Archive for February 2016
Windy Monday
Is it because it was a Monday? That’s my excuse. Hassles at work. Discombobulation at home. It felt like what Mondays are always being accused of feeling like.
I felt an unexplainable urge to walk round and round, circling in place like Delilah before she lays down, before flopping down myself like a rag doll on our couch, beneath a blanket, in front of the fire Cyndie had burning in the fireplace when I got home.
I suppose it could have been the wind. Blowing snow around at 20-mph, with gusts into the 30s. Driving the commute home was an adventure of wavering vehicles, wobbling back and forth in their lanes.
In a fateful calm, I found myself mentally preparing for the sound of scraping metal that never came, as an eighteen wheel tractor-trailer rig worked its way past me in the fast lane, moving ridiculously close in my peripheral view, several times, as it eased by in the wind.
Who knows what inspired me to decide to dig into documents I knew Cyndie would need to begin the process of preparing information to give to our accountant for our 2015 tax returns. Maybe it was my way of avoiding looking for the card I stowed almost 6 months ago that would tell me what day my next dentist appointment is supposed to be.
I’m growing tired of the insidious plaque on the inside of my bottom front teeth that I can’t stay ahead of cleaning. I think I need floss with a coarser grit. The magical kind that shreds plaque, but stops short of eroding enamel or gums. Yeah. That kind.
Thank goodness I had no allegiance to the teams involved in the Superbowl game Sunday night. I imagine the fans of the Panthers had a pretty gloomy Monday. The fans of the Broncos were probably too delirious to recognize what day it was, let alone whether it was a hassle or not. I watched the game, but the outcome had no bearing on my mental balance, one way or the other.
We finished the evening by deciding to register our online presence with our new healthcare provider for 2016. Cyndie wanted to verify some details of our coverage. She went round and round through loops of links that looked promising, but all fell mercilessly short of the information she was curious about. We were trying to be conscientious, well-informed health plan participants, but the struggle and stress of the online search process began to feel unhealthy.
We decided to take a break and have an ice cream dessert nightcap. I was all too willing to disregard my day’s sugar tally.
The type of day I had yesterday was solely a function of it being a Monday. Or it was the wind.
It might have been the wind.
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Too Warm
I was not entirely prepared in my mind for the temperature to be as warm as it was yesterday. It turned out to be the second day in a row with temperatures around 40° (F). Regardless, I decided to take a crack at pulling the groomer behind the ATV in the morning.
I did a little research to learn what time of day might be the best for grooming. Naturally, I found results for both early morning and end of the day. It hinged on how much trail use could be expected to occur afterward.
Basically, desired results require an overnight of sub-freezing temperatures for the groomed snow to achieve a firm set.
When the sun came up high enough to light the day, it revealed a thin glaze of ice on all the surfaces. I held half a hope that it might provide a crust on top of the snow that would help my cause.
I was much too late for that by the time I made it outside. In fact, the moment I finally stepped out the door, I bagged the idea of using the 4-wheeler, because that glaze had become nothing but wetness.
I took Delilah to the side yard and worked on splitting some wood.
Then Cyndie came out. With her support and encouragement, I changed my mind and decided to give the ATV a shot after all, while she occupied Delilah.
My suspicion that it was too warm was confirmed, but I forged ahead anyway. I was able to coax the ATV forward after I got stuck the first time, but not the second time. I unhooked the pallet/fence panel and turned the Grizzly around.
Hoping to break down a path to eliminate the stopping points, I revved my way back in the direction from which I’d just come, then turned around and covered the same ground a third time. Next, I hooked up the fence panel again and tried a grooming pass, one last time.
It was a mess, but I learned enough to be satisfied this will work nicely when done frequently, soon after snow falls, and doing so from the very beginning of the snow season.
Yesterday was too little, too late, and just plain too warm.
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Grooming Trails
In response to a suggestion from George about making a trail groomer, I dug out a piece of goat fence and a pallet to see if something that simple might do the trick.
Not wanting to leap all the way to the commitment of trying to navigate the 4-wheeler through the deep snow we now have, I decided to test it using my own two feet.
The results met my expectations. It can be done on foot, but it was a LOT of effort after the short amount of time when my muscles wore out. In the end I was spending more time stopped for a rest than I was moving forward toward my goal. Using the ATV will be much easier, but I will need to plan to hit the trails early and often in the snow season, to develop and maintain a packed base to drive over.
There are a few corners where it will be tricky to negotiate the dragged groomer around trees, and I will need to plot a route that doesn’t involve backing up, but I think I can come up with solutions.
The effort to drag a groomer behind the ATV is different, but not significantly less than the effort of hiking the trails several times on snowshoes. The main advantage of the ATV is that more ground can be covered in less time.
However, since I enjoy snowshoe hiking, I find the extra time it takes to walk all our paths multiple times brings me a lot of pleasure.
The primary advantage of using snowshoes is ease of mobility. I can quickly and easily make intricate maneuvers to establish paths with sharp turns and short routes.
I expect the long-term version of winter trail maintenance will always involve a combination of the two. I envision establishing a perimeter circle that I can easily drive with the ATV, with a few options connecting the labyrinth and the back yard to a couple of the easy trails toward the barn.
In addition to that, I will snowshoe the routes from the house to the wood shed and Delilah’s kennel, and a few paths through the woods that are intentionally too narrow for machines to drive through.
We should be able to have the best of both versions.
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Photo Fun
When I was shoveling snow off the deck, I spotted my reflection in the mirror in our bedroom and decided to try a self-portrait. It doesn’t adequately capture what it looked like in person, but I like how it turned out anyway.
I finally got around to plowing the area around the barn and hay shed yesterday, after the storm last Tuesday. When I got up early on Wednesday to plow before going to work, I only did the main run of driveway, from the house to the road. After a prolonged exercise of back and forth on the ATV, I parked it and picked up the snow shovel to finish and clean up edges by hand.
While I was running the ATV, the horses watched me from a distance. Once that ruckus was over, and the only sound being made was the repetitive scrape of my shovel, they no longer showed a need to keep an eye on me. The sun was winning the battle of breaking through the clouds and it seemed wonderfully cozy for a winter day.
I glanced up toward the horses and they had all disappeared to the ground. In the time I fumbled to get my camera out of a deep pocket, where it was staying warm next to my body, Dezirea had finished a thorough snow-bath and returned to her feet. The others weren’t down much longer than her, but they all had a nice few moments of total relaxation, sunning themselves in the fresh blanket of powdery snow.
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Good Thing
Activity in our kitchen is back to normal, now that Cyndie is home. When I walked in the door from a day at work yesterday, my nose was greeted by a simmering ham roast in the slow cooker, two side dishes baking in the oven, and a fresh loaf of home-baked cranberry/orange/walnut bread and plum crumble dessert cooling on the counter.
George was coming over for dinner. I went to start a fire in the fireplace, but noticed we needed to bring in more firewood. That meant I would need to shovel a path to the firewood rack on the deck.
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The food Cyndie prepared was fit for serving a royal feast. To heck with counting sugar grams or total calories. I ate it all, and then some.
We enjoyed dessert in front of the fire, where we lingered long while pondering the fragility of mental health in a wandering trail of tales, eventually feeling as if we had gone full-circle and discovered connections in otherwise seemingly dissimilar situations.
There is always hope possible in times that seem hopeless. If it is not easily available for the grasping, it can be cultivated, when the essential willingness is on hand.
It remains to be seen whether the hopes and remote support seeds we planted will produce desired results in the long run. In the mean time, the fine food and fellowship we shared and enjoyed was a heck of a good thing for the three of us.
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Snow’s Here
I drove to work in the morning yesterday on wonderfully dry pavement and then left for home a couple of hours earlier than usual, when the snow storm started to make an impact. The trip home took about twice as long as usual, and involved several instances of crawling along at 35-40 mph on snow-packed roads.
I am not complaining. I was very lucky. One of the first spots where I encountered a lot of brake lights was on the I-94 bridge over the Mississippi near the University of Minnesota. Just beyond several cars ahead of me, I spotted a vehicle out of the normal position in line. Closer inspection revealed it was facing the wrong way, but moving to correct itself to get reoriented while everyone else waited.
In a blink, we were all on our way again, and as I passed over the spiraling design made by the tires of the small SUV, I was shocked that no other cars had been struck. That spinout covered all 4 lanes of traffic, yet no damage was done.
During the rest of the trip home, I only saw two scenes of the aftermath of multi-car crashes surrounded by flashing lights of emergency responders. Both instances were in the lanes coming from the other direction, and the backups I endured were merely a function of people slowing to gawk.
The worst part of the trip was when my “Check Engine” light came on again, after almost a week of thinking we had solved that mystery. After replacing two different sensors, we discovered the fuel filter was long overdue for being changed. It seemed like that had done the trick, until today.
I drove straight to the shop and they checked the code. Same message as before. I had them reset the warning light again and plan to see how long it will go this time, before I turn it over for more experimentation.
I have other things on my mind right now, like clearing mounds of snow from paths, doorways, and one long driveway. I put a little of the old acquired knowledge to use last night and went out to plow the main driveway in the middle of the storm. That way I will only have half as much snow to clear this morning, before I venture out to see how the roads are.
Hoping I will be able to average a little more than 35-40 mph today.
Here is the driveway, before and after, as of about dinner time last night…
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The view out the bedroom door…
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Cyndie Returns
How smart are dogs? Ours picked up on my activity right away when I got home from work yesterday. Sure, I dropped a few verbal hints that Momma was coming home, but I think she could tell by the way I was putting furniture back in place and converting my temporary man-cave back to our shared living space.
Cyndie has actually returned a day earlier than her original plan, due to the winter storm that is expected to be in full swing this afternoon, around the time her flight was supposed to arrive. She moved it up 24 hours and arrived without hassle last night, making the drive from the cities on dry pavement.
At one point last night, I found Delilah standing with her nose up against the door to the garage, clearly expecting it to open any minute. Maybe she heard something. I don’t know about that, but Cyndie was still over an hour away at that point.
It was a pretty fun reunion when Cyndie stepped in the door. Delilah was incredibly happy, almost as much as Cyndie.
We have had enough warmth recently to melt most of the snow off our driveway. I took a picture to use as a comparison to what it will look like after the 8-12 inches of predicted new snow stops falling.
I’m going to stay at work as long as possible today, hoping to head home before snow accumulation begins to create traffic backups. Unfortunately, they have moved up the time that precipitation is expected to start to 9 a.m. today, so driving could be impacted long before the afternoon rush hour.
If the depth of snow and strong winds lives up to what is being forecast, there is a strong possibility that I will stay home from work on Wednesday.
All these possibilities are a lot less stressful for me now that Cyndie is home.
I think Delilah feels the same way.
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Peripheral Views
During one of our walks around the outside of the hay-field fence over the weekend, I paused Delilah so I could take some pictures. I like how the two I have selected to post here, have noticeably different coloring, even though they are taken from the same vantage point. I zoomed in to focus on the horses and our buildings for the first one, and then took in a wider view with a sliver of blue sky for a highlight across the middle.
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I like how the slope of hill influences the wider view, and the clouded sky ends up looking almost like a reflection.
The shot with the horses is one of my favorite perspectives of our place, because you can see the house (barely) through the trees. It gives a reference for the spacing and location of all our buildings, which is not easy to achieve.
Happy February! Before you know it, there will be groundhogs all over the place, trying to decide whether they can see their shadow, or not.
I’m sure that winter is patiently awaiting their verdict, so it will know how it should proceed for the next couple months. I’m not concerned. We have enough hay for whatever amount of winter remains this year.
I think.
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Relative Something 