Afterglow 2011 - Day 1 Saturday

I knew Afterglow was going to be tough this year without Timmy. But life goes on and so must we. Keeping traditions is the best way to honor his life and so I took my customary picture with Coach Gordon Bombay before I left him alone for the week. By now he's used to it.

I know that a lot of you have followed along with my Afterglow posts over the years, so you know we usually stop at Arby's or Culver's. This time around we decided to change it up and stopped for Subway. Somehow this picture ended up in black and white. Changing it up.

The best part about Subway is that they allow you to customize your sandwiches. And who doesn't like sandwiches, right? Sandwiches are beautiful. Sandwiches are fine. I like sandwiches I eat them all the time. This year Rez and Kelly were coming up to Afterglow with us and of course the always picky Jenny was there, so Subway was the best choice for eats. Jenny surprised us all by getting pizza (Subway sells pizza? That's like McDonald's selling tacos) but Mom went the traditional route with a sub sandwich. And in the end all left the restaurant satisfied.

Before rolling into Afterglow Lake Resort we always stop for groceries at Bonson's Pick N' Save in Eagle River. This allows us to grab some booze for the first few days. In the walk-in cooler was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen - a 24 pack of PBR Tall Boys.

Mom and I are usually the last to arrive and everyone else is already settled in. I always crack open a beer before unpacking the car and taking everything in the cabin. I followed the ghetto ritual of "pouring some out for your homies" to pay tribute to Timmy, who loved PBR.

We first have to rearrange the furniture to our liking and then we have a lot of stuff to bring in from the car. We have all of the personal items and clothes that we brought up plus all of the groceries, and it takes a Herculean effort from a crew of at least 6 people to get it done in a timely fashion so we could go swimming. At our peak we would have as many as 8 people staying in the cabin, which doesn't include all of the cousins who spend most of their indoor time here. So there was a reason that we had this much stuff. We don't do it just because we want to. That's silly.

It doesn't take long from when we get there until the cousins migrate over to cabin #2. Brian and Stacy accepted the positions of fun police and set out to make sure everyone at Afterglow had a great time.

Everyone gets settled in pretty quickly because the first order of business is to go swimming. There isn't any debate over who gets which room because we all have been in the same spots for years.

Every day of our lives since Timmy has been gone we decided that we have to rage extra hard to make up for the loss. We call it Rage for Timmy, or RFT if we are CT'ing it. One of the things Timmy always did at Afterglow was to flip the geese upside down. Pete must have realized this because he nailed the geese to the wall. But he didn't count on Eddie bringing his tool kit. Eddie pulled the little one apart and nailed it back on the wall upside down. Then we hung up a picture of Timmy with the geese so that he could take part in one of his favorite Afterglow traditions.

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