Winter Activities

Well, much has happened since I last wrote you. Where to begin?
First, I did sign up for the John Beargrease Dog Sled Race. Of course, I am not running a team in the race (some of you guys cracked me up), but I am working at headquarters answering phones and taking down times off the ham radios. Check out their website if you want to find out more about the race (http://www.beargrease.com/). Basically, the race is over 300 miles along the north shore of Lake Superior. There are checkpoints along the way where the time is radioed into HQ. Should be interesting. I wish I could watch the beginning of the race, as I hear it is very moving and emotional, but I will be at HQ, which is nowhere near the beginning of the race. I will let you know how it all goes.
Early in Feb, we went to our first University men's hockey game. Actually two of them. It was great. The place is packed, and the stadium has very steep seating, so it seems like everyone has a good view. And they are FAST. Their skating skills are amazing. My favorite player is the goalie (must stem from my obsession with Ray LeBlanc from the 1992 Olympic Games...he was the first goalie to wear the highly decorative ITech masks...(http://www.wrightmask.com/rayleblancusathumb.jpg)). How they know where the puck is boggles my mind. I don't even know where the puck is half the time, which explains why they have a light and horn to indicate a goal.
I did my first winter sport this past weekend.....ice skating. My sister-in-law, niece and I went to Play It Again Sports, a used sporting goods store and bought used ice skates. Then we went down to Bayfront Park, right along Lake Superior. Unfortunately, we had a heat wave that day, about 40, so the ice was horrible. Super horrible. Funny enough, the warming house was "Closed due to extreme weather" (extreme?????). You would skate smoothly, and then jerk to a stop on a rough patch. Funnier yet was the water that would shoot out from the ice as you skated over it. We had a hard time explaining to my niece, Maddi, who is 3 years old that we weren't on a lake, just a flooded field. She would panic when the water would shoot out. To put it mildly, I am a horrible skater. I haven't skated in 20 years and it shows. Again, another reason to be impressed by ice skaters and hockey players.
While we were out skating, Clay and his brothers were snowmobiling. While Kari, Maddi and I were having dinner, we got a call from them on the trail requesting a pick up in Tower, MN (about 90 miles north of Duluth). Clay had broken his collar bone and they were 10 miles out of Tower. So we ran around, checked mapquest and drove up there. They were able to ride to Benchwarmers, an eatery/bar (with about 50 snowmobiles parked outside), which is where we found them. They left the sleds there and we all made the trip back to Duluth and St. Luke's Hospital. Clay is okay, but he is very sore and it is hard to move around much. He is still teaching his classes, which is a good sign. They just gave him a sling which he has to wear for 4 weeks.
Well, I wanted to leave you with some information about Lake Superior. This lake is amazing. It really has so many stories to tell. It is the second largest lake in the world and the deepest of the Great Lakes. What fascinates me is the number of shipwrecks found in Lake Superior. One in particular is the Edmund Fitzgerald, which went down on November 10, 1975. There is a great song by Gordon Lightfoot about the disaster. Check out http://home.europa.com/~random7/fitz.htm to see the lyrics and annotation. If you have the time, try and listen to it (you will need 6 minutes of your time...its a long one), but if not, just sing every two lines, and drawl out the last word of every two lines. He kind of speaks it instead of singing, so you can get the idea. Apparently, the water is so cold that those who are lost at sea never surface to the top. The last four lines are spooky:
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
Superior they said never gives up her dead
when the gales of November come early
This is why they say Lake Superior is haunted, and there are lots of books out there on the topic.
Well, I hope all is well wherever you're at.
Take care,