Open, 26º at 7:00 am and cloudy. Forecast high 40º, cloudy, light rain and snow this afternoon. Good spring skiing, variable conditions. Hard and fast morning and late afternoon. Slower in the warmer part of the day. Loon is closed.

Boiling sap to syrup in the sugar house today, 9 to about 5.

Life is slowing down and getting ready to slip into spring, Ian changed the oil in his truck yesterday, I made an appointment to have the snow tires taken off the Prius. I vacuumed the upstairs and wrote ‘go to the dump’ on my list. The other spring thing that made the list was take Ruby to the groomer. She hates it! But a bathed, shaved, Ruby is a good lab looking golden retriever.

The picture on top was taken during the 2004 Craftsbury Marathon. Dick didn’t know he was part of the ad campaign until he saw the Cross Country Skier magazine. And later John Broadhead asked him to please  not sue. Dick brought in this magazine and the front page of the Ottawa Star newspaper. After skiing the Keskinada Loppet he shared the front cover of the Ottawa Star with Becky Scott, a medal winning Canadian Olympic skier.

Open, 25º at 7 am , cloudy. Forecast high 38º, the sun is suppose to shine this afternoon.

“Spring skiing,” said the nice Norwegian lady yesterday. I told them about the skiing, hard and fast in the morning and late in the day, slower during the middle, warmer, sunnier part of the day. And she said, “Spring skiing. Best skiing of the year, the Norwegians all take Easter week and go to the mountains and ski. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and the skiing is wonderful.” So this year we get to have a Norwegian Easter ski week. When the temperatures warm the snow and the sun comes out, you can hop on your skis and pretend you are in Norway, or perhaps just let your Norwegian blood come though a little. And smile and enjoy the glide.

The sugar house was busy yesterday! Boiled down 11 gallons on Sunday and the total for the year is now 74.75. To us this seems like so much. Chuck went to Bascoms last week. A big place in New Hampshire. They sell sugaring supplies to all the local sugar makers. They also make syrup. The have lots of their own taps and they buy sap from other people. There are people that tap trees, gather the sap and sell the sap to someone else. So, anyway, at Bascoms, they have made, as of last Friday, 37,000 gallons of syrup. To me that seems like a lot. For them that is just business as usual. 

This is Martha, and she is excited.

This is Martha. Martha skied 5 hours on Saturday, and not as much on Sunday. Maybe only 4 hours. She told me she didn’t mean to, but the skiing is so great she just couldn’t stop.