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Spring Break & Jim’s Birthday

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Eric had the week off from school and spent Friday and Saturday doing yard work for Bob Ruberti; raking leaves & sticks from the lawn and gravel back onto their driveway.  He picked up some cash and was able to re-infuse his debit card.  He had a AAU practice in Frankfort at Coach Spina’s driveway and Jack Crane spent an overnight.

Kathryn and I took advantage of the nice weather to accomplish yard work.  I raked the area between the fence and road; the front lawn; the sticks from the Shad tree, and four wheel barrow loads of seed pods from the little locust tree.

We had a lot of downed limbs and branches due to winter ice storms and high winds.  Some of the limbs were big enough to cut up with the chainsaw.

Billie Jo  posted a couple of favorite photos on Facebook with a birthday salutation.  The top picture is from one of our 1st trips to Utah.  The bottom picture is one that Ed photo-shopped by combining a picture of me from a back packing trip in 2009 to Kibby Pond with Eric and the Hays onto a pseudo Nature Conservancy magazine cover

For my birthday, Eric gave me a fancy blue bird house and Kathryn got a replacement Bartlett pear tree.  I gifted myself with a truck cap for the Toyota Tundra.  I hated the Tonneau cover and the truck cap is more suitable for loading canoes.  Jim & Pam Helmer joined us for dinner; chicken & biscuits with the traditional Tomato Soup cake.

Team Bummer – Mainly Mullers

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Sunday Kathryn organized a team  to play in Dolgeville’s Team Bummer benefit volleyball tournament.  Eric stayed at Union College to compete in the playoffs of his Bbrawl AAU tournament.  They played the same two teams they played on Saturday; this time beating the Schoharie Nitros by 15 points and losing to the Comets by 30.

There were six teams in our intermediate pool and the “Mainly Mullers” team finished 2nd in our pool with a record of 8-2. It was fun.  Though there was a lot of waiting in between games.Everyone complained that the net was set to women’s height. We lost the first two games to an amazing team of 4.  They were all over the place.  I believe they didn’t lose a single game.  We also were just sort of getting the feel of one another. The four person team  managed to hit every time, and hit through our blockers.  It was amazing.  None of them looked like volleyball players – they were all sort of short and sort of scruffy looking.  The woman was quite short, didn’t look particularly young and was a bit dumpy in build – but she got every pass and made a GORGEOUS set every time.  And they hit everything.  Boy did they hit. We took all the rest of the games which came to 8 games won and came in 2nd place on our court.
Didn’t like the way they did playoffs.  Just the first placed team from each court for the playoffs and since we lost to the four person team, we didn’t make it.  Our court seemed to have all the decent teams and the other court seemed to have less competitive teams for some reason (though it was supposed to be random) so whoever had to play that 4 person team must have gotten crushed.  When we left, it didn’t look like there was anyone left from the second court.

Sightings of Spring

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Every year about this time my slightly southern relatives start announcing their sightings of spring.  This afternoon I saw the King of Spring.

I hear that you’ve seen Robins and black birds with red wings.
And I don’t deny that you have seen all those things.
To get a glimpse of spring from one of these sightings,
Makes your heart jump, feel joy, they are quite exciting.
So I don’t mean to diminish or throw shade
But I have a topper from the sighting I made.
I am sure you’ll agree this is the best and affirm
Because today I spotted a little fish worm.
 

Skiing at McCauley Mtn

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Wednesday Kathryn had to work and I took the day off to take Eric and Trevor skiing at McCauley Mtn.  We left the house at 10:30 and arrived about an hour later.  We had to wait a few minutes before they would sell their half day ski pass;  12 noon – 4:15 for $20; so we staked a table in the lodge, Trevor rented a helmet and the boys geared up with boots, etc.

It was a perfect day.  McCauley wasn’t crowded so there was no waiting for the ski lift.  The boys met up with a friend, Jack, and were intrigued by all the new ski trails to explore.  They came into the lodge at 2pm for food and drinks and then returned to repeat runs over the rest of the ski center.   McCauley has a base elevation of 1567 ft and rises up 633 feet to a summit elevation of 2200.  There are 21 trails and 5 lifts (chair, t-bar, rope tow).  Other than one double black diamond run (Helmer) they did every trail 2 or 3 times.

You Picked A Fine Time To Leave Us Kincaid

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With all the new snow Kathryn and I have been snowshoeing and XC skiing quite a bit.  Usually I snowshoe our trails and Kathryn does a combination of snowshoeing / XC skiing depending on how deep the snow is and the condition of the trails.  We have a nice ~3 mile loop that we have been using this year. This past weekend I snowshoed the loop alone, no dogs for company, just me and the quiet of the woods….. Too quiet.  I ended up with an earworm song playing in my head as I snowshoed.  Unfortunately I have no control over the earworm songs that play in my head and, unfortunately, this one was Kenny Rogers song “You Picked A Fine Time To Leave Me Lucille”.   What does one do with an earworm song repeatedly recycling through their brain?  Why they inflect more pain on it.  So with apologies to Kenny Rogers…..

In a condo down in Cancun
Rick and Danny are renting a room.
Far away from this winter’s embrace.

They each spend all of their days
On the beach in the warm rays
Drinking Mai-tais and napping ‘til noon.

They could have stayed home
But to the south they did roam
Leaving us to weather the storms.

It hasn’t been easy
As you soon will see
Left here in the dark and gloom.

You picked a fine time to leave us Kincaid.
There’s been some ice storms,
and there’s been the snow storms,
and look at the mess that they made.
You picked a fine time to leave us Kincaid.

Maintaining our trails

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It has been hard to keep our XC ski trails in good condition as our weather has fluctuated among cold weather, rain, ice storms and lake effect snowfalls.  Lots of places are still wet and require some maneuvering around wet spots.  We had to move or cut some downed branches.  I built a small leaning rail at the junction of the loop where Kathryn sometimes changes from snowshoes to skies to glide back home.

Snowshoeing the Ski Trail

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We finally got a couple of snowfalls – enough to provide a base for our XC ski trails.  Skip and I managed to snowshoe to the top of Kirkland’s field (1 hour up and 30 minutes down trail) , followed by another day completing half the lollipop loop.  On 26 December the dogs and I completed the loop by going counter clockwise past “Appliance Alley” to the teepee / halfway mark on the loop.  Despite warming temperatures and rain the trail mostly held together; enough for Skip, Beth, Kathryn and I to snowshoe the whole circuit on Wednesday.  On Thursday and Friday we received 21 ” of snow.

New Year’s Day Kathryn and I began to re-establish the filled in trail.  For the most part I was able to discern where our previous trail was, but it was faint and it felt like breaking trail all over again.  It took us about an hour to get just inside the woods to the intersection of the trail to Appliance Alley.  From there Kathryn skied back to the house.  It took me 30 minutes to snowshoe back down the hill on the broken trail. We will probably to extend the loop in the coming week similar to the way we did last week.  Hopefully the rain in the forecast won’t be too hard.

Christmas 2016

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Friday we picked up the grand-kids for a sleep-over at our house.

We returned them on Christmas Eve day, before Eric, Kathryn and I went to church services.  On the way home Eric negotiated for an early gift opening so at 6:15 he came down the hall playing Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.  We went through our gift exchange: a ski pass pack, basketball and gear, clothing and an electronics battery pack charger for Eric, sport umbrella, wool socks, roomba for Kathryn.