Winter 2, Spring ZERO

I am truly sorry to those of you who would like nothing better than to run in shorts, outside, in the sun, without upping the hypothermia count.  I am enjoying this weather.  Would I prefer 15C for my afternoon runs?  No.  Why?  What is wrong with you?  (This is you talking to me)  Have you taken leave of your senses?  Oh yeah, I forgot.  I'm talking to Pierre...

I invest time (enough to make ultra training look like a shortcut), money (not a lot, but it adds up over the year) and effort into making maple syrup.  If this year had paralleled last year, I would have made 10 litres.  Total.  Suffice it to say that the syrup season is progressing well, albeit late.  Quite late.  I've made syrup in April before, but never light syrup.  Or medium...  Always dark.  Circa April first you start to hear this little shaky-old-man voice in the back of your head stating "The end is near"!  But not (thankfully) this year!  Last weekend (okay, technically still March) I boiled down for 4 days, making 78 litres of syrup.  That's over 3,000 litres of sap that boiled away to steam.  3 tonnes of steam!  I burned 2 bushcord of wood in 4 days.  That's a row of wood 16 inches wide, 4 feet high and 48 feet long.  I have made 100 litres of syrup, so the podium finishers at Creemore Vertical Challenge won't have an overriding desire to lynch me this year.  My militant Users (have you ever dealt with a maple syrup "customer"?) are happy and only halfheartedly threatening me this year.  They know their fix is on the way.

The season will continue into this weekend and possibly next.  Please excuse me while I dance the maple syrup producers jig of joy.  Oh!  And in case you have signed up for Creemore early, and read the fine print, yes, the "early bird" syrup is already bottled.  They are only 250 ml jugs since I do not have the capacity to fill 100 larger jugs (see a future blog regarding my plans for retirement...) but they are both cute and more than simply a sampler of sweet syrup.  Seriously!

So there you have it!  Nothing about running (since I have done little in the last week), nothing about the upcoming Spring Warm-up (yes, I know, I might still be boiling down), but a note on the M season set straight!