First weekend on the lake yields sore muscles for me

It is now the Monday evening after the first long weekend of he year and the muscles in my back, my arms, my legs are telling me two things. The first is that I am out of shape. The second is that I am getting too old to do the hard physical labor.
We went to the cabin on Friday afternoon. My wife chose to stay home this weekend and the executive director of Girl Guides of Ontario flew in so the two could work on developing policies for the organization at the cottage. They spent the weekend indoors working on their computers.
Saturday, I managed to get some rollers under one of the floating docks that was high and dry on the beach. With the easy part accomplished, I chose to try and get the floating dock into the water. Through hard pushing, some levering, soaked shoes and pants, finally after two hours, the dock floated. I had accomplished something. I was cold, soaked and the wind from the northeast provided no relief.
Luckily, the cabin was toasty warm. The hot tub was heated.
I decided to begin practicing my casting. After a half hour my hands were numb with cold.It was that sort of a day. Just staying warm was a chore.
My sister and her husband arrived mid-afternoon with two nephews. We began planning our work for the next day. Having two 25 year olds to do the bull work was just too good to pass up. Last year, the cabin acquired a wood fired hot tub. It has consumed a lot of our firewood this past year and it was now time to get next year’s supply started.
We scouted the area around the cabin and discovered that the cold that had killed off a lot of my shrubs had also put an end to a fair number of birch and ash trees this year. The ash had managed to live for more than two years after the beavers had eaten half way through the trunk trying to fell it.
So after a hearty breakfast of hot blue berry and bran muffins, nephew Rod and I started felling trees and bucking them to size and hauling the stove length pieces back to the cabin to be split. After a single trip with the wagon, the two nephews became the brawn of pulling the loaded cart over the rocks and along the paths back to the cabin.
We then let them show their ability with the splitting axe.
My muscles were telling me by noon that I had overdone it. And even a late soak in the hot tub didn’t diminish the soreness. And Monday morning when I bent over to put my socks on, all the muscles in my back let me know that I had abused them in a single lightning bolt of pain.
And then pulling my shirt over my head, my arms broke into a chorus of spasms ready to deny me.
As for my two nephews who did the brunt of the work, they seem none the worse for the two or three hours of physical work. There is now enough wood for the 2008 season. We looked after 2007 last year.
Yes I did go fishing. And yes I caught two beauties. There was some play left on Sunday.
–Jim Cumming,
Publisher