Turning to look at him, it didn’t take 10 seconds to see his problem. His brand new, $250 saddlebag was missing off his bike. Along with it, a third of our gear.
We had a quick huddle, and looked up at the darkening sky. It looked like clouds were rolling in just to make our day that much better. It was decided to quickly head to the cabin, and re-inventory there. We could pop out the next day to replace whatever we’d lost. The missing gear did give us an open place to strap down the ice bag.
We were about 5 minutes down the gravel road when the skies opened up. Soon we were all soaked, but there was no place reasonable to stop, and with just a few miles left, we decided to gut it out. We continued through the darkening evening, and hit the dirt road, with only about 2 miles to go. Of course, God in his infinite good humor thought it would be funny to hit us with one of those real downpours, until we were crawling along at about 10 miles an hour, slipping and sliding through the mud and slick grass, branches reaching out to swat us from the side, and making our little journey Hell on Earth. We were slowly advancing with Dan in the front, since he was most familiar with the unmarked road, followed by Jack, with Sheri and me in the rear getting splattered with their mud.
It was great to see the cabin show up in Dan’s headlights. It had gotten as dark as midnight, with the setting sun and pounding storm. We quickly parked in the carport, and stripped our gear off the bikes. Dan wandered behind the building and managed to get the Honda generator running, giving us lights.
The doors were padlocked and windows shuttered to keep out intruders. While Dan was unlocking the side door, we were all complaining about our rotten luck.
“There’s not a lot of space inside, and we haven’t been here since last year, after Mom passed.” Robin informed us. “We have bed linens, towels, fishing gear, swimming gear, and some dried and canned foods. How about if I get some towels for us and we get rid of our wet clothing out here and dry off, so we don’t soak the place?”
She had barely gotten the words out of her mouth before we heard Dan bellowing “God Damn it to HELL! SHIT! DAMN! FUCK!”
Now, Dan’s a little guy, about 5’4, and pretty quiet most of the time. He’d shaved his head to look a little older, which made him look like a short bald 8th grader. He almost never cursed, but he was certainly making up for it on this trip.
Looking past Robin, which was easy enough – she didn’t even come up to my chest; I could see the source of his ire. Someone had been in their cabin, and hadn’t left it in as good a shape as they’d found it. Only one light bulb in the kitchen was working but we all filed in behind Robin to see the disaster. Our wetness and muddiness wasn’t going to make a lick of difference.
Vandals had broken in through a window on the far side of the cabin. There were beer cans all over the place, piled up dirty bed sheets on the two beds, and water was pouring in through the broken window. Critters had been in the house, and a dead bird was in a corner, with feathers all around. Animal feces were scattered all around the kitchen area. Couches were overturned in the sitting area, their pillows scattered. I watched Jack turn and head back outside, and a few seconds later he had re-closed the shutters, somehow jimmying them shut, stopping the worst of the rain.
You could feel the atmosphere of the place just sinking. The mood was as dark as the sky. Our hopes for a fabulous weekend getaway were getting washed away with the torrential rain.
I walked over to one of the two storage closets that had been looted and found a box of four 17 watt fluorescent light bulbs on the top shelf. I walked around and replaced the lights in two lamps, but it didn’t make the place look any better. We were all behaving sort of lost when Jill started cleaning up. “Alex, any towels left in that closet?”
There were some indeterminate cloth objects on the middle shelf. Garbage bags, paper towels, plastic utensils and toilet paper, were on the bottom shelf, with some cleaning supplies on the floor along with a bucket a broom and a mop. I dragged the main cleaning supplies out, setting them to the side and then I started pulling out the contents of what appeared to be the towel shelf, and found we had at least 8 towels. They were mostly pretty threadbare beach towels, with a few hand towels thrown in. I unfolded and snapped each one open, checking for anything living in them. On this one thing we lucked out. They were all in pretty good shape. On the next shelf up I found replacement basic white bed linens. There were some critter droppings on the shelf, but the sheets themselves didn’t seem to have been bothered. I passed those out as well.
