Well time has sure passed me by! Last post was in December and here we are with today being the first day in March. Weather has been…tough. Extreme cold with lots of single digit temps overnight coupled with days on end not getting above freezing. And lots of snow, especially a week ago when we received a little over 36” of snow. Yes, 3 feet!! Broke a record for snowfall. It was quite the blizzard with a 74MPH gust recorded right here in town!! We lost power at 3:30 in the morning so I got up and started shoveling outside my workshop door for a place to put the generator. It started right up and in short order we had coffee brewing, lights, refrigerator, and a fire going in the wood burning insert (it has a blower).

I then shoveled on and off for the next 16 hours; the first shovel was the worst as it was the night’s accumulation which was around a foot or so. I then went out frequently to minimize the depth I had to shovel. For a while it was coming down around 3-4” per hour so I’d shovel starting at the house and by the time I reached the street, where I had started shoveling was already a couple of inches deep. They plowed the road two or three times before 8AM but then as it got really bad, they pulled all the plows off the road for the duration of the blizzard.

I was getting really low on generator gas – probably only had a few hours remaining but I saw three RI Energy bucket trucks slowly driving up and down the road with spotlights up on the lines: always a sign they are inspecting to find the cause(s) of the initial outage and to assess if they can readily repair. About the same time my son in law texted me that he was making a gasoline run and offered to refill my cans, which I happily agreed to. As these things often work out, we had power back within an hour of him dropping off my gas so I never ran out/needed to refill the generator!

Speaking of the generator, it was its first time seeing a load since I bought it in January of 2022. I do pull it out a couple of times a year and exercise it but we have not had a power failure (of sufficient duration) to use it since I bought it – over four years!! It ran perfectly although I barely had a load on it; I think I was less than 5% total load. And as to heat, while the ends of the house got cool – around maybe 64 degrees – the central part of the house was quite warm thanks to the wood stove blower.

We already had snow on the ground from January so hiking was difficult. I only got out twice in January for around 20 miles total and only once in February for a really tough 9 mile hike with snow on the ground between 4” to 8” average but some spots more than knee-deep. It was a really tough hike on my knees but I am glad I was able to get out! With this last storm we have close to four feet on the ground – more in areas of drifting!!

I also got out hiking more in the latter portion of December and that enabled me to achieve my goal of 500 hiking miles for last year. But unlike 2024, I also road walked a lot more so my 2025 totals were better than 2024 (yes even allowing for the two weeks from hell with my bypass surgery). So for 2024 I had 49 hikes totaling 517.3 miles and in 2025 I had 45 hikes totaling 502.7 miles. Yes – fewer hikes and less miles. But, 2024 it was 84 walks for 338 miles while 2025 was 203 walks totaling 935.6 miles, so 855.3 total miles in 2024 and 1438.3 total miles in 2025. And on top of that, my total mileage – which includes mowing the lawn, getting the mail, etc. – was 2108.2 miles. And that equated to 4,275, 157 steps!

I just crested the threshold of 70 years old a little over a week ago. I am trying fiercely to not let a number impact my sense of well-being or self-perception but it is a savage fight. Seventy is a huge number! I am absolutely thankful and honored that I am able to actually live to see this number. The more time has passed the more I have come to realize how close I was to never seeing 69 when I had my heart issues. But the medical community did their thing and kept me alive long enough to fix it and get me back to the right side of healthy. But let’s face it – aging accelerates and you just know when that when you turn seventy life is only going to decline for you. The picture with this post sums that up: used AI to have the 70 year old me looking at the 18 year old me. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

As you’ve read over and over here, I hike and walk a lot. I also do at least 50 pushups every night and (depending upon how tired I am) often do 70 (to match my age). I lift weights, with only some regularity now, but that will change as the weather warms and I will get back to three days a week. I try really hard to stave the ever-creeping tides of age and let me tell you right now – it is impossible. You can perhaps slow it, but there is no stopping it! And I swear the older you get the harder it all is – I think I need twice the effort to just come close to maintaining an acceptable level of fitness. But as I have said many times before: I am thrilled to still be alive and well to complain about how hard aging is. I have so many dear friends who are gone – people who were wonderful kind folks and who deserved the chance to grow old but were denied that chance. I do know how lucky I am!! Stay well dear reader and take delight in the thought that days are getting longer and spring is truly right around the corner!