Wood cutting weekend

For more pictures, check out last year's wood cutting extravaganza.

My buddy, Ricardo, has a cabin (really a house) about 30 minutes north of Madison and it's a nice relaxing place to visit what with the woods, nature and fire place fires. The reality though is that either wood has to be purchased to be burned, or dead trees from his 20+ acres need to be cut, dried and split. Since the trees are plentiful, it only makes sense to do the latter. The wood stacks were full from last year and ready to be split, so that was our chore for last weekend. Five of us went up on Friday with the thought of starting to split some wood before a snow storm hit.

Friday quickly dissolved into a trip into town for a fish fry and then a night at one of the many local bars. It was great fun which included Smitty stealing not one, not two, but three glasses under his coat. Ha! Golfing buddy Nick tackled some chick in the alley (we're still not sure what happened there) and Ricardo was off smoking (something) with the DJ. Only Bill the Bear and I remained unscathed.

Saturday morning was not happy for most, but I was doing ok. Smitty was in a bad way...as was Ricardo who went on a "shot of Jameson" spree. For some reason the site won't let me move pictures now, otherwise I'd put the "me cooking breakfast" picture here.

So I'll go on with the order that the photos are in now.

This stack of wood is one of four that needed to be split. In all, it was probably close to 3 cords of wood. We worked at it from about 11 until after dark....sometime around 6 I guess.

This is where the wood WAS stacked, with the picture above positioned just left of this picture. The splitter is on the right. Actually, we struggled getting the splitter started up due to "old gas". Bill thought of getting some started fluid into the tank (or sprayed it in the carburetor I guess) and that got it fired up. While they were trying to figure out what to do, I decided to shovel snow since I knew I couldn't help with the starting process. You have to know your limits!

And here's the wood shed. At this point it's only about half full. You can see one row in the back and this middle row of wood. Another row was stacked in front of this one.

We each have a meal or food to bring and or prepare. Due to making breakfast for tailgates 10 times a year, I opted for breakfast. It's not the easiest meal since I'm usually not the earliest of risers. It all worked out though and here I was making chorizo omelettes with cheese, green pepper and onion. We also had maple sausage links and thick cut bacon. Good eating.

But there was plenty of time spent in front of the fire as well. We got this puppy up to 800 degrees pretty much every night.

We didn't have music on, so I'm not entirely sure WHAT was going on here.

Here, Nick and Bill are playing cards. I played Euchre for the first time and we played a little Pai-Gow Poker.

Smitty after the Friday night fiasco. For some reason, there was too much smoke in his upstairs bedroom, so he slept on the couch. Oh, I didn't mention that Ricardo and Bill brought a couch up to the house, but it caused a chain reaction of couch moves: the new one went into the living room, the living room sofa went up into the upstairs room, the sofa up there went into the basement....I think...I don't even know anymore. That's what we did on Friday instead of splitting wood. We had to get the couch inside before the snow hit, so we just focused on the furniture.

Nick doffing the coonskin cap. He looks happy!!

Instead of coming home on Sunday as Nick and Smitty did, I stayed after the Bears game (which we watched at The Corner Pocket in downtown Portage) and went curling! Yep, curling. I got to throw 16 stones and it was very fun. My buddies Terry and Sharon got me into the curling club while their daughter Erin practiced and the coach snuck me onto the last sheet.

Curling is actually a LOT harder than it looks. The actually delivery is as easy as it looks, but the aim and speed is tough to get down. Now, I've only thrown those 16 stones (of which I put two in the house, sent one through the button, and left one just short of the house) so maybe it really isn't that hard. Or maybe I'm just an outstanding athlete! Ha! Anyway, it's a hoot and I'm going curling with friends on the 19th and am looking forward to it. Thanks Terry and Sharon!!!