter I lived there, which was…oh…eight years ago. God, I’m old. Anyway, I flew in on the 22nd, and we didn’t get a double-digit reading on the thermometer until the 26th or so. Of course, if you know me at all, you know that I thrive in the cold. I loved every minute of it!

On one particularly balmy day–I think it was the 24th, maybe–my youngest brother and I packed up some beer and headed out to the lake to go fishing. It was 4 degrees, after all. Perfect fishing weather! If you’re unfamiliar with ice fishing, I suggest you check out my post from two Christmases ago, in which I describe this fun-filled winter pastime in great detail. (Just go click the category “Life and Times of the Big Red Poet” on the main page of my blog, and it’ll show up as “Christmas is fun!”)

Through the wonder of modern telephonic technology, I was able to snap a picture of our ice-fishing setup. Check it out:

Let’s put this into perspective. The fish house, “The Bandito” as we call it, is about four and a half feet high. It’s just high enough that you can sit atop a five-gallon pail without brushing your head on the ceiling. It’s also about five feet wide, which is pretty close quarters for two guys to fish. Out front, under the angled part of the canvas, there’s no floor, just open ice. That’s where we drill the holes and catch the fish! All around The Bandito, you’ll the the various accoutrement associated with ice fishing: a case of High Life, the blue bag full of fishing rods and tackle, the ice auger to the left of The Bandito, the trusty shovel to the right, and my coat on top, since it’s about 60 degrees inside once we get set up and get the heater started. Of course, The Bandito collapses when the poles are laid down, and the canvas folds into the bottom, creating kind of sled which we use to drag all the rest of that crap out onto the lake. One guy gets to drag the Bandito/sled while the other carries the ice auger. I discovered that the sled, when loaded with about 100 pounds of beer and fishing equipment, does NOT pull easily through about two feet of fresh snow. In fact, I nearly had a coronary to prove it. Fishing was kind of slow, but it’s always nice to get out on the ice with my brother and sip on some High Life and Dr. McGillicuddy’s Mentholmint Schnapps. “The Doctor” is considered essential ice fishing gear, and it saddens me that you can’t see the bottle in the photo…

Christmas Eve proceeded the same this year as it does nearly every other, which is kinda the way we like it. We frosted Christmas cookies, sang along to Anne Murray’s “Away In A Manger” while placing the Christ child into the nativity scene on Christmas eve, exchanged gifts, enjoyed whiskey old-fashioneds, and ate entirely too much. Dad found a new place to get the tree this year. He said two old farmers were just sitting out by the road with a sign that said “Trees $10.” When he pulled over, they were selling beautiful, natural balsam trees. Once decorated with lights and thirty-some-odd years’ worth of collected Christmas ornaments, it looked like this:

Again, the picture came from my phone, so you’ll have to excuse the questionable quality of the photo. Now that I look at it, I think I like the blurred image. It lends a certain softness and surrealism to the picture, wouldn’t you say? My family was kind enough to give me a number of very thoughtful gifts, but the most impressive by far is the Edirol R-09HR. It’s a digital recording device which has on-board stereo microphones and records straight to .WAV files on an internal 8 gigabyte flash card. Now I can pursue my ambition of becoming a concert bootlegger. See?

It’s small enough to look like a cell phone or MP3 player at security checkpoints, and the microphones are good enough to make some incredible concert recordings. This little baby is the top of the line, as far as digital recorders are concerned. I’ve already recorded one show, and I’m thrilled with the results. If the whole “concert bootlegging” thing is totally new to you, this may not make much sense. Just know, gentle reader, that I am an avid collector of live concert recordings, particularly of the mighty Led Zeppelin…but that’s a topic for another post.

A few days after Christmas, we had a heat wave (It was almost 30 degrees!), so we decided to go out and hunt some pheasants. Along with both of my brothers, my dad, and dad’s hunting dog, I headed out to a nearby shooting preserve to try my luck. Pheasant hunting is entirely unlike hunting deer. When hunting pheasants, one takes a well-trained dog out into the field and lets the dog work the grass, the woods, the rows of corn, etc. We simply follow the dog until she “locks up.” Hunting dogs are trained to freeze in place and indicate the location of a bird once they catch its scent. Then, the hunter simply walks in the direction of the bird until it flushes up. Once it’s airborne, the hunter just pops it with a shotgun and the dog retrieves it. It’s a LOT of fun. With knee-deep snow, though, walking the fields was a little tough, especially with shotgun in hand, but we still had a very productive hunt, harvesting six pheasants in just over two hours. Check ‘em out:

There are four hens and two roosters here, as you can tell by the variations in their coloration. We were able to take hens because we were on a shooting preserve; normally one can harvest only roosters. That bird at the top left isn’t headless, by the way; it just fell into the snow oddly when I placed it for the picture. If you’d like another look at the birds, along with some pot-bellied guy in a dorky hat, here ya go:

As you can tell from my slackjawed appearance, walking through knee-deep snow in full winter gear, including wool pants, boots, a quilted flannel shirt, and a shooting vest, is hard work. Oh, and if you have any doubts about my power to resist the cold, notice that I’m not wearing gloves in the photo. Somehow, the pictures of my brothers from this hunt are far more flattering than the picture of me. What a curious mystery…

Here’s the older of my two brothers, with his impressive goatee:

…and here’s the younger, whose hair/beard combination is not to be trifled with. We have impressive powers of facial hair in my family. It’s a gift.

Notice that neither of the boys are wearing gloves, either. Somehow, I didn’t manage to get a shot of Dad or the dog, but there may be one on somebody else’s phone. If I find such a picture, I’ll come back and add it to the blog.

EDIT: Here’s a picture of Dad and Maggie, although it’s not from this particular hunting trip, obviously. Notice that Dad, too has impressive facial hair.

The most adventuresome part of my trip to The Great White North was the trip home, ironically enough. On the morning of the 30th, I woke up to snow. Lots of snow. It had snowed at least six inches during the night, and it was still coming down like gangbusters. My flight was supposed to lift off a few minutes before 3:00 p.m., which meant I should be at the airport by about 1:00, just to be safe. Calculating for driving time, we would need to leave my parents’ house by 11:00, in optimal driving conditions. Since the conditions were NOT optimal, and since my mom is a bit of a nervous driver (Dad was at work), we ended up leaving my parents’ house a little before 9:00 that morning. As it turned out, the roads weren’t too bad, and I arrived at the airport in plenty of time. Security check was relatively painless, and I was sitting at my gate a full hour before boarding time. Then the snow began to REALLY come down. Minneapolis-St. Paul airport was shut down for an hour and a half. The plane which was supposed to take me to Houston was arriving FROM Houston on a turnaround trip, but it couldn’t land in the snow. It didn’t have enough fuel to go into a holding pattern for an undetermined amount of time, so it diverted to Duluth to land and refuel. By the time the plane fueled up, the snow slowed down, and the plane flew back to Minneapolis, it was 6:00. Normally, I don’t much care about delayed flights, but I was planning to take the shuttle van home from the Houston airport, and the last one leaves at 9:30. Boarding a three-hour flight in Minneapolis at 6:00 does not bode well for catching a 9:30 shuttle van in Houston, particularly when I have checked baggage. When we touched down, I bolted off the airplane and down to the baggage area, already calling my roommate to come pick me up because I was certain I’d missed the van. While I was waiting for my bag, my phone rang. Considering that it was already 9:45, I was shocked to find that it was the van driver calling to ask if I was still in the terminal. Apparently, some other passenger had a bit of a delay, and the van hadn’t left yet. I told her where to pick me up and then called my roommate and told him to head on back home. By the time the baggage carousel actually delivered my duffel and I loaded all my stuff into the shuttle van, it was 10:05, which is decidedly NOT the departure time for a 9:30 trip. I think the other people in the van were annoyed with me…

I did manage to make it home, though, relatively unscathed, except for the psychic scars which were inflicted upon me by the traveling vitamin salesman who sat across the aisle from me on the flight. Often, congresspersons seeking to delay a vote will filibuster by reading all the names in the phone book for the district they represent. This salesman had as much oratory stamina as any filibustering representative, but the content of his chatter was far less interesting. I briefly considered trying to cut either my wrists or his with the broken plastic cup from my four-ounce serving of ginger ale.

Well, now I just sound angry. Angry and self-referencing. That’s probably not a good combination.

All things considered, my annual trek to The Great White North was a smashing success, and I wish you could all have been there with me. If nothing else, I think you’d like ice fishing.

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