The Brave and the Bold

 It's a new season at Agimac River Outfitter and it started out with a bang.... in the weather I mean.  We wondered if the ice was going to leave the lake in time for fishing opener.  When we arrived on Friday May 8th, it was in the 20's.  Very cold.  First thing we did was start a fire in our fireplace.  It didn't take long to start warming things up.  

John started up the generator so that we could have electricity, then we began the process of getting water back in the house.  Everything went well in that department.  But then about ten o'clock in the evening just when we were going to bed, I smelled a terrible smell in the basement.  I called for John and Joanna to come down and smell it too so that we could ascertain the problem.  Immediately they knew it was a sewer smell.  Where in the world was it coming from was the next question?  All the traps had water.  We couldn't figure it out and knew we couldn't sleep in the house because it would be too dangerous.  So we packed up some sheets and headed to cabin 1 for a slumber party.  We had never slept in one of our cabins before.  John lit a fire in cabin 1 to warm it up and bless his heart, he stayed up most the night going between our house and cabin 1 to keep the fires going.  What a man!!

The next day, we got up on the roof of the house to inspect the pipe that was for the sewer and found that it had gotten dislodged from the pipe it was connected to probably from ice coming off our metal roof.  That had never happened before.  We were so grateful to have found the problem and were able to fix it in a few hours.  No more nasty smell!!

The weather was quite nice for about a week while we got all the cabins prepared for coming guests on May 15th, and then it turned brutally cold again.  But we have some very hardy folks that like to come the first week of fishing to get a head start on the great fishing.  

On Friday May 15th, I drove our four wheeler over to the campsite at the north end of Indian Lake to see what was happening with the lake.  We had been having some warm weather in the 60' s and 70's and that day there was wind gusting to 40 mph, so I knew that should help move the ice.  I saw that half the lake was open and there was still some dark ice covering the rest.  Later that afternoon, ice started flowing down our river and the wind successfully opened up the lake.  Just in time!

One of our first guests was a 13 year old newcomer to our resort who had never come to Canada before.  His name is Grayson Wurtz.  What trooper he was!!  About midweek I was walking along our road by cabins 8 and 9 one afternoon and caught a glimpse of this young man running down the road from cabin 3 wearing only a bathing suit, carrying a towel.  I thought to myself, "he can't be going swimming now.  It's only 38 degrees!"  

Sure enough, he was headed to a dock where his grandfather was standing nearby to watch and make sure he got out of the water safely.  I ran back to the house to get my camera to record the event.  I figured it would make a great blog.  I wondered if it was some kind of ritual for his introduction into manhood since he had just turned 13 the month before.  

He leapt into the air with the greatest of ease and quickly popped up with a shriek from the shock, ran for shore to grab his towel and high tail it back up to the cabin for a hot shower.  I imagine the water was almost as cold as the air.  Way to go Grayson!!

These are the pictures I captured of his polar plunge.