After taking Thursday off from training for the Muncie Endurathon, I spent Friday running five miles, mowing the lawn at the lake, trimming the lawn at the lake, doing three loads of laundry, driving three plus hours to Traverse City for dinner with Becky and her sister Judy, and then driving on another 45 minutes to Torch Lake. When we got to Mike’s cottage, there was no power and the caretaker mouse had died of boredom right in the middle of the living room. I told Jean his brothers were all lined up under her bed, waiting for her to go to sleep, so they could attack. She didn’t sleep well both nights. I wonder why.

After calling Mike and Diane to find out where the breaker box was, looking for matches to light one of the many candles but finding a flashlight that worked instead, we turned on the main switch and we had power. We didn’t have any water either but I found the two switches that started the pump and away it went. After hearing some splashing, which turned out to be a burst pipe, I flipped the switch back off and thought we had better wait for Mike. To make a long story short, Mike fixed the broken pipe and we had water by 8 AM.

The “gang” was going to ride long and I knew I would ride short (50 miles around the lake) so I left about five minutes after they did all by myself. It was actually a nice ride other than missing the first turn and going two miles out of my way. I didn’t feel so bad since I made all the rest of the turns, but the rest didn’t. Tom, Brian and Jean missed the second turn (and all the rest), rode directly to Elk Rapids, and then rode 15 plus miles along a very busy, windy US-31. Diane, Kim and Corrine missed the second turn, but got it back on track only to have a flat tire (Kim) which took them 45 minutes to fix. Thankfully I wasn’t there because it would have been painful to watch.

Since I finished before everyone else (Jean and the boys went 90 miles while the rest of the girls went 83), I showered first. Mike had turned on the water heater and said we had hot water. I could discern maybe five degrees difference between the hot and cold faucets, so I took the shortest shower on record while still washing and rinsing the important areas. When the boys got back I told them of the problem and one of them switched the water heater from “vacation” to heat.

After a while, Brian took his shower and couldn’t feel any heat at all. He would get wet, turn the water off, lather up, and then turn the water back on to rinse. He was visibly cold after he finished (no, not the shrinkage factor…blue lips) so then it was Tom’s turn. He said the water had not heated at all and, just before he finished, he thought he would turn the shower handle to cold. Instant hot water. The hot water handle was on the right, just the opposite of what it would normally be. The girls had very nice warm showers.

After an eight plus mile run Sunday morning (everyone else ran longer), and a great breakfast with the group, Jean and I headed for my Aunt Juanita’s cottage to put in the dock. Without going into great detail, the mosquitoes were worse than I remembered, the dock sections were heavier than I remembered, there was one way to pick up the dock supports that would pinch your fingers and I found that way immediately (sorry Aunt Neat…I may have used a bad word or two), but we got the dock in and it held my weight, so it should hold anybody. All the time we were there I was drifting down memory lane. That’s the cottage my Grandfather built when I was three and we went there every summer when I was growing up.

Today Jean suggested that we go out for “a recovery ride” and I agreed. The wind was blowing 12-15 mph and gusting, we rode 39 miles…not the 25 I expected, we added on eight miles of hills in the middle (THAT’S NOT RECOVERY), and I didn’t take nearly enough fluids. I know Jean, so why would I ever believe that her idea of recovery and my idea of recovery would be the same. While we rode the last couple of blocks she had the audacity to say “That was a pretty good training ride”, to which I responded, “It would have been, had we been doing a training ride instead of the recovery ride you said we would be doing”. Do you think what I said made any difference?

Just (Tuckered Out On The Holiday Weekend) Jack

I’ve been in this training mode for biking and triathlons about eight and a half years. In all that time I’ve learned what works for me and what doesn’t. I can usually quote something a triathlon guru has said about training and I thought it would be second nature for me to put that knowledge into practice. Not so!!

Over this last year, as you all know, I’ve battled a couple of injuries/illnesses that have reduced my running to three miles at a crack and made my bike riding pretty much non-existent in 2007. This year the running is starting to come around, but my progress has been slowed due to a hamstring injury and a pesky sore knee. With no riding in 2007, I’ve been working my way back with some trainer rides this past winter and some short rides (25 miles or less) this spring. Since I didn’t winter in Florida as I have in the previous five years, I have no long ride bike base to start with.

So, yesterday, the wind was blowing at a steady 15-20 miles an hour with gusts of around 35, and I decided to ride with Brian, Diane and Bill. Apparently I thought it would be too easy with tight fitting clothes, so I wore my Trilander wind breaker which turned out to be a wind “catcher”. I missed the light at the M-37/M-43 intersection so I was behind from the start. I would start to catch up and the wind would start blowing. My jacket ballooned behind me and it was like a jet (or a Piper Cub) putting on air brakes. By the time we turned back to the east and had a healthy following wind, my legs were spent and I had hit the wall.

I kept up (sort of) until midway between Middleville and Hastings when my quads gave out and it was all I could do to finish the ride. I’ve told dozens of people dozens of times to increase your mileage, whether it’s biking or running, in small increments or you’ll run into trouble. Do you think I would do that myself? NO!! I went from a long bike of 25 miles to a long bike of 46.3 miles after not riding at all for 10 days. What’s wrong with me? That’s a rhetorical question, so please don’t send me your list.

After my leg burn-out on the bike, I ran this morning, expecting to go eight plus miles. I thought I would do the “around-the-block” seven plus miles and then cap it off with a run around the downtown. With all those hills on Cook, Quimby and Broadway, I thought better of that idea and did a 5.4 mile flat run around town. My legs weren’t sore, but they were completely fatigued. I wonder why that happened. With the Muncie Endurathon Half Ironman eight weeks away, I’m wondering if I’ll be anywhere close to ready. With the weather in Michigan this spring, the water is still too cold to swim in and, with my reaction to chlorine, I haven’t swam since early last fall.

Maybe I’m more athletically suited for chess or backgammon.

Just (Way Out Of Race Condition) Jack

When I look back at this past winter and the weather that has followed, I’m struck by the fact that averages don’t really mean a thing. You would think that the temperatures would usually be at those averages with a few days slightly above and a few days slightly below. The same way with snowfall. Some years you would have a little more snow than average and some years a little less. But that’s not he way it works.

This past winter we had one of the highest snowfall totals on record. Why couldn’t it have been one of the lowest snowfalls on record? Can we expect next year to be one of those way below average years to make up for this one? Is there cause and effect? Was this the worst winter in recent memory because I chose to stay in Michigan for the first time since I retired? You know that I’m a typical accountant that expects everything to be in its place. Every day we should have the average high temperature in the afternoon and the average low temperature at night. We should expect the average number of rain days per year and we should expect the average number of inches of rain too. How can we function not knowing? I have had to change my life plan book (luckily I wrote it in pencil) several times just in the last few weeks. I’ll bet all of you have too.

I went to the U.P. this last weekend for a memorial service for one of our friends. Jean thought she would give me a gift before I left, so she passed on the upper respiratory infection she had been carrying around for a week or two. I told her I didn’t really need anything and gifts were not necessary, but she insisted. She knew it had been at least a month since my last cold and I was running out of things to whine about. I had thought of returning the favor by leaving things I had hacked up lying around in Kleenex all over the house, but then I thought that might send germ warfare to the next level. I’ll keep them to myself for now.

I saw my friend Ernie at the fitness center this morning. He also went to the memorial service and I sat next to him and Barb. At one point in the service, while Jack’s oldest daughter was speaking, she asked us to join hands. Ernie said he expected me to write an e-mail about the hand holding when I got back on Sunday. I hadn’t really thought about it. I wonder why he wanted everyone to know he held hands with a younger man. Was it his way of slowly coming out of the closet? If you know Ernie, it had to be a pretty big closet. And why wait until now? He’s around 70 years old and isn’t that the “who cares any more” age anyway?

After spending time at Jack’s service and time at Tom Strumberger’s father’s visitation, I should be able to come up with something really profound that makes everyone feel better. But that’s not happening. Having lost a father and older brother myself, you can hear all the platitudes of comfort and it still hurts. You can say things like “…he lived a full, rich life…” or “…it must have been his time…” but that doesn’t bring them back and you still miss them. So you “get along OK” by remembering the good times and the bad and how they affected your life. Your story…no one else’s…and you never forget how they made you, maybe a big part and maybe only a small part of you, what you are today…good, bad or otherwise. The only good thing is that you really find out who your friends are, that they’re hurting for you and would do anything to make your pain go away.

Just (Wanting The Weather To Fit The Training Schedule) Jack

I just got back from a few days in San Francisco to visit the kids and tomorrow I’m off to Iron River in the U.P. for a memorial service on Saturday. The trip to San Francisco was lots of fun and the trip to the U.P. will be not so much fun, but it will be nice to visit with old friends and talk about the good memories we all have about our friend, Jack Sorby.

Matt and Anna spent a few days babysitting their father in San Francisco, so I guess turn-about is fair play. I fought with myself about taking running clothes with me. I knew if I took them, I would run and, with the recent injury to my left hamstring, that wouldn’t be smart. I walked a lot, sometimes alone and sometimes with Matt and Anna. The walks seemed to stretch out the offending muscle and it must have done some good ‘cuz I ran five miles Tuesday and this morning with zero pain.

One of the walks was on a trail along Alpine Lake, just north of the city in Marin County. The first two miles of the trail looked flat on the map, but it went up and down due to small ravines and ridges going down to the lake. It reminded me of the trails that some of the Trilanders will be doing this week at the Pinckney Half Marathon. After that two miles, the trail turned up the hill (I suppose it was a mountain, but it was a small one in the coastal range) and continued up for .9 miles gaining 800 feet elevation. It was chilly (mid fifties) and windy, but Matt and I were both sweating profusely by the time we reached the top.

We walked along a ridge on a fire trail for 1.4 miles before we headed straight down, giving back the 800 feet elevation we worked so hard for, to where we started. It was a total of 5.2 miles and we were both bushed by the time we got back. We had lost enough in fluids that we thought it best to head straight for Marin Brewing Company to replace fluids and have a sandwich. As we passed San Quentin prison, I waved to Scott Peterson. For what he did, he doesn’t deserve to have that nice a view.

Sunday evening, Matt, Tonya and I went to a beer dinner. No…it wasn’t a dinner made strictly out of beer…it was some very elegant food paired with some out-of-this-world beers. I hope I didn’t embarrass Matt and Tonya too much when I referred to the Citrus Cured Curraun Blue Sea Trout as raw fish, or when I tasted some of the pate-based appetizers and made an awful face like a little baby that tastes pureed peas for the first time. Actually, the food was excellent and much of it was new to me. I haven’t traveled in the circles of duck breast served rare and caviar that costs more than a good pair of running shoes, but I’m learning. I am slowly acquiring a taste for some of the sour beers and there were quite a few. The alcohol content of the pairings seemed to increase as the night went on with Avery Brewing’s The Beast Grand Cru and Lost Abbey’s Older Viscosity in the 12-14% range. Yes, we took a cab there and back.

Just (Missing The Kids Already) Jack

Sometimes runners refer to their legs as their “wheels”, so keeping that in mind, I’ve had another flat tire. I’ve fought with that hip problem for over a year and I’m finally free from pain. I’ve been ramping up the running mileage, but not so fast that my body can’t take it. I’ve tried to be smart about it and increase the distance by small increments. And I know better than to increase the speed too fast, so I’ve kept things at a slow pace.

I had a meeting Thursday morning at 10 and decided not to get up and run early. I wanted to give my body a chance to wake up and it also gave me a chance to run some errands. The meeting lasted until noon, so by 12:30 I was out on the road. It had just started to lightly sprinkle and the wind was blowing, so it wasn’t a great day, but it was a whole lot warmer than most of the winter runs. I started off slow and didn’t increase the speed since I figured it would take a while to warm up.

About a mile into the run, on a flat stretch of city streets, I felt my left hamstring knot up with a shooting pain just above the back of my knee. I limped to a stop and walked about a dozen steps. I thought it may just be a twinge so I started to jog again. After about ten steps I knew it was injured. I thought I could walk the rest of my run route, but the more I walked the more sore it got. I started directly home and, by the time I got there, I was in pain and I could tell the muscle was knotted up.

I talked to my trainer, Bill Bradley, on Friday and he said to not run on it for a few days and schedule a massage to get the knot released, which I plan to do tomorrow. So this morning, when we met to do our Sunday morning cruise, I wrapped it in an ace bandage (the six inch kind just like Bill prescribed) and started walking. As I watched the entire group go off running, I could see devil jack sitting on one shoulder looking like a huge gargoyle and I could hear him say, “Go ahead and run a while. Bill can’t see you and you’re tough enough to get past the pain”. On the other shoulder was little tiny smart jack, barely visible, and I heard him say, “Don’t be stupid. You’re first race isn’t until July and, even if it takes a while to heal and you miss that race, it isn’t worth aggravating an injury and making it worse”. I went against my instinct and listened to smart jack.

I got back an hour earlier than anyone else and, when they did get back, I didn’t have any stories about how tough the run was or how steep the hills were. There were several of us sitting at the dining room table at Tom and Corrine’s eating the weekly brunch. You all know I don’t hear well when there is background noise, so I was off in my own little world a good share of the time. All of a sudden Becky, who was sitting on my bad ear side, said something about once having a cookie on her behind. I’m not sure why I heard that and, since people were still eating, no one wanted to hear how it got there, but she told us anyway.

That was on the heels of a conversation we had Friday evening after Becky had stopped at Fall Creek to have a couple of drinks with people she worked with. She was crocheting and talking with Jean while having a couple of glasses of wine. Again, out of the blue, she started talking about how she didn’t like the number three because it was an odd number and she only liked even numbers. She went on to say that she also didn’t like the number eight (I always thought eight was even) but did like seven (I always thought seven was odd). Tom Strumberger and I had brewed a batch of Tripel Karmeliet Ale all day and I was thinking the fumes must have gotten to me. It made perfect sense to Jean, so what do I know?

I’m off to San Francisco for a few days. I fly out on Wednesday and fly back the following Monday. I’ll be able to walk a lot and may do some light jogs around the park if it feels better. Jean has been sick with whatever crud has been going around for the past few days. She wasn’t able to go to work on Friday, but Saturday she was able to muster up enough strength to ride her bike trainer two hours followed by a transition run. She said she felt better afterward but started failing again later in the day. This morning she gritted her teeth and was able to do her two hour run in town. She must be consulting with a different trainer than mine or is only listening to devil jean.

Just (On The Mend Again And Getting Tired Of It) Jack

The three or four of you that actually read these e-mails I send out probably know that I’m geeky about almost everything. So it won’t surprise you when I tell you that I keep track of my checkbooks, investments and all other assets and liabilities on the computer in a program called Quicken. Last month I wrote two checks and paid the rest of my bills online or with a debit card. You can guess that I enter all that in a regular check register, but I also enter it on the computer every day or two. Rather than trust my addition and subtraction without a calculator, I use the computer program to tell me what my checkbook balance should be.

So last week I was paying some bills online and was entering the amounts in Quicken as I went. One of the checks was to a company that had sent me a refund a couple of weeks earlier. Since the computer knows it’s smarter than I am, after I entered the company name, it went straight to the deposit block (the last transaction) instead of the check written block. I didn’t notice, entered the amount, completed the account name and clicked on enter. After I had paid all my bills and entered the amounts in my checkbook, I looked at the balance in Quicken and wrote that number down in my check register. So a $356.14 check was recorded in Quicken as a $356.14 deposit and my account was overstated by $712.28. Not usually a problem since I keep a balance high enough to avoid any service charge. But remember, I just wrote a check for half of Jean’s new bike.

So I went to the bank today to get some cash for spending money and the bank said I didn’t have enough in my account for the $100.00 I asked for. I came right home, printed the online bank activity and discovered the error right away. My corrected balance was 35 cents. I transferred some money from another account to avoid any problems. There won’t be an overdraft charge, but I will get a service charge on this month’s bank statement. RATS!!! It’s only March and I’ve already made a mistake.

All four of you also probably know that I post each of these weekly e-mails in http://www.jackswriting.com/ so anyone can read them. This e-mail will make my 200th post. I have posted 6 eulogies, 8 ramblings and 186 e-mails. I’m still waiting for the call from a college psychology professor asking if he or she can use the writings in an upper level psych class called “How Many Things Are Wrong With This Person?”. The “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” puzzles in the paper usually only have six or eight things. I’m guessing the answer sheet the professor uses to grade papers has possibilities in the high teens or low twenties.

Today is St. Patrick’s Day and I don’t have anything green to wear except my underwear (give me a break…they started out that color!). Anyway, if I get to showing my green clothes to anyone, I will have had way too much fun and someone should offer to drive me home.

Just (Looking For The Pot Of Gold At The End Of The Rainbow) Jack

Today is the day we switch from Eastern Standard Time to Eastern Daylight Saving Time. We all know that the purpose of changing the clocks is to transfer an hour of daylight from morning to evening. Science has proven that we use less electricity that way because we are more likely to turn a light on in the evening than in the morning. If it’s light one hour later, that’s one hour less that the light is on, so we save money. That way we have more money to build bombs to drop on people in countries we have invaded…scratch invaded…countries where we have come to their aid to give them a better life.

Anyway, not turning on the light in the morning has its drawbacks. This morning, when we were getting ready to go on our normal Sunday run, I reached for my running shoes and they weren’t where I usually keep them. Then I remembered that I ran in them Thursday and left them on the front doormat to dry. I had forgotten to put them back in the closet, so I went out, grabbed them, and put them on, all in the dark…remember, science says don’t turn on the light so I didn’t. I’ve felt really good on my recent runs and, about a mile into the run, I started thinking I was running with a couple of two-by-fours strapped to my feet. I looked down and I had mistakenly grabbed an old, worn out pair of running shoes that I use to mow the lawn at the cottage.

Of course, I’m too cheap to buy work shoes, and the old worn out running shoes are fine for that kind of use. After they’re worn out from running and have no cushion left and half the soles are worn through, I further break them down by walking around in wet grass and they go through several “wet-dry” treatments. Needless to say, my feet weren’t in the best of shape when I got done. Thankfully, I was able to use Brian’s Father’s Day present, a foot massager, to nurse them back to health. Just think…a foot massage with no paybacks.

I picked up nine cases of empty beer bottles from one of the guys in the Kalamazoo brewing club this past Wednesday morning. Most of them still have their labels. Most people wouldn’t care about that and would just put a sticker on the bottle over the old label, telling what kind of beer was in it. You know me well enough to understand that wouldn’t do. So I’ve been cleaning off the labels and washing the bottles. When I use them to brew, I’ll wash them again and run them through the sanitizer. With all the work it takes, these free bottles become costly based on time spent. If I were working, I’d go through that calculation, decide that my time is worth more than the cost of new bottles, and turn these in for the bottle deposit. But when you aren’t working, your time is worth nothing, and that’s why I’m washing bottles.

I usually don’t talk politics…well, maybe I do sometimes…and I never talk about how I agree or disagree with U.S. foreign policy…well, except for the first paragraph today…but I’m completely fed up with the Michigan/Florida primary fiasco. In Florida, the state Republican leaders moved their primary in violation with the national Democratic party rules and made their primary not count. Without picking on only the Republicans…in Michigan the state Democratic leaders did the same thing with the same result.

Now there’s a national debate as to how to fix it. In my humble opinion, it can’t be fixed. In all fairness, if we have a “do over”, we’re rewarding political arrogance and someone (us) will end up paying millions of dollars for it. If we don’t have a “do over”, Florida and Michigan voters won’t help decide the party nominee, and the party will probably not win back enough support from the disenfranchised voters to win in the national election. The sad thing in all of this is that the average voters on the street…you and me…are the victims. We had nothing to do with the changes, except for the fact that we elected these jack^&&*& to represent us, and if we re-elect them again, we deserve what we get.

Just (Sixties Protests Are Back…Vote The Bums Out) Jack

If a bunch of our friends weren’t going, and if we weren’t going out to dinner afterwards, there’s no way you could get me to go to a store, even a bike store, and spend two hours milling around looking for bargains. I spent the entire time being in other people’s way. If I stood in the corner, somebody wanted to look at something in that corner. The only thing I needed was Smartwool running socks and they were one of the only things not on sale. I did pass by a couple of bargains and, if I wore a XXXL or an extra small, I could have gotten a real deal.

Jean spent her time looking at bikes since I gave her half a bike for her birthday. Bill, one of my former friends, suggested to Jean that Jack should buy the back half which includes the seat, a custom seat post, custom crank arms, front gears, rear cassette and front and rear derailleurs since those components costs the most and Jean could buy the front half which would be cheap by comparison. I thought us guys stuck together, but I guess Nancy’s got him whipped into shopping shape and he’s trying to take the rest of us down with him.

After the shopping torture I was ready for a good meal with great friends in a nice restaurant. Apparently I had this black cloud hanging over me ‘cuz my meal came last. Not just the last one on the serving tray, but was one of those “Oops…they must have forgotten your Chicken Tortilla Salad” after everyone else had been served. It came five minutes later just as everyone was finishing up and trying to decide whether to get dessert or not.

If that wasn’t bad enough, we ran into the worst snow squalls driving home I have ever seen. Sometimes the snow will swirl and you’ll be blinded for a few seconds, but this went on for miles. I couldn’t see more than fifteen yards in front of the car and couldn’t tell whether I was on the right side of the road or not. The girls in the car looked out the side windows and let me know when I had wandered into the center of the road or was getting too close to the edge. I couldn’t see well enough to pull over and, if I had stopped, we would have been hit from behind by the cars following us. By the time we got to a business where we could have pulled over, we could see well enough to continue on. Why was it that I decided not to spend the winter in Florida this year???

This morning was the Elaine Standler Memorial Indoor Triathlon. Since I can’t get in the pool with my chlorine allergy, I couldn’t compete but did help out on the treadmills. The turnout wasn’t very good and I’m not sure why. It could be that tons of people have the flu or it could be that fewer and fewer people want to embarrass themselves in front of “those people” (the Trilanders). At any rate, after standing on my feet for three hours, I came home and did my Sunday run. I’m still not running far, but I’m up to six miles and I feel great.

Since I was running around noon and tried to avoid traffic, I ran on side streets as much as I could. Things went great until I ran up North Hanover street past Hastings Manufacturing Company. Just past the plant is an older neighborhood of homes that are small bungalows…the type of home you would expect in an industrial part of town. The homes are small but well kept and I was daydreaming as usual about bygone days. All of a sudden a Pit Bull and his younger mutt friend came running out from a house into the street. The dog looked like he didn’t want me there and I didn’t want him there either. I had my sunglasses on and looked him straight in the eyes where I saw a reflection of what looked like a huge Thanksgiving turkey on a serving platter with my head attached to the turkey neck. I stopped, turned toward him, pointed and yelled GO HOME!!! After about the fifth time, he turned and went back to his yard along with his yippy little friend. I’m not sure whether he was afraid of me or whether he couldn’t stand the smell of me messing my pants.

Just (I Guess I’ll Have To Start Carrying My Pepper Spray) Jack

After last week, when our some of our running group ran in weather with temperatures of 5 degrees above zero and wind chills of 18 degrees below zero, I thought we had hit rock bottom on the common sense meter. Not so! This morning we had freezing rain falling on streets that were below freezing producing treacherous black ice. There were also areas where the snow had been packed down to ice anyway, and the rain turned those spots into ice so slick you couldn’t stand on it without falling.   At 8 AM, our usual meeting time, a whole bunch of otherwise partially sane people in our running group met at Kevin and Stacey’s to go running. Sam and Colleen parked next to our Jeep and, when they got ready to leave, their car had moved 4 or 5 feet on its own. Without naming names, one of our group fell before we ever got started; at least one of our group fell while on the run; and at least one of our group fell going out to their car while leaving. Remember…we all run for better health! It rained during the entire run with the temperature hovering near 32 degrees. Everything on me was wet except for the crack down my “great divide”.

I thought we were planning to run down Irving Road so I turned at that corner and everyone else went straight. I’m throwing away my Trilander training shirt that says “Friends Don’t Let Friends Train Alone”. Anyway, I actually had a better run than expected. I wore my “YakTrax” which kept me from slipping and I sweat enough to get wet every time I run, so things were pretty normal. I met 4 cars going out and 4 cars coming back on my 5.33 mile journey. When the cars went by they sprayed tons of water that had settled in ruts in the road. After a couple of drenchings, I decided to jump the next time one came by. Being white (a reference to the movie White Men Can’t Jump with Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson) and 61 years old, my three foot high jump turned out to be about six inches and I just got a different part of my legs wet.

I ran as far as the bridge over the Thornapple River just outside Irving. It’s in a low spot (duh…it’s over a river and that’s usually the lowest spot around), and there was snow plowed up on each side, so the water had nowhere to go and was at least four inches deep. Just to show I still had a tiny bit of sense left in my body, I turned around and didn’t try to go over the bridge. In the very center of the road you could see a couple of spots of pavement so I could have tried that route. Or I could have tried to walk in the snow banks on the edges, but I figured I would have stepped into a foot of snow before hitting four inches of icy slush. Smart huh?

To change the subject…last week I got a grain crusher that crushes the grain I use in beer brewing. The day it came I put it together and was itching to try it out. I didn’t have any uncrushed barley and won’t be brewing until it warms up some so I was out of luck. Then Matt suggested I crush some of the old stale stuff I had in the freezer that I wasn’t going to use anyway, so I did. It worked great, but then what to do with the grain? I decided to put it out in the yard so the deer could eat it, which they did. Ever since then, the grain has been gone but they revisit the spot hoping some fool (me) would put out more. As I look out there today, there is snow on the ground and it shows that the deer have relieved themselves (number two, not number one) right where they ate the grain. The transition from animals to humans (if you believe in evolution) must have come when we stopped crapping on our dinner tables.

Just (Ready For This Long Winter To Be Over) Jack