February 24, 2007

We are accelerating into the next season. For two falls and one spring, I have heard mention of the rate at which we gain and lose daylight. 5 minutes a day didn’t really sound like much. For some reason, this gain of 5 minutes of daylight each day that is currently happening seems very fast. The first time I woke up and it was light out, it was a little disturbing. I felt like I had overslept. A few nights ago, we went out to dinner and it was still light out when we came out of the restaurant. It feels like spring is rushing at us.

Of course, the temperature hasn’t mislead us. It is clear that we still have many more weeks of winter. The temperatures took a drop this week. We have seen lows well below zero, double digits below zero several mornings. We didn’t even go skiing today because it was just too cold. We weren’t all that motivated for skiing anyway since it has been weeks since we had any appreciable snow. With the cold, though, we have had beautiful clear skies with bright sunny days.

Yesterday I watched dog sleds zip past my office. It was cool to see the work being done to set up the course and then to see the races. I went out and took some pictures at lunch. Once the racing was done for the day, the big equipment plowed the course into a ridge of snow down the middle of the road, ready for today’s racing. We went downtown and watched the racing. It was a short course with fast dogs. It was difficult to take pictures because they were so fast. The teams were as large as 20 dogs. It was more exciting than the ceremonial start of the Iditarod because they were really racing and really racing fast. We watched all the teams head out. We had lunch and then managed to see many of the teams return on the out and back course.