adventures of a canoelover

…until today. We were forced to huddle around my crackberry to get our internet fix for the day. The geeks at TDS sent us a new modem, I fixed a few wires that had come loose during a remodel, and voila’, we’re wired up again.

I am, as of this afternoon at 4:37 PM, officially sick and tired of winter. I never would complain about too much snow, especially in years past were the snow cover sucked big time. But now, I would like to state for the record, the blogosphere, and anyone else interested in my whining that I want no more snow. No more 23 below, no more icy roads, no more pushing stupid people out of their snowy tombs. Just this morning a couple Grumpy Samaritans helped push a guy off the sidewalk. I have no idea how fast he was going to clear the berm and end up high-centered with his front wheels on the sidewalk, but my guess is way too fast. Dope.

Snow snow, go away, snow again some other day. I want Spring. Crocuses. Snowdrops. Trout lilies, Pasque flowers, and green things. Most of all, I really could use a few good paddling days, it has been WAY too long.

This has never happened before on our little home weather station, but apparently the wind chill was too low to show up on the monitor, reading instead “OFL.” I don’t know what OFL means…maybe it’s “really really cold” in Taiwanese.

Yes, it’s cold, but it’s also beautiful, so Ian and I took a snowshoe in the Arboretum despite the temperature, and we wanted to take some pictures. It was wicked cold and windy as I remember it being and actually being outside in it. We were dressed for it, and didnt want it to end.

I think this summer I’m going to save up and get a Snowtrekker Tent. Then we can take longer winter trips and get some time on Lake Superior or some other northwoods haunt. Winter camping without a heated tent is drudgery: you never really get fully warmed up or dried out, but with a heated tent…life’s pretty swank.

Ian was a champ, even with the bitter cold, and did his famous victory pose after our adventure in the woods. Tonight we’ll drink hot chocolate, watch a Poirot DVD, and work on finishing a pair of snowshoes I’ve been working on for a few weeks, just in time for all of it to melt…maybe. Who knows, the groundhog saw his shadow. The weirdest thing is that I was in Louisville 24 hours ago, shirtsleeves rolled up because I was too warm in the 68 degree weather. How the human body can respond to 100 degree temperature swings I do not know.

This is a record for Madison schools, who last closed during the eruption of Vesuvius. If biblical apocalyptic burning hail came falling from the sky, Madison schools would issue asbestos umbrellas and run classes as usual.

But thats not the main reason for this blog entry. It’s to post a picture of my nephews. Harry and Ethan are two of my favorites…my sister has great kids. They have a Zen-like quality of “just-so-ness” that I enjoy. We spent an evening together when I was at the OR show in SLC and we had a great time. I wish they didn’t live so far away, but it would take an act of God to get me to move to Utah. Sorry, Nirvana is here in Wisconsin; everything else is a pale facsimile.

Courtesy of Five Star Floors.

See Stephanie knit. Knit, purl, knit purl. Knit knit knit.

See Darren lace. Over, under, over under. See Darren tie a girth hitch. Hitch hitch hitch.

See the reflection off the top of Darren’s head. Squint squint squint. It looks like a melon. See Stephanie laugh. Ha ha ha!

Great day in the Arboretum. Ian had a scout activity this AM, earning his last few badges for his Eagle Scout. Being an Eagle Scout may seem like an anachronism these days, but it’s a lot like work, and for young men I think it’s a good thing to have long-term goals.

Anyway, Stephanie and I took off for the Arb. Lovely day, light snow falling, and not too much snow. There was a wind crust just under the surface that was sometimes annoying, but we still had a great shoe. The beeches are one of my favorite trees, since they’re pretty primitive – same ancestors as oaks, but simpler. They keep their leaves all winter, which makes them stand out in a fairly monochromatic world. So I end up taking lots of pictures of them.

We saw tracks — turkey, deer, coyote (maybe fox, hard to say), mouse, rabbit, voles…it was all there, sometimes all in the same place at the same time. It’s also a good time to see the mounds. The mound building tribes were more active in this area of the country than anywhere else in the world. There are thousands of Indian Mounds in Southern Wisconsin, and those are the ones we know about; I’m sure thousands were cleared and plowed under by unsuspecting Norwegian farmers a century ago.

I’m working on another pair of snowshoes. That virtually guarantees there will be no more snow. C’est la niege.

Two very random but cool things happened to me in the past few days.

First random thing: The folks at Vibram sent me a new pair of Five Fingers. These are the KSOs (Keep Stuff Out, or perhaps another S-word if you’re among outdoor reps), so named for the cuffs that will keep sand/stuff/s— out of your shoes. They look weird but they are basically like walking barefoot without worrying about stepping on stuff. Since I would rather be barefoot or wear mukluks/moccasins, this is perfect for me.

I wore them around the house tonight, suppressing a strange desire to ribbet.

Second random thing: I have been trying to find a wood floor refinisher. I called all the guys in the phone book, but frankly didn’t think much of them since none of them returned my phone calls. So I checked Craigslist and found a couple of guys who do floors. I figured it would be worth an email, and within a few hours they wrote back, and would come see me the next day. They shown up this morning, and since they had their stuff they just started working once we agreed on a price (less than the big guys, thats for sure).

When I came home from work, I saw this in progress…

I told them to play around a little with the hallway, have some fun. They are clearly having a good time.

It’s nice to meet guys who work so hard and love what they do. When he asked me what I did, and I told him, the first think he said was “Do you love it?” I said, quite truthfully, that yes, I do love it. He smiled and said, “That’s awesome.”

Yes indeed. Awesome describes it perfectly.

…when they talked about the Kelvin temperature scale, when all molecular movement ceases, etc. etc.?

Well, welcome to Wisconsin.

Well, they found my bags…and I survived skankiness through the grace of friends. Noah at Mountain Khakis gave me a pair of Original Mountain Pants. Bill at Icebreaker gave me some underwear and a shirt. Carol at Smartwool gave me socks. I bought a pair of shoes from the Dansko rep. Got a hat from Keith at Ibex, and so I was able to survive an extra day with clean clothes courtesy of my friends.

Being a retailer in our industry is a wonderful thing. Nice people, all love the outdoors, and they’re generous when one’s bags to go to SCL not SLC. Thank you, everyone, for the extra day. The nose you saved might very well have been your own.

I did get to see Whitney…at school at Brigham Young U. We drove up for the last few hours of the show to see a few friends, and then went to Hires Big H to get a hamburger and a frosty mug of root beer. It was the perfect end to a tiring day. She’s not coming home this summer, so our chances to see her are going to be limited moving forward. They grow up and they leave. C’est la vie, but I don’t have to like it.

Airline travel is weird. You buy a ticket, you trust in the Airline Gods (false gods, of course) to do something really simple–get your bag from A to B to C. If the airline randomly flew you to a different location, we’d get a little riled up. So I have a nice meeting today with the CEO of one of our largest vendors, and I’m going to look like a person who only has one set of clothes and traveled 1200 miles in them the day before.

I have no idea where my bag is, and strangely, neither do they.