I should have know..............

 13 inches of snow predicted Friday through Saturday..............heavy wet snow...........as expected we lost power about 11............Randy "invited" me to go out with him and look at the trail at about 2....we drove the trail until about 4 and Randy wanted to open a path off from the trail that Bruce had already packed and groomed with his equipment............so we turned off the packed trail with our snow machine into the deep snow...........and immediately tipped over!!!!  I "jumped" off (more like fell off....) so the machine wouldn't land on my leg......then we got upright again and moved slowly through the 13 inch deep snow going up a rather steep hill..............and proceeded to get stuck!!!  Not just a little stuck,,,,,,,,,,,,,really stuck!!!  We tried forward's, backward digging out around the tracks with the blade cover for the chainsaw, lifting the back, lifting the front........made little headway once and moved about 6 feet -- but after that, nothing!!!!  Randy gave up and said we were going to start walking..............now Randy had just done this very similar walk of 8 miles with the other snow machine dying just a week ago - it had taken him 2 hours to walk back near our house and have Bruce pick him up on his 4 wheeler!!!!   Mind you it's about 4:30 by now and the sun is starting to set - we start walking and not far into it I tell Randy he better walk ahead cause I can already tell that I won't be able to keep up (mainly because of my groin injury in September - usually I "outwalk" Randy but now my steps are quite a bit shorter.........and the fact that I thought this was going to be a fun ride and wore the 8 pound mickey mouse boots)  You're right.............it's getting dark and I'm out walking in the woods by myself where Randy saw wolf tracks last week and the guy doing the clear cutting/logging said he heard wolves 3 days ago............  Thank goodness part of the time the clouds cleared and there was a half moon out that made it much easier to follow the snowmachine track instead of sloughing thru the deep snow!  And only 8 miles to go!!!  I stopped often and sat down on the snow banks but felt bad I was making such slow progress - and hoping that I would see headlights soon----I did see headlights about 4 miles into my walk - Randy came on the other snowmachine and not the truck because he was afraid with the temp getting warmer that the truck would get stuck -   I was amazed on our way back home how far I had yet to go and knew then that I would have taken all night to travel that far - my body was having competition with which part was yelling loudest...........foot, tendon, back, knee or groin!!!

So, tragedy averted and more lessons learned and I have told Randy he doesn't need to create any more of these situations so that I might have something fun to write about on the blog!!!!!!!!!

That nite was recuperation and so the next day - lots of muscles we both haven't used in a long time but better today!

Took one team out and the weather was a bit warm but they only went 12 miles!  We did have one glitch----Randy went out on the sled for the first time this year ahead of me......When I was trying to catch up to him after taking time to get my coat and gloves on, I came upon the turn off from 7 mile fire lane leading into the woods and the rest of the trail, only to find out that the logging crew had once again  graded 7 mile fire lane and had left a bird of 4ft tall hard snow bank that somehow Randy had managed to go over with the team and the sled!!!! (I found out after that it wasn't that way just one hour before we took off with the dogs and that he did have trouble getting the leaders to climb up the snow bank and pull the sled with them!!!)

So I punched the snow machine to get up and over the bank to follow Randy and was afraid I was going to tip over but didn't1  the rest of the run went good until Randy motioned me to pull around him and the team and I couldn't hear what he was telling me but imagined that he wanted me to make the bird less difficult for him to get back over the snow bank with the team and the sled - so I drove fast, like 23 mph back to 7 mile fire lane to try and crush the bank with the snow machine - went over once, no problem - turned around in the road , no problem, back over no problem, tried to turn around to over the bank a couple of more times and got stuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Stuck almost all the way across the trail with only 2 foot for the team to go around me!!!!  In the interim I had shoveled out most of the bank to make it easier for Randy to cross and our team went by me and down the bank without a problem!  A nice young guy from New Hampshire here to train out of Bruce's yard came back after he saw I was stuck (his 2 teams had also gone around me) and the young, strong guy lifted the rear end of the snow machine and pulled it over and then the front and got it turned enough so that it would go down the trail straight!!!  By the time I got back to our dog yard Randy was just jumping on the other snowmachine ready to come and unstuck me!!  He had gotten back and unhooked and unharnessed all the 8 dogs! 

So enough excitement for this week -planning to train again tomorrow unless it gets so warm it will be "punchy" (where the dos feet sink into the snow which can result in injury)

Happy birthday and love to Donna yesterday, Kay today, and Lydia tomorrow!!!!