FITNESS IS NO MATCH FOR MOTHER NATURE

I just returned (very thankfully) from a very cold but great trip to Seeley Lake, Montana. I say "very thankfully" because my buddy and I managed to get into a bit more sledding ( the cool way to say snowmobiling) than we had bargained for.

First off, we are complete novices to the sport. Secondly we set off into the high country the day after a -31 degree night, but we felt encouraged on that front since the little red line was pushing a balmy 0 or maybe even 5, I can't remember exactly.

Looking like a couple of guys that might be out to shoot an ad for Michelin, we set out on his two brand new, "green" friendly sleds around noon. We struck off over frozen Lake Seeley at as fast a clip as allowed in the break in guide. What a gas! Flying by ice fishing huts, stopping to take the obligatory pics to send to my wife, and laughing and whooping it up. Amazing how fast things can turn around.

About 20 miles farther up, and farther into the wilderness, we suddenly found ourselves on a trail that definitely was not groomed and surely not for the likes of us. When Robert tried to turn around, he quickly mired his sled in some pretty deep snow. I jumped off my sled and after digging some snow away from the sled's drive belt with my heavily mittened hands, I squatted behind the sled and heaved upward in dead-lift fashion. Thanks to all the heavy training, I was able to wrestle the end of the 650 lb. sled up and on to fresh snow. From there, Robert was able to motor it down the ungroomed trail in search of a turn around.

Very pleased with myself and thinking that I could blog about how my training regimen had saved the day, I tried unskillfully to back my sled 200 hundred yards to the nearest turn around. I suddenly became aware that Robert was no where to be seen or heard. After some minutes I saw this dark form staggering toward me from the direction I had just left. Robert had done a much more thorough job of burying his sled about 100 yards from the original sight.
He was exhausted from trying to pull the sled off its side and from trudging through the thigh deep snow and he just sat down huffing.

Neither of us had to look at our watches to know that it was getting late and it was definitely getting colder! We had no choice but to abandon his sled and tandem it down the mountain on my machine lickety-split. Since the second seat is higher and Robert being extremely tall, I gallantly took the rear seat thinking he could block more wind that I.

The difference those few inches made was exponentially bad. I have gone snowshoeing in -30 weather. That was nothing compared to this. In short order, my toes, face and hands were uncommonly uncomfortable, but my knees were in excruciating pain (they were pointed directly into the merciless wind), and we still had many miles to go.

Thanks to Robert's excellent sense of direction, we made it back to the lake in about 1 hour. If it had been left to me, we would have been hopelessly lost since I simply followed him up, having long since consigned my frozen eye glasses to a pocket. On top of that, it was now dark.

As we again passed the ice fishing huts, I remembered our jocular mood on the journey out. All humor was now totally frozen out of me. We stopped at a sporting goods/auto supply company where Dan, the owner said he could take us up then or we could wait till tomorrow to get the sled out. Guess what we opted for!

The trouble was, we still had another grim 10 miles to go on the vehicle which had safely delivered us, but made us pay dearly for our transgressions. When we finally arrived home, looking all the world like those two idiots on the motor scooter in Dumb and Dumber, I could barely hobble on frozen knees into the warmth of the house. Robert turned and gave me a big hug and we both exclaimed, "we're home!" He then said, "How about a scotch?"

"You bet" I said, "no ice!'

By the way, I don't care what kind of shape you are in, if Mother Nature wants you, she can have you---anyway she wants you.

Stay tuned, in the next posting I will show you how "savvy" and skill trumps brawn in a tight spot.

Yours in health,

Walt