Another Go At Winter

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Winter is slowly letting go of its icy grip on central Michigan. Still, I wouldn’t quite call it ideal weather for big base mile road and gravel riding, but it’s becoming more doable every day.

As you may or may not have seen in my last post, up north a bit winter is still rolling along, so today I took advantage of some extra time, shot up for another fat bike ride on the nordic ski trails at Hanson Hills and had another go at winter before it’s gone. [To reiterate, Hanson is done grooming for the 2013/14 season and the trails are open to all traffic, including fat bikes, riding these trails was done legally].

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The ski and tubing hills are still covered with snow, yet were void of people, the small lake was frozen over and my car was the only one in the entire lot. It was sort of eerie and a bit like I had 35 km of trails as my personal winter playground (one of the few benefits of being an active non-contributing member of society.. sigh).

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Ridin’ Bikes is Swell

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After mentally cracking for what may have been the 84th time in my life last week and vowing to spend the rest of this godforsaken endless winter under beer fueled fart smelling blankets in a curtains closed bedroom, I pulled up my grown fat man bibs and forced myself out into the snow to ride today. I have to say it was worth every second of the 21 minutes it took me to stuff my fat ass into three layers of cycling and cold weather gear.

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Shamed Into The Cold

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A well used ceramic space heater sat humming at my feet as I sat sipping my third cup of coffee and staring blankly into my computer monitor. I had long given up on it producing anything worth while and now aimlessly clicked through dead-end after dead-end on Monster.com, hyperbolic football gossip on The Daily Mail and finally full circle back to weather.com where I had started my morning off three hours earlier.  I was pleased to see that it was warming up, however I was disappointed to see that all that meant was that it was now 4˚ and not -4˚. Thoughts of climbing on the trainer in my basement now entered my head as I took a big sip of my now ice-cold coffee. Fuck.

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Not Easy, But Not Unenjoyable

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I opened my eyes,  rolled over and shut off the alarm clock a mere minute before the French ambulance siren on speed screech could emanate from its tiny speaker. I stretched, unfurled my man blubber, let out a loud clack of a fart and tried to remind myself of why I had the alarm set for 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Oh yeah, Wifey asked me to set the alarm, because she had an appointment with the Lord, or was at least going to church to meet up with B-Man who stayed the night at a friend’s house and would be attending 9 a.m. mass with his family.

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