Deer Trailing over the Butte Yesterday afternoon Bonnie and Craig drove over with the Nordic Trak. I really enjoyed meeting them and getting acquainted with new friends. Hope to see them again soon. They live over near Silver Creek and the East Fork on part of Jim King's old place. Joe has known Craig for a while and he met him snowmachining several years back. He makes beautiful welded gates, the kind with metal artwork on them. So Ken left the N.Trak off at their place on his way to a snowmachine outing, and they brought it over the rest of the way to me. They also pretty much got it adjusted for me to use. It's a skier rather than a walking treadmill and is smaller than I expected, which is good. It looks just about brand new. It's setting in the studio and I've been on it several times already. Thought it would be more difficult to get coordinated on it, but I really like using it. I'll have to practice to learn how to use the arm pully cords. So far I'm just using the sturdy handles for support. I was able to look up and read the manual online.
Thank you so much Nanny and Ken for your generosity, sharing and caring in giving me such a great gift. I promise to use it to help get me well and stronger. Who knows, maybe with enough practice I can XC ski again before winter is over.
Still no storm, in fact the moon and stars have been shining through the clouds (as I write this in the middle of a wakeful night). Toward the west the lights of the oil field are reflecting off the clouds as if there were a city over there. Monday morning it is 32 degrees and sunny blue skies to the south, dark cloudy overcast to the north. But no more than a skiff of new snow. No telling what we will have in the next 30 minutes.
Tomorrow is my next chemo appointment, and Charm is going with me. This morning they are doing avalanche control in the Hoback Canyon again so expect the road, and the weather as well, should be good on Tuesday.
This morning I had the nicest visit with Nancy and they are about ready to go to their second home in Overton in about a week. Charm and I touched base about tomorrow. Gina called and said my computer had been delivered to her from Best Buy today.
Well.....about 11 a.m. or so we got a heck of a ground blizzard. The Salt Lake TV said it was coming and I guess it hit the whole region about the same. It lasted about 2 hours and for most of the time I couldn't even see the yard fence. It was pretty awesome, and sometimes I couldn't even tell which direction the wind was blowing...... up ...... down ....... north ..... south ....... swirling in circles. It rearranged all the drifts in the yard and some grew maybe a couple of feet. The snow in half the front yard was blown off almost to the ground and left several thousand rabbit turds laying there. I just had to laugh, because all that had been covered up so you didn't even know it was there. I don't know what the road will be like in the morning when I leave to go meet Charm. We are going to play it by ear again and if it's not safe we won't go. She certainly has the harder trip with nearly ten miles of snowmachining to get out of her place.
www.pinedaleonline.com Blizzard cuts short IPSSSDR in Pinedale A fast-moving Wyoming blizzard caused race officials to abort the Pinedale Stage Stop mid-race before the teams were able to reach the Finish Line in Pinedale. “We had to stomp the race 2/3 of the way through,” said IPSSSDR Director Frank Teasley. “We had 60 miles per hour winds and white out conditions. We couldn’t grant a safe race. It was epic!” Conditions were so blinding it was impossible to see the race course or to safely travel the roads. Click here for more photos from the Pinedale leg of the race on Monday: Blizzard cuts short IPSSSDR Pinedale Stage Stop (7 photos). White Out The blizzard created white out conditions on the roads and for sled dog teams on the trail. Conditions became so dangerous, race officials cut short the 33-mile race 18 miles into the stage. This was the view on Hwy 352 between the Upper Green and Cora. The race trail is on the right hand side, paralleling the road. The racers are in there... somewhere.
President of the LDS church Gordon B. Hinkley died yesterday. It hasn't been very long since I heard him speaking on TV. Beverly wrote: "He was 97 and had a good life. We will sure miss him, such a sweet man."
FROM WRITER'S ALMANAC: It was on this day in 1986 that the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after takeoff, killing all seven astronauts aboard. That evening, President Ronald Reagan eulogized the lost astronauts in one of the finest addresses of his presidency. He said, "We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped 'the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.'"
