I actually took a vacation. They made me. Well, peer pressure and "use it or lose it" leave did. I even took two extra days off for lounging after we traveled. I NEVER do that.
Yes, I am a vacation hoarder, according to the latest Style page article on the subject. That and we get told every day what the pendings and goals are and how critical they are to people's lives, even though we are all just freeloading incompetent slackers to those who should know...
Anyway, it took a jump to go and a jump to get back and the air never got above 3 degrees with -17 as an average night sans windchill, but it was fun.
Despite the bitter cold and being in northwestern Minnesota, there was only a tiny bit of snow and the forecasted snow did not manifest. However, the guy who owns the place we went dug up snow from the frozen lake with his Bobcat and trucked and shoveled it onto the trails where they were getting thin. We got to classic ski on several trails easy enough for me (except for one hill with a turn where I fell badly and bruised my buttbone). I got to learn how to skate ski on the lake, during a brief reprieve from wind.
The sauna was not working- a Scandinavian crime! But the twenty foot long hot tub was good enough to put feeling back in the butt and limbs...
We stayed in an old repurposed train caboose (see pic), which was very cold on the metal floor but kept warm enough for good sleeping bags with a space heater for the bathroom plumbing and a baseboard heater for the small room. I was glad we did not stay in the tiny wood cabin heated only by a woodstove this time...
A neck gaiter/balaclava was required at all times outdoors and got all frozen. I found out the "warmest" gloves were not, and my old discount ones worked better. Ditto for old school union-suit type long underwear vs. the new synthetics. (Bulk pays after a certain point, within my price range.)
We saw a bald eagle flying around their treetop lake overlook roost. Not so many wolves howling this time, but a few and the resident border collies and Shepherd mix kept busy barking at something.
The dogs sherpaed us on one long ski round, looking back occasionally to make sure we were keeping up as they made relentless forward progress despite constant dog wrestling matches and frequent stops for smells and marking. The old Border Collie with stiff hips made especially sure I kept up...
Kudos to South High's Nordic ski team for being reasonably well behaved in the gas station as they headed out and we headed in. (But Ski Boy's team will kick your butts in the slopes, sorry.) I was reminded throughout our trip that increased LGBT cultural visibility does help sometimes...
I finished Armistead Maupin's The Night Listener in the caboose loft. Reading Eminent Outlaws' discussion of it made me curious. It is an odd, fictionalized yet based on true story but fascinating. I also read Peter Cameron's Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, which was pretty funny and truthful despite the protag narrator trying really hard to be quirky. Good indoor in frigid weather reads.
Now I'm cruising through Moth Smoke, by Mohsin Hamid, which is funny and horrifying at turns. The irresponsible poor rich boy protag, who lurches between Lahore's high society twentysomethings and the criminal underground, makes some terrible choices, but of course that keeps it interesting and is not unrealistic...
Posted via Blogaway
No comments:
Post a Comment