Clear Skies And 12º

7:13

7:45

It's 6:50 and I have been up for a half-hour, the sky turning pink blush just above the horizon, on a very cold morning, the coldest we have been since winter of 2010. Typically for our fickle Chautauqua weather, it may get up to 49º tomorrow according to my weather app Dark Skies.  I did make it to breakfast, with two other hardy guys. 

The Leftovers

Yesterday was miserable if you had to be on the roads.  Ironically, it started for me with a paddle into the rising sun, an exciting way to begin the morning, but I returned home to a blizzard, a whiteout.    Because of the blizzard, I was reluctant to go to yoga but it let up around 9:30, so I decided to go.  The roads were clear but still icy and I slid into a curb on a left turn into Lakewood.  Jen, my yoga teacher, drove in from Westfield and saw four different cars off the road because of the ice, not fun.  There were four of us crazies in class, not a surprise.  I stopped for coffee, talked with a couple of regulars, one who visits my Suburu garage, Finns, every morning to have coffee with Finn, his buddy.  I also found out that there are a number of beaver dams in the area that create problems for flooding and the way to deal with them is to dynamite the dams. Interesting.

Long Point

I didn't get home till 12:30 and Evie was ready to go to the Lakewood YMCA.  I talked her into waiting and hour when the weather seemed better.  I had the leftover stuffed spaghetti for lunch and watched my show.  Evie left for Lakewood around 2:00, hoping for decent weather.  While she was gone, I watched another episode of Peaky Blinders, finished my Virgil Flowers book and took a brief nap.  Evie didn't get home until 3:30 and the roads were fine until she got within a couple miles of our home when another snow squall hit.  She took her time and made it home safely.

Kinney's Run

I wanted to complete my trifecta of kayaking, yoga and a walk so I bundled up and despite the snow, went for a short hike.  I wanted to go in the woods but just walking up the road in a foot of snow discouraged me, so I walked up the plowed road to 394, then came back through Kinney's Run, a quarter of a mile of woods so I did get in my walk in nature.  I was gone only a half hour but it was enough to get my heart pumping. 

We had a difficult time making up our mind what to do about dinner, whether to say damn the weather and drive to the Viking Club or be sensible and stay home.  Finally, we decided to stay home and have an easy dinner, no fuss.  We already had a pot of black bean soup and Evie browned a couple of hot dogs, baked some tortilla strips for the soup and we had dinner. We watched some of the news and it was fun to finally hear a Republican stand up to Trump and his lackeys calling their briefing on Iran,  'the worst briefing I have seen on a military issue in nine years of being on the committee." Other Senators suggested that once questions about the assassination of the Iranian general got tough, the briefers left in a huff.  We watched another episode of Undone, then the hour-long Jeopardy of Champions won this time by James.  We ended the night watching some of the Dallas Mavericks NBA game because I wanted to watch Luka Doncic play, the Slovenia megastar.  And I started a new book by Irish writer, Mick Herron, called Slough House.