After five days of waking up not sick, but still with some sort of allergy or slight head cold, I woke up on Saturday not sick and without some sort of allergy or head cold. There was much rejoicing.

My goal for Saturday was to do nothing, and I was on my way to doing just that until Wifey went to have coffee with a friend, and as she left, the increasingly finicky garage door had a pulley break, and the door was wedged in the track about 3 feet from the floor as it closed.

With the door’s wheels wedged hard in the track at an angle, all the normal ways to manually close the door failed. So, after realizing that the repair place in town is closed on Saturday, I spent the next 60 minutes failing to fix the door, followed by 30 minutes of removing parts that explicitly say DANGER! DO NOT REMOVE! so as to get the door to shut.

Not the way I wanted to spend my Saturday morning, but I got the door down and salvaged a day of footy and slack. I also realized in hindsight that the entire issue was likely caused by a hardened buildup of caked road salt and dirt on the roller in the track, causing it to jump out of place. (sighs)

Come Monday, I was up at 3:30 AM to see Wifey out the door to the airport for a week of Union business in the disgusting, stank, fecal weeping anus of our world/country—Washington, DC. A trip that will actually have her (MY FREAKING WIFE!) giving a presentation to a congressperson on the “other side.” Meanwhile, I sit typing this useless dross, hoping that the garage door repair person doesn’t come during the Real Madrid game later. We all have our crosses; Wifey is mine I am Wifey’s.

I returned to bed with Lola until 5:20, then was up for coffee, and out the door for a 6-mile hike on wait for it…. icy trails, again.

I seriously can’t remember the last time I hiked without microspikes or snowshoes! (November or early December, I think). 65% of the trail is still solid ice with layers of powdery snow on top to make it extra slippery. I almost fell several times with spikes; I can’t imagine hiking without them. The worst part is that there is NO snow around town.

I saw a few deer, some geese, and a couple of ducks, but for the most part, I just kept my head down, tried not to fall, and stomped out a 6.04-mile loop to start the week.

The trails were shit, and the 14˚ temps seemed way colder, but the sun was out, the sky was blue, and for a couple of hours, I was alone in the woods with the critters, blissfully ignorant to the daily shit show of modern America and taking no satisfaction in saying “75,019,230 of us told you so! So pardon my ignorance as I watch it burn to the ground.”

Later.