The week started with two days of indoor lumbering/running (not affiliated with the 2026 Soiled and Ignorant Tour), and was followed by two days and 8 miles on trails covered with solid ice, slush, and standing water. Which, come Friday, I had had enough of. Well, at least my feet had enough of the lateral torsion caused by hiking on lumpy ice and slush.
In my last post, I lamented the fact that mid-Michigan was hit with an ice storm that made driving the trails pretty dumb. That was Friday.
Saturday, the ice was still here, but given that we lacked a number of kitchen staples, I made an early morning trip to the grocery store instead of the trails. Later that day, we got even more ice.
Sunday came, and guess what? ANOTHER day of freezing rain and ice. Meanwhile, an hour away in Lansing, a friend of ours said it was 46˚.
It happened again. I thought I could justify not lumbering in mid-Michigan’s recent snow/rain/thaw/freeze hellscape by calling it a “mini-break” and embracing four days of rest, recovery, good food, and slack in the name of staying warm and dry with bones all in one piece.
I thought this plan would be good for me, and have me rested, recovered, and ready to get back at it come Monday morning.
After my snowshoe lumber (snlumber? lumbershoe? snumbershoe?) on Friday, I came home, made breakfast, and set about getting shit done. Thankfully, there was no need for me to leave the house. So I didn’t. Nor would I leave the house for the next 48+ hours except for brief forays onto the deck to get a couple of bird pics, refill the bird feeders, and yell at Lola to hurry the hell up during one of her shit journeys in the early morning darkness.
There was no weekend lumbering or photo creeping, but it was still pretty swell.
Wifey and I were up at the ass crack of dawn on Saturday to eat breakfast, coffee up, and dump out before the Jingle All The Way 5K in town at 8:30 AM. Wifey was running it, and I was there to cheer her on and get some photographs.
Part I, The Orneriness
The long (too long) weekend brought our first substantial snowfall of the season, with about 6″ dropped in our area. While I am no fan of winter and snow, I do appreciate the normalcy of snow when it’s supposed to snow. Way to normal up, Ma Nature, bravo.
We did luck out with the timing of the storm, when it was pushed back from starting early Saturday morning to late that afternoon, which allowed Brennan to stay another night and still safely dive back to East Lansing before the snow fell in earnest. Again, bravo Ma Nature, bravo
Another weekend has come and gone, and once again, it was pretty darn not bad.
There was less slack than I wanted due to light snow coming on Saturday night, and the remaining leaves needing to be cleaned up on Saturday morning. The good news is that 95% of all the leaves are down and cleaned up, and the remainder can be taken care of another time, or just let winter take its course. Glad to have it done and out of the way. Of course, I was gifted a literal pain in the neck in the end, so that’s not great.
For the sake of not forcing my daily micro-adventures down the throats of the world, I have limited my posting this week. [insert ironic crowd cheers here]
The reason being that while the week has offered me my normal allotment of miles, it’s been more “samey” than usual.
I wake early, drink some coffee, drive to the trails in the dark, hike 6+ miles, and hardly see any critters because the sun has only been fully up for about 30 minutes by the time I finish.
The weekend was the weekend, and as weekends go, it was a pretty good weekend. Know-what-I-mean?
I felt good when Lola and I got up at 5:20, although I will say, she was WAY more excited to stuff her face in a bowl of “lamb” and rice dog food than I was to serve it, but I was looking forward to the day’s lumber, despite the early morning assault on my senses.