Training Log Archive: Swampfox

-15F out at the moment, with lots of sun. Not looking too good for skiing today--not unless the Cowboy Ski Index improves by quite a lot.

C • Iron in the Swix CH-36 and start gliding. 2

Funny to see how different the snow situation in town is over just a couple of days. Whole lotta Yowsa! today, just as much as yesterday. Road biking is not going to be a good option until we get a few sunny days coupled with some mildish temps. Not going to happen today, and it's definitely not going to happen tonight--which is supposed to get really cold.

Checking the weather history, it looks like the (now old) record low for the date was -19F, in 1971. That is versus the current -29F. Brrrr!

C • cold? 7

It snowed all day long, making for very nice Yowsa! conditions by mid-afternoon. Unfortunately, that's when I was planning on going up skiing, and by the time I was about halfway through Yowsa!, I realized it was colder than I had thought and that there was much more snow on the ground than I had realized. I went in to check conditions up top, and saw from the highway cameras that while the roads were open and there was still traffic on them, conditions looked pretty iffy, and almost blizzarding. When I checked the temps and saw it was also already -2F up top, then that settled and I scuttled plans for skiing, and returned outside to finish Yowsa!!!

Too bad about the skiing, but the Yowsa! was fantastic! The biggest piles of snow in my yard are about 6' high, and I no longer have no idea where my mailbox is, except that it is generally somewhere to the west, kind of like California, but not quite that far. I may put together an expedition and attempt to reach and locate it tomorrow, if it stops snowing.

Even though it was snowing during last night's Yowsa!, I left about half the driveway untouched, just to make sure I could have some pleasant Yowsa! in the morning.

I need not have worried; it snowed all night long, stopping right around daybreak, about 6"-8" in all. Still no wind, and the temps in the high teens this morning made for perfect Yowsa!. The time went by all too quickly, and it seemed like I was done almost no sooner than I had gotten started. Maybe it will snow some more today. Even if it doesn't, at last the Laramie Valley has a proper winter to it.

I will give skiing today 4 out of 5 snowflakes. It was probably worthy of 5 snowflakes, or at least nearly 5, but I am a hard grader and like to save the 5's for when everything is absolutely perfect, and for one thing that means absolutely no snowsnakes. I didn't see any snowsnakes today, but then I skied for a long time after dark, and they can be very hard to spot in the night.

While I was skiing I couldn't help but think some about an article I had seen. It was about a survey taken to see what people thought were the most underrated things of 2016. Most of the items made some kind of sense, and #1 was Donald Trump--which was kind of obvious. But #2 was puzzling: Jack In The Box tacos. The folks doing the survey thought so too, until they hit upon a quite odd relationship. It turned out that when they did a word association test and asked people what the first thing was the came to mind when they heard "Donald Trump", more than 44% of the people immediately responded with "Jack In The Box Tacos"! It sounds almost preposterous, but then so many people are pretty weird to begin with; how else can you even begin to explain the election of a man with utterly no redeeming qualities and zero moral and ethical character (I know, I know--I'm being overly generous) to be the nation's next president? It would really make more sense if people had elected an ordinary mushroom instead.

I guess this caught me off guard because I didn't even know Jack In The Box had tacos. I thought they just served hamburgers and stuff like that. But then, I've never been in a Jack In The Box.

Anyway, it was really pleasant out tonight, and the christmas trees were all lit up again.

C • Canadian activities 1

At last, some honest to goodness Yowsa! I was beginning to think it was never going to happen, Without Yowsa!, there really isn't much point being in Laramie for the 6 winter months of the year.

Woke up this morning, looked outside, and was surprised to see snow had fallen during the night. Excellent!

I was surprised because before going to bed, the skies had been dark. Around here, the skies almost always take on a pinkish glow to the SW (lights from town) before it starts snowing and while it is snowing.

Later in the morning it started snowing again, and it snowed at a steady, light rate all day long. The best thing was that after eight days of nearly incessant wind, today the gods of wind took the day off, and so the snow was falling straight down--exactly what was needed to patch up scoured parts of the trail net.

I went up skiing in the mid-afternoon, and it was so nice to at last have some nice snow on trails again and not have an accompanying amount of treefall that I skied well past nightfall and skipped running. There was very thin cloud cover and so while you couldn't see any stars, enough of the moon was seeping through that the lighting was quite good, and way more than I needed for skiing (map reading, on the other hand, would have been a problem!) It was such a nice time to be out. The clouds weren't touching the ground, but looked so low and thin that my guess is that if the trails were just another 500' higher or so, then maybe they would have been above the clouds, with a clear shot at the moon and nearby Venus. (The elevation of the ski trails is a little less than 9000', and so high enough that sometimes it seems like you can feel the thin air if you're working hard enough.)

As I was finishing up running Saturday night and approaching the parking lot, I was surprised to see a group of people had shown up and were out stringing up lights on small fir trees. It seemed odd, so many days after Christmas, and to be doing it then, the 31st--plus I'd never seen anyone doing something like this up there before--but the lights were quite pretty.

Tonight I saw the lights were still up. They really add a surprisingly nice bit of atmosphere to the place after dark. I have no idea how they're powered--maybe batteries, maybe solar + batteries?

Normally the place is just dark at night, except for whatever headlamps skiers might have on, or from bike lights. There's no electricity up there and therefore no lighting otherwise.

C • Moon 2

Headed out noonish for some skiing and running and, mostly, to enjoy the low sun before it got lower still.

I skied long enough to get the flavor of the place and to check out the crowd, which today included a friendly amount of snowshoers and about the usual amount of snow bikers. So far we still don't have any snow biker gangs, though I am hopeful.

Then I went running, partly on nicely tracked snow bike trails, and partly on snow drifted trails blocked off to tire traffic by numerous fallen pine trees. It was heavy going except for the parts where I had been preceded by moose, and even though their footprints were partially drifted in, they still offered better footing for me when I could fit my shoes in.

When I was finishing up and back at my truck, I decided on a whim to add in just a little bit more down the hill form where I was parked. A lucky decision, because I came across a very large moose which was also checking out the scene. It had no antlers, but the odds on guess is it was a bull.

Came home and had some dinner while watching some videos of Billy Gibbons running through some old ZZ Top numbers with an Australian chick (Orianthi.) Holy cow! Mercy!

Now I can't decide if I want to head to Texas first or to Australia, but I'm leaning down under.

C • Which sounds more fun? 3

Another very nice day--pretty much a repeat of yesterday, with full sun, blue skies, and just a few degrees cooler. Also a repeat of yesterday insofar as I got out and biked, skied, and ran. So fine!

I think I will switch back to my "less good" skis (a pair of combi skis where it doesn't matter as much to me what the state of the bottoms are) for the time being. There is plenty of snow in the woods, however, not plenty of snow on many small sections of the trail net, thanks to wind scouring, tree removal, etc. It would seem like grooming would include moving some of the plentiful snow in the woods to some of these sections that are hurting, but that's not what usually happens.

An unusually fine, late December day where winter relented for a few minutes, and it was possible to score a trifecta (biking, skiing, running) in total comfort. Didn't even need long pants for biking. Not going to be like this next week!