Last week started with about six or seven inches of snow and icy roads that forced schools to cancel. Somewhere in the middle of the week the temps warmed up towards 50˚ and the aforementioned snow all but melted. Then come to the end of the week the temps dropped again and froze the roads solid which aided me in finally getting out for a ride.
Three tomatoes are walkin’ down the street.
Papa Tomato, Mama Tomato and Baby Tomato.
Baby Tomato starts lagging behind, and Papa Tomato gets really angry.
Goes back and squishes him and says: ‘“Ketchup.”
—Mia Wallace, Pulp Fiction
Despite having lived through 39 Pennsylvania winters and 7 Michigan winters I have yet to learn to embrace winter. I’ve got better at dealing with winter over the years by adding activities like snowshoeing and rides on the Fatterson with my camera into my routine but saying I embrace those activities is just crazy talk.
After Tuesday’s short—but sweet—ride, things turned pretty pear-shaped. First, the wind kicked up on Wednesday and was blowing hard enough to bend some trees and rattle some shutters. There was no way I was going out in a cold wind like that, that’s just not fun to me. Then, come Thursday, the temps sunk into the mid-teens and the wind continued to blow. Screw that!
Despite not getting outside over the past two days, I kept quite busy indoors.
Friday’s ride was just the mental enema that was needed to clean out the brain sludge that had has been accumulating over the past few weeks. Because of that, I was eager to get back out on Saturday.
Early parts of this week brought shit weather that included steady cold rains that made the dirt and gravel roads even more of a quagmire than they already were. This caused me to retreat to the Not So Stankment and time on the dreadmill and/or to The Chamber of Farts to climb under the covers and wish myself somewhere else.
When I rode last Saturday I returned home mentally broken like expelled wind forced betweenst the ass cheeks of a 300-pound hobo who just finished off a can of ice-cold pork ‘n’ beans. With that brokenness, I puttered and muttered through the week logging several miles of sprint intervals on the dreadmill, a session or two of pedaling nowhere fast on the trainer, perfecting my return to pescatarian eating (80% of the time), and many a night doing 12-ounce curls undoing all the work put into those workouts and diet changes.
Thankfully for all concerned that ended on Saturday when the temps warmed up and I forced myself out onto the slirty1 and snirty2 dirt roads.
It’s been 5 days since the Suckest Ride of 2018 v.1 and I’ve had little interest in returning outside since. My mind hasn’t been in the right place, not to mention the days have been all over the place this week due to the MLK holiday, B-Man having 1/2 days due to finals most of the week, an appointment, and a general slack and disinterest about most things not involving sleeping 18 hours a day.
After a week that was filled with doing a lot of stuff that I really didn’t want to do, I was looking forward to the weekend and getting out on my bike. I was, of course, prepared to ride in the snow, ice, and cold temps… it’s winter in Michigan, that shit happens.
Proper clothing, ice-gripping studs, fat tires, and a “Fuck it” (in a good way) attitude help one to make the best out of what winter throws your way, and I have nearly all of those things, yet I still came away from yesterday’s short ride mentally broken.
I was motivated to ride, I swear I was. I was up at 8 AM Saturday and dumping coffee down my throat as I watched FA Crap footy and waited for the temps to rise. The thing is, they never did.