Wednesday, April 6

Not too much happening here on the home front. Right now our
lives revolve around dismal weather and water polo tournaments. Molly and company
played a Big 10 tournament at Purdue. Where they beat University of Michigan for
the first time in at least four years. The Big Ten, which has 14 teams in it. Go
figure. Is this the state of college math now? I do remember the Big Ten being
called the Big Two (University of Michigan and Ohio State) and the Little Eight.
At least that added up to ten. Didn’t even need my slide rule for that one.

Michigan State 6, University of Michigan 5.

Pressure defense.

On the cage.

She drives.

She fakes.

She scores.

Purdue is of course in West Lafayette, Lise’s home town. So
we stayed with Sue and got to see a couple other generations of the clan. Always
fun to do. And we took Lindsay too, getting her out of town for a spell.

We got back Sunday evening and then Monday morning I headed
north to the Upper Peninsula to install some acoustic bat monitors. The idea is
to put the monitors in place before the bats come out of hibernation. I thought
I would get in a little play time too. I figured a four hour drive up there, a
few hours to install the monitors, spend the next morning playing, then four
hours back in time to meet with our financial planner. Boy was I wrong.

It’s interesting how lack of preparation, 25 degree
temperatures, frozen ground, and six inches of snow can make things more
difficult to do. When I have everything prepared, it takes me 20 minutes to set
up a monitor in my yard. This time it took over an hour for each monitor. For
starters I had to haul all the equipment anywhere from 50 to 150 meters through
the snow covered woods. In the yard I can put three stakes in the ground within
arm’s reach, hold the 15 foot microphone pole upright with one hand, and use
the other hand to loop guy lines around the stakes and tie some quick knots. When
the ground is too frozen to drive stakes in, trees and logs are further away than
arm’s reach, and it’s too cold to tie knots with one hand, things get real interesting.
I had to set the pole up, then run to a tie point, try to loop a guy line around
it, run back to catch and balance the pole, then run back to either finish
looping or tie a knot. Then repeat the procedure for two more guy lines. Then
repeat the whole procedure for five monitors. The Keystone Cops do bat
monitors. Needless to say, I didn’t get any play time. On the up side, our
financial planner didn’t laugh too hard when I said I was retiring.

A bat monitoring station.