Training Log Archive: CleverSky

When I went to the kitchen to get breakfast, I had a flock of visitors strolling through my yard. At least three adults and 12 chicks of various sizes.

When I was a kid, there were pheasants around. I don't remember the last time I saw a pheasant, but there are far more turkeys now than there ever were pheasants. I saw another similar flock on my bike ride.

C • Pheasants 3

I came up with a loop that was fairly flat, though I threw in one good hill in the middle. Managed to keep up a pretty decent pace. The thing that gets the most worn out these days is the back of my upper arm (is that the triceps?).

C • Triceps 2

Little bit: moved the majority of the scrap wood from the large shed over to next to the driveway and stacked it in a less haphazard way, so that I can figure out what size dumpster I'm going to need. Definitely the kind of work that calls for sturdy boots and heavy gloves, because about half of the boards have a lot of nails sticking out of them. About an hour and a half.

Today barely qualifies as exercise in the conventional sense. The GPS track shows a walk that I did five times today, once just walking north, then pushing an empty glider cart south, then pushing the cart with my glider on it north, and later just walking north, and just walking south. The track is from the last of these. There were other miscellaneous bits of walking around as well, but the walk between the launch area and the hangar is something that a lot of pilots avoid, using the ATV if they have the chance. And I don't count flying as exercise, even though in some sense it is, almost entirely upper body work, and really not even level 1. I had just shy of 100 minutes of that today. I might have gone for another walk when I got home, but that's when the downpour started.

Fitchburg City Forest and Nashua Valley Conservation Area, with Nancy. Nice woods, but very limited parking.

Late in the hike, we heard, then spotted, an owl of some sort, and kept track of it as it flew to a few different perches. I'm guessing it was a barred owl: pretty big, round head, and the calll was a single "Whoo-r-r-r-r", without the question about caterers. That reminds me, on Thursday night, in the fading light, we scared up some animal in a farm field that scooted into the woods. We were guessing it was a deer, but it kept making a strange noise that sounded something like sneezing.

C • Deer sneezes 2

Times being what they are, circumstances converged for an an entertaining moment: Nancy went into a bank wearing a mask and came out a few minutes later with thousands of dollars in cash; I was waiting in the car with the engine running.

Nancy's house to home on the Incubus. Google Maps estimates 1:27 for this trip by bike, on a slighty shorter and somewhat flatter route than I took (2A the whole way from Ayer).

Arriving home, I noticed that some hornets were building a nest in the garage door bay. So I armed myself with a snow brush and a spray can of the right kind of poison. I put the scraper end of the brush against the base of the nest, and with a quick flip propelled it out into the middle of the driveway where I immediately doused it with the poison. A perfect plan, except that one guy flew out of the nest and immediately homed in on the marauder, nailing me on the left thumb. Hurt like fire, though a shot of benzocaine spray eased the pain. A few hours later, it's still a serious annoyance, though.

Down to Seeley to pick up Nancy's car. Mounted first try, but I walked the steep part of the downhill and took a few tries to get back on.

Post-prandial crepuscular stroll with Nancy. Lots of fireflies out at the end. GPS lock was bad at the start, we didn't really swim across the river.

After dropping Nancy's car off at Seeley, I went out for a ride, In The Dim. First up to Small Town Forest, where I hadn't been for years. When I was on the ConComm we had half-baked plans to have some logging done there, but it neber got off the ground. Looks like it has now, though. After a loop around the logged area, I found the trail out, and got to the exit on Pierce Rd. that I was hoping to find, after taking a trail that maybe continues, but kind of looked like it dead-ended at a beaver dam. Then I took the other trail that I was hoping to find, that went over some more difficult terrain and again popped out where I hoped, on Warren Rd. At one point the trail vanished, and I pushed the bike through terrain that I was imagining might be an ancient trail remnant, then spotted the real trail (also faint) off to my left. In retrospect, this was probably right below where George and I camped in the summer of 1979.

Then I was going to go around to Seaver Rd. to get into Hickory Woods, but I spotted a trail that looked like a shortcut, but in actually ended up in somebody's back yard, so I skootched through and kept going. Looks like better shortcut would be off of Wildwood Rd. When I went into the woods the next time, I turned on my headlamp. And at the end, I didn't feel like dealing with the poison ivy on the trail out to Gilchrest, so I went around to Holman.

I didn't get rained on, but it had rained during the day, and although some places had dry pavement, the vegetation in the woods was really wet, and although it wasn't that hot, it was humid enough that my glasses kept steaming up.

I believe that makes half of the days in this nutty year that have now gone by. And I've managed to log something on every one of them, though a few have been pretty marginal.

C • Impressive! 1

Groton Town Forest, short on time, so I didn't go that long, but I ran fast. Rained before, rained after, but not while I was running, although there was plenty of moisture in the air. Went some places where I don't think I had ever been.