Defying Gravity

Winter around here means ice sickles.... when most people think of ice sickles they think of something that looks like this:

Or this:

But, physics is an interesting thing. It often creates situations which seem impossible. "Rocks" that appear to grow upward. Water that appears to flow uphill. In our case, it creates ice sickles which form not only horizontally but often curve upward. We even have curving ice sickles that have straight ice sickles coming off of them.... As if they couldn't make up their minds as to which direction was best...

On the back of our house, the eastern side, there is some sun. But between the neighbor's house and the change of the angle of the sun, there's very little heat there at this time of year. Basically, there's just enough to begin things melting but not enough to melt off the snow and ice. So, it builds.... little by little, day by day... Until you end up with things that look like this:

I had moments of hearing the mother's voice from A Christmas Story, "You'll shoot your eye out." Instead of it being "an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time," I'd "shoot" my eye out with my Nikon D5000.... thankfully, I made it back inside safely, with the exception of the snow that got down inside my boots.