Hogan’s Not-Quite-Race-Report: “The Green Mountain State”

August 19th, 2010 by Mike Ebert

Hogan’s Not-Quite-Race-Report: “The Green Mountain State”

Hogan Sills, Report, Verizon U-25 Cycling No Comments

Every year my family and I take a trip to Northeastern Vermont, where we relax and do lots of lake activities that we can’t do in boring ol’ Champaign, IL. This year, because of summer school finals, I wasn’t able to go with my family right away, but I soon joined them in Vermont (after a long delay at the airport) and was able to stay for a week. It’s basically tradition that the night I get there I try to catch a bass off the dock, but this year I was greeted with temperatures in the 50′s for the first two days, and that was enough for me to make up the excuse, “I won’t be able to catch anything during this cold front, so I’ll fish another time.” Really, I just didn’t want to go out in the cold. So it slowly gets warmer, my dad and I go for some bike rides, and soon I’ve convinced him to go ride Bald Mountain with me, a 3-mile ascent with deep gravel and some steep sections (the deep gravel is on the steep sections, just to make it more difficult for bikers).

About halfway up we had some rear derailleur trouble when a dog chased down my dad causing him to eject from the bike. He was ok, but the derailleur hanger was not, so I rode up to the top and borrowed a phone from a someone living up there and called for a ride back home. After that excitement, the next couple of days were perfect for some waterfront activities. I tried out the kneeboard for the first time, which was pretty fun, and also did some snorkeling out to my man-made bass structure.

We had some visitors too… a family of ducks stopped by twice and walked up on our lawn.

I went out on the dock every night trying to catch Mr. Bass, but with no luck. Soon I gave up on night fishing and got up early in the morning a few times. Still no luck with bass, so eventually I succumbed to perch fishing, because I needed to catch SOMETHING.

These little fish are fun to catch, but nothing like the huge adrenaline rush of having a 5-pound smallmouth jumping around on the end of your line in the pitch black of night. One of these years I’m going to wear a heart rate monitor when I go night fishing, I bet I might actually get up towards 180 bpm. Morning fishing has it’s luxuries though, like bringing breakfast in the boat and enjoying the beautiful sunrise warm up the glassy lake surface. That’s something that never gets old.

Speaking of Vermont, I’d like to acknowledge some of my loyal blog readers who also visit Vermont in the summer. Dan and Katy, thanks for following my blog from all the way in NYC, and thanks to some other new readers who I met on my trip!