Well, Adie has wasted no time in celebrating Ice Out! Every day we go for our walk, every day Adie manages to find the biggest mud puddles to sink into, and every day Adie washes off in the lake before returning to the house. The water can't be much more than 40 F but that doesn't seem to stop her; she wades right in and has a little swim while lapping up a drink at the same time. Yesterday we hiked over to the neighbor's farm and happened upon three deer grazing in the not yet green grass. Luckily, we didn't happen on any coyotes as we did see several traces of them on the way over. I continue to carry my walking stick wherever I go and even took the liberty of extending it to its full length yesterday after we passed the third pile of coyote scat!
In the afternoon, I headed out to pick up some of the many sticks that seem to have fallen from the sky over the long winter months. In my infinite wisdom (or not), I decided to let Adie off the leash while she was in the yard with me. Well it took her less than a minute to catch the scent of a grouse and she was off. I chased her for ten minutes before Caroline, still in her pajamas, came as reinforcement. After another ten minutes, Caroline was able to cajole her and snap on her leash but not before Adie managed to find a particularly prime water hole, filled with mud I might add, that she layed down in to cool off ... back to the lake again! Her mission was successful though; she managed to flush out a grouse or two before she was caught and contained.
While most of the walking we do is for pleasure, Garrick, on the other hand, has been walking and biking for purpose. Every morning, he heads down the long road to the busstop and every evening after baseball practice, he heads back again. At first, when there was still a fair amount of snow, he walked the entire way. Then, as the snow began to melt, his trip became a combination of riding with a bit of walking over the soft spots. Lately, with the snow almost completely melted, he has been riding. For the past few days he has been having a bit of trouble with the bike chain though ... it has been falling off the gears. (I suppose this should be expected when you get the bike for free ... from the dump no less.) So, yesterday he headed off to school only to have the bike chain come off at a very inopportune moment ... as he was riding down 'the big hill'. At the bottom of 'the big hill' is a small hill ... going up. Garrick has it engineered so that he can pedal extremely quickly, while standing up, when going down 'the big hill' so that he has to do no work in order to get up the hill on the other side. (He has been practicing this for a few summers now.) Just as he reached top speed, the chain came off, jammed the bike and Garrick went flying over the handlebars, into the dirt, followed by the bike which to make matters worse 'ran over him'. Luckily it was cold enough out that he wore his ski gloves that morning as it prevented his already scabbed hands (he was doing wheelies the previous weekend at his aunt's house in Ohio ... on a borrowed bike ... and also flew over the handlebars) from opening up. Somehow, he didn't miss the bus!
This morning, because it was pouring rain when he left ... really it had nothing to do with his previous two biking experiences ... he decided to walk. As you can imagine it takes quite a bit longer to walk than ride (downtime for repairs not included) so he left at 6:40 for the 7:15 bus. As I had planned most everything ... but not everything ... to a tee, all three umbrellas were ... in the truck ... in the parking lot. So, he set out in a downpour, wearing his red LL Bean raincoat that I purchased for him to go to camp almost three summers ago and his snowbaording pants. Wish I had thought to get the camera out for that!
Hope you're staying dry -
Karyn
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