Skillman Scuttlebutt

At the start of summer, one of Chloe's friends was feverishly scribbling stuff down in a notebook.  I wondered why a girl, freshly liberated from school, was spending her first days of freedom doing something that looked an awful lot like homework. When I asked her about it she said,  "I'm writing down my summer bucket list."  She explained that every fall she lamented the fact that she didn't get to do everything she wanted to do before summer was all over.  So this time around she had a plan: A Summer Bucket List.

Chloe and I decided that's exactly what our summer needed too!  So we each made up our own ambitious list of stuff we had to do before summer slipped away.  Chloe's was all fun stuff and mine was a mix of adventures and a fearless list of warm weather projects.

So while I was derelict in blogging over the summer, I was off trying to check off all the things on my list.  Here's how it went...

#1  Get My Motorcycle Endorsement
Ever since I heard the first rumble of a Harley when I was a little girl, I knew I wanted one of my own.  My Uncle (the one we talk about in hushed whispers) was a bona-fide member of a notorious biker gang with a knack for amassing tattoos, parole officers, and ex-wives.  It was his Harley that I heard for the first time--I was probably no more than six or seven--but the sound of my uncle's bike cast a spell over me that I've never been able to shake.

All these years later, even after riding quads at the dunes for over a decade, I still have never gotten a motorcycle or even an endorsement to ride on the open road. (Kinda hard to drive four kids around on a bike...)

So this summer I decided no more excuses and put it at the top of my bucket list.  It was time get that teensy tiny little "M" added to my driver's license.  How hard could that be?  [insert foreboding music.]

I downloaded the DMV's motorcycle handbook on my ipad, read it, went down that same afternoon and took the test.  Several hours later after waiting in a momentous line, I left with a motorcycle permit (which only allows me to ride while being accompanied by another motorcyclist) and an appointment for a ride-on skills test scheduled for the first open test time TWO MONTHS LATER. 

Two looooong months.  What's a girl to do?

In the meantime I bought myself my first motorcycle.  Something small and easy to ride.  The Harley would have to wait...for a little more cash and courage than I happen to have at the present moment.

Finally, after waiting impatiently while most of the good riding weather to slipped painfully away, it was time at last to ride to the neighboring town and take the ride-on skills test at the DMV. 

Drum-roll please...

This is the part where I have to tell you I failed the test.  Seriously.  Failed it.

Needless to say I cussed all the way home.  My Uncle (may he rest in peace) would have been proud of the foul mutterings echoing inside my helmet that barbaric day.

The truth is...I had been bamboozled.  The skills test isn't all that difficult.  You turn, you swerve, you weave, you stop.  That's it.  Most people have trouble on the weave, or the turn or swerve, but me?  I had trouble on the stop.  The freeeeeaking stop.

My "unsatisfactory" test-failing stop came just after I pulled off a perfect cone weave. Everyone dreads the cone weave but I mastered it like a pro.  But the instructions from Mr. Test Guy was that I weave through the cones, make a u-turn, go strait and then make one more tighter u-turn, then I was to stop where he was standing (he even pointed to his feet which I noted were right on a certain line).  So I head out, weave the cones, made two u-turns then stopped right on the line he was standing on when he gave me the instructions.  Big mistake.  While I was cone-weaving he moved back and stood in another spot.  I happened to make my stop--a nice smoooooth stop mind you, right on the line where he had previously pointed that his feet were on and NOT where he was presently standing.  He had moved back five feet after I rode off.  Ten points were deducted for each erroneous foot I put down when I stopped at the "wrong" line, then Mr. Test Man failed me. As if to poor salt on my open wound he added, "excellent cone weave though...best I've seen all year."

I could have actually driven over all five cones and passed the test.  They are only two deductions each.  But a foot--each one is worth ten! Apparently hitting things you shouldn't isn't as catastrophic as mistakenly stopping safely on the wrong line.  Imagine my frustration when I discovered that the DMV was so booked up I'd have to wait for another
 TWO MONTHS for an open test date!  The end of October!

I went home and got online and lucked out enough to find one open spot in a 3-day motorcycle class that, if you pass the class, you automatically get that coveted little "M" put on your driver's license.  No more Mr. DMV and his wayward test instructions (or my lackadaisical listening skills).  Long story short, bright and early the next morning I was the only girl in a 3-day motorcycle class.  I was rather grouchy about the whole thing since it cost me almost $200 and three full days of my life.  But when the three days were over, not only did I get my motorcycle endorsement but they offered me a job to come back and teach the class as an instructor!  Take that Mr. DMV man!

Motorcycle Endorsement, check!



#2 Build Water Balloon Launchers

Ever since our friends the Petersens taught us how to play 'Human Battleship' we've been trying to figure out how to liven things up a bit by launching our water balloons with a little more gusto.  It seems that if there's no possibility of anyone getting injured, we just aren't interested in playing the game for very long.

Building a water balloon launcher sounds easy but it ain't so.  Like the Wright Brothers, our first few launches were, well, a bit disappointing and slightly dangerous.  That's because I cheaped out on the project when I discovered that rubber tubing now costs $3.70 a foot and I needed twenty feet!  Naturally I tried to go with ten feet of tubing on the first go since spending over seventy bucks on a ridiculous summer gadget sounded like a waste.  But take it from me, you're gonna need all twenty feet of tubing if you want to avoid the balloon backfiring.

 This definitely amped up our human battleship games!  But one little safety note...you're gonna wanna shoot the balloon up and not directly out.  A direct blow instead of a high lofty arch results in an awkward triage situation with massive casualty.

Not to mention the embarrassment that comes from an injury where you have to tell people it involved a water balloon.


#3 Make an Epic Slip-N-Slide
We made one a few summers back and it was a ton of summer fun.  They have one at the Playboy Mansion, but don't ask me how I know that.  I figured it was time to build another one out on the lawn only this time even more epic than our last. Unfortunately, items #4, #7 and #8 distracted me from the project and it never happened.  Next summer it'll be top of the list.



#4 Paint Headboard
I've had this headboard that I've honestly never liked.  I've been meaning to take the thing apart, beef it up by making the headboard higher, and give it some new life.  I thought about buying a new one but I decided on a motorcycle instead, a much better choice wouldn't you say?  I was going to paint it darker but at the last minute I decided on a whim to go with a distressed white and lighten my room up a bit.

I didn't take this pic but I found one that shows what it looked like before:

 and here's after...

#5 Wakeboard Five Days in a Row
I think I'm at my happiest when I'm on a wakeboard.  It's nirvana.  So this one is the one I'm most sad about not achieving.  Although we made it out to the lake quite a bit this summer, I think I only made it to 3 consecutive days.  That said, Mark didn't even get out on the water once.  He took one for the team this summer, so to speak, and did all the boat driving.

What we did do was get Connor and Chloe and all their friends up on wakeboards this year.  Chloe randomly decided all of a sudden that she wanted to get on a board-- and when Chloe decides something, she makes it happen.  She got up on her first try and boarded for quite a ways.  I was so excited I didn't even take pictures.  I was too busy jumping up and down.  We got a few cousins and Connors friends up too. 

I was too busy enjoying the water to take many pics at all but here's one of my favorites...

You can barely see the boarder going down for the count in the wake just past the dancing handle.

And while I may not have reached my five-days-in-a-row, it was a blast getting all the kids out on the lake and improving their skills.  Music to my ears is when the kids beg all day to go out to the lake.

The weather's still forecasted to be warm so perhaps I'll get this checked off even though summer's officially over...never say never.  We're hoping to eeeek as much summer out as we can.



#6 Go Cart Races
This will have to be put on our Fall Bucket List.  It just never happened.  But probably for the best as someone was sure to get hurt and put on the injured list for the rest of the summer.



#7 Ride the Bike Path More
A few years ago Mark bought me a really nice road bike.  Mark is an avid cyclist and he figured he could motivate me to get out and ride by getting me an impressive bike.  Sadly I've used it all too infrequently since then.  He likes to climb steep mountain roads on his bike and I'm afraid the only way I'm gonna ever volunteer to do that is if I'm riding a motorcycle--not a bi-cycle.

But this year I decided to dust the poor thing off and ride our local bike path which winds through five towns for 21 miles.  However, we recently had a horrific unsolved murder happen on said bike path so I was happy when my friend Kathy wanted to meet up and ride with me. 

Kathy is in really great shape and when we first started riding I thought it was strange that she couldn't keep up with me.  She was a serious slow poke.  Soon I realized her bike wasn't as light or built as well as mine so I thought maybe we should switch bikes so she should try mine out.  Big mistake.  This time, with me on her bike, I could barely keep up with her.  I was huffing and puffing and thought I was gonna die.  Meanwhile Kathy barely broke a sweat.  Needless to say I wanted my bike back and Kathy went out that day and bought herself a new one.

This is Kathy on my bike.  Her bike, at the time we swapped, looked like a granny bike, which is fine for her cause she's got like ten grandkids (although you would never ever guess it), but I declined to be photographed on it.  I may be a grandparent but I certainly don't have to be photographed riding a granny bike.  (I did like her cheesy bell though!)

#8 Clean Barn...Ugh!

You know you've got a problem when it takes a skid-steer to help you clean out your barn.  Luckily, somewhere in our messy barn was just such a thing to help us get the job done, a job which sorely needed to happen.

Barn ownership ain't all it's cracked up to be.  Seriously, I think when you close the barn doors your stuff mates and multiplies in there while you're away.  Forget what you've heard about rabbits, it's really barn junk that propagates so perniciously.

This summer it was time to take back the barn.  Lucky for me Connor is getting older and can muscle up on things more these days.  Also lucky for me he's got two buddies and the three of them never spent more than a day apart from each other the entire summer.  The Three Amigos just roamed from one house to another all summer long linked permanently together.  I took total advantage of this and enticed them to the house by offering them a whole week of kneeboarding and wakeboarding.  Little did they know when they eagerly appeared on my doorstep that I'd be working them to death by day only to tug their exhausted bodies around the lake by evening for just an hour or two behind the boat. 

I convinced them to ride in the bucket of the skid-steer so I could lift them up to the upper deck of the barn to organize things up there.  I tried not to transport them up and down too fast, though once I admittedly hit the pedal a little too roughly and they experienced a little "Tower of Terror" moment.  And since there was no waiting in line for such a thrill ride, I sheepishly explained that it was better than Disneyland. 

For the most part they hauled things back and forth between the garage and the barn and the dump trailer with the riding lawn mower and its mini-trailer.  They always made sure to drive the long way back to the barn so they could endanger each other's lives--as if my skid-steer antics weren't thrilling enough.

Ian, Severin, & Connor

I think they messed around so much it took me an entire week to get the job done.  It could have reasonably taken three days but they seemed happy as long as they were together and the possibility of heading to the lake loomed in their future.

I didn't get a lot of lake time but I got myself a very clean barn.  Yay!



#9 Clean the Secret Room
Our secret room is the worst kept secret ever, everyone knows about it and which closet contains its hidden door.  It's also in serious need of a summer clean, but I just didn't have the heart to organize it this summer.  Might have to be a fall project.  The barn cleaning was epic enough.



#10 Fix Ceiling Fans

It got pretty hot this summer and two of our ceiling fans needed new switches.  They're both really nice fans so I don't need to replace them, but the crazed children that live around here like to swing from the pull chains and two of them have nothing to pull anymore.  One is stuck on slow speed and the other is stuck with the light always on.  It's been that way for a couple of years but this summer, I decided it's time to fix it!

Thank goodness for Youtube.  I watched two videos and then rode off to the hardware store on my motorcycle to buy a couple of new switches...

I pulled the first fan apart, wired in a new light pull-switch and voila--no more unscrewing light bulbs to turn off the lights!  Next I wired in a new speed pull-switch in the second fan and now we could get it whirling at faster speeds! Yay! But the darn thing was now out of balance.  One more Youtube video, four nickles, and some duct tape later our fan troubles were over (thank goodness you can't see the tops of the blades).  We were back to enjoying cool air moving throughout the house.  Ta Da!



#11 Big Screen Lawn Movies
Didn't happen.  Mitchell, our resident audio-video specialist was still away at college and we forgot how to set the whole thing up.  Life without Mitchell is bleak.  We may have to go back to the etch-a-sketch for our entertainment gadget.  It doesn't need a wi-fi password or charging.



#12 Take the Train
Our kids have never traveled by train.  So when we learned that G-Ma just moved to a town with a really cool train station we decided to put this on our summer bucket list.  Must ride train.

 Here's the cool train station at G-Ma's.

It's almost as fun as traveling Italy by rail, but without the gelato.


#13 Go Camping
I was hoping for something more woodsy than the Dunes, with pines and fresh mountain air, but alas, the Dunes will have to do.  It's the only camping we managed to squeeze in...which...is always a blast, so no complaints. 

 
...so I didn't actually camp in the dirt, or make that gigantic slip-n-slide, or a few other things, but my barn is clean and I've got a teensy tiny little "M" on my driver's license--what more could a girl want?

Thanks for the summer bucket list inspiration Scarlett!