New Year-New Beginnings

Happy New Year to all, hope everyone had a great holiday. Ours as you may have noticed was a little bittersweet (if not please see previous post) but you have to keep on moving. A long New Years weekend was in order and we decided to go up January 1 and get some work done on the garage. We stayed over till Sunday and got quite a bit accomplished, had a little fun and some unexpected adventures.
It was a cold weekend, temperatures never reaching 20 degrees. First order of business was to work on insulating the first floor or the garage portion. This was the easiest and required the least amount of cutting, fitting, and thanks to my wonderful wife, went up very quickly. With half of the garage section insulated by late Thursday, we went out for a short 50 mile ride on the snowmobile trails. The trails were in decent shape, a little thin in some open fields, and the occasional water hole that hadn't been filled in completely but pretty good riding overall.
By the time we got back the temperature had dropped quite a bit. The left is the temperature inside, and the right is outside.
On Friday we went to look at heaters for the upstairs and picked out a unit which should work out well, and that will be installed in a few weeks. After leaving we went in a different direction, and after a while we ended up kind of lost. We set up the GPS, and its first reaction was "whenever possible, make a legal U-Turn." Well I've heard that before and if you go a little further it comes around and find a new route. Finally it seemed to get back on track.Except for 1 thing. We were in Vermont. Roads sometimes are roads in the Summer, but not the Winter. Soon we were driving next to Uncle Willy's barn with the GPS showing a road, but not the terrain. There were however about 35 turkeys, which decided to promptly take flight.We went back to work on the rest of the first floor insulation, and a little cleanup and organization. We put up a few shelves to store some of the snowmobile gear, and worked on the insulation. Now the first floor is about done.
Saturday was a recreation day. Karen took Ryan out on the snowmobiles for a while and he did around a 20 mile round trip down to Marty's and the surrounding area. I stayed back to work on another project, a prototype snowmobile ramp, which passed its preliminary test very well. Ryan had a great time, and had some good photo opportunities.
This is the wall of ice on the railroad bed, a couple miles away, always a great photo spot. This next one is somewhere on the trails.
And finally the prodigal son (and wife) returns.

Later on Karen and I went out for a spin, and did another 50 or so miles. This time we chose a path less traveled, and went from Danville to St. Johnsbury, Waterford, and back through St. J. We stopped for a bite @ yes Petty Co Junction We drove back on some smaller trails and saw a spectacular sunset. Riding back we took the very less traveled trail, and soon the trail markers became fewer and farther between. It was dark and this trail was barely wide enough for a single snowmobile. One hill was blind and dark and sloped pretty bad, and before I knew it, I was tumbling down the hill, with the snowmobile tumbling over me. I wound up standing in a bathtub with the snowmobile upside down. A great guy Mark happened by and helped us get it righted, and up the hill. We sat there for a few with hearts pounding, a little shaky, and ego bruised and windshield and mirrors broken, but otherwise unscathed.

Neil Peart of the rock band Rush wrote in one of his books "adventures suck when your having them" and its true. It was easy to find a little humor in the spill since I wasn't hurt badly, but also lucky that a tree stopped the snowmobile from possibly landing on me. Even more funny was the fact I wound up standing in a bathtub on the edge of a snowmobile trail. I am just glad I had proper riding gear and a helmet on. And of course I was asked by Mark to stop and help someone in trouble on the trails in the future, as a kind of "Pay it Forward" We tend to do that anyway, but when someone stops and helps you out, you know its the right thing to do. I also learned to avoid trails marked in red on the map in the future (Red means stop now) :-)

Until next time safe travels! And remember folks, don't try this at home! =-)