Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Holiday Memories

Christmas is one of those nostalgic times. I was back up North a couple weeks ago, visiting my parents who still live in the great white north, and my mom shared some old photos with me, and I got a bit nostalgic. Although I am totally a California girl, seemingly switched at birth and forced to live for the first 17 years in the Midwest...I did have a pretty fun childhood...and here are some of those memories. These are the early years...note the presence of snow and winter in so many of them.

Christmas time, 1978
First winter in Upper Michigan (1978)
Yes, that really is a snowbank! This is the front porch of my folks' house! Yes, the snowbank is taller than I! (that year, it snowed 380 inches, or something insane like that). After the roof was shoveled a couple of times, the snowbank on the ground met the one from the roof, and you sometimes couldn't see out the windows anymore!
1979, fall. (Quincy Copper Mine Hoist in the background)
1979...my first dog...my English Setter, Louie (oh, and my grandma, little sis, and dad, too)


Anyway, I was up there to get an alumni award at Michigan Tech, so here's some more recent photos, too!

Getting my 1.5 minutes of fame at MTU commencement.

My dad and I while out snowshoeing.
And my mom and I. This was a silly sign I saw on the ski trail I had to pass by while snowshoeing. Check out all the icons! And I was happy to see that this was a "dog trail!" I found out later what that meant...when someone came by on XC skis, with a dog harnessed up! Skijoring is quite popular now, I suppose! Looks fun.

Yes, this is an industrial-strength snowblower cutting back the banks, and a dumptruck following along to 'catch' the snow!

Now, hence anyone get the wrong idea....it was fun to visit 'winter' for a few days...but it sure was nice to have the last 6 days on the bike, outside in the beautiful crisp Santa Barbara air...sun, no snow, (a little frost a couple of mornings) and the company of friends.

It is a Merry Christmas.

Ciao!

3 comments:

Chris said...

You have aged well. Merry Christmas.

Itinerant Rick said...

The snow looks pretty, but I know I would only tolerate it for about 5 minutes! You look all official up on that podium with your garb. Cool.

We just got back from Christmas on the central coast and lots of nice bike riding - my kind of Christmas! We hope you have a happy New Year! See you at Kern!

-Chatterbox (too lazy to log him out)

Itinerant Rick said...

And this one is really me, not Chatterbox doing the imitating.

I grew up in the mountainous west; hundreds of inches of snow, and temps that could get down into the -40 to -50 range at times. Loved that, but it was hard to bike in for 6 months of the year, but cross country skiing was great. But now we revel in the fact that it is raining and we can still go out for a couple hours on the bike.

See you at Kern (where I will be support duty), and other races this year. For now Chatterbox is nixing the Sea Otter .. but there is still time to change her mind ;-)