When I saw the forecast for this weekend I got excited : cold and clear....FINALLY. With a low of 32° last night, 32- 33 tonight and 27-28° tomorrow it's beginning to actually feel like fall here at the head of the Chesapeake bay. I set up my rig : XLC, -10° 'Bator, Snugpak TQ + Snugpak Thermalon TQ liner , ZQ UQP and HG Econ pillow , expecting a cool and quite night. Wearing a pair of midweight Darn Tough wool socks under a pair of 200g Polartec fleece liner socks from the Ukrainian tactical clothing company 281.Z , midweight micro grid fleece base layer top & bottom from Condor, fleece fingerless gloves and my UGQ down Skully , I quickly fell asleep while watching a movie on my kindle and breathing in the crisp autumn air.
All was good until around 630 this morning, when I was rudely awakened by what I'm calling the lead reconnaissance element from a mixed squadron of Canadian geese and Mallard ducks. This "flight of fowl" were practicing touch and go's and low altitude $#¡+ bombing runs from their new amphibious base : the calm , sheltered waters in front of my house. The cacophony of low, rumbling ,back and forth chatter between birds already on base, and the loud echoing calls by air traffic control guiding in the rest of the flight was enough to keep me from falling back to sleep and forced me to retreat inside. Defeated, I slipped my whoopies from their toggles and carried my entire rig in to prevent those still in a holding pattern DIRECTLY OVER HEAD from jettisoning any remaining bombs on my precious.
I'm sure the entirety of the squadron will have landed by tomorrow morning with hundreds of future
Underquilts and " Christmas Story" duck dinners literally camped out in my front yard. So, while I'm glad my fall hanging season has finally started , the quiet was very short lived and it's already time to break out the war, err, ear plugs. From my extensive experience gained living here where I do, that can only mean one thing : it's gonna be a long COLD winter..... and that is definitely music to my ears.
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