After a few days spent with my slack turned blissfully up to 11, I woke up Monday morning with not one ounce of desire to lumber on what were either going to be extremely slushy trails or extremely icy trails. Either way, I knew I didn’t have the brain power to deal, so I didn’t. Giving up is so easy, I really should get back into the routine.
Fast forward to Tuesday morning…
Sometimes you miss a goal, and sometimes that is just fine. Such is the case this week. I missed my “normal” weather goal of 30 miles of lumbering in 5 days. I also missed my 20-mile Winter Contingency Act goal, coming in at 18.88 miles in 4 days. But as I said, I’m fine with it.
For roughly the 10th time in the past 3+ months, I let Winter beat me down. And for roughly the 10th time in the past 3+ months, I have bounced back like a body tossed from the top of the Empire State Building.
These days, I’m not so much hiding from winter as I am beat down by winter like an aging heavyweight boxer lying on the mat, dazed, confused, with blood and spittle running from my slackened jaw as my eyes struggle to focus on what is happening around me before accepting fate, and closing them. *cue soundtrack*
But hey, it’s February, and like the saying goes, “new month, same old cold, miserable, bullshit.”
Obviously, I am riding a wave of hyperbole and caffeine this morning, as I recap a week of nothing. For that, I make no apologies.
After a 45-minute treadmill lumber on Friday, the weekend came and went, and featured all my favorite/tolerable indoor winter-time activities, including a come-from-behind 2-2 draw for Spurs against City. It was swell.
Last week’s multi-day deep freeze had me in my comfy chair watching YouTube channels or on the treadmill for the majority of my “Me Time,” and I knew I needed to change something, stat. Or keep the slack going, and return to The Bed of Torment, a depressive, heaving bag of aging suck.
So, I started Monday with a better outlook and a plan written in sand to make this week better. I think I done good.
After making breakfast, cleaning the kitchen, and seeing Wifey off for a day in the office, I collected my gear, opened the garage door, and saw a steady snow falling.
I wasn’t thrilled to be driving as it snowed (part of the aging process, I suppose, like sporting large tufts of ear hair, unkept eyebrows, and sagging scrotums tucked in socks), but a quick look at the radar showed that it should be over soon.
With that, I took off like a herd of turtles, and as I was nearing the park, the bright orange sun was now rising over the trees in the farm field to my left, and was made more luminous by flakes in the air. I couldn’t help but stop on the empty dirt road to admire the glow and snap a pic.
After 72 hours without leaving the house, I embraced returning to the cold, snowy woods to lumber like an obese dog to a pile of its own vomit, complete with half-digested sock. It was pretty OK.
On the first day of our current deep freeze, I headed down to the Not So Stankment to lumber on the treadmill for 3 miles.
I knew better to look at the weather app on my phone when I woke up this morning, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hopeful the weather goofs were wrong.
I, like most “dad types,” have a strange morbid fascination with extreme weather events. I think it’s brought forth from the same gene that some of us have for things like gas passing, belching, boogers, shaving scum, earwax, and turd size.
Anyway, the forecast was not wrong, telling me that it was -7˚F. With that, I immediately knew that an outdoor lumber was not on the table today. Well, at least not for me.