All Hail Kromdor IV

Hey kids.

The entrance to the McNerney family property.

As you guys know, me and my old high school buddies get together a couple times a year - once in the winter and once in the summer - to go camping out at Trevor's extended family's 80-acre hunting property, outside of Rosebush. 

The winter one didn't happen this year, and for most of the year I assumed the summer one wasn't happening either because I hadn't heard anything regarding it. Then, last month at Trevor's daughter's Graduation Open House, Sean informed me that it was happening in mid-July, and that Trevor was supposed to have passed along the information to me.

Way to go, Trevor.

Sean pre-constructed this year's Kromdor.

So this particular weekend in July that they had settled on just so happened to be the only weekend in July where Kris was out of town, on the annual Momcation downstate. This was problematic, because we couldn't really leave the girls alone on their own for two nights: while they're certainly old enough to be on their own, and responsible enough for sure, we didn't really trust it with boyfriends in the mix. 

Consequently, I decided to stay back on Friday night and make this summer camping trip with the ol' Clare High squad a one-night affair (like I did last year.) Mom offered to stay at our house on Saturday with the girls, which put everyone's mind at ease, and I was able to drive up in the late morning to meet up with everyone.

Kind of a laid-back vibe this year - no karaoke or any big projects (like building a new outhouse or whatever) - just a brief stint down at the stream, sitting around and talking, then building a fire towards the end of the night for the annual Kromdor sacrifice.

Good catching up with everyone, though, and at least it gave me an excuse to breaking out the camping equipment once this summer (again, like last year, the only time our tents saw any use whatsoever.)

So here you go, folks - this year's camping trip with Kromdor and the boys. 

Enjoy. . . 

When I got there, everyone was up and around already - I had missed the two-hour window where hungover folks are just sitting around in chairs, smoking cigarettes (which I was fine with.)

I set my tent up, strapped on a knife, and we prepared to head down towards the creek at the base of the ravine to chill out in the water for a bit.

The stream that runs through Trevor's property (usually lined with coyote traps during the wintertime.)

This big-ass tree fell across the stream a couple years ago. Not sure what the ol' McNerney clan is wanting to do with it.

Sean climbs up.

Two of CHS Class of '98's finest.

Sean's daughter, Gracie, brought her boyfriend (at right) with her this year.

Trevor and Scrunge.

The weather was great this year, fortunately not as hot as last year (which was miserable and sapped everyone's energy like crazy.)

After a couple hours down by the creek, we came back up to the site for some lunch.

(And of course Lucas and Scrunge brought all their dogs up.)

Scrunge and Sean got bored and decided to jerry-rig a kite together with sticks and a garbage bag (because they can't sit still long without undertaking some kind of creative project.)

Brutus was all worn out after chasing after running water (seriously.)

Sean's sisters came out after awhile, bringing along their husbands and families (Emily stayed the night, but Katie ended up taking off in the late evening once the fire started.)

I parked close to my car this year in order to make the set-up and tear-down process a lot easier (opposed to walking crap hundreds of meters to my car and back - definitely doing this again next year.)

Trevor and one of his girls fishing on the pond.

This pond is only like six feet deep at the most, but it's gotta have like twenty feet of stinking muck at the bottom. So frickin' gross.

The 'finished product.'

Nobody attempted to fly it, it basically got tossed in the trash right away. An exercise in futility.

Max and his mohawk.

Sean brought up a bunch of weird sunglasses with him this year (because it's Sean) and the Elvis pair - that came with matching sideburns - matched Grace's boyfriend almost too perfectly.

Sara and Yours Truly.

The Originals (missing Matt Lee, who wasn't flying in from San Francisco until later in the month.)

Again, going back to the arts and crafts thing mentioned earlier, Sean brought up a bunch of spray paint and some t-shirts he picked up at Goodwill or something so folks could do designing. I sprayed up a shirt at his insistence, but didn't bother taking it home with me. I don't trust running something like that through a washing machine and not ruining the rest of my clothes.

My tent set-up. Having it next to the pond gave me a great breeze at night, too (only downside was the loud-ass frogs nearby, but I brought noise-cancelling headphones and that took care of it.)

Some close-up shots of this year's Kromdor totem. . .

Everyone got an opportunity to graffiti it, too.

Antlers were added once Sean brought it up here - Scrunge insisted upon it.

Not sure what the story is with the abandoned paddleboat (at bottom left.)

A couple of worn-out dogs.

Post-dinner hangout at the site. A few more of Sean's older relatives swung out and visited for a couple hours.

Getting the fire started as the sun began to set.

Scrunge and I were on wood duty this year, and as he cut some big limbs off nearby trees (dead trees, of course), Yours Truly hauled them back down the two-track to the firepit.

View of the site from the woods.

The fire gets going.

Sean and Sara use some stencils to spray-paint the canopies.

While we were out collecting some birch bark (which helps fires get going faster 'cause it burns like crazy), we found an abandoned grill in the middle of the woods. Nothing weird about that.

Sean tends the fire.

Kromdor is sacrificed to the gods.

This year's Kromdor burned fast - usually it lasts a lot longer, but this year it flared up and died down in no time.

We sat around the fire for a couple hours, then did our traditional midnight walk down to the road in the dark (without lights, per the rule.) After that, folks turned in for the night - nobody was really in a 'rage 'til dawn' sorta mood this year.

Trevor, of course, fell asleep by like 9pm. He's always the first to fall asleep. I tried waking him up at one point but the shit wasn't happening. He's 44 going on 90.

- Brian

Brocation 2024, Pt. II

 (contd.)

Around 4am the next morning, the guys got around and drove out to some po-dung marina on the other side of town in order to meet up with their chartered fishing boat, one of this weekend's headlining events (aside from yesterday's golf outing and tomorrow's dune ride, that is.) Tom and I were staying back from this excursion, neither one of us wanting to drop $150 for a five-hour fishing tour out on Lake Michigan (granted, I wouldn't have wanted to do it for free, given my track record.) 

We had kinda heard the guys getting around to leave in the morning, and had woken up here and there (they were far from quiet leaving the rental this morning), but both Tom and I were able to fall back asleep and got five more hours of sleep than these poor sons of bitches.

These five guys (plus Collier) were chartering this boat, otherwise occupied by the ship's captain and a 'crew' member, some 17-year-old kid that assisted with the fishing poles and what not.

Pulling out of the marina, way too early in the morning.

Passing some giant-ass boat in the harbor on the way out to Lake Michigan. . .

It was still dark out when the guys finally started fishing.

Mitch and a sunrise

So, like with any chartered fishing cruise, they have a set number of poles available to use at any given time, and the paying customers take turns at them.

Omkar and Mitch await their turn.

(This pic has Collier written all over it. . .)

Morgan and Erik

The sun starts to peak it's head out. Just so we're clear here, I was still fast asleep on dry land while this was happening.

Morgan doesn't look so sure about this one.

I'm not sure what kinda fish these are, but the guys each caught like two of 'em.

Later on in the morning, Tom and I probably still asleep at this point.

Nobody puked off the side of the boat this morning, which was cool - Lake Michigan is clearly not as choppy as the Atlantic Ocean.

Filling up the cooler with a bunch of dead-ass fish.

Look how calm the water is here, that's nuts.

Guys look like they're losing steam here, or maybe the fish stopped biting once the sun came out.

The kid nets a fish off the line.

Morgan, Mitch, Omkar, Collier, LBB, and Erik.

Seriously, this dude can sleep anywhere. . .

Meanwhile, back on dry land, Tom and I had finally gotten up and around, and were preparing to set off for some morning errands.

We had been tasked with getting a couple food staples for tonight's dinner (the main course being the fish the guys were currently pulling out of Lake Michigan), and I needed a can coozie because I had forgotten mine at home.

Setting off in Collier's SUV.

We made a pit stop in downtown Ludington to see if any of the campy, local tourist stores carried any cheesy 'Ludington' can coozies, but none of the three or four stores we popped into carried them. . . which was super weird.

Jaywalking across the main drag, zero f***s given.

Still blows my mind that none of these souvenir stores carried can coozies. That's like not carrying shot glasses or magnets.

I haven't been to Ludington in over thirty years, but I remember that building with the mural on it used to be a super cool souvenir store back in the day. Now it's like a bar or something.

After swinging out to Meijer for some food items and ice, Tom and I came back to the rental and got our crap around for a beach excursion. I was looking for my Brocation mug so I could take a long the usual Bloody Mary, but it wasn't anywhere to be found. As it turns out, Collier accidentally grabbed mine and took it out on the fishing boat with him, so I had to make due with his crappy, nickname-less mug for the morning.

Lonnie's clearly super proud of this massive haul.

Tom and I established headquarters on Ludington's beach around 11am, and despite the gorgeous weather - which was about as perfect as you could get - there was barely anyone on the beach.

Some kind of a tanker slowly passes by on the horizon (this is zoomed in quite a bit.)

Represent.

The fishing trip complete, the guys start to make their way back to shore.

Lonnie Big Balls, still sleeping.

West Michigan shoreline.

Erik and Omkar (who's inexplicably dressed up like some snobby rich kid in an '80s movie.)

The victors and their respective spoils.

That's a lot of frickin' fish, we clearly weren't about to eat all this in a single sitting.

Meanwhile, back on the beach, the weather was still awesome, and slowly but surely more and more folks began to arrive to take advantage of the sun.

Heading into the water to cool off after an hour or so of bronzing.

Water was like bath water this morning.

Tom, with the pier from the day before in the background.

After a couple hours on the beach, we headed back to the rental to check in on the rest of the guys. Erik, Lonnie and Ryan and gone out for lunch once they got back, while Morgan, Omkar and Mitch preferred to remain at the rental at go back to bed. Obviously, we came back and tried to rouse them up into action. Mitch was the only one that was up for the beach.

Morgan was in bad shape. It started off with him just getting tired, but then he developed a super bad headache and almost cold symptoms, and he actually remained in bed for the rest of the day, not even coming out of the room for dinner and other shenanigans you'll be seeing later in this post.

Omkar was out, but he'd eventually join us down at the beach an hour or two later.

A bunch of dead fish in the rental's freezer.

Returning to the beach with Mitch.

Filling up nicely as we got into the afternoon.

Mitch, Erik, Lonnie, Collier (and his nerdy umbrella) and Tom. I was the only one who sat facing the sun, as the other guys don't seem to care about bronzing as much as I do.

Omkar finally arrives.

Mitch, Lonnie, Erik, Omkar and myself headed into the water after awhile of sitting in the sun.

These two were lame.

My cornea was bugging the crap out of me, and I had spent too many hours in the sun without food or water (and, arguably, the booze didn't help either.) I nearly passed out coming in from the water, and had to sit down and hydrate for an hour or so until I felt better. Getting old sucks.

Erik, Lonnie and Omkar, all ready for some racy calendar pics.

We brought a football and frisbee along with us, and Collier and I got some use of the frisbee (which I frickin' suck at throwing, by the way - felt like a special needs kid with it.)

Later on in the afternoon, we decided we were all beach'd out and headed back to the rental to get a start on our big fish dinner. Of course coming in from the beach, six half-tanked guys tracked in a crap-load of sand with us. . .

Kitchen could've been bigger, that's for sure.

Getting the grill all set and ready to roll.

Tom was in charge of potatoes while Erik and Mitch took care of the fish outside.

Brussel sprouts (or, as I like to call them, miniature lettuce heads.)

Fun times in the kitchen. . .

Some pretty decent fillets they got here.

Collier, not helping out in the slightest. You can see the 2024 Paris Olympics on in the background - we had that running in the background throughout the weekend.

They wrapped these in foil packs to keep them from drying out, which was a smart move. 

Lonnie and I, catching up on our Olympics. Once the food was cooking I popped in to take care of the dishes.

Took a bit for these to cook properly, but they came out great in the end.

We ate the holy hell out of this food, folks. 

Fish came out awesome. I'm not a huge fan of fish, either (I don't like overly 'fishy' tasting fish, but this wasn't bad at all.)

Happy campers.

Collier demonstrates how to sync up two JBL speakers simultaneously in order to achieve surround sound. I wasn't aware of this, but apparently Collier and I have had this discussion before and have troubleshot this in the past.

After dinner and clean up, we decided it was time to wander into downtown Ludington and hit up a bar or two. On our walk in (which was only, like, four blocks, we saw a vintage Firebird on the street, which was pretty sweet - I used to have a HotWheels version of this car.)

We passed through like two blocks of residential and rental properties before hitting the stores and restaurants of downtown.

Some giant ship always returns to port (or leaves it, I'm not sure which) at the same time every night. Some Great Lakes cruise liner of some kind, I think.

Check out these three adorable bastards.

Tom in front of some trippy wall mural. From one direction it looks like old ship doors, and from the other it was some thing else (but I forget what was painted on the other side, sorry.)

The previously-mentioned building mural.

Collier poses on one of those bike statues (not sure what the point of these things are, honestly. . . besides being photo ops.)

Decided to try our luck at third-story bar with the top floor being open-air.

Our hostess leads us up a few flights of stairs to the absolute top of the building.

The venue was great, and the seats were perfect, but the sun was shining smack in our faces the entire time. I wouldn't have minded this in the slightest, but my cornea - as I mentioned before - was acting up a bit and so was overly-sensitive to the light.

. . . hence me cocking my hat at such a douchey angle.

Ordering some drinks (the service was definitely slower than my liking, that's for sure.)

The view from our table, looking down at the lower tier of the third level of the bar.

Looking out across the street at downtown Ludington.

Omkar took an uncharacteristically artsy pic of this random alley on our walk back to the rental.

A gorgeous sunset this evening, we should have timed it better so we could have checked in out on the beach properly (as such, which you'll see in a sec, we got there too late.)

Downtown Ludington, at the close of the day.

Erik and I lead the troops towards the beach.

A short walk later, we stopped off at the rental in order to grab a few drinks for the beach.

Not a terrible sunset, obviously, but had we gotten there a little earlier it would have been a bit more colorful I think.

Tom, believe it or not, can do a cartwheel, as he demonstrates here.

Following our very, short sunset visit to the beach, we trudged back to the rental and folks began to turn in for the night. Everyone was exhausted - from getting up at 4am, from spending too much time in the sun, from drinking all day, etc. Mitch then decided to shave before bed, randomly - like, who does that? Shaving is done in the morning.

Collier, Mitch and Tom, all tucked in and ready for sleep. Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion, gang. . .

to be concluded. . .