Cynthia and I braved the elements yesterday and headed for our UU church in Norway, Maine, leaving a bit before 9am. No trouble at all getting there. The snow hadn’t started yet. But during our church service the storm began.

We were having an exciting and amusing Solstice service. Noise makers and drums were brought in to chase away the darkness and witness the return of light and life. So, as we had fun banging and clowning around, the snow began to build up outside.

Hey, we had some serious aspects to the service as well. It wasn’t entirely Pagan, but did have a bit of the Christmas cheer with tree and all, plus some messages for the Christians among the sparse congregation.

Needless to say, we left for home, normally a 35 minute drive, right after the service. We did fine, driving very carefully behind lines of cars behind snow plows, until we made the turn onto rt 117 to Denmark.

Then suddenly, with no warning from anybody (not even from God), we spun off the road. I watched in horror from my driver’s seat as our Subaru Forester slid past a road sign and to the right of some birch trees, and came swinging around down an incline to rest beside a small house. We were unscathed but a bit traumatized.

Suddenly people seemed to appear from nowhere. A small truck with a plow stopped up on the road, people got out and came down to us, a friendly guy from the house came to my window. “Hey, with a little help I think you can back out of here!”, he said.

The people in the truck maneuvered it down by the house and started removing snow from behind our car. Cynthia was invited into the house. Shovels went to work and I was told to back up slowly. Before I knew it, the car was freed and ready to go.

I thanked the people profusely, drove back to the road from the driveway, and followed the savior truck, ever so carefully, back toward Denmark, and then made it up the hill and home.

All this time it had been snowing without let up of course. What a exciting and interesting day we had! Whew… we were sure happy when we emerged from our car safely at home.

Slowly the ice is building up on all the branches, bushes, trees and houses in Maine until finally we have the BIG C

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Yesterday morning I wrote the incomplete sentence above, and appropriately enough we completely lost power just as I was about to put RASH after that big C. ha ha But good old wordpress save what I had written and now I can complete it, just about 24 hours later.

I had “fun” getting our Honda generator going yesterday which partially restored our power, at least heat and light and a few wall switches. Good thing it was fast moving ice storm.

So, the ice storm cometh and the ice storm goeth away. Time marches on. Who knew what the Shadow knew.

I had fun walking up and down our dirt road this afternoon poking around with my walking stick. The temp was in the upper sixties and there was this roaring current under the snow on the shaded side of the road. The stream broke through in a few places but clung to the side as it roared down the hill. The sound of the roaring water can be heard for quite a distance away.

OK, here’s approximately the same shot taken back on Feb. 16. Nice clean snow, huh?

Has there been any progress made in getting rid of the snow? Hard to tell. They almost seem like two different worlds, yet the same. Or not.

So, this is the big Super Tuesday. It finally came. Twenty-four states will be voting but Maine won’t have its Democratic caucus until this Sunday, the 10th. It looks like Hillary and Barack are neck and neck at this point. I favor Barack but will support Hillary if she gets the nomination. John McCain I think is insane in that he’s totally succumbed to warmongering, not that he ever was anything but a warmonger. Whoever becomes President, Hillary or Barack, had better start cutting back on our over-bloated Pentagon and Defense Establishment.

A couple hours later and we’ve cleaned off the driveway, mainly with the snow thrower but we had to shovel next to the street.

Here’s a shot of the turn around space for our Subaru and the start of the path to our front door. Lotsa snow, huh?

Nat fixed the snowthrower! Yeah! He replaced the two sheared off pins with bolts. Here he is over at Kate and Don’s place after he had finished doing our driveway:

Here’s another shot of him with Kate pointing to “the man”:

Finally, here’s our driveway around 11am after Nat finished snowthrowing it: