This Week In Hubbard Park: Hurricane Arthur, and More

Overlooking Mirror Lake and Hubbard Park on a "mint" July 4th weekend.

Visit #879, Monday 30 June 14, 5:45-8:10PM, 5.0 miles.
Temps in the 80's, sunny and pleasant.

Visit #880, Friday 4 July 14, 10:15-11:20AM, mileage n/a.
Temps in the mid-70s, very humid with developing rain, an extended effect of Hurricane Arthur.

Visit #881, Saturday 5 July 14, 12:05-2:50PM, 5.1 miles.
Temps in the 80's, sunny, dry, and breezy.

After last week's work, I had left unfinished the dismantling of the mountain bikers' stunts. There was a second one to be removed, so I returned to Hubbard Park on Monday to do so.

Here it was:

I came prepared with all sorts of tools but when I actually set to work, I merely needed my hands.

That done, I reached the top of the trail and hiked back to Hubbard Park proper via the I-691 walkbridge. As I crossed the highway, I noticed the flags which were fastened to the fencing in time for Memorial Day, were gone.

Monday's theme developed to be "textiles".

I found a bath towel:

An XXL t-shirt:

And a pair of basketball shorts:

But Monday's interesting find was this:

What is it? It's a workout schedule for performing pushups, written on a paper bag. Ah, but the irony comes from what was INSIDE the bag.

Eclipsing Insanity and PX-90 workouts, it's the latest in training regimens; beer pushups! I'll bet Americans will jump on that!

I filed the workout package where I put ALL trendy exercise regimens:

Thursday night Meriden experienced high wind and rain. There was to be a brief respite on Friday morning before the rain returned as Hurricane Arthur traveled north off the eastern seaboard. So I took the opportunity Friday morning to tour the trails in Hubbard Park on my mountain bike to check for any downed trees or other trail damage. While riding up Reservoir Avenue enroute to the park, I came upon a telephone pole which was knocked down by a falling tree limb.

During the week of 22 July 2012, 2 large trees fell across the Main Trail from a heavy wind and rain storm.

In the photo above, you can only see the foreground tree. Unfortunately, both trees did not drop completely to the ground and became "widowmakers".

Back then, Paul Bernier and I did our best to restore the trail but the trees would have to remain until they fell to the ground.

Here you can see the tree in the background which is left leaning.

Well, during Thursday/Friday, the foreground tree reached earth, blocking the trail. My recon bike ride on Friday paid off. My job on Saturday was to remove the tree from the trail.

It took a while as my chainsaw bar got stuck once, but I was successful.

The tree in the background will have to wait for another storm.

From here, I took advantage of my chainsaw and hiked up toward Castle Craig where I'd received reports of a small tree across the Blue Trail.

I headed back down, retracing some steps, hiking over I-691 as I did on Monday. Good thing too, as I was pleasantly surprised someone had replaced the missing flags in time for the holiday weekend.