Crunching along through the snow and ice with the dog, a couple days ago, I was startled by the sight of two red-bellied woodpeckers falling into the snow almost at our feet. They were “at” each other and too busy to notice us right away. This gave us a chance to watch the show—two long-billed, nine-to-ten-inch, black-white-and-red birds active as they fell and active where they landed. In a moment or two, they noticed us standing over them and hastened away, one after the other, to a tree across the street. The first one had no sooner landed there than the second one arrived and ordered the first one to leave. When the first one flew to the next tree over, that was the end of whatever was going on.
Don, our friend most likely to be able to explain these goings-on, came up blank, but he says woodpeckers are very territorial, and what we saw was probably saw a territorial dispute. My sister Carol, whose feeders are visited constantly by woodpeckers from downies to what she calls pillies, said maybe it was a sibling squabble. Ho, ho, ho.
Last week’s acquisition of new microspikes for my boots turns out to have been a timely one. They’ve been getting quite the workout on this week’s ice, of which we’ve had plenty. Temperatures are hovering around freezing now, though, which means all the lovely hockey rinks cleared on Thurston Pond are melting. It was too foggy yesterday morning to tell whether anyone had collected the goal nets while the ice was strong enough for that to happen safely.
One day in college, we students woke to find campus was a sheet of ice. If we’d had skates, we could have used them to get to class. This was back in the days when the university didn’t close for any kind of weather. Those with the power to make such a decision seemed to figure we were young and walked to class, so we’d get there one way or another. Who could say what they figured for the faculty? In any case, classes were held.
The ice we’ve had this week isn’t as smooth as that long-ago ice, but it’s just as slippery. When my husband took the trash bins out to the curb, midweek, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get back up the driveway. I keep trying to interest him in microspikes for his own boots, but he hasn’t bitten yet.
Last night, neighbors from the court swelled the number of attendees for a talk at the Dexter District Library. We carpooled there to see another neighbor, Ovidiu Adam, give a presentation on the Flying Dutchman. No, not the legendary sailing vessel doomed to sail forever. The other Flying Dutchman: the two-person, heavyweight dinghy sailed in the Olympics and other big-time races as well as by recreational sailors.
Ovidiu owns a Flying Dutchman himself and was instrumental in the purchase of one by the University of Michigan Sailing Club, of which he is a member. He is a passionate sailor, who started sailing competitively for his country’s team when he was a fifteen-year-old in Romania. He and his brother Razvan sailed Ovidiu’s Flying Dutchman at the last International North American Flying Dutchman Championship and won. Ovidiu has already made plans to compete in this year’s world championships, which will be held in Florida.
So, how do sailors from, say, Europe get their boats to Florida? They form groups of six and rent a container, the kind that ships transport. The Europeans have access to “racks and bunks” that can be fitted inside a container, and into which six boats can be neatly slid. Pretty nifty, huh? Ovidiu says Europeans are used to doing this.
The talk was a special presentation of the sailing club, and the library venue, believe me, was a lot spiffier than where the sailing club held meetings many years ago, when my husband and I were members. It used to meet in a classroom in West Engin. We cherish the memory of a meeting there one night, during which we all watched a sailing video. One member was so entranced by the on-screen image of a heeling boat that he fell right out of his chair.
No one fell out of a chair last night. The after-dark trek to Dexter and back, through the fog, felt like an adventure in Cory’s new car. It was even more fun in good company, in support of one of our own who spoke on a subject about which he cares deeply. Maybe we should carpool to the Worlds in Florida.
26 January 2024