first wknd in VT

left last thursday with a carload of essentials. tele skis, snowboard, poles, hiking boots, hats, gloves, 2 bikes, cpl extra wheels, air mattress, 12 pack of beer. crap, forgot the baby. kidding.

our first wknd was surreal. temps soared into the low 60's, breaking every record on the books. then the rains came. and came. not sure how much fell, but the Mad River was a ragin'! got-out for a short ride on friday afternoon, was in short sleeves, would hit a cool patch of air, freeze, then hit a warm patch. was kinda like swimming in a lake in early summer. you find a warm spot (and i'm not talking about one you create by peeing), but it passes by way too quickly and soon your nipples are harder than a diamond-tip something or other. that being said, my lawn was green and it felt like Spring, perfect opportunity to survey our 1.2 acres of bliss and clean-up the property.

sunday morning our new neighbors popped-by, super nice folks, a btl of maple syrup in hand. apparently they tap the stand of maple trees from below our house up the hill aways - old school style - with buckets and taps, none of this plastic hosing crap. the cpl-few nice maples on our property are part of their sugarbush and we're more than happy to have them work our trees for a bit of syrup!

after meeting the neighbors, i hit-up Mt Ellen with Mike for a cpl runs on some real new england hard pack, and by that i mean rock hard. my brain was telling my legs to turn, but my legs refused. down. and again. down. and again. mike tore it up, but that's expected, that dude rips! next wknd it's all tele for me. the snowboard is getting hung-up. period. time to learn something new. while i was on the hill, jenn and sarah went for a walk and quickly found some nice trails a few hundred feet from our door which they explored with the zeal i'd expect.

work has been good this week, getting stuff done, but i can't wait to get back to VT! to make it feel more like home i snagged one of those wheels-about-to-fall-off Uhaul trucks to drag a bunch of our crap up there this wknd (like our cooking gear, what's life w/o good food!?)

what's crazy is we get DSL on our dirt road in backwoods Vermont and it's faster than anything you could get in Boston - and was hooked-up in less than 2 days! Vermont is pushing hard to become the most wired state in the country - and it shows. more on that later...