
After a 45-minute treadmill lumber on Friday, the weekend came and went, and featured all my favorite/tolerable indoor winter-time activities, including a come-from-behind 2-2 draw for Spurs against City. It was swell.

After a 45-minute treadmill lumber on Friday, the weekend came and went, and featured all my favorite/tolerable indoor winter-time activities, including a come-from-behind 2-2 draw for Spurs against City. It was swell.

After making breakfast, cleaning the kitchen, and seeing Wifey off for a day in the office, I collected my gear, opened the garage door, and saw a steady snow falling.
I wasn’t thrilled to be driving as it snowed (part of the aging process, I suppose, like sporting large tufts of ear hair, unkept eyebrows, and sagging scrotums tucked in socks), but a quick look at the radar showed that it should be over soon.

With that, I took off like a herd of turtles, and as I was nearing the park, the bright orange sun was now rising over the trees in the farm field to my left, and was made more luminous by flakes in the air. I couldn’t help but stop on the empty dirt road to admire the glow and snap a pic.

After 72 hours without leaving the house, I embraced returning to the cold, snowy woods to lumber like an obese dog to a pile of its own vomit, complete with half-digested sock. It was pretty OK.

On the first day of our current deep freeze, I headed down to the Not So Stankment to lumber on the treadmill for 3 miles.

I knew better to look at the weather app on my phone when I woke up this morning, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hopeful the weather goofs were wrong.
I, like most “dad types,” have a strange morbid fascination with extreme weather events. I think it’s brought forth from the same gene that some of us have for things like gas passing, belching, boogers, shaving scum, earwax, and turd size.
Anyway, the forecast was not wrong, telling me that it was -7˚F. With that, I immediately knew that an outdoor lumber was not on the table today. Well, at least not for me.

I had a plan for Tuesday, but that plan fell apart for multiple reasons.
First, I saw the weather when I woke up; 2˚ with a “real feel” of -11˚. Hmmm, 12˚ was bad enough on Monday, screw that.
I also started doing the math in my head for how much time I needed for the lumber, plus the Cul-De-Sac-Shack duties I needed to get done, plus driving 45 minutes each way to the dentist, not including the time actually spent at said dentist.
Shit, this whole dentist thing is a real stick in my spokes.
With that, I aborted the lumber and freed up some time to get things done proper without rushing around like a nut.
Speaking of sticks in spokes…

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.

Our flirtation with sunlight ended, and we were back to steady snow and winter slop today. Slop that wasn’t due to hit until mid-morning, and slop that I had hoped to avoid driving in by getting to the trails early. But it turns out the weather goofs were wrong, and a steady wet snow fell for nearly the entire lumber. Such is life, whatever.

I find myself shocked at how “back to normal” I finally feel after the last month of holidays, snow, ice storms, and unwanted slack. To quote the great George Costanza after he ate that magic, penis-moving mango, “I’m back, baby! I’m back!” Well, maybe not that good.