29-Jan-2000
It was a gorgeous winter day.After working some on my stamp business invoice program, writing a check to the state for the sales tax we collected on our stamp business in 1999, and going to the Post Office, I took my cross-country skis down to the Newton Centre playground. The sky was a deep winter blue without a single cloud and the temperature was around 30. I was wearing a thermal undershirt, flannel shirt, heavy sweater, and nylon windbreaker when I set off. I parked near the hut on Tyler Terrace and followed some ski tracks across the slope back in the general direction I had driven from (I fell on that stretch), the snow crust crunching under the skis whenever I strayed from the track. The little stream through the park looked ominous and hypothermic with the icy crust of snow sloping down to it, and I gave it a wide berth. Across the park was a slope that had lots of ski and sled tracks. One set of ski tracks looked well enough worn (and gently sloping) enough that I didn't think my ski tips would get stuck under any crust and I gingerly went down them. No problem! I took that hill three more times, going farther each time. Four runs was enough of that. I struck off across the park for the far end, getting to the Mason-Rice parking lot before I knew it. Coming back from that end I was up higher than I had been going. I was less confident of following the tracks down that slope than of the ones at the other end of the park, but it still worked.
I don't mean for this to sound like a big alpine adventure. There's perhaps thirty feet of difference in elevation in the whole park. It's just that the crusty snow behaves differently from packed powder. Either the skis slide along the top without any control, or you stay in an existing track, or they break through the crust and you can't push them sideways because the crust is against your ankles and the ski is in the powder beneath.
After one lap around the park I was too hot and took off the sweater. It was too nice a day to stop, though. I did another run out to Centre Street and from there out to Pleasant, stopping to give a pep talk on cross-country skiing to a couple whose kid was trying out a sled on the slope I had gone down four times on my first lap. It ended up being a good invigorating hour of playing in the snow. Even when I'm thinking about it, though, I take too long a stride on x-c skis. The first time out every year I overstretch my thigh muscles. I'll feel it tomorrow and Monday.
A few minutes after I got home, Arlene came home from a Newton Schools Foundation meeting where she had spent the morning and half of the afternoon and asked if I wanted to go for a walk. We went out to Cutler Park. The weather was still gorgeous, with the sky getting darker when the sun went down. There were hardly any birds around except for a flock of tree sparrows under some bushes. Where a side path leads out to the Charles River we heard a“ brrrreep” call and went to investigate. “Does that sound wren-like?” Arlene asked. She had it! A Carolina wren hopped up on the marsh plants and flew across the path.
We had some leftovers for supper and went out to Building 19. I got a pocket Ethiopian Amharic phrasebook (guess I just have a soft spot for the Amharic alphabet since living upstairs from some Ethiopian kids at college), Guy Kawasaki's How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, and Robert Levine's A Geography of Time. (or how every culture keeps time just a little bit differently). From there we went to Brigham's for ice cream sodas. After all, it's not the coldest night of the year today!
 |
 |
 |
|