Igor's & Rosedale

Corinna met me at Friz on the way home and we took an alternate route. Originally we were going to bomb Rainbow, then decided Mission Road because it's steeper.



Then we ended up flying down Rosedale Drive to Puckett, plenty steep and long but with that stop sign at the intersection with Puckett and all the sand they put down in the winter on these roads still dusting the edges, it was only a half bomb.



I only got to 38 mph and had to grab a big handful of brakes to at least be in a position to stop.



Then we climbed Mill Street. Photos don't do this hill justice: it's hard to figure how the concrete could set before it slid off a hill this steep. I'd had a couple of beers at Friz and a big late lunch, the combination of which left me bloated and sluggish.



Still, I was appalled at how poorly I climbed on Mill. I climbed it last summer with only one stop to weep and gasp for breath. I know my bike was loaded a little heavier this time, but damn. I think I stopped four or five times, then would climb until I felt like I would puke and stop again.

I've never actually puked from exertion, but maybe with more beer I could.

We rode by Igor's. Which is Sauer Castle, but when I was in high school, there wasn't a sign up to tell you that. Or, as I recall, a security fence. I remember going on a date with a girl I'd been dying to go out with forever, and this was one of the places we went. There was a guy there who supposedly owned the place, but in hindsight, I think he was shitting us. A bunch of teenagers were there, all of us drinking under age, and he wouldn't give us tours of the inside because of 'safety' concerns.



It was a long time ago, and since my date wouldn't let me take the wheel of her Camaro for fear that I would put it through its paces (a justifiable fear; I had driven the Volvo one girlfriend's Dad lent us 115 mph down I-635; and that was a Volvo station wagon, no telling what I'd have done with a muscle car), I probably had more beer than I'd have had if I was the one driving.



So maybe our host that night was a legitimate caretaker on some level. Or maybe he was just a 20-something with the fantastic combination of good judgment and maturity to enjoy playing Fonzie with a bunch of kids who wanted to drink in the yard of a haunted house.



There's glass in the windows, some signs that the place is being restored. And the property is definitely more secure than it was in 1987, though the signs claiming we need to 'beware of dog' and that the place is under 'armed guard' are a stretch. There is no armed guard I could see, and without him, I don't know who'd feed the dog.



I called the girls to tuck them in before we left Igor's, and Em told me I didn't have the real story of Sauer Castle. The version I remember from the date in high school was a kid had jumped from the top of the tower into the fountain in the front yard and he haunted the joint. Em told that, no, this Sauer dude went off to war and was coming home by boat, and his wife went to meet the boat and didn't see him get off. So she went home and hanged herself; then he arrived home by a slightly later boat and found her and shot himself.



That's the true story of Sauer Castle? I asked. It's haunted by a moron who assumed that her husband could only arrive home on one particular boat or else he was dead? And a guy who would be busted up to the point of suicide about losing a dingbat like that?

And no way Em could have the story right anyway, because no matter what the sign in the yard says, that place will always be Igor's to me.