Iron Dog started today with the Trail Class out on the trail for about two hours - teams just starting to come into the first checkpoint at Skwentna. Pro Class (including Todd Palin) will be starting tomorrow & that’s when I start following the race closely. As cold and snowy as conditions have been around the NE, Iron Dog could have been run in the lower 48!
If you’re interested, here’s the Iron Dog website: http://www.irondograce.org/ On the red navigation bar, just click on “Race Tracking” & from the pull down menu, click “GPS Tracking”. You can also choose to look at the teams in the Trail & Pro Class. From the GPS Map, up at the top you can select “Main Map”, “Leaderboard”,” Race Flow” & a “Mobile App”. You can set the map to refresh every 3 minutes.
No gardening going on, but we have been feeding sunflower seeds from last year’s crop to the very hungry, cold birds that are hanging around the bird feeders (in addition to store-bought seed). We finally got up into double digits late morning and are now around 19 degrees. This should be the last very frigid night - some “warmup” coming tomorrow, i.e. above freezing by late afternoon although snow & sleet might get to about ½ “here before going to freezing rain and then rain. I am not a fan of snow so I won’t be sorry to see it melt away as fast as possible!
In an effort to stay positive, saw this quote today and liked it:
“It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it.” ~John Burroughs, “Winter Sunshine”
We are in for a continued round of freezing temps for the next week. Yuk. I was hoping for a break to take out the trash.