Sunday, February 12, 2012

February warm up

Last Saturday we stood at the start line of the Yukon Quest to watch 24 teams blast off down the trail to Whitehorse, Yukon. The race typically takes a couple of weeks for the mushers to finish. This is in large part because it is one thousand miles long.








if you want to follow live tracking of Yukon Quest:
http://yukonquest.com/


It was a nice, normal-for-this-time-of-year 10 below at the start of the race. But by midweek it shot up to 30 above in some places, and this weekend we have above zero temperatures overnight.

The snow isn't all melting just yet, but it is nice to be outside. Yesterday walking back from the general store Joe decided to see if he could knock the heavy snow off the power lines along our street. After several tries he just tapped the line with a light chunk of hard snow, and the line, freed of its burden of heavy snow, shot up, leaving the heavier snow to hang in the air for a split second before showering down. The vibration traveled past the pole at the far end and caused the next stretch of cable to vibrate and lose its snow load as well.

Mesmerized, I looked at Joe and said: "if we were a couple of 12 year old kids we would grab our bikes and ride around the whole neighborhood with a video camera looking for more of these to hit!"

As it turns out there was another one at the far end of our road, and I took a shot. After ten tries I hit the line and it shot up, the snow shot down, and I decided we needed to get our bikes and a video camera.

Alas, this was the last one left on our road to film...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxK7Zort3AM

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