WRC Guys & Gals,

Well once again the Mother Nature smiled on us and provided an almost perfect day !  Altho slightly cool it was sunny, and if you happened to venture down to the waters edge on the dock where the  sun was shinning brightly you could almost believe it was a warm summer morning !  With that said when you walked back up the drive into the shade the last signs of winter blew thru the newly sprouted leaves of the trees and sent a chill up the back of your neck !

Stepping back in time to the previous week my morning worry was the forecast for Saturday was going to change from sunny and cool to cloudy with a chance of a possible shower !  It seemed like one of the Greek Gods had some kind of a crystal ball and was talking to one of his buddies saying "watch this I'm going to change it again"  !  Almost hour by hour it would go from sunny to partly sunny to lightening bolts !  But by Thursday morning it had settled to sunny to partly cloudy  !  We had it somewhat covered if it did turn nasty thanks to a number of our members that brought pop-up canopies !  Thank you Dave Deck and Jerry Kay !

By thursday afternoon I was pretty sure my worries were over !  That's when I received a message saying " I'm coming to your meet, please have a life vest there for me " but it was from a number I didn't recognize !  As many of you know these darn iPhones aren't psychic, so if you'd never talked to the person on the phone sending the message, or never had them send you their phone number and put it in your contacts list ! There's no way of knowing who sent the message !  So the only thing I could think to do was to send a reply back " who are you ?"  The reply back to me was " Travis Kerbrat don't you have my number "  Travis is the Web Master for the National Club and he and I have corresponded with each other many times !  You could have knocked me over with a puff from the cool winter breezes !  Needless to say I was very pleased that he was coming to our humble WRC Mentor Lagoons meet, and said I'll put and extra inner tube in the boat for you !

Friday was a busy one for Peg and I as we attended our Grandson's "Grand Friends Day" at his school ! Something Grandparents would never miss !  But there were still things to do in preparation for the Saturday's meet !  We had to put up the signs directing people to our dock ( sorry Kevin I'll try to do better next time LOL) !  Peg had almost everything ready food wise and I just had to make sure the coffee pot was out for our resident coffee Guru,  Domonic Durda, whom I had asked if he would handle making sure he had several pots ready when the gang showed up !  And man did he do a great job, The coffee was hot, the creamer was cold and the sugar was sweet, What more could you ask of someone ? And Dom's girl friend MaryAnn did a great job of wiping the heavy dew off all the tables and helped prep for lunch, but I think Dom is going to have to find her a safer hand warmer, the top of the grill now has a couple of melted glove prints on it LOL !

Saturday morning ~~~ up at 5:00 couldn't sleep in, had things to do !  Grab a cup of Java, make sure I had the banner, stands and poles loaded in the truck !  We had put the table cloths on the night before so that part was ready !    Down to the dock,  unload and plug in the crockpots so the Sloppy-Joe would be hot for lunch,  Al Carlson, a good friend and great helper showed up shortly after I got there with Water Pop and a cooler of ice. Al is one of these guys that is always willing to help with anything there is to do !  I had several bumpers tied along the outside of the dock that I knew would make it hard for people to get in and out of the boats when they showed up !  Al and Dom pulled all of them and put them behind the dock box !  Thanks again Guys !  The first boat to show up was Paul Wood in his aluminum LoneStar with his newly freshened up Merc 9.8 ! Paul is another one that doesn't take a step back when the Sargent asks for volunteers ! He and Dom had our new Banner up and tied on in no time !  Thanks guys !

We were finally ready,  and the gang started to show up !  Dick Bergan and his son-in-law came in and were happy to see we had hot coffee ready, we talked motors for a short time till some others started showing up. The boats started arriving too, the ones I saw were Paul wood in his LoneStar,  John Hagerman in his aluminum with a pristine "58" Evinrude,   Jerry Kay with his Chrestliner and a Wankel Outboard Plus a Johnson 10, Terry Lane with his Sandusky and an 18 Johnson,  Bob Davidson in his PennYan and an 18 Evinrude,  John Fairgrieve with his very nice FeatherCraft and a 35 Evinrude,  John Birchak showed up with his StarCraft with a 30 hp Johnson,   Steve Schmitmeyer in his aluminum with a 18 Johnson, and Bill Mohat with his newly acquired Lund with a 50 Mercury !  10 boats in all !  WOW !

Bills boat needed a little tweaking to get it idling smoothly so I was happy to try and adjust the carbs a bit ! Bill and I had just rebuilt them this past week so it was just the final step in making sure it was running smoothly ! A quick run out in the lake confirmed she was ready !   I had put my Arkansas Traveler in the water a couple days earlier and had my freshly redone Mark 25 on the transom.  I had run it a couple days before and spun the hub in the prop so had to change it that Friday evening, fortunately I have a couple spares, the prop I put on was a standard 2 blade Merc prop that had been reconditioned.  Kevin Bem and I took the boat out for a run and it preformed fine, in fact better than fine as I felt it was on of the fastest mid hp motors I have !
Later today I offered Travis a ride to tour him through the Lagoons, but when I tried to open it up in one area it spun the hub in this prop too ! Bummer I'm running out of Merc props !  Oh well that's not a bad thing as the motor has great torque !

Lunch was almost ready and I had Hot Dog cooking duty !  When I looked around the food line was getting pretty long so we were hot on the dogs ! Speaking of Dogs, Bill Mohat's loving pup Lilly was befriending anyone who looked generous with an extra donut, cooky, hotdog or anything eatable !  She's a great dog and Bill has trained her very well !

The Sloppy Joe seemed to go over well as did all the additions people brought !  I regret I don't know everything that added to the menu or those that brought the dish's, but thank you for your thoughtful additions.  The two I do know were Lin Kay's famous potato salad and Cindi Hagerman's cake, Yum to both and thank you ladies !  Also thank the  ladies for helping Peg with dishing out the meal, Cindi,  MaryAnn, Marilyn and Linda !

After lunch there were a couple more boat rides and people were starting to leave. It's always a sad time when you realize it's over but the memories will linger on and I'm sure there will be more fun times ahead at future meets !   So in finalization, a big thanks again for all those that helped to make it a great day on the water !  We'll see ya at the next one, and remember till then ~~~~~~~~~ Keep The Blue Smoke Flowing !

Gary & Peggy