Looks cold up there. Let’s stay down here.
The weather turned a wee bit brisk this week. January can be that way, even in The Duck! City, with hired assassins throwing hot lead at decent people’s houses.
When we’re talking 30-something with wind and gloom outside, I’ll stay inside, or lace up the running shoes and go pound ground for a while. A short while. I’m not training for anything other than staying above the auld sod a while longer.
I’ve gone running twice this week, and stayed indoors once. But today the sun was out. Just 35 degrees, to be sure, but still; big yellow ball in sky. Which it apparently will not be tomorrow. Cloudy, cold, windy, 50 percent chance of snow, yadda yadda yadda. In other words, January.
Snow on the Crest, mud on the trails. But hey, the sun was out, and so was I.
With that in mind, I layered up, grabbed the Co-Motion, and got out there. Not for long, mind you, but I was riding a 30-pound touring bike on singletrack, so extra credit, please.
When I climbed off to take this photo some dude wearing VeloNews kit soldiered on by. I didn’t recognize him, but then I wouldn’t, having walked away from that low-speed crash back in 2016.
It took them six years and a change of ownership to stop sending me free copies of the magazine, which kept shrinking like a solo breakaway’s lead on a long, flat stage. I sold all the kit on eBay.
Tags: Co-Motion Divide Rohloff, Elena Gallegos Open Space, VeloNews
Mad Blog Media 
January 19, 2023 at 4:07 pm |
Woohoo! Selling crap that we really don’t need. Especially the velo-lose garbage.
Great to hear that it is quite pleasant down there. Yeah it’s a little brisk but you can always put on more clothes. But the sun, the sun ! and it’s dry. You ole lucky dog !
January 19, 2023 at 4:28 pm |
Chilly Thursdays are perfect for riding the Elena Gallegos trails. There’s never anyone else there.
Though I hadn’t expected quite so much wet underfoot. Our trails usually soak up any moisture they get and stay dry, except in shady corners. But there was some goo in the open. I was judicious about line, and doubt I did any lasting damage, but I try to stay off wet trails.
January 19, 2023 at 4:45 pm |
I think I still have a cap and a pair of socks with the VN logo. Swag bag from a letter of the week, prolly. I kind of miss caring about that stuff. Kind of.
January 19, 2023 at 5:22 pm |
I still have a cap and (I think) some bibs with the newer san-serif VN logo. I also have a winter Capoforma jacket and a DeMarchi fleece, both with the old-school logo.
I wish I still had the original VN jersey, which was beautiful. I can’t remember who designed it, but it was spectacular.
January 19, 2023 at 4:56 pm |
Sun finally showed up here today and by late afternoon, the roads look like roads again. I waited till about noon to go pick up the motorcycle from the shop, where it has been sitting all week due to the snowstorm up here. Marc, the shop owner, was not releasing it before a test ride and that took till yesterday until he could get it out of the shop without getting sideways.
Coming home, the instrument cluster was flashing snowflakes at me all the way home. Had not seen that before but apparently when you get below freezing, it warns you about icy conditions. It was a balmy 29 F as I buzzed home on the bypass. I wonder what the wind chill is at 29 degrees and 60 mph.
January 19, 2023 at 5:23 pm |
My scientific opinion would be “really fuckin’ cold.” This is why I ride 30-pound touring bikes on singletrack in those temps.
January 20, 2023 at 8:51 am |
PO’G pegged it: “RFC”! Or 9F according to NOAA’s wind chill calculator.
January 20, 2023 at 1:18 am |
I suspect I’ve mentioned it before in an earlier chat line about motorcycles, but I recall seeing a couple of Harley riders up in Fairbanks, AK, extending their riding season when the temp was down in the teens and the roads were marginal. Tough mothers that probably had already frozen their nuts off.
January 19, 2023 at 5:34 pm |
Oh, hell.
January 19, 2023 at 7:06 pm |
Lots of great ones, but this one really got my attention.
January 20, 2023 at 12:04 pm |
Funny that Stills wrote this one, and Nash wrote my other fave, Southern Cross.
January 20, 2023 at 12:42 pm |
There were some writing fools in that outfit. Massive egos, too. A tough combo. What beautiful harmonies, though. And a really clean, stripped-down sound.
January 19, 2023 at 7:22 pm |
I think probably even David was surprised he lived this long. This was one of my faves.
January 19, 2023 at 7:48 pm |
Things got so bad between me and Stepdad that I spent the summer of 1970 either with my grandparents or camping out in the sunroom of my uncle’s house. My cousins were into serious music, as my mom and her siblings were a musical family (see Joseph “Mouse” Bonati https://numerogroup.com/products/mouse-bonati-mouses-house ). I kept my sanity listening to C,S, and Y, Carole King, Jefferson Airplane/Starship, and trying to write TS Eliot style poems, and my mentor in high school English class had us reading stuff like The Waste Land. So this death gave me some really serious flashbacks.
Thank you, David, for all you did for music. And for me.
January 20, 2023 at 2:00 am |
The weather got much worse up here in Chicago when the David Crosby news flashed across the tube in the afternoon. Listening to David Crosby’s “For Free” as I read these replies. RIP, David.
January 20, 2023 at 8:54 am |
I hear you Dave. The news of his returning was like “The Hawk” hitting you on a cold day close to the lake.
January 20, 2023 at 11:21 am |
Ok, break out the Kleenex.
January 20, 2023 at 1:45 am |
I wonder if the reason we don’t live longer is because we collect memories, and eventually the recollection and emotions of all those memories reaches a point where the effect that they have on us is too much to cope with. Such is the case of music from the past. That music draws out those memories and we are inundated with the emotion of those times. I’m thankful to recall Crosby’s et al earlier music during a time that I had the fortune of being part of a loving family. Yeah my Dad got laid off from his job after 22 years, we were kind of poor and my brother was having issues with the feds when he told the draft board to go fuck themselves, but as a snot nosed kid, I look back on the time with decent memories. I’d wish God to bless DC, but I believe he already did when he was down here and we all benefited.
January 20, 2023 at 10:41 pm |
Yes, all those memories are still very clear, and bold. 50 years of CSN&Y, and the history of those days. People younger than us can and will never know what a struggle it was to get the country the hell out from the war (Vietnam) and all the civil rights issues. At work tonight, about a half minute after closing, one of the managers put on the entire Deja Vu album, front to back. And loud. It had been more than 25 years since I listened to that one, and yet I still remembered every lyric and every note from every song. Crosby was complicated, and deep. Look at the emotion D.C. conveys in the For Free song from Khal’s embed above. Even though he had performed it hundreds of times live, the deeper meanings are all there in him, for us to experience. And he didn’t even write it.