Sunday's cobalt sky was about as crystal clear as it ever can be. Conditions in Muskoka at 10.00am when we departed for a 2 hour ski were mid-winter cold - around minus 6 with a good breeze from the north. We walked down the big hill, across the bridge and started along the creek towards Saw lake. This particular terrain on either side of the creek is flooded and swampy from April until December and it takes the full winter snowpack to build and form itself before entering the daily thaw/freeze cycle in March to make it accessible on skis. As the sun begins to expose the structure of the snowpack, we can see underneath it in places and the alder bushes are pushed right over in clumps with the snowpack sitting on top like a lid just barely containing the pent up branches. The clumps provide a beautiful, gently undulating surface to ski on. Always a highlight, and to get it on such a perfect day as this. Then a full loop of Saw Lake at record speed on the thin skiff of softer ice and snow on top of the 2 feet of solid ice. Changing to interior, shaded terrain, we negotiated the trail to Keyhole Lake and came back to the road on the Johnson Trail. A full sampling of very challenging trails under these conditions. Siobhan has a purple bruise on her hip from Saturday morning.

March offers some of the best and most challenging skiing of the season. The snowpack is very hard in the morning and softer later on, especially in the south facing areas. There's still 40 or 50 cm of snow in the shaded areas of the bush and, when it's cold like it was today, our ski trail is like little luge tracks and falling is like falling on concrete. It's fast and unforgiving. It seems like we know, and maybe we subconsciously hope, that the skiing season will soon give way to paddling and biking in our corner of Muskoka, but I really do love the cross country skiing that we can do from our cottage door.

4 weeks to go before we go to the US Southwest. We sketched out our tentative route on Friday night and it looks really good. We'll head from Phoenix to the Tucson area and visit Seguaro National Park and then we're going to spend some time in New Mexico. There's an off-grid, hippy town called Truth or Consequences, New Mexico which caught our attention but we want to see White Sands National Park and Santa Fe so we have some decisions to make as we can't see everything in 8 days.

Hoping for big things to come, blog wise. I am going to get a new computer and probably a new video camera and I will be posting video and really taking this up a few notches. I may even separate the football from our outdoor pursuits. Stay Tuned.

For a league with a season which lasts for all of 5 months, the NFL has a remarkable ability to maintain fan interest during the other 7 months which follow the Super Bowl. March features free agency signings and multiple roster moves, as teams prepare for the April draft. Have the Bills been active in this year's free agency bidding frenzy? Absolutely. How about the signing of CB Drayton Florence from San Diego to counter the loss of Jabari Greer to the Saints? Or, C Geoff Hangartner from Carolina? Don't forget former Bengals QB Ryan Fitzpatrick who will have his work cut out for him if he wants to be worse than JP Losman. Re-signing with the team was OL Kirk Chambers and gone are TE Robert Royal and OL Derrick Dockery. RB Marshawn Lynch plead guilty to being an idiot for having been caught in an expensive car in Oakland with a bag of pot and a gun. He will likely not be suspended by the league. So, until Saturday March 7, the Bills were going about their regular off-season business, shuffling their roster - as were the other 31 teams in the league - and generating media coverage of the various no-name player visits to One Bills Drive, and generally doing little to change the team's fortunes.

I had heard, last Thursday I think, that Cowboys President and GM Gerry Jones and Terrell Owens had decided to part ways and then, on Saturday at the cottage, I heard the very end of a radio report about Owens signing a one year deal but I missed the name of the team. Probably Oakland or maybe Washington, I thought, but I never suspected what I learned on Sunday when I got home and logged on to the chattering posts about the Bills that I read when there's stuff going on with the roster. So, it's actually happened - they have signed him to a one-year, $6.5 million deal. The circus has come to town and it's not going to be boring. Even Dick Jauron will seem interesting now that TO is in the fold. I can't wait for the first OTA's next month. Maybe he will bungee jump off Niagara Falls.

So, why make this move? Were season ticket sales a little slow this winter? Was this an opportunity to energize the fan base? Will this put the small market Buffalo Bills on the national media radar like they have not been since the Music City Miracle? Yes, yes and yes but is this a good move for the football team going into 2009? Aside from the concerns about his attitude and propensity to be an attention seeking and selfish cancer in the locker room (which may be greatly over estimated - both in terms of what his attitude is actually like and in terms of how much it really matters anyway), this guy can play. Yes, he's 35 now but he can still run, get open and score touchdowns. He has always done this and he sure looked pretty strong to me with Dallas last year. Defensive coordinators will now have to defend Lee Evans and TO at the same time and they can't both be double-teamed, can they?

I remember Marv Levy being asked once about whether or not a certain player was "a good guy in the locker room". He replied by saying that he had never really understood what that meant and that the characteristics which he always looked for in a player were talent and commitment, and that success in football came from combining those with practice and execution. "The Equipment Manager - now there's a good guy in the locker room", is how he wrapped up his answer. So, will TO be a good guy in the locker room? We'll see. I don't know that it really matters though. If he is healthy, his production should speak for itself and, hey, whatever happens, it's going to be fun.

Well, spring is on its way in Muskoka. The skiing was challenging as the snowpack has lost its structure, has developed sink holes and the tracks we have worked on all season are becoming unstable. Perfect conditions for pulling a hamstring. We are reading travel books and studying maps of Arizona and neighbouring states as we go in mid April for 8 days.