Red Lining

Last weekend was my favorite weekend out of the year. It involves Starlight, family, friends, a canoe race, and lots of good food, including ice cream. This year was the 40th anniversary of Red Lining participating in the General Clinton Canoe Regatta. 40 years ago my dad brought his college crew team up for some crazy relay canoe race. 40 years later some of those guys are still coming back and now they bring their wives and kids. We now have three generations enjoying the weekend.

The weekend starts out with putting in the docks. This year we were blessed with really warm weather and the lake was so warm we decided to give some of the team a break and put in the docks before everyone got there. By Saturday the crew starts to arrive and by 6:00 our house is full for the annual pre-race dinner, where my mom creates an amazing feast. For the 40th year we decided to go all out and enter 4 teams (40 people) so we had 60 people enjoy the evening. Bebeth and I decided to surprise my parents with a few things that night including video taken one of the first few years of the race. It was great to watch everyone watching the crazy running start and looking at the pictures from over the years.

Sunday morning we all pile into the cars and caravan to the race start. It was a successful day. All teams finished, no one came in last, it was beautiful weather, and everyone had fun. The day is never complete without The Penguin! It is an ice cream place on the side of the road that has 50 flavors where they throw either chocolate or vanilla in the machine and then throw any other ingredients you want and pull the lever and out comes your flavor.... and the flavor of the person ahead of you. Thanks Will for ruining my chocolate coconut crunch with root beer!

The weekend is never complete without some task. This year, cleaning out the dam. So 10 of us headed down to the dam to pull out all the sticks that the beavers had carefully placed. 10 minutes into it someone finds a baby snapping turtle. It was very cute, but we went back to work blindly sticking our hands into the water and pile of sticks with out bare feet in the mud. 10 minutes later someone finds a very large snapping turtle, about the size of a soccer ball. By the end two more large snapping turtles were found. When the fourth was pulled out of the water we decided bare toes and fingers would make great food for the turtles so we decided to stop. The weekend is very complete without an adventure!

Thanks to everyone for making the 40th a perfect weekend! Here are some photos from the weekend.

Memorial Day 2010