Sunday February 25, 2007 was a busy day.  I was having trouble with my furnace at home and I had to stick around most of the early part of the day waiting for a repair man to arrive.  My furnace is only about 7 or 8 months old so it is still under warranty.  For some reason the furnace keeps shutting off needing to be reset before it will continue to run.  I reset it a few times before I got tired and decided the company that installed the unit should get involved to help permanently fix the problem.  I’m glad we got a vent-less gas log for the fireplace in our family room a couple years ago.  I was able to turn on this gas log and keep the house relatively warm during the periods when the furnace wasn’t working.  Turns out water was leaking into the blower from the humidifier.  Once the water was fully removed and the humidifier fixed the problem went away. 

The furnace guy was gone around 2:30 pm and I was looking to get outside for a hike.  I got a called Bob on cell phone and asked if he wanted to do a hike.  Bob had already gone for a run early, but he was still interested in doing a hike.  Bob was out driving when I called him and he just swung by and picked me up.  We parked his van in the small lot next to Paint Creek Trail off Tienken. 

Once on the trail we headed north.  There were quite a few people out walking and running when we first started.  As we got further north the amount of people dwindled.  We only went about two miles north until we got to Silverbell Road.  We turned around and headed back right at the point where the trail meets Silverbell.  The wind was starting to pick up on the hike back south making it a little cooler.  We also started to get a few snow flakes in our face during the southern part of our hike.  It wasn’t a heavy snow, just a few light flakes blowing around going sideways a good portion of their flight.  Someone must have been out earlier in the day riding their horse because we had to dodge the physical evidence left behind on the trail by the horse.  Every so often we will be out on the trail when the horse back riders are on the trail and go right past them.  You sure get a good feel for how large these animals are when you pass by them so closely. 

Turns out this was the exact same route Bob had run earlier.  So, he ended up covering the same area, one timing running and then the second time walking.   

It was around 3:00 pm by the time we got onto the trail.  It took us just a little over an hour to do the full four miles.  Over all it was nice to be out on the trail after having been cooped up inside with the furnace repair guy.  It was later in the day than we normally start out.  Because it was later in the day we had already eaten lunch and we didn’t include a meal like we would typically do in the middle of the activity. 

Following are the statistics from this hike, I estimate we went hiked right around 4.0 miles at a nice pace of approximately 3.5 to 3.8 mph.    
David Lindquist