Real Summer

Summer. Real Summer. We have had some summer-like weather this year in sputtering fits, but stringing together days full of sun, warm, and humid just has not happened until this week.

The corn sold by Josh in the Pioneer Plaza's parking lot also screams that real summer is here.

The last of the twice-a-week ski shows is over with the end of July. In August there will only be shows on Wednesdays.

The crowds at the performances seem to be getting larger and larger.

Pig in the Pines (aka Ribfest) was held this week on Thursday through Saturday in St. Germain. It's pretty much a high holy weekend for those of us that love meat on a bone.

"Praise the Lard" was a new entry at Ribfest. Of the five rib venders, these were judged the second best by the Knottlane rib panel. A very strong start for the new (to us) group.

Last year, Texas Outlaws was proclaimed fifth of five by us. We were mistified how they won the 2013 St Germain rib off with the tough, over cooked offerings we got from them last year. This year, the Knottlane panel agreed we got the best ribs of the event here.

Pigtails, usually a strong competitor over the years, disappointed. It was as if they got a few orders of last year's Texas Outlaws sad contribution, added some freezer burn, and reheated 'em. Last place.

Hog Wild was slightly better than Pigtail's. Fourth place.

Pigfoot has great sauce on mediore ribs and took the bronze. We would like to thank all the players for their time and effort.

The final day of Ribfest was the first day of Footstock, the figure eight barefoot world championship. The new announcers did a great job as did the event organizers. There were complete figure eights, burgers, t-shirts, port-o-potties, and we did not crash the drone.

Peter Fleck won for the fourth or fifth year in a row (we lost count).

We are getting more comfortable with Knottlane's UAV. This week we are hoping to fly it and get pictures from the south end of the lake.

Real Summer! Sure it's late, but better late than never. It looks like we are going to enjoy the seasonal warmth for at least a few weeks, more than enough time to injure ourselves. We got about an inch of rain on Wednesday. That reduced the amount of inches of lake level lost in July by about an inch. Lake Lucerne is currently 24.5 inches below the nail, let's hope for a wet (and hot) August. Footstock ran a little long on Saturday and we were a little late for Lake Lucerne Family Fun Days. When we got there at 5:10 PM, it was all over. Next year, we'll send the drone over earlier to get a brat and fly it back to Footstock. I think that'll require a firmware upgrade though.

-Nemo should be skiing, not coding

Real Summer

July 29th through August 4th, 2014