Winter Carnival and long winter weekend

Yesterday was the Winter Carnival for Ben and the other kids at the Lake Clear School...Ben wasn't feeling well, but he wanted to participate...I was luckily able to go over and watch/help...


He had a great time playing with his friends in the snow...


It started raining most of the way through the festivities, but they kept playing and having fun...


This morning, neither Ben nor I have school, so we're enjoying a mellow day together while it drizzles and melts outside...Ben asked for a funky breakfast, stuff that he has never had before...I made pancakes with various add-ins (clockwise from the top):

• ginger
• mandarin orange
• marshmallows
• hot dogs
• popcorn
  

He ate in his Darth Sidious costume because that's how we roll on our days off...we're now watching "Hancock", which is a great story, although a little rich in rough language...

Winter Carnival Fireworks!

Yesterday afternoon, we got a call from George Bailey, a teacher that I work with over in LP...he wanted to go and clean off his plane, which lives at the Lake Clear Airport, and offered us a ride in exchange for some company and help...we met him over at the airport and headed over to his plane...the weather didn't work out for a flight, but it's always cool to see George and to explore the inside of the wire at the airport...


Ben in his plane-cleaning outfit was ready to go to work...looking pretty serious about his job of light-aircraft squeegee-er...


Gail in the Element with a spiffy beret and a Winter Carnival button...

After dark, we headed over to Saranac Lake to see the opening ceremonies of the Winter Carnival...the lighting of the pirate ship and the ice castle, and the fireworks, which are always fun...even in a freezing drizzle like we had last night...

My little camera is simple and tough, but it does not do very well in dark conditions with occasional flashes...it's just not that smart...Gail did a great job of taking pictures, while Ben rode on my shoulders to get a view from over the crowd...


The fireworks started off when the pirate ship launched some fireworks at the ice castle...a clever little gambit that unfortunately resulted in the furled sails of the pirate ship catching on fire (more on that later in the blog)...the ice castle responded in kind, and the fireworks display was off and running...


Maybe because of the mist and hanging in the air, the light from the fireworks reflected all over the area where we were standing in a really impressive way, and the booms/whistles/screams/pops from the various kinds of explosions were amazing...


The organizers (choreographers?) of the fireworks did a great job of mixing high altitude explosions with low-level light shows just above the turrets of the castle...


Ben was captivated the entire time, giving a blow by blow description of the size and color and sounds and closeness of the explosions...at one point a shift in the wind brought some of the rocket material down all around us (with some pieces landing on the sleeves of my coat, and a still flaming fragment touching down on some nearby fireworks-watchers, luckily out-of-towners)...Ben thought the whole thing, including the near-incineration of our short-term neighbors, was AWESOME!!!



It was at this point in the celebration that people began to notice the smoldering and smoking sails on the pirate ship, and a minute later, the arrival of a couple of fire engines...Ben, and all of the children around us, thought that this was a highlight of the fireworks display...while the firemen unloaded their hoses and got ready to assault the conflagration on the pirate ship...


As a particularly huge series of booms and technicolor explosions, both high and low, went off above the castle, the SLVFD ran a hose into the pirate ship and ran around the side, entering where Ben had played only hours earlier, and hosed down the sails and mast and flag while everyone cheered...some for the firemen, some for the fireworks, some for both...


The ending of the fireworks display was a pleasant assault on our eyes and ears and noses (yummy sulfur smell!) that went on for minutes before leaving all of us in a thunderous silence, which the gathered crowd swiftly filled with applause and cheers before wandering back to our cars...all of us remarking that this may have been the best Winter Carnival Fireworks display ever!

Thanks Saranac Lake for a fun time with the Winter Carnival so far!

Saranac Lake Winter Carnival, part 1

Ben and I visited the ice castle in Saranac Lake today...this year's version is awesome!!!


There was a neat sign with some history of the village and the Winter Carnival and the ice castle...we've had a good year for building an ice castles...lots of cold weather and not too much insulating snow on top of the frozen lake from which they carve the blocks of ice...this combination allowed the makers of the ice castle to cut really big blocks of ice to aid in their construction efforts this year...



This year's theme is "Pirate's of the Adirondacks", and in the picture above, Ben was helpfully pointing out one of the cannons carved out of ice in front of the main gate leading into the ice castle...


That's Ben seated on one of the thrones inside the main chamber of the ice castle...yup, it's really tall...


This little outbuilding overlooks the boat launch, and itself is made from a couple of hundred of the huge blocks of ice, and has a functional wooden door built into the wall...


Out on the front porch of the outbuilding, there are a couple of Adirondack chairs made of...wait for it...ice...


Around the back of the ice castle is a maze made of ice walls about 8 feet high...in some places you can see aquatic plants frozen into the ice, and while walking through the maze, Ben and I could see people through the blocks of ice...


In one part of the maze, there was a tunnel that Ben crawled through to get back to the main chamber of the ice castle...the tunnel was 20-30 feet long...


While we were checking out the ice castle, Ben and I heard some bagpipe music, and turned around to see the Winter Carnival King at the head of a procession...


A procession of people heading over to a cleared area on the lake, where the local curling club was getting ready to have a demonstration and tournament...


Ben and I hung out for a while watching the players hurl and sweep in this classically Scottish pastime...Ben has Scottish blood running through his veins, and thusly appreciates both sports and forms of combat that involve throwing heavy rocks...


After watching the curling for a bit, we wandered over to the prize of this year's ice collection...the ginormous pirate ship...


Not only was it cool to look at from the outside, but it was beautifully built, and had an open deign that allowed people to get inside and explore it...


This picture is of Ben inside the ship, up on the upper deck behind the steering wheel...

The great ice and superb planners have really outdone themselves this year...we'll be back tonight for the fireworks, and we can't wait...

Why my job rocks, part #47

Every winter at the end of January, beginning of February, this whole area celebrates winter in a Winter Carnival...Saranac Lake Celebrates as a town (this year is their 111th Winter Carnival) and the Lake Placid School system celebrates in what is the longest continuously running Winter Carnival held by any school in the country (and likely the universe!)...we took off Thursday and Friday from the drudgery of book-learning to enjoy the outdoors and excessive cold of the North Country with our student...it was super!


Thursday we had the opening ceremonies (speakers, Carnival royalty, the school band, etc.) and then we headed out into the cold for an afternoon of skating and sliding...Mirror lake (the lake on which most of the town of Lake Placid is around) is plowed off to allow people to skate on one part of it, and the rest of us climb the toboggan tower and slide on wooden sled down an icy track onto, and across the lake...it is awesome and noisy and bumpy and scary and fun and really cold...


The people running the toboggan tower cram 3-4 people in each sled and throw them down the tracks...you are going screaming fast by the time you are halfway down the incline and once you hit the ice on the lake are going just incredibly fast (they have a warning for people with heart conditions, back conditions, mental instability, over-developed sense of safety, etc.) and once you are out on the ice you inevitably start to spin in slow circles while the still shooting across the lake...


The runway across the ice is plowed smooth for about 300 yards, and if you have enough mass in your sled (as mine somehow always does...) you can end up overshooting it, which yields a dramatic slow-down in a cloud of powdery snow and a bumpy grinding to a halt of the sled...followed by a long walk back across the lake...


Here you can see my sled (of course I have a student carry it) on the way up to the top...it was a beautiful day, although just ridiculously cold...it stayed below zero all day, and got windy in the afternoon, yielding windchill temperatures in the 20s to 30s below zeros...




This is my sled team at the end of our first run...if you click on the picture to enlarge it you can barely make out in the extreme distance the toboggan tower...it is an incredible ride...howling down the track, a blur of faces to one side as you listen to a high-pitched scream that may be yours or may be your sled-mates, and then BOOM!, you're out on the ice and begin to rotate in the circle, seeing all of the mountains and bright blue sky growing up and away from you in every direction as you continue to rocket across the lake...


The kids kept warm by running back to cram in as many rides as they could in the afternoon...we were all stiff with cold and happy at the end of the day!



On Friday, we all go over to Whiteface for a day of free skiing...the mountain gives all of us lift-tickets and rentals and lessons for the day, and we run wild on the hill...we teachers spend the first little while helping kids get outfitted and buckled (I chose blades this year, really short skis with both ends tilted up so that I can actually ski backwards), but may try out a snowboard next year...


Once everyone is set, we head out and up onto the mountain...lots of the kids take lessons, and then disappear all over the huge mountain...


This year we seemed to have the mountain almost to ourselves, which was really nice...Lake Placid kids skiing everywhere, having fun and enjoying the company of their classmates and teachers during a perfect day outside of the classroom...a great way to break up the winter doldrums...


, and the day was much warmer than Thursday had been...up into the 20s and sunny, with a blue sky all day long (after a little snow in the early morning)...it was awesome!...


Here is a reachout picture of me and one of my students on the chairlift zooming up the mountain after lessons were done...the kids of Lake Placid seem to be fearless, and I spent lots of the day playing the "cautious old man" card, and keeping the kids that I skied with from too dramatically over-reaching their skill levels...the great news was that everyone had a great time, and none of our students got hurt...


Here is a picture of one of my students and a fellow Grade 6 teacher, George Bailey, up at the top of the mountain, after barely convincing the enthusiastic student not to try his luck with Bear, a black diamond trail...just yet...


We had much better luck skiing on one of the easier, wide open and almost empty, trails that would bring us back down to the lift for another run (and another, and another, and another...sigh...fun day)...You may not have noticed in the previous picture, but George was wearing cross-country skis and spent his day making graceful telemark turns while our students (including the one pictured above) generally zoomed down the mountain in straight lines to maximize their speed and chance of early death...I took advantage of the day and my blades to spend the day zooming and turning and sometimes skiing backwards, taking pictures of the kids and teachers that I work with and enjoying the sun and the cold and the freedom and the awesomeness of my job...

To hammer home the point even further, we got back to the building, had a paycheck waiting in our mailboxes, and were released to the weekend early...


On the way home, I took a picture of this year's ice castle (in Saranac Lake) out of my car window...we'll be visiting it today with Ben, and watching fireworks over the frozen lake tonight...

Belated Superbowl Weekend Pics

Sorry for the delay, this time of year either gets busy, or I get less efficient (or both)...


Ben likes "toad in the hole" for breakfast on weekends, so I sometimes make them for him...it's an egg fried inside a piece of toast...Ben even likes the "bread cookies" made by butting out the center hole...


He likes his with catsup, so I made a smiley face...


We went over to our friends house for the Superbowl, which turned out to be a food-fest at which a game of football was also watched...this is the proper emphasis in my book...Gail and Rebecca enjoyed a couple of appropriately wintry drinks while the fun was going on...


The kids, Ben and Ayla and Autumn and Ripple, all played nicely together the whole time, and everyone (myself included) stayed up too late...



Topher enjoying a piglet in a blanket...


Ayla with some pro-Cardinals warpaint and a perfectly balanced Superbowl supper...


Ben and Ayla had almost too much fun playing during our visit...


Everyone loved the 3D glasses and the 3D commercial...as far as I could tell, there was only the one really 3D-tastic effect, but the glasses were fun!


Ripple is a cutie-pie, although since Penny has joined our household, she looks almost too black...she's not though, she's perfect!


Ben produced some lovely poems at school, which I am sharing with you...