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Winter's Back!January 15, 2006 After several ridiculously balmy days -- it must have been around 50 F -- the temperature plunged over a few morning hours to the high 20s. Uhura's doors didn't want to open, and the driver's side window is still stuck shut. Snaps and clasps required hand-warming before they'd open, and I could practically see the ice forming on yesterday's puddles. Last winter the temp took an equally abrupt dive while I was potlucking with friends; hard rain turned to heavy snow. When we emerged warm and well-fed to start our drives home, everyone's car doors were frozen solid. Whatever ice-picking, -scraping, and -thawing devices anyone had were, of course, inside the vehicle. Some bright soul thought of hot water; we started a hot-water bottle brigade from the house and soon all the doors were thawed. Engines running, heaters blowing, the sound of windshield scrapers was heard in the land. Today wasn't nearly so bad, but the wind was pretty wild and it felt like about 10 degrees out. Naturally I decided to go for a trail ride. Allie Fuzz-Bucket was up for it; she was up, period. Out at the construction site, where the Lobdells' handsome boat "shed" (shed, hah: it's a gorgeous post-and-beam barn, but Jim thinks that if we call it that, pretty soon we'll have horses living in it and there won't be any place to work on the boats) is nearing completion, half a dozen flapping tarps waved us on our way. Allie doesn't like tarps, especially when they flap at her; as if a 30-degree drop in temperature wasn't enough to pump her up! From beginning to end she forged ahead like a pint-size locomotive. Two dogs confronted us approaching the short, steep switchback that leads down to the Mai Fane farmhouse: a Boston terrier and a black probably-Lab-and-border-collie mix. The Boston was the bolder of the two, but he skedaddled when his yapping didn't slow Allie down. Rhodry would have taught him better manners, but I'd left Rhodry in Allie's stall: he's still a little limpy from the strained foreleg he gave himself a few days ago. We were out about an hour. Despite the cold, Allie worked up a little sweat, so I turned her out in her fleece cooler-sheet. It's navy blue with maroon trim, and she looks quite spiffy in it. Next time the other horses razz her about her meager wardrobe, she can score some points on that.
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