How the Milwaukee Brewers Almost Stranded Me By Joe Shead I blame it all on the Milwaukee Brewers. If it hadn’t been for them, I’d have never gotten into this mess. I’d spent the summer of 2011 in Alaska and was excited to finally be back home. Summers on the Kenai Peninsula where I’d worked as a rafting guide, aren’t really summers. You’re generally looking at 55 degrees and light rain most days. If it’s 60 degrees and sunny, people break out the shorts and sandals. Since I was deprived of a “summer,” I wanted to try to salvage a little warm weather fun before the snow flew after I returned home. It was early October, but it was as warm as it had been all summer in Alaska— and it wasn’t raining. The plan was to head up the North Shore with a fishing pole, a shotgun, a canoe, and a tent and just have some fun in the Superior National Forest for a few days. After fishing a couple of my favorite lakes off the Caribou Trail, I found another lake on a map that looked “ducky.” I wanted to see if I could find some ring-necked ducks back in the marshy area. The lake delivered. It was full of ducks. Plus, it had walleyes. Best of all, it was tough
to get to. I had to leave the main roads and squeeze down a forgotten trail for more than a mile to reach the lake. Good fishing, good hunting, and isolation. Just what I needed. By some miracle the Milwaukee Brewers had snuck into the playoffs, and being a native Wisconsinite, I was following their postseason run. The sprawling expanse of Lake Superior contains nothing that can block radio waves, and I can pick up the game from the radio station in Ashland. So one night as I cooked walleyes over a campfire, I cranked up the truck radio to listen to the Brewers take on the Cardinals. As usual, the Cardinals were having their way with the Brew Crew. I’d have been way better off not listening to the game at all. Finally, around the 7th inning stretch, after the wheels had long since fallen off for the Brewers, it dawned on me that I’d been playing the radio just off the truck’s battery for an awful long time. Maybe I should start the truck. Click, click, click! Ugh… I’d drained the battery too much to start the truck! Oh boy! My brother’s words from a few weeks earlier instantly echoed in my head: “That’s the original battery in your truck. I’d get a new one before winter if I were you because it’s probably due to fail.”
Well, if I stood on one foot, with an arm stretched out like an antenna and didn’t move, I could get just enough reception to give my brother a call. “Ha ha ha ha ha!” he laughed over the phone from 400 miles away. Well, that wasn’t helping. Strike one. Hmm, I was stranded good. I was at least 30 miles from Grand Marais where I could get a new battery, and it was midweek with nothing but gravel roads—this was more than a decade ago before things became so touristy, even in the fall. My prospects weren’t looking good. Maybe I could empty my wheeled cooler, pull it all the way to town and tow back a new battery? That didn’t sound too appealing. No, I needed to prey on the kindness of a friend.
The lake provided good fishing for walleye and perch. | JOE SHEAD
Chuck! Chuck loves to hunt ducks. Maybe I could convince him to drive up from Duluth to hunt with me. I fired him off a few texts, emphasizing how good the duck
hunting had been but purposely neglecting to mention that I was stranded. Chuck said he’d love to come up, but he couldn’t get away. Strike two. Hmm. Maybe my buddy Joe could come to my rescue. Joe also loves to hunt ducks. If
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