I woke up early Tuesday morning with daylight sneaking through the curtains of the bedroom, a few minutes before my artificial “sun” alarm clock was due to wake me at 6 AM.
Despite the slightly earlier wake-up, I was eager to get the dogs out, get some breakfast in, and plan another ride in lieu of my normal lumbers.
Then things changed.
After a week off from hiking, I headed back into the woods on Thursday to finally get some miles in. Or at least that was the plan.
No matter where you live, people will say that the weather is psycho, except maybe in Pittsburgh, where crazy weather means going more than 24 hours WITHOUT “partly cloudy” skies (which is a nice way of saying “it’s cloudy with a chance of rain, yinz guys.”).
I haven’t had what I’d call a “normal” lumber in the woods since the first week in January. The time in between has been spent doing the following:
It’s been a hell of a month, but such is life.
The outside was a mess of ice, melting snow, slush, and rain on Friday, and after 15 miles of snowshoeing already completed, I was a mess of aching knees, stiff calves, sore hip flexors, and an arthritic mind. So with that, I took Friday off to bask in the glow of the dank sky and catch up on some long overdue house shit.
Part I, Tuesday, 6:17 AM
I was up at 6 AM on Tuesday to tend to the dogs, drink giant mugs of coffee, make food, and slack around the internet in the dark, waiting for dark grey daylight sometime after 8 AM and a chance to get some miles in my feet.
This is a long one, people. No reason, really; I just found myself wasting time every so often this week and writing down random shit.
6:05 AM on Christmas Morning, and I was up as usual.
No, I wasn’t waiting to gleefully rip through a giant pile of presents (although there was one with my name on that I had my eye on); I was up waiting for the freaking sun to start thinking about rising so I could squeeze in a few miles before we did the version of Christmas Morning you do when it’s just a couple and their 19-year-old son who is now thankfully way more into sleep than opening holiday presents.
Sadly, the sun wouldn’t be fully up until after 8, so that meant I had nothing to do but tend to the dogs, drink coffee, and look at the ever-declining interwebs until I had enough light for woodsy lumbering without a headlamp.
Oh, Monday, there is no
escaping your misery. – Me
After a pretty good, not bad, OK sort of weekend, I woke up in a funk on Monday. A funk that got increasingly funkier with a dark morning of blowing wet snow.
So as not to be stymied by my normal Monday funkiness, I threw a lackluster breakfast burrito down my throat, took care of business (that means pooping, not real money-making business), and headed out for a 7+ mile lumber through the woods.
This week has been a blur of final fall leaf cleanups, getting the septic tank its quinquennial suck-out, dealing with an unrelated plumbing issue in the basement shitter, and dealing with Lola (the dog), who, after four years, has decided that shitting on the floor of my office is easier than going outside.
This week has been a weather rollercoaster of light snow, rain, and sun with freezing temps one day, spring-like temps the next, and snow amounts varying between our home near town and the trails out in the country before finally melting.
