Back From Shasta ~ Bad JuJu!

[Razzman]

What a week it was!

Weather was great for Shasta this time of year, never topped 100 which was good. Water was nice at right around 80 and we always had morning glass! But there was some serious bad JuJu on this trip! The water level was down by 66 feet when we got there and 72 by the time we left. It was dropping a foot a day, that's some serious water loss on a lake with a 365 mile shoreline when full!

So here's how our trip went;

• Tuesday: Six hour drive with no issues. Got to group campsite only to find out you can't drive to site to unload, had to hump everything over 500'! Setup camp, went to check out lake only to find the walk to lakeside is afreaking brutal sheep trail of a 1/4 mile downhill to the lake! At late dusk the dog starts barking at the edge of camp and with a flashlight i see a 500lb brown bear staring back at me from 30' feet away! Scare 'em off and alls good until a 300' black attacks the garbage dumpster! Geez! Stayed up late partying!

• Wednesday: More peeps come in only to find out that one in our group brought three other families with him not on the roster, major tent city happening! Looked like a homeless camp! Oh well the more the merrier. Boats all launched, 7 total! Lake was great and not crowded at all. Got in some good boarding for all. Two I/O's in the group and one goes down, engine issues. More peeps arrive! Bears attack dumpsters again! Stayed up late partying! I hit the tent, couldn't hang!

• Thursday: A buddy pulls his Sanger V215 out to gas up and notices both seals blown on brake axle! Nuts! No way to fix it where we were, call a late show to bring brease gun! Go to marina to fill up and gas is $4.28 a gallon, OUCH! More peeps show up!! Water drops more and land is showing through off the shoreline in areas, gotta be carefull! Haime Barrios (owner of Tower Biminis) shows up with his Malibu making it 8 boats, 3 RV's, 22 tents and 11 more peeps! Temp has dropped to mid 90's but water is getting blown out in the afternoons. We get smart and quit using the dumpster and walk all garbage to the garbage crib each night, bears hit that instead and leave us alone! Stayed up late partying!

• Friday: MORE FREAKING PEEPS ARRIVE!!! We have an overflow issue! It's all good as we rented a 20 peep pontoon boat for two days to handle it! We had an awesome cove that handled all the boats and the pontoon no problem and still left swimmimg and floating room! One of my stereo remotes goes on the fritz! Haime informs us he has a chef coming tonight and is going to BBQ chicken & ribs for everyone for the next to nights! Boy was it to die for! Water is down more and traffic if picking up making the red dirt wash way out into the lake hiding exposed land! Bears are all over the garbage crib! Darn things are even sitting in the road! Stayed up late partying! Big brown decides to sit 10' feet from my tent while i'm in it! Out comes the Glock 40!

• Saturday: Day peeps arrive!! Gotta stack 'em like cordwood now!! Take a group photo, 66 peeps! As the crowd disperses a good friends dad collapses from dehydration! Called paramedics and hydrated him, luckily one of our crowd is a fireman! All good they didn't even have to take him to emergency. On the water traffic has picked way up making the good water hard to find but it can be had. Took the boats and pontoon downlake to find a nice secluded cove which we found after an hour! Red dirt is way out around 50 yards from shore now! We leave cove for some tubing as the wind is up. We go down lake later to hook up with the pontoon and group as they were headed back and i see the pontoon and my brother-in-laws Sanger beached in another cove and he's bailing with a plastic trash can!! He'd hit a rocky spit of land just under the surface over 60' from shore and started sinking! Lucky for him a sheriff came right by and got him to shore! He called the harbor and they brought out pumps which allowed the pontoon to tow him to the launch. another buddy raced back and got the trailer down while everyone was cleared from the ramp as we only had about a minute to get it on once the pontoon arrived! Tore up the prop and ripped the rudder off making a big hole in the stern! Nobody hurt and the boat is repairable. Brought it up to camp and all hands jumped in to strip it clean to dry out. More BBQ from Haime! Bears hit the crib. Oh yeah, it was my brother-in-laws bday so he really partied!

• Sunday: Most of the Peeps leave, that's a twist! Traffic diminishes somewhat so it's more of the same, boarding, surfing and tubing! Another buddy with a Nautique wants to see the infamous rock spit so he'll know where it is. We both head down in our boats and crews to it. I stop about 60' and a little back from it and look back to see where he is and notice a wakeboat charging straight at it at over 30 mph with four peeps in it! We try to wave them off but they ignore that waving back and keep coming! Both boats watch in horror as they plow into it at speed! It throws the boat up and sideways throwing one peep up in the air slamming him down on the gunwale as it goes back into the water from over 6' in the air! Both boats rush over and the boat is circling, the crew is all of Indian decent and it's a rental! We tell them to beach it but they either don't understand of won't and keep going in an odd path to the marina at like 5 mph! We find a sheriff and tell him. Amazingly they made it to the marina! We saw it a couple hours later on a lift. The tracking fins we totally bent over, the prop, strut and rudder were toast and the boat was gouged seriously underneath! Believe it or not they told the marina they barely hit something and the marina only charged them $85 for a prop! Go back to camp and chill, too much for one day! Went to bed at a decent hour! Yeah the bears are hitting the crib all night now for chicken and ribs! What a racket!

• Monday: Slept in a bit and got to packing up. Got it together and headed home around 1:30pm. Stopped for an early dinner at a popular eatery along I5 and brother-in-law grinds off trailer plug hanging low on a steep driveway! No trailer lights at all and no way to fix! Hit the road and I make on more stop for dog and wife while everyone else keeps going. Ten minutes later i get a call that my Nautique buddy's trailer broke away and he almost lost the whole thing! On the way to him i get another call, everyones all right but pickup a 2" ball as the ball had broke away! Stopped at Home Depot and picked up a ball, met them and we repaired the trailer. No damage at all other than the spare that kept the trailer off of the highway! Got home at 10PM!

All i can say is what a week and nothing really happened to us!