WHAT an unusual winter.
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| Glare Ice topping on this Sunday (dae) |
That very first winter here in the early eighties had only a light dusting of snow at Christmas time. It didn't begin in earnest until the New Year had passed and then we got hit. We'd go several winters with little or nothing then by contrast the following winter there was enough to bury cars and houses and snowplows.
This winter there's been very little snow, I bet I cleared the driveway maybe a dozen times. By contrast the last two winters, I couldn't keep up and had to enlist the services of Donnie Cole and his tractor blower at times. I seriously considered packing it in and living in Phx!
Course being married and all, that wasn't going to work.
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| Everything on the Island looks like this. |
The winter of 2015/16 will go down in history as middle of the road. In fact I rode my Polaris Indy Lite about as much as my Yamaha Big Bear! I was out yesterday around the hood checking out County Line road's unpaved portion which is passable by a high clearance 4X4 or in my case an ATV.
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| The Big Bear is pretty much the perfect quad for my purpose. |
I puttered up to the local snowmobile cabin just up the hill from our home only to come across Anna, who had taken a couple of hours to walk there along the trail. You see, last week we had freezing rain a couple of days and what snow we do have is covered with a thin (1") crust of ice.
"Brenda... can you have a look see and tell me what my butt looks like please..."
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| This is County Line road above our home. |
Treacherous to walk on, I myself took a heck of a tumble yesterday during our walk. Today I hurt in more places than I knew I had. Right wrist and forearm, left elbow, twisted my right knee and hurt my right foot and my left butt cheek feels bruised.
I'm sure this too will pass, but I am going to be tender as sirloin the next couple of days!
Spring Day came and went during a storm (that brought the precipitation) and since then the temps have hovered right around the freezing point so things are just warm enough during sunny days to melt the first layer of ice but not the sub surface.
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| Oops... stuck! |
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| Shovel is mandatory! |
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| Still some huge drifts on the back trails. |
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| The PIT. |
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| Challenging trials sections in here. |
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| Anna up at 'her' cabin! |
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| Not getting through here anytime soon with the Serow! These drifts are 6' deep. |
This year I would like to work on getting my two Vintage trials bikes geared up. I have parts for the TY 175 and the TL 125 Honda I picked up last year is a good restoration model to gear up. My backyard has plenty of obstacles suitable for my basic trials skills which really never advanced past the 'fun' stages back in the mid seventies! On my travels yesterday I rode through the local shale pit (I have permission from the owner) and there are several always changing challenges for me if I get tired of riding my own property.
I'm also still working on getting a magazine into print with a few friends, something fun and another check mark on my lifetime "things to do for the Doc, list".
At some point, I am going to travel to my old surroundings in Calgary for a visit with the new soon to be, grandchild, my first!
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| The Caliber R/T |
On the return leg I'm driving back, having bought Lisa's Dodge Caliber RT that I had found for her at a local Calgary dealership some years ago. It's an R/T model in very good shape with low mileage and all wheel drive (AWD). This will be my 13th time crossing Canada by road!
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| Home sweet home! And I do mean that. What a beautiful place to live. |
So... this is my retirement, could do a lot worse:)
