I'm Shivering Just Thinking of It

I love this picture. It shows that even big strong guys wear waders when standing waist deep in ice-cold water in May. THERE IS MORE THAN ONE WAY TO PUT IN A DOCK. Someone alert the father-in-law.

Sorry - got carried away but it won't be long now - time to put in the dock at the in-laws cabin.

The Hobbled Wife said that I just had to blog about this.

May: Time to put in the dock. All over Minnesota, families will be coming together to curse, sprain joints, drop tools to lake bottoms and experience the thrill of icy water over the top of one's waders.

Sure, it's a tradition. But George Jukish thinks some Minnesotans are happy to outsource it. "Most of them come up here to relax," said Jukish, who installs docks and boat lifts on Bay Lake, Gull Lake and the Whitefish Chain in the Brainerd area. "The last thing they want to do is spend their weekend messing with a dock and lift system."

Hah - he doesn't know my father-in-law. The first thing he'll want to do is spend his (and my) weekend messing with a dock.

In the old days, Jukish said, that might have taken four people, stumbling with a lift down a steep bank and scraping through shoreline landscaping and muscling it into place. [He must have seen us last year.] Everyone on Jukish's crew still gets in the water to assemble docks, but the team is quick: Last week it assembled a 17-section dock with two boat lifts, two personal watercraft hoists, a bench and a ladder in 45 minutes.

45 minutes - and such a big job - I could weep!