Weekly Mileage #102 and the Maple Sugar Festival

Snow on Friday!

One of Sunshine's co-op classes this term was the puzzles used in escape rooms and how to design one of your own. Monday Mr M and I went to Sunshine's escape room, which wasn't super involved (we had 20 minutes, rather than an hour or whatever most escape rooms allow), but it was harder than we expected. Hidden objects, black light clues, lasers, codes...it was fun!

Monday afternoon we had to stay home and wait for a repair on our water pressure tank. We replaced the pressure tank a year and a half ago when our well pump went out, and the spigot started leaking a week or so ago. The tech said the spigots that came with the pressure tanks have been nothing but trouble and they've had to replace a lot of them. It was a quick and easy fix covered by the warranty (thankfully).

Tuesday morning I rode my bike and managed to break my computer screen as it slid off the deep window sill next to my bike. So frustrating. I called around, and it will be cheaper to repair the screen, replace the battery (it's been having problems for awhile now) and debug to improve the RAM (it's been running super slow and we can't expand the RAM on my computer), than to buy a brand new laptop with more RAM. As much as I wanted to take it in right away, I had to wait until I took the car in on Thursday to see how much it cost to fix some issues it was having. For now, my laptop is still useable, just a pain since screen visibility is reduced by 1/3 and there's horizontal lines through the remaining 2/3.

Wednesday morning I got up and went for a trail run! I've been wanting to do this for awhile now, but have never managed to for one reason or another. Last week I realized I could finally manage it, so I checked my schedule and the forecast and decided on Wednesday morning. I laid out all my clothes and stuff the night before so I wouldn't have any excuses, and then went for a run in 21* weather. Besides being really cold, it was a beautiful morning. Trail running is definitely harder than running on the road or the treadmill, but it felt good and I'll be doing it again.

Wednesday afternoon we went to nature group at a local park. The weather had warmed up a bit, but it was still cold. That didn't deter Ocean from ignoring me and playing in the stream anyway. After awhile he sat down and tried to take his shoes and socks off. I stopped him, and he played for a bit longer, but we were the first to leave when he decided he was done. That'll teach me to put hiking shoes on him instead of boots.

Thursday I took the CRV in for new brake pads, rotors, and calipers ($ouch) we thought/hoped it was just a cheap tire balance issue, but no such luck. We've had this car for more than 13 years and it's been a great, very reliable vehicle, but it's got almost 180k miles and it's starting to show its age 😥Hondas do have longevity, but they still develop issues as they age.

Since the house is reaching the age where everything starts dying (heating/air conditioning and well pump died a year and a half ago), or threatening to die (our water heater), here's another to add to the list that : our microwave died this week. This is a pain, but at least we can survive without it. For awhile, anyway.

Friday morning I did my long run on the treadmill. I'm up to 4 miles total and I ran 2.5 miles of that in .5 mile chunks. It's still feeling pretty good to run, though my left knee is a bit stiff. I've been using my foam roller after running, and it's definitely helping hold aches and pains at bay.

Ocean doesn't take regular naps anymore, but he really needs them, so he'll end up taking random naps once or twice a week when he can't fight the exhaustion anymore. On this occasion I was trying to snuggle him on my lap because I knew he needed a nap, but he didn't want to have anything to do with that. Instead, he dragged the blanket a few feet away and laid on the floor. After a minute or two, I realized he was being very quiet, and when I checked, he was fast asleep, surrounded by couch cushions since the boys do not believe in using couches as they're intended. Couches + cushions = fort building materials.

Saturday we drove to the mountains on the border of West Virginia for the annual Maple Festival. It's been on our calendar for the last few years, but we've never managed to make it. The timing wasn't optimal this year either, but we did it anyway. Sometimes that's just what you have to do. It was fun to see much larger outfits and see that they do things pretty close to how we do (though their boiling setups are much better). We also played in the snow (we got several inches the day before and the mountains got 8+ inches) and tasted some maple flavored goodies. Yummy, but I definitely ate way too much sugar.

If you look closely, you can see the tubing running between their trees.
They had a really nice slope for getting the natural suction going.

We had a busy week, but I've felt pretty good. I've got some thoughts on that that I'll share later in the week.

There were some vendors in one of the small towns that the festival is centered around, and this one caught our eye.
A foot-powered lathe! He let the boys try it out, and they thought it was super cool (check out River's smile).

Weekly Mileage
Tuesday- 10.0 miles biked
Wednesday- 1.45 mile trail run
Wednesday- .5 miles walked at nature group
Friday- 4.00 miles run on the treadmill (2.5 miles total run)
Saturday- .5 miles hiked at sugar camp
total- 16.45 miles

7 hikes towards #52hikechallenge
0 kayak miles towards #365milechallenge

23.95 outdoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
11.15 indoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
60.0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
95.10 miles total