Muddy Sunday!

If you've never played mud volleyball before, you're missing out. Jen, Joy, Kristen, Caleb, Jean, and Kressen played in a 1-day charity tournament today to benefit Habitat for Humanity. The tournament consisted of 32 teams playing on courts filled with ankle (or more) deep mud.

Since none of us had played in a mud game before, we had a bit of a learning curve. It turns out that you can't jump real well when your feet are suctioned into the mud, and its way harder to set or spike a ball that's weighed down with water and mud. So, we decided to slip, slide, and start playing like fourth graders. Underhand serves, passing over the net, and watching the other team screw up their attempts at offensive play became the order of the day. It worked pretty well, and at the end of the day we won 3 of our 5 matches (and nearly one the last). It was a great time and a fun way to get really dirty, and I'm definitely planning on on doing it again next year.

Pics:
1) The team - before
2) The mudmaker...
3) You have to duct tape your shoes on or you'll lose them to the muck
4) The ladies, after game 3
5) The game
6) Me, after game 4
7) Kressen and I
8) The team - after

Diving Square Lake

Zach and I headed out to Square Lake to see if we still remembered how to dive. Since neither of us had been out since our Madiera wreck dive last year, we were both definitely in need of some downtime.

Neither of us had been to square lake before, and we were pleasantly surprised. Even though the visibility was only about 5 feet, there's plenty to see. There's the tail section of an airplane, 3 underwater platforms, a chainsaw, an underwater toilet (no kidding - someone mounted a toilet to one of the platforms), lots of fish, and more. The dive sites are all in about 20' of water, so it's a very safe and easy dive to do. The water's also nice and warm above the thermocline, so you don't need the extremely bulky 7mm double suits that we use in a lot of other lakes.

I got some pictures of one of the bass we encountered, the tail section of the plane (with a toy rake on top and guidelines leading away from it), and some other stuff. Unfortunately, my camera shut off about 1/2 way through the dive, so I didn't get pics of the best stuff, which we found later. This included a fish (Bluegill) that seemed to have fallen in love with me and kept "kissing" my mask and Zach sitting on the underwater toilet. I guess that gives me some pics to shoot for next time.

Update

Well, the dry season is upon us, so blog posts are becoming few and far between. Thankfully, there's some fun stuff coming up in the next couple weeks (diving, Wausau trips, a mud volleyball tournament), so hopefully things will liven up a bit on this site. To kick off the fun times, there were two noteworthy events this weekend.

First, there was a great party last night that was hosted wonderfully by Brie. It was for several occasions, all centered around Meaghan: her upcoming birthday, her engagement to Nick, and to send the two of them off to their new home in Massachusetts. Congrats to Meaghan (and Nick) - can't wait to come out and visit you guys!

Second, Caleb, Dennis, and I headed to Taylor's falls for the afternoon. As much as I normally loathe driving that far such mild water, we had a pretty good time. There was a decent wave for surfing up at that top that gave some fun rides, though you definitely still had to earn them on the paddle back up. There was also some good eddy play and Dennis got a chance to put his new boat through a few more paces. All in all, it was a pretty good way to spend a few hours.

As a testament to the recent changes to the paddling community, that was the first time this year that I'd been part of a paddling trip without any women paddlers. It was great to have some river time with the guys, but it's also great to see the number of ladies in the paddling community now. Good times all around.

Here's to some fun in the coming weeks!