Not to beat a spent lingam, but I haven’t been on trails using just my trail runners since sometime in mid-November. Until today.
Posts Tagged → doing stuff
A Normal Loop & Some Birds
As with most of 2026, last week was pretty crap for lumbering, with only 3 lumbers and a mere 13.78 miles in my feetz. I was pretty down about it, but there were some signs to be positive about.
Real flowers, sun, and green grass type spring is about 7 or more weeks away for mid-Michigan, but there has been a real uptick in critter activity, and many birds are returning to breed. While 23˚ and 13 MPH winds are not my type of breeding weather (I tend to catch a chill when breeding outdoors), the birds don’t seem to mind, and it really is a sign that the critters are just as ready for spring as I am.
Foiled and Back
As I woke up on Wednesday morning, I could hear light rain striking the windows. “Hmmmm… going to be a wet lumber this morning,” I thought as I climbed out of bed and fart-walked my way to the bathroom.
Soon—or two hours later— I was gearing up and ready to head out. Now the rain was absolutely lashing down, and the sky had nearly returned to complete darkness!
“SHIT!! Oh, fuck it, by the time I get to the trails, it’ll slow down or stop!!”
Restarts & Refrozen
Last week’s multi-day deep freeze had me in my comfy chair watching YouTube channels or on the treadmill for the majority of my “Me Time,” and I knew I needed to change something, stat. Or keep the slack going, and return to The Bed of Torment, a depressive, heaving bag of aging suck.
So, I started Monday with a better outlook and a plan written in sand to make this week better. I think I done good.
Complaining & Stomping
More Wintry Lumbering
After getting 30 miles of lumbering in 5 days last week, I took the weekend off to slack and watch footy. The slack went fine, but the footy was lackluster with Spurs losing at home yet again, 2-1 in the dying minutes of stoppage time to West Ham, who are in the gahdamn relegation zone! I continue to hate them. Moving on…
I was eager to get back in the woods on Monday, and got to the trails just as the dark night turned to dark grey daylight.
Lumbering and Clumping
TUESDAY
With my rediscovered motivation via the not-so-subtle art of self-fat shaming, I was back on the trails Tuesday for another lumber in the snow.
The additional snow that fell over the weekend had turned softer, and while not that difficult to walk in, it was mildly irritating when I suffered from the age-old problem of wet clumps of snow forming within the chains of my microspikes. One minute I’m walking along fine, the next minute it’s like walking on high heels made of snowballs.
With that, I had to make some adjustments to my gaiter straps, the main culprit of the clumping. The “clumprit” if you will (sorry). And during this adjustment at the .50 mile mark, I realized that my Garmin had accidentally paused right after I started. Thankfully, after thousands of miles on these trails, I knew that I was indeed at mile .50 and was able to make the correction when I got home. It took my dim bulb of a brain a little while to process the mismatched mile-math along the way, but somehow I survived.
The First Day (2026 Edition)
As has been my norm for a number of years now, I was in bed at roughly 9 PM on New Year’s Eve. I get NOTHING out of New Year’s anymore, which is a shame, because that’s the night that Wifey and I met many years ago.
So, we kissed and hugged it out around 9, wished each other Happy New Year, and I was off to bed, with Wifey and Lola not far behind me.
A Normalish Stomp
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.
Breaking & Nearly Broke
I took the day off from lumbering on Wednesday due to overnight snow, the need to shovel out a driveway, and a strong desire to not leave the house after I was finished.
So, today I was off like a herd of turtles at daybreak (two full hours after I woke), and eager to be in the snowy woods. Until I got to the snowy woods.