Posts Tagged → fucking weather

What’s Old is New Again

Do you smell that? It smells like hyperbole.
– Me

I’m no good at this. 

While you may think that I’m about to say I’m no good at this whole “life” thing, and I tend to believe I’m not, I’m actually referring to multiple days off from outdoor activities. In post-blizzard Michigan, during the longest, darkest, coldest, rope-to -the-fucking-attic month of the year.

It’s been four days since I was last in the woods, and it might as well be 4 months. While I know it’s near impossible, I feel like I’ve lost every shred of fitness I gained over the last 16+ months; my Instagram feed is set to be bombarded with ads for big and tall stores (again), and the brain that I have worked so hard to semi-salvage from a sticky web of depression and life-long self-loathing is set to go into shut-down mode and return me to the fart scented sheets of The Bed of Torment.

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Miles on The Brain

I knew I would struggle to get 25 miles in my feet last week, but I didn’t foresee it going quite so poorly; melting snow followed by 24 hours of heavy rain, followed by a return to below-freezing temps, had the trails alternating between slippy mashed potato snow and solid ice that crushed and snapped underfoot as I trekked over them with mico spikes strapped on my shoes.

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More Snow & Funk 45s

The more things stay the same, the more you want to drive to your local watering hole, hand them your credit card, and not leave until spring or your liver fails. Either way, it’s a win/win situation.

I sort of jest; despite the lack of sunshine, shit weather, and now the addition of 6 more inches of fresh snow on top of what we had, I have not been slowed down from my near-daily hikes and was able to hit my 25-mile goal on Saturday morning with a SLOW 4.5-mile lumber through the woods before the gamey balls of the latest winter storm arrived later that evening.

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Dogs, Hawks, and Chats

As we enter the second half of January, things remain dark, dank, repetitious, dark, and dank. Except for last Saturday, when the Weather Dogs actually blessed mid-Michigan with our first day of sunshine in 2023, 14 days into the new year. Of course, roughly 24 hours later, it was gone, and Dankuary continues on.

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Stupidity & Dangerous Curves

Last week’s Winter Storm Elliot ended up being pretty standard stuff for my part of Michigan; however, the gusting 30+ MPH winds, my unwise decision to “hold off a bit longer” until I got the snow tires put back on the 2014 Ford Escape, and the county’s strange decision to forgo plowing or salting the roads meant that I missed two days of hiking that would have easily g0t me to my self-imposed 25-mile weekly hiking goal. Crap.

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Fuzzyness

It’s been a minute and a half since my last post, but there is a very good reason for that; weather, travel, gym time, and soccer dad duties have conspired to keep me out of the woods with my camera, and no one exactly wants to read this shit anyway, let alone read this shit when it has nothing to do with anything even vaguely outdoor-related and only features photos of my kid playing soccer, a bowl of pasta I made for lunch, or my dogs. Unless, of course, I’ve misjudged my ever-dwindling audience and the blog’s SEO stats (I think I have those).

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Looking For Do-Overs

Can I get a do-over on last week?

Something about last week was off for me. While nothing horrible happened, and I’m still maintaining a good (enough) mindset, something was off. I think the Michigan spring is getting to me, and I use the term “spring” lightly. The past week was filled with cold temps, high wind, ice storms, heavy rain, and very few fading glimpses of the sun. The week also seemed worse because it was B’s spring break, and while the rest of Michigan seemingly did something in warmer climates, we did nothing. Again. 

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