Ice Skating The outside temperature manages to hover around freezing, sometimes above, mostly a bit below, which has an interesting effect. The 5 or 10 feet of snow this region gets during a winter never really shows, most of it melts during these warm spells, leaving only a foot or so visible at any one time.
We just recently had a run of warmth with 33 degree days and some rain, which melted most of the snow, including it on the lakes. Which were still frozen. Which means we could ice skate!
This excursion took almost all day, we started at 10 in the morning, and headed home before 3. That's all the sun we get these days. The 15 minute drive took us to one of the more spectacular view's I've witnessed. A giant frozen lake tucked into the snow sprinkled forest, extending in both directions almost like a river. Sunk into the flat white ice were several islands, some with houses. Some of these houses had boat ramps and docks, which I could now walk up to. One place even had a diving board over the ice, which made us wonder how deep the water we were standing on was. This scenery was by far the best part of the trip, it would be hard for anything to top it. And there were no skates that fit me. Bummer. I was looking forward to cruising around the islands, to getting some speed and not have to turn left and avoid some kid. Those ice rinks at home are just to small for any real skating.
Half way through out day, we packed up the stuff, and moved camp. I rode a mountain bike with studded tires through the snow, that stuff is more slippery then you'd think... but all was good when we got to where we were going. A fire was started, and so was a hockey game. I ate lunch, and warmed my butt by the fire before heading out to explore this winter wonderland. My wondering took me out of ear shot of most of the noise of the group, and I heard something for the first time. The sound of snow falling. The area was that quiet, no wind, no animals, not water, nothing. Just the sound of snow fall.
Øystain and I took another walk around another island. Vegard, on quiet skates, came up behind and slid a bowling ball sized ice cube at us from behind... he's not always serious.. he made some comment about working on his curling. By this time the snow had fallen for a few hours, and a nice white dusting had covered everything, the ice included. This set the stage for some fun. One of those giant ice cubes met it's end by being thrown up in the air. When it hit the ice it shattered and each piece of shrapnel that shot off left a trail in the snow. It was like those films from electron colliders smashing sub-atomic particles to bits, showing the path the various bits took. An explosion frozen in the snow. OK, so I'm easily amused.
The trip back was nothing too exciting, but dinner was pretty good, somehow just our table ended up with 2 different meat dishes. And both were very good. AND we had ice cream. AND an hour later we ate pan cakes and coffee. I'm pretty sure I ate too much AND I didn't complain about it. Posted by byron at December 09, 2002 04:07 PM