3 PM: About to go Snowshoeing...

We watched "Burn after reading" last night, boy did we laugh out loud almost through the whole movie. In the morning, as we got ready to go for some breakfast at Elmer's in Ashfield, we're still chuckling about some of the scene's. Another great movie made by the Cohen Brothers, if you haven't seen it yet... don't wait any longer!!!
Ashfield is the nearest town for Abbot and Sarah, about 3 miles downhill, most of it dirt-road, is very small. But it has a few things to offer and it also starts to get famous. Elmer's is the former general store and now a Katrina victim made a restaurant out of it. I met Nan Parati the first time today, even though I've been to her place many times in my previous visits. I asked her about missing New Orleans... Yes, she does and she goes back every year a few times. Maybe I'll meet her at Jazz Fest, in the "Barn 12". Breakfast is really good every table busy with eating folks from near and far. A friend of Abbot and Sarah was there with his son and girlfriend who live in San Francisco. Just after we finished eating and I was about ready to try to go on-line we got thrown out because more hungry folks trying to get a table to eat.
We went for a little tour of the surrounding area to see the damage of the ice-storm that hit the Berkshire Mountains about a week ago. A ice-storm is when it rains and it freezes immediately on whatever it lands. In this case it's trees that build up too much ice and then they break, some just lost the top or bigger branches, some broke in half and others uprooted and crashed onto other trees and toke them down too, a very devastating result, it reminded me much of what I saw in Louisiana after Katrina's attack on nature. A big loss of Maple-trees, or sugar-bush as the locals call it, will cause a big loss of income for farmers or individuals who make sugar starting in about a month when the days are getting warmer and juices start flowing in the trees again. But then again, lots of firewood will be flooding the market the next fall.
The weather is a bit warmer then in previous days and the sky blue and the sun warming, a fine day for some snowshoeing. Abbot and I head to Colerain to visit Terry and from there we're going to snowshoe right out of his place into the woods... At 3 we were just about ready to go on this new adventure. I never done this before...