Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Snow dealings, round 19: clearing my driveway. The glop we got a couple of days ago froze solid before I could get to it, but today's 7" or so was fluffy, and I was able to snowblow it fairly easily (and the snowblower rope-started from cold today). Afterwards I tried chipping away some of the underlying ice layer with a steel shovel, but that wasn't entertaining for very long, so there's not much black showing on the driveway. About 35 minutes.

C • 7" 1

Snow dealings, round 20: Nancy's driveway. I did part of this in the morning, and intended to do the rest while Nancy was watching the Oscars, but was too lazy to get up off the couch until they announced the final award, at which point I decided that I had better get the rest of the snow out of there before the impending freezing rain turns it to concrete. She thought I was crazy to be going out to shovel at 11:30 PM, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Now it will just turn to sheer ice instead. About 30 minutes.

Hiking up and down Mt. Holyoke, partly in snowshoes. Jeff and I hauled our harnesses up, I shoveled off the launch area, then we scrutinized the conditions and decided that the wind was too light for us to be able to soar, and it was therefore not worth the effort to drag our gliders up there. The trail up from the ranger station was all full of nasty postholes, though the trail on the ridge wasn't bad. We wore snowshoes from where we left the road all the way to launch (the start of the trail looked like we were going to need them), but I didn't bother to put them back on when we started back down. We took the road down, rather than the trail, in order to get an idea of the conditions. In my mind, it's too long to be worth going that way unless I were pulling the glider with a bicycle (something I've thought about). In any case, it turns out that they don't plow very far past the ranger station, so the cart would probably have been useless going that way. Didn't get to fly, though it was a nice enough day for a little hike. But Jeff could use a bit of conditioning, he was moving pretty slowly on the climb. :-)

20 pushups, 20 pushups.

20 pushups, 50 situps, 20 pushups.

20 pushups, 20 pushups, 50 situps.

20 pushups, 20 pushups, 50 situps.

Took advantage of a narrow window in the availability of ice. Considering all the snow we got in January, I was not expecting any more opportunities to skate this year, but the 60 degree day on Friday caused enough melting to flood the lakes, and then the cold night Saturday got it all solidified again. I was lazy and drove down the hill, but when I got there it looked good enough to give it a try. Hickory Hills gets quite a bit of snowmobile traffic, so the surface was in most places intolerably bumpy. I skated to the dam and found that the central section was so rough that I was just about walking. I settled on a few coves in the SW part that were untracked enough to have some nice sections near the shore, wide enough for me to be able to turn and do laps. I was surprised to see nobody ice fishing at all, maybe they're sick of it by this point? Just one guy walking his dog. I was also chased by a couple of yappy little curs who seemed very put out by my presence, but I was in my element and they didn't stand a chance. Finished when it was just getting dark enough to make it hard to see the ice texture. I might have been better off to try and find some other lake that for some reason gets no snowmobile traffic, but this was still not bad, considering.

Tenpin bowling, Stephen got 62-83, I got 107-119, and Nancy bowled 119-123. Her second game started out very strong, with X-X-9/, but it got difficult partway through that game when I guess it was 9 PM and things turned "cosmic" -- I found it difficult to focus with the blacklights and heavy metal music. Not that I necessarily dislike that stuff, but it does make it harder to bowl well.

C • probably good training 2

At Silver Lake (Hollis Town Forest) with Nancy, Stephen and a bunch of guests from the Bundschuhs' party, In The Dark (hatlamp). This was a "full-moon" outing, but the moon hadn't come up by the time we were done a little after 8 PM. NE out of the parking lot, down to the first pond, then over to the straits and a couple of laps around the marsh, then back. The trail was solidly snowmobiled, and the ice was partially clear, but I went postholing through untracked stuff a lot in order to keep myself warm, get some extra exercise, and slow myself down to around the speed that the others were going. I also did some intervals for the same reason. Cold out, around 17F or so I think, and I wasn't really dressed as well as I could have been (better hat and gloves would have been good).

20 pushups. Fell asleep before I got to the rest of the exercises.

20 pushups, 20 pushups, 50 situps.

Shorter Mystery Blazes loop. The thermometer had a number that started with a 5 on the middle of the day, but it had dropped to the mid 40s by the time I got out in the fading light. Crust has softened up completely, so I was sinking into almost slushy stuff, thus I was slower than last time even though I was running for the first downhill part. I got across Mulpus Brook on the snow bridge again, but I don't know how long I'll be able to get away with that. The main trail had an amazing amount of animal droppings on it (deer, I'm guessing, but I'm no expert in these matters). Jacket was unzipped and gloves were off shortly after I started, and although I wore the hatlamp, I turned it on only once, in the hemlock grove just before the power line trail. The rest of the time I got by as my eyes adjusted to the ambient light. On the last ascent, a couple of breaks in the clouds blew through, revealing brilliant moonlight -- nice.

I could swear there was a day last week when I did the pushups/situps thing, but I don't remember when.

Willard Brook SE, with the more northerly variation, medium snowshoes. Maybe 10-15% of this had been snowmobiled in, and I was breaking trail for the rest. Maybe half of that had one set of old snowshoe tracks, which were not helpful. I was breaking through the crust and sinking in about 3" most of the time. Late afternoon, with the sunlight fading enough that by the end I could see distinct shadows on the snow from the quarter moon. Temperature about freezing. Like the other night, this was a very noisy outing -- crunch, crunch, crunch...

Shorter Mystery Blazes loop, In The Dark (hatlamp). After a couple of long work days with no exercise at all, I headed out at about 8 PM, and conditions were very, very different from Saturday. In the interim we had gotten an inch or so of wet snow, followed by some daytime temperatures above freezing, then while I was out it was 10-12 F. In some places people or deer had walked in the tracks, chewing them up, and the whole mess had frozen so it was lumpy and frustrating. I pretty quickly realized that I was better off going on the unbroken snow next to the old tracks, as I was sinking in only about an inch with the medium snowshoes. Very much faster conditions, note how much quicker I did the same loop, with less effort. The one spot where the snowshoe tracks were good was the Shorter cutoff, though it was a hair narrower than I would have liked, so I banged my ankles a couple of times. The snowmobile tracks in Hickory Hills were pretty good, although icy enough that the downhills were treacherous, and I had to run them in order to avoid sliding. Still no snowmobile tracks on the main trail, I wonder if there's been a crackdown, or if the guy on Holman Street has given it up. Nice night to be out, I know how to dress comfortably for these temperatures.

I've decided that it would be interesting to be able to sing "The Star Spangled Banner", so I've undertaken this week to learn the lyrics. I have most of them down at this point.

20 pushups, 20 pushups, 50 situps.

20 pushups, 20 pushups, 50 situps. I also did some cleanup work at Nancy's scraping ice off the driveway and such, but not really enough to log.

Snow dealings, round 18: tidying up Mom's yard. I took her snowblower and cleaned up around where she parks her car, trying to make enough room so that the plow guy can turn left at the top and still have some space to leave the snow. Doesn't look like we're going to get any after all, so I left the car there instead of bringing it to my house, though we did put a sheet of rubber on the windshield in case there's a lot of ice. There was a bit of shoveling involved, but not too much.

Shorter Mystery Blazes loop. Finally got out for some exercise. I pondered whether to take the giant snowshoes, but opted for the medium ones, and after not very long I was regretting that choice and thought about going back to change. I was surprised at how little of this was tracked in. The main trail had seen no snowmobile traffic since the midweek storms, and the first half of MB had nothing since the last time I was there. The Lane trail did have what was apparently an out-and-back on XC skis from Holman St. The power line trail was packed by snowmobiles, and I was so beat from the MB (sinking in 8"-12" with each step) that I was planning to cut it short and just turn right at the power line trail, but I decided to check out the entrance to the north half of MB, and saw that somebody had gone through with (pretty small) snowshoes, and that a deer had postholed along those tracks as well. This packed it down just enough that the going was easier and faster for me, so I forged ahead. Nevertheless, I was pretty gratified when I got to the Hickory Hills trails and had snowmobile tracks again, but they lasted only to the esker, and then I was breaking trail again. I had crossed Mulpus Brook by just walking across the stream, and the ice and snow held. I was still surprised, however to see a set of snowshoe tracks running right down the brook a little way south of the Xmas bridge. This was all a trudge, but a pretty vigorous one, I was working hard and sweating out there. This was early afternoon, temps right around freezing, with sleet showers. The GPS works a lot better in the air than on the ground, and it looks like there's some spurious jaggedness to my route that is probably giving me credit for more distance than I actually traveled.

Snow dealings, round 17: liberating Mom's car. Stopped by her place and shoveled out around it enough to back it out of the spot where she had stashed it, and I'll get it over to my house tonight in advance of the storm. I'll also need to do some work with the snowblower tonight to create some maneuvering room for the plow guy. While I was there, I shoveled some snow off of her roof above the most outrageous piece of ice, tossed on a few handfuls of table salt, and told her to stay clear of that spot for a few hours. I have my fingers crossed that it won't do any damage to the propane tank when it lets loose. Meanwhile, Nancy reports some water drippage, so I'm snagging an extension ladder from work so that I can get up to her eaves at some point and investigate. Fingers are crossed that the heater tapes will help, though the ice and snow unfortunately have a head start.

Snow dealings, round 15: more work at my place, roughly an hour, maybe? I shoveled out the path to the oil filler, and tidied up the main walk from the overnight flurries. Then I pulled out the snowblower and did a quick pass on the driveway to get some bare pavement showing in the hopes that if there's some sunshine it will melt clean. Next was what to do about Mom's car if we get another storm. I decided to snowblow out a parking space so that I can bring her car over here to keep it out of the way of the plow, but not have it be blocking my way when I clear my driveway. This was a multistage operation, since the snow is much deeper than the mouth of the snowblower, and almost up to the level of the top of the discharge chute. I had to slowly chew one path in the length of the car, then I would repeatedly back up, knock down a foot of snow from the side of the path using a shovel, then go forward a couple of times to get the rubble out of there. I think I now have a big enough slot for her car, though I may need to do a little more work to enlarge it. I officially gave up on my mailbox yesterday, went to the post office and filled out a "hold mail" form, and in the space for the date when the hold should end, I just wrote "when the snow melts". Just as well, since this morning I found my mailbox lying on top of a giant snowbank, and I have no idea where down underneath there the post might be. I really wanted to get out and do some snowshoeing yesterday, but there was too much work to do. I may try to get out tonight. The elephant in the room is what's going to happen to all this water if it warms up suddenly. We could be looking at some pretty impressive flooding. Snow depth here is 24"-29", depending on where you measure it.

Snow dealings, round 16: tidying up at Nancy's house. Not sure of the time, might have been a bit longer, maybe 30 min. Most of this was taking the plow snow that Nancy had scooted over to one corner and launching it up over the pile, which at this point can be done only by one particular twisting technique, using core muscles rather than arms. Probably good cross-training for paddling. I also made an attempt to chop down the banks at bit at the road in order to allow for a little visibility up and down the road when pulling out.

Not enough mental oomph remaining to get out into the woods in snowshoes in the dark at 15F.

Snow dealings, round 12: my house. The garage door wouldn't open due to the show packed against it, so I had to shovel around from the front door to free it up, which took about 10 minutes (leaving the oil filler and woodshed for later), then there was about 25 minutes of snowblowing the driveway. No engine troubles to speak of. This was the easy part.

Snow dealings, round 13: Nancy's house. Nancy had shoveled the fluffier stuff yesterday, plus at least enough to get out this morning, but when I arrived there was waist-deep plow snow clear across the driveway. I had to park at the repair shop up the street and jog down to her place with my shovel. I didn't quite have it ready for her to pull in when she returned from work, so I told her to park in the driveway across the street temporarily. I was largely done when the guy across the street showed up and he and his wife start wondering out loud whose car it was (duh, maybe the guy standing across the street with a shovel?). So Nancy moved her car, and the guy asked if I could give him a hand getting his snowblower out of the bed of the truck and said he'd blow some snow for me. Unfortunately he had lost a cotter pin and one of his wheels wasn't turning, and I could have been more effective than him if I had been operating the machine, but I can't be too critical, becuse it sure did help (he has watched Nancy and me shoveling before but has never offered to assist, or to let us use the snowblower). The issue is that the snowbanks are so high that I can barely get the snow over the top even if I limit myself to small shovelsful.

Snow dealings, round 14: Mom's house. Stopped by at around 9 PM to see how she was doing, and to clear the path to the woodpile, and things were not good. There was a 4+ foot tall wall of compacted snow something like 10 feet thick between the driveway and the back yard. The plow guy did a great job, but he's running out of room to put the snow. Mom said she could manage to shovel a path, obviously not having thought this through. When I showed her how solid the snow was, she reconsidered. Not to mention the fact that she probably couldn't reach high enough to take a scoop off the top of the pile, and since I can barely launch the snow over the top of the pile... Not quite so bad once I got through to the normal snow. The ice on her roof is insane, with icicles coming out of the soffit vents again, meaning she has ice in the eaves. What a nightmare. Still have to get back to snowblow the area where she parks the car and turns it around, though there may no longer be room to turn it around (the snowbank is close to blocking the door to the house). And she's low on wood, so may be getting another delivery that I'll have to stack. If we do get more snow, I'm going to evacuate her car (probably to my house) so the plow guy will have a chance, though I guess he's saying that next time he'll have to back in and plow downhill toward the road. The crazy neighbor with the front-end loader can reportedly no longer show up and restructure the pile because his wife thinks that my mother is trying to steal him from her. Or so says Mom...

Some guy recently said, "It's just winter". At times I think of this, and I want to strangle him. I'm reeeeeeeally looking forward to some nice hang gliding weather...

C • I think you know where to f... 2

Snow dealings, round 11: snowblowed my driveway of the 8" of so of fluffy stuff that fell today, then reshoveled the walk, the path to the oil filler, and the path to the shed. 47 minutes, of which maybe 10 minutes or so was actually shoveling.