We got another wee dusting of the white stuff on Wednesday. It seems 0.02 inch is how Heaven doles it out to us these days. A bit stingy, que no?
Funny how a big dumper is more fun to deal with than one of these piddling dribbles, which barely shift the needle on the Drought-O-Meter®. It’s the little things that suck. Or blow, as the case may be, since these non-events usually come with a side of gale-force wind.
My go-to running garb for this noise includes Merrell Moab Flight trail-running shoes; Darn Tough wool socks; thermal Hind tights over some truly ancient Hind shorts; a long-sleeved Patagonia base layer that’s so old it was made in the USA; a pilled-all-to-hell zip-up North Face vest to keep the pipes from freezing (and transport the iPhone in a side pocket); a long-sleeved, high-collared, quarter-zip polyester VeloNews shell by Columbia; a Sugoi tuque; Smartwool gloves; and Rudy Project shades to keep the windblown sand out of my baby blues.
I shouldn’t need most of this kit today, since it should be warm enough — a high of 52°, with “light and variable” winds? — to ride the ol’ bikey-bikey. But I’m keeping that Paddygucci base layer on standby.
We have this little cold snap parked overhead, which certainly beats being on fire. Nevertheless, it leads to dreams of visiting deserts where the temperatures are a little more in line with what leaps to mind when one hears the word “desert.”
“Why, yes, I could eat. …”
Alas, it is Herself’s January to be elsewhere, and someone has to mind the store. Miss Mia Sopaipilla needs assistance with this and that, refusing to learn how to open the cat-food bin, refill her water fountain, or use a toilet.
At the moment Miss Mia and I are enjoying a light snowfall. Well, I am, anyway. Miss Mia just roused herself from a nap to have a bite to eat and a sip of water, after which she will be headed straight back to the sack.
And to think some people call them “dumb animals.” They may not possess the power of human speech, but they certainly manage to get their point across.
Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute snow falls on that bush, it gets stronger
“Snow, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of snow in the morning. The smell, you know that snow smell? The whole hill. Smelled like … winter.”
A wee dose of winter in the backyard, just in time for Election Day.
My brother geezers were already abandoning the Monday ride on Sunday. Cold, wet, no thank you, please, etc.
I bailed too, mostly because I’m taking antibiotics and steroids to beat down a sinus infection, but also because I had my fill of cold and wet in the Before-Time™, when I fancied myself a cyclocross racer.
My interest in the activity started to flag after a few years living on our wind-whipped rockpile outside of Weirdcliffe, in Crustytucky County, Colo. (“Gateway to Gardner”).
I actually had some of my best races while we lived there, because I was living at 8,800 feet and training even higher, running a ton, riding a ’cross bike almost exclusively on the indifferently maintained and largely unpaved roads, and doing laps on my own short homemade course.
But evil weather was both my strength and my undoing. I needed a course with lots of running to have a chance against the roadies, who are like cowboys, reluctant to dismount from their steeds and proceed on foot. So, yeah: rain, mud, snow, anything to suck a few mph out of those tree-legged, leather-lunged sonsabitches.
But getting to the races in the kind of conditions that favored my limited skillset — run around for 45 minutes while wearing a perfectly rideable bike — could be something of a project. The nearest one was 90 minutes down and north in good weather, and it was the race I and my club put on twice a year in Bibleburg. The others were in Franktown, Littleton, Lakewood, Longmont, Boulder, Mead, Fort Collins, and like that there.
It got to where I would book a motel room, drive north the night before a race, eat dinner out, breakfast on coffee and energy bars in the room, get my ass handed to me at the event, clean up in a car wash, find something to eat, and drive home. After a while it began to feel a lot more like work than recreation, even if I did well, which mostly I did not.
Unless I saw heaps of snow on the deck when I got up on race day. Yay. And even then I had to drive home in it.
The travel got a little easier when we moved back to Bibleburg, but the racing never did. I was working a lot while training less, and at a lower altitude, too. The flesh was unwilling and the spirit was weak.
I could tell I was over it in 2004, when I rode my main race bike to a ’cross in Bibleburg . No spare bike, not even a spare wheel. And when I flatted about halfway through my race, I wobbled off the course, resolved the puncture (who brings a pump and saddlebag with spare tubes and tire irons to a friggin’ race?), and rode home.
AND THE GREAT WEATHERPERSON spake unto the People, saying, “Place thy Shovels where thou canst Find them in the Dark, for I shall send a Snowpocalypse to thee, yea, even unto the Upper Reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert, wherein roam the Purse Dogs from which it takes its Name.”
“And they shall be Sore Vexed, for their Darling Little Aztec-Themed Sweaters and Tiny Suede Booties shall not Warm them and keep their Feet Dry in this, the Hour of their Need. And they shall Tremble and Yap and Bite the Hand that Feeds them, which is to Say it shall be the Same Ol’, Same Ol’, only Colder and Wetter.”
But the promised Snowpocalypse failed to Eventuate, and the People grew Restless, having Armed themselves with Shovels, Snow Blowers, and Strong Drink, and endured many painful Bites from their Chihuahuas as they stuffed them into the Cutest Miniature North Face Gore-Tex Insulated Jackets with wool Paddygucci Beanies and Itty Bitty Sorels.
“What gives?” they enquired. “Where it at the Snowpocalypse?”
And lo, the Great Weatherperson answered in a Voice like Thunder, proclaiming: “Ho, ho, got you again, didn’t I? Check the Calendar, dummies. April Fool! You might get a little Rain if you’re Lucky. Gotta run; these Chihuahuas don’t make Themselves, y’know.”
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