Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Hollis Town Forest, with the Bundschuh party crew, nice leisurely stroll on mostly hard blue ice. I wore a headlamp, but enough other people had lights that I never bothered to turn it on. (A little stop in the middle for libations to be passed around.)

Snow dealings, round 4c: my driveway. Fail. I didn't get to this last night when it was softer, and it froze up overnight. The snowblower wasn't really interested in chewing into this at all, and preferred to ride up over the top. I was able to walk around following it with both it and me supported by the crust. So I spent a few minutes with a shovel, prying up chunks from between my bulletproof tire tracks and tossing them aside, but that didn't seem very productive. It will melt eventually.

Snow dealings, round 4b: Nancy's driveway. In contrast to yesterday evening's session, what fell overnight was some snow followed by varying precipitation that probably ended up with rain, so what was on the ground was dense, saturated slush. Very tedious to move, nearly impossible to lift, and the asphalt underneath was dangerously slick. Did the minimum necessary to get the cars out, and figured a lot would melt during the day. The snowblower would have been useless.

Snow dealings, round 4a: Nancy's driveway. A few inches of fluff that was pretty easy to just push around, and that would have been easy with the snowblower if it wasn't currently waiting for some replacement parts.

Long-Sought-For Pond, wind estimated at 0-5 mph, NW. Black ice, consistently solid but pretty bumpy in spots (particularly in the southern part), with some ice fishermen and a few skaters out. Sometimes becalmed, sometimes blowing decently. This was the first time that I felt like I was genuinely sailing. Not a single stroke with my legs, this was all wind power. Looks like I got up around 16 mph for a few brief moments, which was pretty fun, but not scary.

Tied the sail off to a buoy and went for a (very brief) bit of actual exercise. Having determined that the best ice was at the NW end, I stayed up there.

And sailing back to the car. There was one moment (the glitch at 15 minutes in) when things got wonky, and I had to follow the advice that I had given myself: if things get wonky, just let go of the sail. Not sure what happened, if it was a wind shift or some bad ice or something else or a combination (I was getting tired), but I just let it go and fell down, problem solved. Back up and sailing in about 30 seconds.

Drove by the clearcut on Gilchrest, and sure enough, they cleared the 10-foot strip (easy to identify because it's bounded by a stone wall on one side), so I have to assume that they did the land swap. Amusing to see that a couple of 1950s era junk cars are now sitting out in the open after presumably having lived in the woods for decades.