What a guy! Thomas Lackey is celebrating his 90th birthday by becoming the oldest person ever to wing walk, breaking his own record set last year. He did it in the UK on Guinness World Record Day, last Thursday 18 November. He is all over the news right now. He says he thinks about his wife when he's up in the air and carries her photo up there with him. Earlier this year I wrote a post I called "
Think Skydivers Are Crazy?" with a picture of two people ostensibly playing ping-pong while wing walking in 1927. People have been doing crazy stuff for quite awhile. Some of us use high-risk behavior as a way to cope with everyday stress. Tom had a heart attack awhile back and one friend said the only difference is that now he needs a little help from his friends to climb onto the wing.
The weather has turned amazingly cold and wintery here in Bellingham. On Friday night it snowed all night long and cold air blew down from British Columbia, with winds steady at 25mph and gusts to 45. I took this picture yesterday morning from inside my cozy abode showing the fence separating our apartment complex from the neighbors next door.
I think there was at least three inches of snow, but only 15 miles south of Bellingham in Mt. Vernon, there was no snow. The cold air didn't make it down that far and so their precipitation fell in the form of rain. I waited yesterday for the first bus of the day at 9:45am (which was happily only two minutes late as I stood out in the wind) and went to downtown Bellingham. I was thinking of taking a nice walk, but this is what the sidewalks looked like.
I don't know if that picture is sufficient to show what walking on the frozen sidewalks was really like, but I sure wished I had cleats on the bottoms of my boots, because I had to shuffle along instead of stride in order to stay upright. Finding the Farmers' Market all but deserted, I took the bus to Fairhaven, a few miles south of downtown and bought myself yarn to make a new hat, along with a good book to read as well. I noticed that in only this short distance south, the amount of snow that had fallen was much lighter.
Once I got home, I figured I could write a new blog post this morning and settle in with my book and knitting, foregoing any outside adventures. Tomorrow I'll get my usual workout at the gym by taking the bus, keeping my car in the driveway. The snow and freezing temperatures are not expected to let up until Wednesday. By Thanksgiving Day we should be back to our normal above-freezing temperatures. I saw one of the local Northern Flickers on the finch feeder. This is not the greatest picture, but I took it from inside and couldn't use the flash, as it would have reflected back from the window. The finches use the feeder by hanging upside down and sticking their beaks into the slot located below. He didn't know that, and obviously didn't need to worry about it, as he could use the entire feeder to his heart's content. I also have two suet feeders that he uses all the time, but he needs other nourishment too, in order to keep himself warm.
We all have coping mechanisms for dealing with the stresses and strains of our lives. I jump out of perfectly good airplanes and hike in the mountains. What's yours?
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