The Battle Lake Motel & RV Park Call us 218-864-5208 Ice Fishing is GREAT

Things that otherwise were so unimportant that they should not have been mentioned except for the fact that I paid for the bandwidth so I might as well pollute cyberspace with my uninformed rantings about nothing in particular.

The price of gas and the weather. I had a person call the other day and they said that they were going to be vacationing closer to the Twin Cities. First, at most we are about $20 more in gas than the northern suburbs. Second, you are going to spend more than that on a room, and it won't be in lake country. Our prices are the same this year as last, and the year before. What else has stayed the same?

Another person called and said that they heard that there was still ice on the lakes. No... We had fishing on the opener. Where do people get these ideas? Another person asked if there was a chance for thunderstorms. A chance? Look, in Minnesota from May 1 to October 1 there is always going to be a "chance" of later afternoon and overnight thunderstorms. A "chance" means what? A 1% chance?

As it turns out the weekends have been great with nice hot and humid temps. Someone asked what the water temperature was. That is pretty hard, the water temp on little lakes like South Turtle can be far higher than the temps on Otter Tail. There isn't much of a connection between water temp and fishing success.

We have been here for almost five years and one thing remains true - the best fishing in this area is on West Battle Lake. People come to our place and use it as a base to try a half-dozen lakes in a weekend, which is great. But, time and time again we find that the people cleaning the biggest fish, or giving us the largest catch-and-release pictures did their fishing on West Battle Lake.

JR (a total fishing guru) tells me that artificial lures work so well on West Battle that they should be illegal. We have a group of guys in the "50 inch plus" musky club. All of them caught their monster on West Battle. Like I said, I don't think that water temp makes a difference. If you bring your fish finder, limit your trolling, use a map, and fish smart you are going to have success. If you just want to bolt up and down the lake tossing your line any old place its going to be tough.

I am so stupid. First, I live in a town of less than 800 people so there a lot of big city things that I just do not get. Plus I am pretty naive about things that are slightly out of the nice little rut that I am in. So it was not too surprising, I guess, that I found myself unwillingly partying with several thousand gay, lesbian, bi, and transgender people. It all starts with Husker Du.

They were a great band from my youth. I graduated from Moorhead State University (that is what they called it then, and what I still call it steadfastingly refusing to update my college alma matters name) in 1984, which was about the peak of their Twin Cities reign. The Replacement shows were always sold out months in advance, and you needed a special pass to get near Bikini Kill or any of the other Twin Cities sound bands. If you think that Prince was it in 1984 in Minnesota you are sadly mistaken. Husker Du was way, way more important to most twentysomething wanna be musicians like me and every single other person I knew that was sawing away on a flying V Ibanez.


I saw them once, when I did make two tries. At one there just seemed to be a lot of people staring at their shoes in some smoky dive bar muttering about trouble in Wisconsin at Alpine Valley or somewhere. The show I saw was at 7th Avenue, which I know is going to sound like I was at Woodstock but nonetheless I was there. I followed Bob Moulds career after that on the periphery. His band Sugar never played anywhere. He played at Taste of Minnesota; which I believe is now just called Taste because of some weird copyright infringement with the Taste of Chicago.

This was when it was still held on the mall in front of the state capital. He played an awesome acoustic set so I was really excited to hear that he was going to be playing the Uptown Pride festival. I like the Uptown largely because my father used to usher at the Suburban World theater, and the old Gale Institute was down there. Its all kinds of trendy shops now, but I had many friends that landed in the Uptown after leaving MSU.

Sooo, I thought, Pride; well I am proud of Uptown too. Thus I waved good bye to Battle Lake and went to the Twin Cities.

What I did not know until I arrived was that the Pride we were dealing with was gay, lesbian, bi, and transgender pride. Oh well. They seemed to be a lot like the punks of the Uptown from 1985; trying to be scary in a Halloween party sort of way, not in a creepy John Wayne Gasey insane clown sort of way. It was all pretty humorous as I looked at all the people in the obligatory black tee shirt, black cargo pants uniform of the Uptown GLBT crowd. I always thought that the punks that wore the safety pins and the black eye shadow and nail polish were just playing dress up anyway. Anarchy just does not spill across the Atlantic as easily as Never Mind the Bullocks made it seem.

The stage was a flat bed barely one foot off the ground. The first few acts were variations on the cycle bitch, drag queen punk genre. Completely forgettable. Although I did meet some very nice young ladies that were from the roller derby team. The beer was not overly expensive. There was an illegal entrepreneur selling booze without the approval of the Bryant Lake Bowl / Pride Fest authorities. I love people like that so I bought a few and waited for Bob. The show was blistering. I was standing about four feet away from him the whole time. Which was a bit close and unnerving so I backed up and eventually walked away on his last tune.

Everyone has given me a hard time about my wander into GLBT land. They seemed peaceful enough and I was never worried about my safety. I dont know if I would have felt the same had it been held indoors, but with a nice warm night, some nice music and some illegal beers it was fine.

Splitting Wood

Recently, back before Thanksgiving, we installed an outdoor wood furnace. With that comes the task of splitting wood. Now technically you could load full "rounds" into the furnace. Its box is about the size of a small closet so trust me just about anything you can lift can go in. But in reality they burn a lot better when they are broke up into slightly smaller pieces. One piece weighed about 150 pounds so its better to bust them up. Some big chunks are so large I can not even lift them up to the door so I don't really have a choice.

I have only an 8 pound splitting mall and some wedges. We borrowed a hydraulic job and it was fine but its a lot of work because you feel obligated to split a couple of green cords everytime you fire it up. Each night I like to split just enough to stoke up the baby till morning.

Green basswood is a toughy. Old fir and ash and oak split like a deck of cards but fresh fallen basswood is like pounding into rubber. I have found that if I come completely off the ground by half hopping half leaping and bring the mall down at the same time as I hit the ground, concentrating all 270 pounds of my bulk into one split second of effort, just about anything will break. Sometimes the wood is so green that the mall head comes back at me with homicidal intent. I use the rebound to spring back up off the ground and hammer that sucker one more time. I find that profanity is especially helpful.

I don't use it around the kids or the guests, or around Wendy or Mom, but by golly when its 2:00 a.m. and I have a knot covered round that is about 2 feet across and 3 feet tall a little of the "f" word comes in handy. I develop a deep hatred for logs that do not split. Sometimes in the snow I will come across a log with a couple of deep smacks in the top. That is one that I wrote off once before as un crackable. That one becomes the new focus of all my anxiety, self delusions, and hatred. Nothing brings me as much satisfaction, really nothing, as having one of those fly apart with the halves cartwheeling through the air and the mall head digging straight into the ground with a spark. Then I hoist the half and toss it into the flames. "There you go, you won't be so tough come 7:00 a.m. You'll be nothing but ashes."

I don't own a chain saw. Occassionally, the wood guys will deliver a chunk too long to go in the box. My usual method of cutting it down is by propping the ends up on a couple of stumps chunks and busting it in half by repeatedly hitting it with the maul until it shreds itself in two. If that does not work and it is light enough for me to pick up it will pick it up by one end and do a full 280 into the side of an oak tree. It will either bust or send me sprawling to the ground. If it does not bust, well now it has really picked a fight. I have two options, the Swede saw (which will work), or picking up by one end and slamming it into the ground. I will put it in back of me and bring it completely over my head and straight into the ground or over the top of a tree stump. Once I pounded a six foot long piece into an old ash stump (the root ball part) so hard that the ash stump shattered. The log I was swinging gave me that classic "baseball bat on a cold day" sting in the hands. Big ash and oak logs clink like pieces of pig iron in the cold weather.

I like splitting wood.