Morning Flakes

I woke up this morning not expecting THIS:

Apparently, no one else did either because my tire tracks were some of the first to damage the landscape of the Boone roads.....so now I'm in the library because my tires don't exactly read "snow" before them and my sliding and skidding and getting tossed off the road up to Blowing Rock didn't bid well for me making it down the other side safely.
It doesn't look like all that much....maybe 6-8 inches on the roads....but I found the steep hills around here not all that friendly to the Civic (aka "bobsled"), and sliding down a hill backwards is way more out of control than going face first. How did I make it through Montana?? (answer: snow tires....??)

Other fun from the week:
A great hike in the Linville Gorge with Lottie and Trottie:
We hiked for 31/2 hours (about 10 miles), and the only other beings we ran into were two rock climbers and a bunch of icicles. Fortunately we ran into the icicles and not the other way around; because they were nasty looking drippers:
The ride on Sunday was pretty groovy: John Fennel, Ethan, Tyler, his pack mule, Hanky Panky and I shuttled 181 to do a Wilson's Classic: Raspberry to Greentown to Raiders, yippeee! :) Fortunately we only had a couple-3 incidents:

#1

#2
#3: Fennel's tire burp/roll and subsequent tree/rock/ground collision was too brutal for photo taking. But he was a rockstar and got back on his bike to finish the ride. Even though we were only 100 yards in. The rest of the time on the bike was some of the most amazing I've felt in months....new balance.....infinitely more control......super fun......uhhh "shreddin."


This lil dude and I crossed paths last week and I had to halt my day for about 30 minutes to get a good shot or two- his coloring was unlike any I've seen and he was a pretty decent size for his size, ~a dime for his back alone and ~a quarter including his legs.
click to get a close up look at his coloring and markings