While we were away in Pennsylvania, the central Michigan area picked up another few inches of wet snow on top of what we already had on the ground, and that made for some tricky hiking conditions on Christmas morning.
Wifey would be joining me for the early morning lumber, and we debated whether to take the snowshoes with us or not. We settled on sharing my trekking poles and using hikers, and that proved to be just fine, with only minor slipping here and there.
My much-anticipated weekend of slack turned out great, and I enjoyed all the hits: good beer, good food cookin’, a commanding Spurs victory, sexy time, and other indoor goofball slacker activities due to freezing rain. As Ren Höek would say, “This is the life.” Well, at least until Monday.
On a recent wintry lumber, I created a new course in my head that I was sure would easily get me over 5 miles and provide some new stimulation for my eyes. I was half right.
The new course just barely got me to my 5-mile goal, so that was a bit disappointing; however, it did provide the appropriate amount of visual stimulation for picture takin’, so I’ll take it.
I’ve been thinking more about the trails I lumber on lately, and it brought back some memories. I’ll explain.
Thursday’s 5-mile lumber in 10˚ temps had me feeling pretty logy last night, but I was up and ready for another 5 miles today and the chance to hit my 25-mile weekly lumbering goal.
Thank goodness it was going to be warmer today. Well, by 4˚.
With about a mile left in my lumber on Wednesday, I passed Mary(?) and Jim(?) coming in the opposite direction. Mary is usually the more talkative of the two when we pass, but this time, Jim said, “It’s going to be something else tomorrow!”
I was confused for a second, but then I remembered the weather forecast: a high of 16˚, windy conditions, and light snow. “Oh, yeah, I saw that! Gonna have to bundle up!”
And the weather people were not wrong.
The week of lumbering is flying by, and I’m currently sitting at a nugget’s hair over 15 miles, with my 25-mile weekly goal on track to finish by the weekend.
What’s not on track is my time spent getting real-life, Cul-De-Sac-ian type crap done, so this post is super short (another gift to you) and heavy on photos from the past two days.
For what it’s worth (absolutely nothing, say it again, ya’ll), I had this crap written and ready to go on Sunday morning, but then I got sucked into a vacuous black hole of software updates on an outdated Mac and all the joys that come with it and missed my time frame. So, now I have to edit all over again, AND my Monday post will be pushed back because I feel like if I post two in one day, it makes me look like a psychopath without a real life outside of this digital word salad.
Thanks, management
Taking a short cut on the dirt roads.
Well, I guess real winter is here, at least for a little while.
It’s 7:20 Wednesday morning and I’m sitting in the room of our house that contains a desk, my computer, and all my camera gear1, wasting time, waiting for my lower intestines to give me the all-clear sign to exit the house for a lumber.
While doing so, I checked the weather. Ho hum, cloudy, 34˚, chance of snow flurrries, winds from 10-20 MPH; yawn, typical Michigan winter. But then I looked at tonight’s forecast; cloudy, snow showers and wind gusts up to FORTY miles per hour. Ma Nature’s kicking shit up a bit! Going to be even more trees down on Thursday.
OK, all clear, time to go.
I was once again the first and only car at the trailhead parking lot at 7:45 Monday morning.
The sunlight was just starting to creep over the trees, turning the clouds various shades of pink, red, and orange as I tightened my shoelaces and waited for my Garmin to connect. All the while, a large gaggle of geese in the river were honking away.
