A Dab Of Spring

6:44

7:29

7:54

7:58

I woke at 6:30 to a surprise, a blue sky, a pink horizon, a melting front yard of snow and an uncomfortably warm 35º. And though there's another big melt in the process, the fishing guys have paid no attention to it and are out fishing by 7:00.  By the end of tomorrow, I expect to see grass in our front yard. Get out the mower, Evie.

Yesterday was the beginning of another big warming up.  And we hoped we might be able to squeeze in another cross country ski adventure before the trails began to melt.  So, like Monday, we decided to head off around 11:00, giving us time to get things done in the morning.  Evie made up another pot of Madhur Jaffrey's Indian spiced cauliflower soup.  And I got out a pound of white beans and cooked them in the pressure cooker for about 25 minutes and I had them ready to make one of the easiest and tastiest Turkish dishes, kuru fasulye, basically white beans, onions, tomato paste, red pepper and salt.

We were not sure where to ski, and we worried about snow mobiles.  We drove past Webb's Trail because we saw a couple of snow mobile trailers.  We then drove to Mayville, to the Rails To Trails access and started skiing.  For the first quarter of a mile, six or seven snow mobiles passed us, to our dismay.

Snowmobile Crossroads

By the time we reached the crossroads, where we could either go straight towards Westfield or hang a right towards Stockton, Bemus and points East, we took the road less traveled, towards Westfield and never saw a snowmobile again.  Our trail was straight and wide, as it should be; after all, it was once a train track.

A Final Selfie For Awhile...Promise

We skied out maybe a mile, to where Honeysette Road crossed our trail, then turned around and skied back, of course, into the wind, with ice pellets hitting our face as we skied.  I loved it.  We stopped briefly at Tops grocery on the way home, to pick a few things up for our dinner of enchiladas.

A Currier And Ives-Like Photograph While Skiing

By the time we got home, our parking space, the snow, was beginning to melt.  And I no longer have to worry about shoveling out, at least for a couple of days.  For lunch, I had another toasted cheese on homemade black bread and a bowl of Evie's cauliflowers soup.  After watching some TV and taking a nap, I finished making the kuru fasulye, a fairly easy task, of slowly sauteing onions, adding tomato paste and the beans, heating it up and I was done.  Meanwhile,  Evie relaxed with some TV mid afternoon, then put together our enchiladas, of black beans, chicken, and salsa, so it was ready to bake during wine time.  We relaxed with a glass of wine and a bowl of pistachios for an hour, then pulled the enchiladas out of the oven, made a salad and we had dinner.  We watched the next episode of The Affair, which we continue to watch but find boring and at times silly.  Clearly, the lead up to an affair is more interesting then the results.  We then watched CNN and MSNBC lead up to Obama's farewell speech, then discuss it with admiration, and Fox News more or less ignored it, then trashed it and his Presidency.  We were both almost in tears by the end of his speech, especially with his tribute to his family, staff and supporters.  We will miss him, his family, his dignity, thoughtfulness, optimism and humanity.  I will leave it at that.

Quotation Of The Year from Kellyanne Conway:  “You (the media) always want to go by what comes out of his (Trump's) mouth rather than look at what’s in his heart”...priceless.