Manweekend

Never, in the history of weekends, has the blockbuster summer season been so eagerly awaited.

The latest sequel of the wildly popular series Man Weekend is scheduled to be released to cottages throughout Highgate Springs on June 5, 2008 and is projected to open to unparalleled crowds and rave reviews.

For the first and only time Man Weekend has been rated X by the Man Weekend Association of America (MWAA). The unprecedented X rating was awarded for the following reasons:

• EXcessive numbers of Men show up.
• The weather is eXpected to be perfect.
• The food is eXtraordinary (in quantity and quality).
• The lake is full of eXtra big fish¹.
• EXtreme amounts of beer are consumed.
• The boats all run eXcellently.
• Minors are not allowed to attend.

Clearly, Man Weekend X is an event that must be experienced live and in person. You will not achieve the same satisfying Sunday morning feeling² by watching the DVD. Don’t miss out on the real thing!

Footnotes:

¹Whether we catch any remains to be seen.
²Tired, sunburned, dehydrated, slightly hungover, and heartburn.

Consider the following:

1. Ty Tobey, a founding Man, was unable to attend Man Weekend 2007.
2. The weather was perfect, the fishing was pretty good (according to Allen), and the Ty-tanic worked flawlessly.

Is there a cause and effect relationship here?

Ty’s absence was an occasional topic of conversation. I now reveal the true reason Ty didn’t show. During his move Ty misplaced his Man Weekend hat and decided he’d rather skip Man Weekend entirely rather than endure the Ordeal of the Garment of Shame. It’s just as well. Man Weekend’s ISP would have probably pulled the plug if those pictures appeared on the web site.

Drama was provided by Gilbert and Scott’s heroic rescue of the Red Rocket when the RR’s new starter motor turned out to be the single-use model. Allen, Tom, Patrick, and Richard spent several hours out in the middle of the bay:

1. Picking pieces of exploded starter motor housing out of
   the engine.
2. Attempting to flag down nearby boats and airplanes.
3. Noting the direction of the drift and wondering if the Venice onion soup place was still open.
4. Franticly trying to remember cell phone numbers.

Fortunately, someone remembered Ty’s number, Ty was able to get Gilbert’s cell phone number from his office, and eventually the AquaPimp came around and, at some risk to its engine, towed the Red Rocket back to Shipyard.

Allen, Patrick, and Tom enjoyed a few minutes of quiet levity when they dropped the anchor while Richard was at the bow in a futile attempt to wield the paddle. Har, har, har guys.

The moral of the story is that if you need to be rescued, either everyone should bring their preprogrammed cell phones or at least one guy should be fishing without a license to insure a timely visit by the game warden.

Ned Atwater, who wants his attendance made a clear part of the record, drove up in his beautiful
30 year old truck. He says he got 18mpg on the ride up. Ned can also be seen in this year’s group shot and in the kayak pictures.

The art of the Man Weekend dinner has been perfected. The Saturday Man Meal was half melt-in-your-mouth meat and half monster shrimps prepared two different ways. The debt the rest of Man Weekend owes to Allen and Patrick for their work is incalculable. Allen brought a case of a dozen 20oz heavy glass goblets that were put into use by those not drinking beer. Whiskey, scotch, G&Ts, wine, and margaritas were being consumed in 20oz servings. Whee!

Tony Reed, a distant cousin to Allen and Richard, and single-star, sends the following:

“The Canadian Man-Weekend Auxiliary Branch, from it’s headquarters in Picton, Prince Edward County, Ont (just across the lake from Rochester NY, see?) wishes y’all all the best for Man-Weekend 2007.

May you always have red meat and strong beverage and a round in the chamber …”

Next year is Man Weekend X and the first gold stars will be awarded to those founding Men who deserve them. The time to start preparations (ie. sweet-talking her) is now!

The panoramic images were made with a free program called Autostitch.

More panoramas can be seen at the Camp Randolph pictures page.

It is estimated that 1 billion people watched the Superbowl this year. That’s just a fraction of the people³ who follow Man Weekend.

Top 10 reasons why Man Weekend VIII is better than Superbowl XL:

• #10 Superior advertising.⁴
• #9 Man Weekend lasts for three days, not three hours.
• #8 You don’t have to worry about your team losing.
• #7 Occasional souvenirs.⁵
• #6 Boats, fishing, and golf!
• #5 No lame⁶ geriatric⁷ half-time entertainment.
• #4 Better food.⁸
• #3 No stupid/blind/bribed officials.
• #2 There’s no one around to suggest that there are better things to do.⁹
• And, finally, the #1 reason why Man Weekend VIII is better than Superbowl XL:
• #1 Man Weekend’s Roman numeral doesn’t look like an underwear size.

“Neither rain, nor more rain, nor rain all !@#$% day long will keep these Men from their Weekend.”¹

Tom and Ty set a new record for Man Weekend by arriving on Tuesday which, unfortunately, was the only really nice day of the event. Everyone else showed up a few hours earlier than usual² on Thursday, except for Charles:

“We’re the Man Weekend Editorial Board, and we approve the following message:”

Charles’ [censored] boss [redacted], one hour before Charles was supposed to [censored] leave on Thursday, [censored] informed him that he had to [censored] stay for the rest of the [censored] week, despite his heroic effort to successfully met a [censored] Tuesday deadline, to clean up a few [censored] last minute [censored] details. All because their [censored] [censored] client [redacted] insisted on an impossible schedule and Charles’ [censored] [censored] [censored] company [redacted] agreed to it. [Censored] [redacted] did fly Charles up to Burlington on Friday but on a [censored] airline without a [censored] first-class section. We think that this is a huge pile of [censored] [censored] and if it ever happens again we’re all going to go down to to [censored] [censored] [redacted] and stuff some [censored] [censored] up some [censored] [censored] [censored].³

Spirits were further dampened by the inoperability of the Ty-tanic, the main engine seal of which disintegrated over the winter. Ty considered trying to buy a new boat⁴ but in the end decided that he’d rather continue to stay both alive and married.

This year Man Weekend was graced⁵ with the presence of Tobey cottage affiliate Adam who put up with the weather and being called “Copper Pin” with good humor. He even expressed an interest in returning! Talk about a sucker for punishment. It was the unanimous opinion of the other Men that next time Adam should bring his Hummer.

Undaunted by the prospect of getting really wet, the Aqua Pimp, HAM, and Ned & Co.’s fleet of kayaks⁶ ventured forth Friday morning and stayed out nearly all day. The fishing wasn’t great, probably because the lake was too high, but fish were caught and the fact that everyone seemed to have gotten a camera cell phone in the last year means there’s lots of proof.

And proof is good because Ty spent the interleaving year creating rules, entry forms, and log sheets⁷ for the prestigious Frank Martin Tackle Box Award awarded to the Man who catches the largest fish during the weekend, be it ever so humble. The whole thing would have been a lot more effective if Ty actually found Frank Martin’s tackle box, but maybe it’ll show up next year.

One thing that bad weather can’t change is Man Weekend food. Damn those hot Italian sausages are good! I think Patrick and Allen got those good unsliced rolls just to keep the consumption rate closer to Patrick’s production rate. It was Patrick and Allen who brought the sticky rolls that vastly improved the morning coffee set-up.

The Saturday washout meant that instead sitting on their asses, drinking beer, and cultivating sunburn in a healthy outdoors environment; the Men sat on their asses, drank beer, and advanced their pasty white complexions in a smoky indoors environment. The wind made even the Tobey cottage porch uninhabitable so, unusually, the Men congregated in Edgewood⁸. Tom and Ty still can’t agree on what happened to their TV so Richard got out his subminiature notebook computer and queued up Animal House, Blazing Saddles, and the Blues Brothers. Never before have so many watched so much on so little a screen.

The gosh-darn weather actually started to clear up a little Sunday morning, and there was the usual talk of a pre-departure fishing trip, but most Men seemed to want to get this weekend behind them ASAP. But never fear! The weather next year couldn’t possibly be worse! So prepare yourselves for:

Footnotes:

¹A low pressure system stuck over Massachusetts and rotating counter clockwise was pumping moist Atlantic air up into Quebec, through the St. Lawrence River valley, and down to the Green Mountains which forced it up to cooler elevations and caused it to condense into rain. Northeastern Vermont was basically the butt of a 500 mile long rain machine all weekend long.

²Leadfoots! The lot of you!

³[Censored] [censored] [redacted] [censored] [censored] [anatomically unlikely] [censored].

⁴Tom did come up with the perfect successor name however: the Ty-conderoga!

⁵To the extent that anything at Man Weekend can be considered graceful.

⁶One of which is pimped up with a combination GPS receiver/fish finder! See the pictures.

⁷Soon to be available in convenient PDF form at a website near you!

⁸The fact that Edgewood has a wood fueled heater that doesn’t suck probably had something to do with this.

Kudos to Glenn and Gilbert for this year’s motto.

More Men than usual succumbed to The Skirt and sent their regrets this year. This pitiful display of total wimpiness was offset by the fine performance of Ty Tobey who left a critical wedding (not his own) immediately after the second “I, do” and flew up to Burlington in time to get some serious fishing time in. It would be to the advantage of others to learn from his example.

Another fine example was set by Ned Atwater and some of his contingent who showed up Wednesday and had a proper Man Fire Wednesday night! Tom Tobey and Richard Heurtley, who appeared early Thursday, both expecting to garner the prestige of being the First Arrival, now know better what it takes.

Richard regrets to inform his fellow Men that the gorgeous woman who carted him from Richford to Highgate, Jill Lacroix, is Mrs. Vermont 2003. Jill’s husband Marc was invited but couldn’t make Man Weekend this year.

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky the entire time. Temperatures ranged from a comfortable (with a decent sleeping bag) 40 to a really comfortable 70. The lake was a few feet lower than usual and ranged from perfectly calm to mildly rippled. Smaller boats could be beached down at the dock, which those of us with bigger boats thought was an entirely unfair advantage.

The fishing was good. Ned Atwater et al. put in Wes Dunham’s old boat, found a hot spot at the mouth of the creek, and sampled nearly the entire lake’s bass population. The Edgewood crowd caught a bunch of juvenile pike and bass and one nice 5lb northern while anchored “off the dock”. Ty and Richard both caught clams while casting with spinners. Gilbert and Scott, once again, did the best with several fine pike and bass, and have the pictures to prove it.

Chris cooked up a MiniMan Dinner of burgers, dogs, and corn on the cob Friday night with contributions of fries from Glenn and deviled eggs from Allen. For the Saturday Man Meal Allen brought 60 dozen clams and steaks provided by Patrick (who, being skirted, didn’t show up in person but after dinner we forgave him provided he shows up next year and brings more steaks). The surf and turf combination was very well received but a few Men observed that pigging out on clams before the steaks were done was, in retrospect, not such a good idea.

Man Weekend Mechanization took a quantum leap forward when Richard bought a timer module for the coffee urn. Now coffee starts brewing at 6:00am even if no one is in any condition to get up that early.

Combustibles at Camp were getting in short supply (note to Ned: Don’t burn all the wood on Wednesday), but while on a beer run Gilbert, Scott, and Glenn came across the end game of a garage sale and, inspired by the “Everything Free!” sign, loaded up Gilbert’s van with crappy pseudo-wood furniture and other odd and sundry items to fuel Saturday’s fire which was of epic proportions. Even Uncle Arthur (wearing a skirt) would have been impressed.

Early on it seemed like there would be a shortage of boats. Ty was coming late and the AquaPimp was imprisoned behind the Ty-tanic in the Tobey garage. Dennis, who usually hauls the Red Rocket and the HAM out of storage, was out on a medical due to an eye operation. The prospect of being limited to the Lamson’s Cadillac and Uncle Arthur’s 5HP outboard spurred the Men into action and eventually all known boats saw the light of day although the HAM and the Ty-tanic didn’t make it into the water. The Men of Grow Cottage were immune to the near boat crisis because they brought the usual array of superb kayaks.

Man Weekend gained yet another tradition, as yet unexercised. Man Weekend hats and pins were first distributed last year at Man Weekend 2003. The question of lost hats was considered during the intervening year and the result was the bright red Man Weekend Garment of Perpetual Regret, or the Man Thong. A lost Man Weekend Hat will be replaced for free with all appropriate pins provided the Man desirous of such a replacement agrees to being photographed wearing just the hat and the Man Weekend Garment of Perpetual Regret, with the image being posted to the Man Weekend web site and to be taken down only if the original hat is recovered. You have been warned. (The first Man to undergo the ordeal has an advantage. The Man Thong is clean now and will never be washed.)

The issue of lost and/or stolen pins hasn’t been resolved. There are a finite number of Man Weekend pins and since the institution of Man Weekend is expected to last for several generations, at least, there is a reluctance to freely issue replacements. Possibilities being considered are:

1. Charging a high price for replacement pins, with the proceeds going to commission the next series of pins.
2. Replacing lost pins on the loser’s fifth or tenth year anniversary.
3. Requiring the Garment of Perpetual Regret ordeal.

The attendance pin policy needs clarification. Attendance pins are accrued for each year of attendance, but are not awarded if the Man Weekend Hat is not present. All this means is that if you forget your hat one year (a not uncommon occurrence) you’ll get two pins next year.

All Men are cautioned to keep Allen Heurtley apprised of their e-mail address so that future announcements (Man Weekend 2005!) will be received. Please send Man Weekend 2004 pictures to Charles so they can be posted on the web site.