So it goes...

Last week I got my reel back from Badger Reel Repair. The reel (pictured above) was given to me by my brother Rob the last time I saw him, before he passed away in Aug. 2011. It was the second time I've had it in for repairs. The first time it didn't seem to be working right, so I brought it to BRR and it cost me $25 to clean, oil and repair it. When I tried it again this summer, it still did not seem to be working right. Now, normally, I probably would not have spent any more money on repairing the reel. The reel only cost Rob $75 at the time, so putting much more into it would seem frivolous. Because the reel means more to me than just an average reel, I thought I'd go ahead and get it fixed. It was $15 to repair, which seemed like a deal to get a functional keepsake. The whole process got me to thinking about things that mean something . You know the items. Things that you would want to take to the basement with you in the case of a tornado. Things given to you...

The trip totals are in from our trek to the Northland of NorthCentral Minnesota. We covered 1035 miles in 3 days. A total of 18 hours on the road, and 3 tanks of gas. We took the first 315 mile leg on Friday and stopped in Shoreview for the night. On Saturday we covered another 200+ miles to Lake George, MN, near Bemidji. Then, on Sunday we turned right back around and covered 500+ miles in a 9 hour jaunt back to Waukesha. While it was a bit gruelling at times, my statement from the previous post still stands. We love to travel as a family, and we do it quite well. There were very few complaints from the kids for the whole trip. They don't even argue that much. I think I had to break up a total of one verbal battle. Otherwise, they got along well. Ben slept probably 9 of the 18 hours total, and Sarah about 5. I did probably 80% of the driving and I was fine with that too. When you break up 500 miles over 2 days, that's easy. For the 9 hour stint I needed a spell. The trip...