Relative Something

Today is the American Birkebeiner race day and we’ve learned the two main mid-race access points nearest our place are closed to traffic. We plan to drop off the two first-time Birkie skiers in Hayward shortly and they will ride a shuttle bus to the start. We will come back and hang out until the time we expect them to finish and then we will drive to town to join the throngs cheering skiers along.

The house on the lake gave us a little surprise when Cyndie and I arrived Thursday in the form of a puddle on the center island in the kitchen for which we couldn’t figure out the source. Yesterday morning, as the sun got high enough to melt the snow on the deck, a dripping began from the ceiling in the kitchen.

We had an ice dam on the roof of epic proportions. Luckily, the crew that does the caretaking up here responded swiftly and took on the risky job of working on the roof to clear the ice.

With that problem tended to we felt free to head out for a snowshoe trek with Delilah, quickly discovering the snow was so deep in the woods that Delilah could hardly make it through.

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After a short distance, we turned around and took advantage of our trail to let her move with a little more ease. We needed to consult photographs of the labyrinth we made last fall to figure out where it was located, but once we figured it out, it was pretty easy to plod the path.

It will provide a nice recovery exercise tomorrow for our racers who are skiing a distance today far greater than any they’ve done thus far.

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