It's a good thing I didn't go out and
buy a snowboard.
For (I think) the second year in a
row, the Downtown Marquette Rail Jam has been canceled due to
weather. The Rail Jam is when they close off several blocks of Front
Street and then set up a snowboard course that runs from the Landmark
Inn down to the Vierling. It's amazing in a couple of ways; the day
before the event, in fact, when they put the course together seems
almost a popular as the event itself.
But not this year. With the warmth
we've been having and the warmth we're still scheduled to have the
conditions just aren't favorable for it, and the organizers decided
to cancel it before investing a lot of time and money into the
project. After all, this is what downtown Marquette looks like right
now--
This is looking across Front Street,
where the course was scheduled to be set up. I took this picture yesterday afternoon...January 23rd. Yes, JANUARY 23rd. And if the event is
still a week and a half way, a week and a half with temperatures
mostly forecast to be above freezing...well, you can see why they
made the decision they made.
So far, the other two big winter events
in Marquette are still a go. The Noquemanon is Saturday, and the
organizers said yesterday they're confident the whole course will
still be around and ready to race. I have the feeling this will be
one of those years when I'll be announcing the names at the finish
line surrounded by mud and snow trucked in from outside the city, but
as long as it works, that's what matters. Then there's the UP 200 in
three weeks. Hopefully, the conditions will be okay for that,
although with the way things are going this year, it wouldn't
surprise me if it was 65 and the lilacs were blooming that weekend.
Let's hope not. I mean, you know how
much I love lilacs, but I'm thinking February might just be a little
too early for them, even this year.
In the meantime, I'll just keep running
every morning in shorts and keep my fingers crossed that the rest of
Marquette's major winter events go off as planned. Having one
causality among them is bad enough; any more than that would border
on the tragic.
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