Valentine's Day....Part II and "Snowshoe Thompson"

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Valentines Day Part II...

The re-shipment of the Valentine's Day Flowers arrived on Thursday...and they were beautiful! (Please pardon my feeble attempt to "artfully" arrange the flowers.) Instead of roses, I received some very vibrant red tulips and some gorgeous purple Irises. I loved the rather unique and non-traditional mix of flowers - the colors are stunning!




The irises took a few days to "bloom", but now they're gorgeous! I love irises...and these are exceptionally beautiful! They are much more vibrant in real life - much more purple and less blue. The closeup on the right captures much of the natural beauty of these flowers.





Not to be left out, my Christmas Cactus is blooming even more now in seeming competition with the Valentine's Day flowers!






Snowshoe Thompson...

Friday night, at the Sons of Norway Lodge meeting, the program was about how the Norwegians brought skiing to the US. The program was absolutely fascinating! I learned so much from the slides and the fascinating movie that was shown. Norwegian skis were typically 9 ft long or longer and the skiiers wore baggy wool pants rather than tight aerodynamic ski suits...nothing like modern skiing at all. Most of their skis seemed to be in the 12-14 foot range...with some as long as 18 feet! The Norwegian type of skiing became quite popular in the mining towns of the mid-1800's and competitions arose as a mode of enterainment. One thing that really stuck in my mind was that someone was clocked at 88.5 mph going downhill on Norwegian skis....can you imagine? That's faster than the speed limit on the Interstates!

A Norwegian immigrant named Jon Torsteinson-Rue ("Americanized" to John Thompson and later nicknamed "Snowshoe Thompson") is credited with bringing skiing to the Western US. His skis were wooden and were about 9-12 ft. in length and quite heavy. He settled in the western US after answering an ad for a mail courier in the Sierra's and proceeded to deliver the mail (via skis) between Genoa, Nevada and Placerville, California for 20 years. His mail run was about 90 miles through the mountains near Lake Tahoe - and he did it in record time. I was just amazed!

The local people called him "Snowshoe Thompson" because they'd never seen skis...they'd only seen snowshoes....and evidently, they thought that the Norwegian's just had "funny looking snow shoes"! He was such a hero in the region that they built a memorial honoring him in Genoa, Nevada. The town he was from in the Telemark region of Norway dedicated a huge chunk of granite to be added to the memorial. Believe it or not, Jon was never paid by the postal service for delivering the mail, but he did it anyway. There's a fabulous write up about him here: Snowshoe Thompson if you'd like to read more. It's fascinating!

A little knitting progress...

During the lodge meeting, I also made some great progress on my "Ditto Socks" - I'd nearly completed the cuff of the first sock! I was so busy watching the presentation that I was completely unaware of the progress I'd made! (I had started the evening with only about 3 rows complete.)


Snow Update...

It's been nearly 2 weeks since the back-to-back "big snows", and there's STILL a lot of snow around here! The streets are pretty much clear...except for the melt/re-freeze that is a daily occurence. However, with these mounds of snow, I'm beginning to think that some of the snow banks will STILL be around in April! There are some predictions for snow later this week, but we're all hoping and praying that the forecast changes.....we've had enough - over 76 inches so far this year!