Gentlemen, start your chainsaws

Oddly enough, I'm glad the above-freezing days didn't last too long. It was getting kind of mushy around here, and I was worried we'd lose too much snow for my snowshoeing excursion over the weekend.

No problem there. Not only have temps dropped to a comfortable 20-to-negative-5 range, but we got a fresh few inches of snow a couple of days after the chinook winds left.

But the warm temperatures had me feeling revived, and on Saturday I propped my snowshoes over my shoulder and ambled to Creamer's to give 'em a test run.

The trails were eerily unpopulated for 10 a.m. on a Saturday, which made me feel like I was tresspassing. The borealis forest trail -- a one-mile loop through the forest behind the field -- was well-packed, so snowshoes seemed like overkill, but that's what I was here for, so I strapped 'em on near the open field and took a few oblong-shaped routes before deciding, in a very amateur opinion, that I was doing it somewhat correctly.

I did seem to be sinking into the snow a little more than expected, and later that night at The Marlin I voiced this worry to a local. They're not floatation devices, he told me (I knew this, but didn't want to interrupt). "If you sank this far," he said with his right hand stacked about a foot above his left, "then you would have sank this far in boots." He dropped his left hand another foot or so.

But back to that morning, when my slight success garnered me the gumption to try the trails at Birch Hill. Turns out they're mostly for cross-country skiing, so i had to go crosstown to try a trail on the UAF North Campus area.

I didn't just learn about snowshoeing that day. LAter at an Ice Dogs game, I found out why intermissions in hockey games are 15 minutes long: so everyone has time to get a beer.

Honestly, had I known that alcohol was the key to understanding hockey, I woulda been one hell of a Lightning fan. Just clutching a cold one in my hand for the entirely of the game gave me the desire to root, high-five and pound on the plexiglass.

Later that week, the World Ice Art Championships began near the railyard and I stopped by one day before work to check it out.

There was a small single-wide building (what us Florida kids call "portables") with signs about ticketing and souvenirs, but I briskly walked around it. It didn't look open and, besides, why would I buy a ticket to see some unmade ice carvings?

But I was stopped by a charming old lady on the other end of the building who informed me that I didn't have a ticket and brought me inside the souvenir shoppe. I got some "gotcha!" looks from other ladies in the portable. Really? I thought, I'm a 23-year-old in khakis and a collared shirt trying to walk into an ice-art exhibit, not a 16-year-old punk sneaking into the back door of a movie theater.

It was 10 bucks a day. My jaw dropped and I made a bee-line to the door ... until I heard it was $25 for an unlimited pass. "You should really open with that, y'know," I said as I signed the credit slip.

So I got in and got a few shots of the single-block competition:

Obviously, more from this later. 'Til then, stay warm, people.