Chicken in the bathroom

OK, it’s 4:00 am and the moon reflects off the snow as you trudge to the bathroom to relieve yourself. The legs that rolled through a steady 15 miler coiling and uncoiling with almost effortless-unconsciousness just hours before now threaten to teeter and tumble at the slightest disturbance. My equilibrium has always had a way of taking a hike at the times when my body is rather disgruntled at being awake. Then again it could be that my first step is usually on the jumbo-size dog bed and/or slumbering 170 lbs dog that sleeps next to the bed. Yes, next to the bed. He slept sleep on the bed with Elizabeth and me until it was discovered that I was unable to keep from rolling into the crater in the middle of the bed, for which he is responsible. Picture a 170 lbs bowling ball lying in the middle of the bed for 8-10 hours a day. Bottom line is...Charlie's a mattress killer! Perhaps we should get a sleep number bed. -It is when I get to the bathroom and right before I turn on the light that I am reminded of the chicken living in our bathroom. Chicken's have this wonderful way of cooing as they sleep. First they slowly breathe in, and then as they breathe out they produce a gentle fairytale soothing coo. It’s lovely. Acorn II is a miniature; a chicken of the feather-footed Bantam variety. He stands about 8 inches at the comb and is a prefect little feather-footed rooster complete with his miniature cock-a-doodle-do. The females produce there own miniature eggs. My wife loves Bantam’s because, “they are the sweetest and make the best mothers, and the roosters all get along.” …there so you know the criteria by which we choose our chickens; hardly substance farming. It is easy in winter to feel that you are the only organism that feels cold, especially when you are out on a 3 hour training ride in 6 layers and a frosty beard and the deer (we have astounding numbers of deer in Oneonta) don’t even own a sweater. How do they get by without wool? -As it turns out Acorn II (I actually call him Egg) got in an altercation with some of his normally friendly neighbors, got pecked at, and at some point must have run through his water dish. The result was severely frostbitten little feathered feet. The end product being a high class all expenses stay upstairs penthouse bathroom. He spent his first night in the shower and has subsequently been given run of the bathroom. He has become quite a little fixture in our room of rest. One now always has someone to talk to when you are doing your business; Charlie has someone to sniff every morning, and the cats (two of them former barn cats) have something to watch during the long winter days. We are hoping that within the next couple of weeks Acorn II can return to general population. Until them as I move from the porcelain throne to put on my cycling bib’s it’s, “Good morning Egg….uh…Acorn III”

Gotta love up-state New York

Oneonta New York …truth be told I love it here. I love it here even when outside the temperature is 4 and the windchill is -12. Even when the boogers freeze to the inside of your nostrils and you can actually, with pinpoint accuracy sense precisely where your mitten ends and your jacket cuff begins. This line so finite and thus definite that one may feel as though they are passing their arm through 1mm thick viscous ice wall, or a 1mm thick wall of lava. It’s that cold…you can’t even tell the difference. Ah, but the sun is bright and the snow porcelain white. One is left with the feeling that everything including the rocks are sleeping, dead, or cryogenically suspended. Your footsteps thump a rhythm and the snow exudes the acoustics of Styrofoam. This is solitude.