I went with Fred tonight to check the clock at 7:00 p.m. The road between our house and Route 2 is not good. There are several bad mud holes - one that's not too bad just below our house, then a worse one between Pupino's and Jeff Down's, and a really bad one in front of the Dudley/Flannagan cottage and Gardner's. There's plenty of mud the rest of the way, even some on Blackadar Hill on the Danville end just before you reach Route 2. These spots are always bad, some years the roads get worse than others, and this year is apparently going to be a doosie. One of our neighbors told me tonight she went around by way of Route 15, took 215 towards Cabot Village and then Cabot Plains Road to get home Saturday. That's going about eight miles to reach a point two miles away. I don't know what would happen in an emergency - but we're all planning to keep safe and healthy until mud season is over.

The pallet doesn't appear to be in danger of moving or sinking right away, although the ice doesn't look very substantial. We are expecting tomorrow will be cooler and quite windy, and that could begin moving the ice around. Then it's anybody's guess what will happen. Sometimes the ice moves enough to disconnect the clock and it takes another day or so for the pallet to actually go down. Other times the ice will get mushy enough so the pallet will fall through. We'll continue to check twice each day, at least - and more often if things begin to get serious. So we still don't have a clue as to whether the ice will last until April 1st or if we'll have a new early record in March.

Before we left, we got a picture of the clock - pretty much just sitting there doing its thing, same as always.

The temperature hasn't varied much today. It's still about 41 degrees, and may have been as high as 45, but the summery days of the past week are behind us and we look forward to some freezing nights and windy and cold days this week. Quite a few people are getting new Ice-Out tickets so they can adjust their guesses, trying to compensate because of our whacky weather. All I can say is, I wish everyone lots of luck.