Two weeks ago, I lumbered over 30 miles and felt great. Last week, I lumbered 20 miles on slippy, lumpy snow and felt like an aching bag of shit by the end. Come the weekend, I sat my fat ass inside and did nothing. Then, I woke up Monday morning at 6 AM, rolled over, farted twice, looked at the -1˚ weather icon on my phone, and said, “fuck it.”
The first full week of the 2025 Ignorance is Bliss Tour is in the books, and I have to say it went pretty darn not bad.
I got out Friday morning at the ass crack of dawn, which isn’t actually all that ass-cracky, given the sun doesn’t fully rise until after 8 AM, but still, I was out, and it was pretty early.
On September 19th, 2022, I started what I jokingly called the 2022 Not Dead Yet Comeback Special. That was the day I climbed out of The Bed of Torment, laced up some hiking shoes, grabbed my camera, walked right past my garage of bikes, and into the woods to lumber on my own two feetz.
For this Christmas Day post, I am going to steer clear of writing about the emotions and grief that my family, near and far, and I have been going through over the past week due to the loss of my father last Thursday and our 13-year-old dog Jake the very next morning. I’m sure you can imagine what it was like; you don’t need me to shit on your holiday.
Sometimes, I can’t put my thoughts into words to explain how I feel, but I’m gonna really try with this one. I also can’t explain how the Universe works or why bad things happen. They just happen, and we’re left to figure it all out.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been a little late getting to the trails due to the late sunrise (8:07 AM Michigan Standard Time for your sunrise nerds who read this) and my want to fill a bathtub up with scolding hot coffee, climb my naked self in, and drink myself out instead of going out into the dank, wintry morning air.
Luckily, Wifey will not permit me to fill our tub up with coffee (“It’ll stain the tub!” she says), so I settled for a big-ass mug or two of the stuff and then got my shit together for another lumber in chilly woods.
On a recent wintry lumber, I created a new course in my head that I was sure would easily get me over 5 miles and provide some new stimulation for my eyes. I was half right.
The new course just barely got me to my 5-mile goal, so that was a bit disappointing; however, it did provide the appropriate amount of visual stimulation for picture takin’, so I’ll take it.
I’ve been thinking more about the trails I lumber on lately, and it brought back some memories. I’ll explain.
As I recently posted, Monday morning’s 6-mile lumber was an unusually warm one. However, a few hours later, the winds picked up, and the temps dropped as if they were blowing directly from the frigid teat of a witch (the one that lives in a shed just outside of Zama City, Alberta).
With that, Tuesday morning’s 6-mile lumber was a cold one and a full 20˚ colder than the day before. Ahhh… normality. Well, at least weather-wise.
I’m not a fan of being right. Mostly because I’m usually right about bad things. But as William Shakespeare once said, “C’est la vie.” (I really don’t know if he did, but he may have, so just go with it).
