Big Ol' Bug Smacker

I will let you know up front, last weekend was a very eventful weekend so let me start from the top.

On Thursday I had a couple of free passes for the Pig Gig. So after we set up camp at the Bay City State Park,  I ran inside the event to grab a rack of ribs from Aussom Aussie. These have been my favorites several times in the past so I knew I couldn’t go wrong. My niece Ashley and I pigged out on these on the way to Grandpa Tony’s to join the family for pizza. I didn’t know it then but these were the best ribs I had all weekend.

We went back out to the Pig Gig on Friday at noon for the annual Special Celebrity Rib Cook-off. We were sitting at a picnic table in the State Farm tent. We were finishing up a rack of ribs when all of a sudden my wife begins to slouch in her chair and gasp for air. She is having some type of heart problem. I called out for help and a woman with a State Farm volunteer shirt on came over. I informed her of our situation and that we needed to call 911. She said she would get help.

Several minutes passed which seemed like an eternity. I then asked her again if 911 had been called. She replied that they were. I thought to myself that even if they had been called, I was calling them again. I got them on the phone only to discover I was the first to contact them. I was shocked.

When someone is having heart problems every minute counts. These people didn’t seem to understand this. The State Farm woman had lied to me. Someone had gone to the stage to make an announcement for a doctor in the crowd and never bothered to call 911. All the time she informed me otherwise. As you can see the workers at the Pig Gig truly had no game plan ready for emergencies.

After the ambulance arrived, my wife and I got a ride to the hospital. By the time we arrived she was doing better. The episode had passed. They ran a bunch of tests and sent us home. Hopefully that is the end of that story.

The Navel Sea Cadets were managing the parking at the Pig Gig this year (I use the term “managing” very loosely). I hope they manage better out on the water than they do on dry land. Their only job was to keep track of how many spots were available for parking. After the parking lot was full all they had to do is let one car in for every one that left. When we arrived back at the Pig Gig on Saturday we were stopped at the gate by the Navel Sea Cadets and informed that we could not come in.  We were told that they had lost count and were just turning everyone away until they could figure out what was going on and how many spaces were available for parking.

Once we got into the Pig Gig we ran into Wendy Dore who runs the event. She was with her dad, Art. Wendy had heard of our situation the day before. We explained how dissatisfied we were with how everything was handled. We went on to tell her how unorganized the event has become. She apologized. Her dad then asked how my wife was doing and said”I guess we should have asked that to begin with”.

Back at the Bay City State Park we had several tents come in on Friday and setup on a couple of sites behind us. It was quite a large crowd of people. They took up a large area. A few of their tents were actually on our site.

Throughout the day these people would travel across our site to get water, use the rest rooms or shower. They would come within a few feet of our awning as they passed by. They had no respect for our privacy at all. Though we really didn’t like this, we didn’t want to make a fuss about it. I was not sure if they would even understand me. They were not speaking English. They spoke whatever language people from India speak.

The next morning I woke to find a large pile of trash was placed on our site during the night. I thought to myself that even if these people don’t know the rules of camping in a State Park they should have some sort of idea about what is to be just plain rude.

Once again I just let it slide. That was until one of them in an automobile decided to drive right through our site to get to their site behind us instead of going around on the road. I was sitting outside with my wife and parents when all four of us in unison yelled out “Hey, Stop right there!” Every big brown eye in the bunch was wide open, just like a deer in the headlights. They quickly apologized for causing problems.

You would think that would have been the end of it but, ten minutes later they were back to crossing through our site again.

To top it off we went down to Mussel Beach for a couple of cones of our favorite ice cream. It cost us over $8.00 for two cones where the ice cream barely crested the top of the cone. But it is somewhat hard to complain because Ashby’s Sterling Ice Cream is really good.

Two years ago I canoed down Thunder Bay River for the first time, so I was excited to return and give it a try with my kayak. We started out at the Thunder Bay Canoe & Kayak Livery in Atlanta, Michigan. This time around we arrived with 11 other people. The group consisted of Jason, Becky, Gary, Ted, Dani, Ashley, Sam, Jerry, Ellen, Terri and I. In all we had 7 kayaks and 2 canoes.

The Thunder Bay River was quite narrow and shallow in most spots along the way. Because we launched from a livery, the river was clear of any obstacles. It was the 4^th of July weekend so the river was quite busy. I was even attacked by a couple of water cannons thanks to my brother-in-law, Jerry.

The last half hour or so of our trip the river became extremely shallow and rocky. We arrived at the Eichorn Bridge about 3 hours later. This area only has road side parking.

This is our 5^th year now coming to Clear Lake State Park for our annual 4^th of July camping trip. I counted 22 people for our cookout. That was a few more than we had last year. As usual the food was excellent. There was BBQ Chicken, BBQ Ribs, Venison, and plenty of salads.

Chuck and Rande made an encore appearance as the Host Campers. It was nice to see them back again this year at Clear Lake. They didn’t think they were going to be allowed to return to the same park again two years in a row.

We had to relocate a bit from our usual campsite. The one we normally reserved had already been taken. The spot we ended up with was just about as nice. It was large and had room for a couple of tents as well.

The big story this year was the power problem. Clear Lake State Park has a real problem with the power when they get near capacity. We shared our electrical post with three other RVs. Out of the four outlets only two are 30 amps, the other two are 20 amps.

This year unlike the last year or two, they were filled to the max. We had 5 RVs and 4 tents in our group alone. The power for our group went out several times during the day and night. Every time it went out we had to hike down to Chuck’s site so that he could flag a park ranger down and have the power reset.

Another problem this year was the weather. When we arrived on Wednesday the temperature got down to 50 degrees that night. By the time the weekend rolled around the heat had climbed to the mid 90’s with high humidity. With heat like that you really need to be able to run your AC in the RV.

One Ranger came by and informed us that we were going to need to turn off our air-conditioning. He also stated that if we continued to run the AC in our RVs that he would not restore the power next time it went off.

Before we left, I spoke with a Park Ranger by the name of Greg Kinser. He informed me that this has been a problem for quite some time. Greg said that Clear Lake State Park is an older park and was never designed to support today’s modern RVs. He informed me that the larger rigs demand more power and overload the circuits in the park.

 I find this somewhat hard to believe since the power always went out at the main, not the electrical post. You would think that if your rig were to demand to much current that it would cause only your breaker to blow. Not take out everyone else. This means that there simply was not enough power for the outlets throughout the park.

Greg stated that he hoped the new Recreation Passport which will take effect on Oct. 1, 2010 will help offset the revenue loss the Parks have been realizing the past few years. The Recreation Passport will be available to Michigan residents for $10 per registered vehicle, or $5 per registered motorcycle. This will replace the resident state park and boating access site stickers. Vehicles registered outside the State of Michigan will still be required to display a Michigan State park permit.

note: The following plea was written by me to my son some time ago in an effort to convince him to quit smoking. I once was a smoker and know the difficulty in kicking the habit. It saddened me to see him go through the pain that I too had experienced. I am happy to say that as I write this, I no longer know of anyone in my family that smokes. Please feel free to pass along the following message to someone you love.

A Father’s Plea to his Child

Reasons to Quit Smoking:

1. BAD BREATH- yes everyone can smell it.
2. No more need to take time out of your day for a smoke break.
3. You will miss out on dating opportunities.
4. It will cost you higher insurance premiums.
5. You will require more sick days.
6. It can KILL you.
7. You cannot keep up with non-smokers in physical activities.
8. Non-smokers look at smokers as having a weak character.
9. You will miss out on important career opportunities that non-smokers will not.
10. Stained teeth and fingers.
11. Nervousness and depression.
12. Constant coughing.
13. You have to listen to others complain about your smoke.
14. Breathing problems.
15. Fatigue.
16. Heart disease risk, including heart attack, no you’re not too young.
17. Gum disease.
18. You will get facial creases and wrinkles.
19. EXPENSIVE.
20. Smoke stinks up everything you own.
21. You are missing out on the true flavor of food. You will enjoy a better sense of taste and smell.
22. Cigarette burns everywhere.
23. Risk of second hand smoke to people around you
24. Nonsmokers don’t like kissing smokers. There is nothing sexy about smoking.
25. Stroke.
26. You take longer to recover from illnesses.
27. With each puff you inhale over 4,000 chemicals (250 are toxic poisons, 60 cause cancer) These include:  Ammonia (found in toilet bowl cleaner); Arsenic (ingredient in rat poison); Polonium 210 (nuclear waste);  Carbon Monoxide (car exhaust); Acetone (used in finger nail polish remover)
28. Emphysema and other lung diseases.
29. Morning cough.
30. No more naps to combat the tiredness because your body has to process all the poisons that cigarettes have.
31. No more self-hate and loss of self-esteem.
32. You will shorten your life with each puff.
33. Nicotine is as addictive as heroin or cocaine.
34. When you stop smoking, you save a lot of money that can be spent on more important things.
35. Immediately after you quit smoking, you will never again have to deal with the hassle of leaving someone’s  home, your workplace, your own home, a restaurant or any other place to have a cigarette.
36. No more cigarette hangovers after late nights out.
37. The older you get, the more you will regret smoking and the harder it is to quit.
38. Arguments with parents, friends who want you to stop smoking.
39. You are tired of the need of a crutch.
40. CANCER!

Reasons to Smoke:

1. Gives you some type of imaginary confidence.
2.     You are weak and don’t have the ability to quit.
3. After being told a thousand times, you truly don’t realize the reasons listed above.

After reading these reasons which way does your scale tip? Take a good long look and think seriously about your answer. I bring this to you because I love you. I too had this problem and beat it. I hate to see you suffer. I only want to help you.

Remember this- The difference between a wise man and a fool is, a wise man learns from other’s mistakes and a fool learns from his own mistakes.

Written by: A loving Father

To wind down from the wedding last weekend and nurse our now full blown colds, we drove over to the nearest hot tub and sauna. That brings us to the Valley Plaza RV Resort. This is a nice place to go to this time of year. Plus it offers off-season rates and a Good Sams Discount making the cost very reasonable.

Sunday, we caught a break in the rain that we have been getting for the last several days. So we hopped into the truck and headed downtown to the 46th Annual Northwood University International Auto Show. Our youngest son Spike, who is a junior this year at Northwood, is working at the show. The show was quite a bit smaller this year due to the reduction of Automobile makes and models being offered these days.  It looked to me as if the attendance this year was down as well. I am not sure if this is due to the weather or the economy. Most likely it is both.

Our oldest son, Jason got married today to a wonderful girl by the name of Becky Card. I am so glad the day has finally arrived. I want to congratulate Jason and Becky for all of the arrangements that the two of them had made to bring this all together. The wedding ceremony was beautiful and the reception was quite exquisite. We had an excellent turn-out. My wife, Terri and I greeted nearly 300 people.
 
I want to take a moment to thank all of our friends and family for helping us celebrate this very special occasion. I hope a good time was had by all. We are extremely grateful for all of the support from each and every one of our guests.
 
I would also like to pass along a special thanks to that one special individual that allowed me to take home their cold. I guess that by touching so many people, latching on to a germ or two was inevitable. It was a totally unexpected bonus.

It’s time for RIBS again which brings us to our annual stay at the Bay City State Park. Like every year the park is just filled with mosquitoes. The rain this year doesn’t help matters. They can be quite annoying, but that doesn’t stop us because we’re just here to make a “Run for the Ribs”.

I had picked up 14 advance tickets for friends and family to attend the Labadie Pig Gig with us on Saturday. Wouldn’t you know that Saturday was the day the sky let loose with a torrential downpour. I mean it wasn’t raining “cats and dogs”; it was raining “hippos and elephants”. That was not enough to stop us hardcore Piggy Munchers. We outfitted ourselves with raincoats and umbrellas and headed into the storm. We arrived to discover that even the vendors and competitors hadn’t shown up yet. We were all alone and HUNGRY!

This year the Sawmill Smoke House did not show up at all, so I figured that Aussum Aussie would regain their title for best ribs. I was wrong. A new contender had arrived called Barbecue Company. I believe that even if the Sawmill had shown up that they would have had to bow to the ribs from the Barbecue Company.

The BBQ Company ribs were juicy, succulent and fall off the bone tender. They had an apple wood smoke flavor that penetrated the meat right to the bone. The ribs were grilled in a dry rub and then glazed with two different sauces until they achieve their perfection. 

One more thing that I would like to mention is about the prices. Every year the price for the ribs goes up. This year was no exception. I can understand how this is inevitable but, in a year where money is tight and hardship is abundant, this is not a good time to raise prices. The thing that gets me is that I heard the rib competitors are informed by the event organizers as to the prices that are to set.  One competitor went as far as to state that they weren’t here to get rich, just to compete and serve good food. The organizers of this event need to remember why people attend this event, to eat ribs!  If people can’t afford them then why show up. If things get too out of hand I may be forced to head over to the Tofu Festival.