5 golden hours, 4 cold nights, 3 warm days, 2 different lakes, and a pair of skates on my feet...
maybe not perfectly tuneful, but you get the point--merry christmas and a happy new year! sunday i met skip, linda, and eben over to grafton pond for an after noon skate-a-thon. sunny, warm-ish, not too windy, fairly large patches of pretty smooth ice, what's not to love?
as i am want to say, "do you want the long list or the short one?" i will give you the short one now, a thin layer of ice over water from all that rain and warm. in the first minute skip's blades cut through--he went from racing along to flopped down hard in an instant. from then on we were actively sussing out those soft spots...avoiding the weakest spots, looking for their special glint and listening for the tell tale, high pitched crackling that spreads like a web from under your blades.
grafton pond is a wonderfully diverse skate, with all kinds of nooks and crannies, loaded with boulders, stumps and islands, protruding from the frozen surface. i was enjoying finding some interesting lines, criss-crossing the middles of bays and exploring the edges. at one point i aimed myself between a large boulder and a fallen tree. as i glided through i started hearing the web-crackling and made a turn toward what i thought would be harder ice.
long story short, i flopped like skip only instead of ice below me, i was doing the plank to avoid the few inches of water on top of the old, thicker ice. extricating myself carefully, i kept the soaking to the front of my legs and my gloves. if i kept skating, i knew i would dry.
it was about 15 minutes later, going to take a picture of linda gliding along in the distance, her blue jacket sandwiched between the ice and sky, i noticed my phone was gone. not hard to figure it out--it had to be back in the water. sure enough, when i skated back, i could see it lying atop the old, bottom ice, beneath the thin, broken top ice--in the water.
i picked it up and stuffed it into my pants pocket. skating up to skip, we heard the tone of an incoming message. something was still working. a few minutes later, another tone made me take it out and look. i took a picture of the pendletons, thinking maybe i was going to be lucky.
the image was still pretty sharp. even the shadow of the phone in my hands looks clear.
we skated for another couple hours, circumnavigating the winding shoreline, from cove to cove. toward the end, we found a couple of clean, smooth lines that crossed one of the widest portions of the pond and skated back and forth multiple times. at one point linda lay on the ice, absorbing the sun and resting up for a final push against the strengthening wind.
as we took off our blades we were all smiling--it was a sweet skate.
so sweet i woke up on monday and went off to try goose pond's ice. bright sun again, colder-ish, and about the same wind. i was all alone this time and able to fly to the north end with a couple of side trips exploring and launching off ice rising up sharply around sunken boulders. one large flake jutting up at a sharp angle lifted me into the air for a couple of feet when i hit it with good speed.
getting to the northernmost cove on the lake included crossing a stream of water running along a crack from the western to eastern shores. i wasn't too worried about falling through, but i didn't want do any more push ups in the water on the surface like at grafton pond. once across, the ice deteriorated, so i made a quick loop and recrossed the watery crack.
zigging and zagging, shore to shore i came back to the dam at the south end. i tried taking a panoramic, but this time the image was really blurry--i assumed moisture had finally infiltrated to the electronics and was now doing its damage.
the dam to the left, the 'beach' to the right, and the shadow pointing pretty much toward the north end makes for a weird perspective.
even with the failing phone/camera, it was a grand day outside and playing. when i go back inside, i will see if the ol' bag of rice trick can make the phone 'smart' again.
as i am want to say, "do you want the long list or the short one?" i will give you the short one now, a thin layer of ice over water from all that rain and warm. in the first minute skip's blades cut through--he went from racing along to flopped down hard in an instant. from then on we were actively sussing out those soft spots...avoiding the weakest spots, looking for their special glint and listening for the tell tale, high pitched crackling that spreads like a web from under your blades.
grafton pond is a wonderfully diverse skate, with all kinds of nooks and crannies, loaded with boulders, stumps and islands, protruding from the frozen surface. i was enjoying finding some interesting lines, criss-crossing the middles of bays and exploring the edges. at one point i aimed myself between a large boulder and a fallen tree. as i glided through i started hearing the web-crackling and made a turn toward what i thought would be harder ice.
long story short, i flopped like skip only instead of ice below me, i was doing the plank to avoid the few inches of water on top of the old, thicker ice. extricating myself carefully, i kept the soaking to the front of my legs and my gloves. if i kept skating, i knew i would dry.
it was about 15 minutes later, going to take a picture of linda gliding along in the distance, her blue jacket sandwiched between the ice and sky, i noticed my phone was gone. not hard to figure it out--it had to be back in the water. sure enough, when i skated back, i could see it lying atop the old, bottom ice, beneath the thin, broken top ice--in the water.
i picked it up and stuffed it into my pants pocket. skating up to skip, we heard the tone of an incoming message. something was still working. a few minutes later, another tone made me take it out and look. i took a picture of the pendletons, thinking maybe i was going to be lucky.
the image was still pretty sharp. even the shadow of the phone in my hands looks clear.
we skated for another couple hours, circumnavigating the winding shoreline, from cove to cove. toward the end, we found a couple of clean, smooth lines that crossed one of the widest portions of the pond and skated back and forth multiple times. at one point linda lay on the ice, absorbing the sun and resting up for a final push against the strengthening wind.
as we took off our blades we were all smiling--it was a sweet skate.
so sweet i woke up on monday and went off to try goose pond's ice. bright sun again, colder-ish, and about the same wind. i was all alone this time and able to fly to the north end with a couple of side trips exploring and launching off ice rising up sharply around sunken boulders. one large flake jutting up at a sharp angle lifted me into the air for a couple of feet when i hit it with good speed.
getting to the northernmost cove on the lake included crossing a stream of water running along a crack from the western to eastern shores. i wasn't too worried about falling through, but i didn't want do any more push ups in the water on the surface like at grafton pond. once across, the ice deteriorated, so i made a quick loop and recrossed the watery crack.
zigging and zagging, shore to shore i came back to the dam at the south end. i tried taking a panoramic, but this time the image was really blurry--i assumed moisture had finally infiltrated to the electronics and was now doing its damage.
the dam to the left, the 'beach' to the right, and the shadow pointing pretty much toward the north end makes for a weird perspective.
even with the failing phone/camera, it was a grand day outside and playing. when i go back inside, i will see if the ol' bag of rice trick can make the phone 'smart' again.
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