First of all, note to Maple Village: SALT YOUR SIDEWALK! You know the one. It runs along N. Maple between Dexter and Jackson. Can y’all even tell what is *in* the photooo below? I navigated part or all of that stuff multiple times today. I managed with YakTrax and a hiking stick. These fashionable items are The New Black, don’tcha know, at least here on Ice Sidewalk Asteroid. I encountered various males of varying ages along the way, all of whom warned me about the ice. Of course, I showed them what was on the bottom of my feet with a HUGE grin on my face. Oooohhh, you are prepared. Yes. I am. Except that the ice today was too slippery to be overly confident even in YakTrax, hence the hiking stick.

Two of those trips were to the Plum Market, the middle one was all the way over to Staples. Can you guess what my Staples purchase was? More Bubble Wrap, you say? Yes, that was it. I got another box of stuff packed away. My small but beauteous collection of liqueur glasses. Very fragile and very carefully packed. I actually hardly ever use them but they happen to be among the few possessions that are important to me. The GG was wrassling with taxes and getting a collection of stuff together for the Hiawatha Shore-to-Shore NCT chapter booth next Saturday’s annual Quiet Waters Symposium over at Moo-U (said with affection). I was emailing / texting with a beach urchin and she urged us to get out and go walk down by the river and then the GG brought up a river walk (maybe she was emailing / texting him too? hmmm…[grin]) and so we did. We started by Barton Dam and the “snowbank” on the steps in the photooo below is what we had to navigate going UP the steps to the dam. I literally crawled up that snowbank on my hands and knees and took the photo afterwards.

After walking there, we hit the Burns-Stokes Preserve on Zeeb Road. It was loverly but we were post-holing all over the place. Why did we not think to take snowshoes? I do not know. Maybe because we almost never have a need for snowshoes on the Planet Ann Arbor.

I lied that we were in Polar Vortex 3. It was windy today but the temperatures were in the 30s and Mr. Golden Sun made enough appearances that some of the ice melted and my face feels just a bit hot but that could’ve been wind too. Also, I didn’t do my Skunk Walk today. Too icy at 0-skunk-30. But between my trips to stores and the post-holing along the river, I got a lot of exercise and some of my muscles (the ones that don’t normally have to deal with post-holing) are feeling it. Not sore, just that loverly thank-you-for-using-me feeling. Actually I think we are supposed to get another so-called polar vortex next week but we’ll see whether that’s hype or not. Below is the obligatory photo of Barton Dam, in this case almost totally frozen.

Love y’all, all five of you! G’night!

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