Consistency, fitness, and junk food

 As Driving Season winds down for this winter, I endure the last few commutes in which I am completely at the mercy of whoever is in front of me. It will probably be more than a few, given our typical weather, but the trend is clear. Daylight Relocating Time has started.

Bike commuting time in transit is much more consistent than driving time. I've written about this before. My average speed follows a predictable curve, increasing to a peak in July before tapering as the summer drains away again into autumn. As age takes its toll, I don't know from one season to the next whether I will make it to the previous year's high range. Just feel it out carefully and settle into a moderate, steady pace. Don't stress the cardiovascular system or the joints. Whatever the average turns out to be, I can set my starting time to get me to work more or less on time. Usually less, but that's not the fault of biking. I can have just as little enthusiasm for punctuality when I'm trapped in the car.

Bike commuting was part of a long-term, open-ended strategy to provide consistent exercise around scheduled employment while saving lots of money and burning off my consumption of snack food. Lots of money is a relative term. I've never earned lots of money in my life. But I haven't pissed away a lot of it on motorized activities, particularly getting to my various jobs. Having my winter job at a cross-country skiing shop and touring center has helped somewhat with the winter interruption to cycling, but I can't count on getting out there as regularly as bike commuting. I even wrote a song titled Snacking out of Boredom and Depression about the toll that the dark and frozen -- or inadequately frozen -- months can take.

Learning to bake has given me greater control over the ingredients in what I make, but it has also made it a lot easier to slap together sweet comfort carbs. And I'm not quitting. I built a whole lifestyle and career around not having food discipline, dammit! At some point, your consciousness ends as your energy is recycled into the universe. Have a damn brownie. Have two. Then go run or ride around.

The rest of my diet is generally pretty healthy: meals made with few ingredients, a high proportion of non-meat items. It looks even better if you count maple syrup and coffee as fruit juices. Oh yeah, and chocolate is from plants, too. I just need to get out there and burn it off. It's all fuel.

Yearning for spring

Winter can be quite enjoyable if you are in a position to use winter conditions with appropriate tools and activities. Otherwise, it is just a challenge to survival, both physical and mental.

As a college athlete -- albeit a dissipated and hedonistic one -- I had heard what happens to weekend warriors who try to continue to compete after they emerge into the Real World and let other responsibilities take over the time they used to spend on training. I only nursed delusions of higher level competition in fencing for a few years after graduation, but I had every intention of remaining physically active.

Physical capability requires continuous maintenance. I found lots of interesting ways to explore under my own power. I recommend all of them. But only a couple work well as routine daily transportation. Cycling is the only one that is basically universal. If you walk, you need to live within timely walking distance of your destination. If you row or paddle, you will need to transport your vessel or have a place to keep it on the water. Park-and-whatever options do reduce motor vehicle use, but don't allow you to be completely car-free.

Bike commuting provided continuous physical activity. It fit neatly into a part of the day already committed to commuting in general. Biking is not complete exercise, but it provides a great baseline from which to add a little of this and that to fill out your needs. It also marks you as some kind of arrested adolescent or weirdo, but that's society's problem, not cycling's. Society will make it your problem if you ride. You have to do your own cost/benefit analysis to decide if it's worth it to you.

One of the hardest things to get used to when you're out there riding a bike and trying to live a low impact life is finding out how many people hate you for it and think you should die. It doesn't have to be the majority. You only have to encounter one homicidal jerk. That's true whether you get tagged by a hit and run driver or you happen to be at the mall the day one of them shows up and opens fire. In spite of that, I find myself trapped by winter, waiting for the opportunity to go expose myself to the contempt and hostility of the motoring public, just to be able to fit physical activity conveniently into my schedule again.

As a member of society and a denizen of a northern state, I don't go wobbling down the icy, narrowed roads on my bike when conditions are adverse. Once you accept that the majority of people have valid reasons not to use a bicycle for transportation, you have a responsibility to examine your own priorities as you expect them to bend to your decision to ride. If biking was really a valid option for low income people to get to their jobs around here we would see them out in all weather. In some places you do. Those would be the places that get first priority when someone starts handing out infrastructure improvements. In the other places, where harsh-weather cyclists are rare or nonexistent, people have clearly made other adaptations. In an open winter, or as winter finally loosens its grip, I will take training rides and ease into the full-distance commute. As long as most roads are lined with slumping snowbanks, and narrowed by flows of ice, I will find other things to do. But it is hard. So many other things I need to do involve no physical exertion at all. Case in point, I'm sitting here on my ass, writing, because this is the time I have.

Unfortunately for me, the shorter options for the commute aren't open until late in the spring, because they involve parking areas and sections of trail that are buried in snow. These thaw slowly to mud and then dry gradually to a decent riding surface. For the past several years I have had to pull off some sudden long days in the early season.

Trainer riding is not only mental torment, it is very abusive of the bike in the trainer. The bike is clamped into a frame instead of free to lean in response to rider input. The rider's sweat cascades down over the machine for the entire trainer season. I do my best to avoid using a trainer, preferring instead to use off-bike cross training activities and some roller riding for smoothness. But that was when I wasn't as mired in depression most of the time. The nice thing about commuting is that I can flog myself to do it even if I feel like a worthless piece of crap. It beats sitting in the car feeling like a worthless piece of crap.

When the days get longer, there's more daylight to burn. Even before commuting season it's easier to fit more things into a day away from work, or into the margins of a day wasted on gainful employment. Meanwhile, I'm keenly aware that one should not wish time away. Just keep tunneling, and look for rewards in each shovelful.

The Evolution of Cross-Training

In ancient times, when I felt free to play, winter was a time to explore as widely as time and money would allow. I did it all -- or mostly all --: I climbed ice, I trudged up above treeline in what you could call mountaineering, I skied cross-country and some Telemark, I hiked. The cross-country skiing was mostly exploratory, on ungroomed terrain, but working in the business put me close to groomed trails. Learning more about the equipment and technique became a professional necessity and an enjoyable addiction for a time.

Mind you, I never intended to get into the gear business or the recreation industry. These happened by accident in search of basic income. Having put my eggs in the "creative" basket, I had little to offer the world of office jobs or practical trades. What I know I have learned by doing. Being a bike mechanic still seems like a worthwhile skill set, made less enjoyable by the consumerist avalanche that buried the industry and the pedaling world in the 1990s. The industry dumps more debris on the pile every year, rather than showing any inclination to dig some away and focus on simple pleasures. So it goes.

Wrenching has not been a gold mine. And the creative eggs are either spoiling in the basket or are easily overlooked in the tall grass and the jumble of other people's more brilliant output. So I guard my resources and spend nothing on journeys long or short that I do not need to take.

Ice climbing was easy to quit. The tools are expensive and the problems don't entice me. As a subset of mountaineering, ice and rock climbing made sense, within my conservative comfort zone. No longer mountaineering, I no longer think much about the supportive skills.

Achievers need mountains to climb. Artists just need mountains to appreciate. I don't need to be clinging to a couple of microscopic rough patches above a deadly drop to have a nice day out on the crags. I'm not keeping a score card of peaks bagged and waiting to be bagged. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's a matter of personality.

Two elderly men I know provide a perfect example of the pros and cons of each approach. The achiever now spends most of his time sitting in a recliner, watching cable news and analyzing situations over which he no longer has much influence. He spent his entire adult life in organizations: government service, sailing clubs, yachting associations. He has plaques, certificates, medals, trophies, attesting to his performance in various hierarchical settings. He has memories of when life was fun, even though his performance focus made it very hard to tell that he was having fun at the time. The artist bought himself a Kevlar solo canoe a couple of years ago, and still goes out paddling, even after a heart attack and the usual pain and stiffness of an aging body. He's in his 80s. He will stop when he is no longer physically capable of going.

Some competitive types manage to remain competitive in their age group until they drop. Some tourist types probably stop and rot sooner than they need to. There are millions of people I've never met, so I can't say for sure. I do observe that the artistic appreciative types, and the achievers with something of the artist about them, seem to remain alive until they're dead, compared to people who need to be at or reaching for the top of a given activity, who stagnate when they realize that big glory is now out of reach.

I'm just trying to stay strong enough to continue my self-propelled lifestyle.

As winter has deteriorated over the years, opportunities to charge right out the door onto usable surfaces have diminished. At the same time, the odds of finding something worth the trip at the end of a self-indulgent drive have diminished as well. I can take a slog in the slush from my own back door more easily that I can take one miles away. From a pure fitness standpoint, the slog from home is more enjoyable than any indoor training, and just as effective as a slog for which I had to burn gasoline.

Winter riding seems less inviting now than it did. Are the roads less clear, or is it just my dwindling testosterone? Can't tell you. I know that the slop storms we get seem to inspire the road crews to slather way more salt than they used to, and the glop impinges on the travel way a lot. Micro-climates also affect riding conditions on most routes around here. Areas that don't get as much sun remain colder, with persistent snowdrifts and ice. Increased population puts more drivers on the roads. Decreased bike use among young people means that more and more of those drivers have not had much -- if any -- experience as riders. Most mean well, but they lack the empathy born of personal knowledge. And some lack empathy entirely.

Then there are simple logistics. In my care-free years, my house was tiny and easy to care for. When it grew into a music school (now closed), the building itself became permanently larger. I would not get a refund if I removed part of the structure. The money is spent. The building is here. And the driveway doesn't clear itself. I gave up on plow guys, because they never live up to the promises. So, every snowstorm, I have to be out there with the snow thrower. You learn a lot you might not already have noticed when you have to move all of your own snow. Moisture, density, depth, can make the difference between a one-hour job and a three-hour job.

At least in this crappy snow year I have not had to go up and shovel the roof. Even though that is the only technical climbing I do anymore, I can live without it. The roof is the quicker part. Moving the avalanche piles afterward is when the real work begins. And none of it was easy.

All that home maintenance stuff does count as exercise. So does splitting and stacking wood. But it's not complete and balanced exercise. For that you need to get out and find something you can do for more than an hour, arms and legs, like cross-country skiing. And not much else is like cross-country skiing, in the way it incorporates the entire body and mind. Metaphorically, things are similar, but they don't provide the conditioning benefits.

In desperation a couple of weeks ago, I dug out the old Nordic Track machine, intending to flog myself through at least a half-hour on it before letting myself have supper. It's not much like actual skiing, but it does use arms and legs in a similar motion. Because you are working hard, but going absolutely nowhere, with no swoop and glide, it is absolutely the most tedious, miserable toil, unrelieved for me by any musical or video distraction. I just want it to be over. As it happened that evening, the cellist called when I was 17 minutes into it. After we finished talking, it was that much later, I was that much hungrier, and I couldn't get myself to start again. And, the next day, I felt like total crap. Joints hurt, I had none of the feeling of cleansing and residual endorphins that usually follow a good workout. So screw that. I'm back to trying to get out and wander around at any opportunity.

Right now I have to go move 3 inches of slush that fell yesterday, in case daytime highs in the 40s to 50 don't get rid of enough of it. Cross training, man. March is a wild card when it comes to winter weather around here. I may be out riding soon, or we might get shut down until mid April. The second half of winter is like another whole season. Animals are fighting it until the end, trying to get to the easier feeding of the growing season. Hut-bound humans atrophy every day, right up to the very day that they manage to break out and start moving around again.

The magic number is 300

When I dabbled in bicycle racing, the training manual we passed around recommended laying down about 300 miles of low-gear base mileage before beginning differentiated training. This was in a climate zone that did not offer a strong alternative training activity like cross-country skiing on a regular enough basis to count as a real routine. Even if a rider took up speed skating, which was available and had a small following, the change in muscle use at the beginning of regular riding season required some adaptation.

In a climate that shuts down outdoor riding pretty completely, base mileage is vital. I don't do any competitive sport riding, but any open-road commuting is part criterium, part time trial. Lacking the discipline to ride a trainer with the religious devotion necessary to provide a real fitness base, I need to get those base miles before launching the commuting season. Alternative outdoor activities have nearly vanished in the changing climate, so I'm coming off the couch with only good intentions.

Last week I hit the 300-mile mark and noticed an immediate improvement. I'd been trying to go easy, but you can't hold back when you're sharing the road with motor vehicles. If a traffic situation demands a quick sprint or a longer interval, you do your best.

Even before the 300-mile mark, I noticed that my whole body worked better now that I was using it as it was meant to be used. We're built to propel ourselves. Obviously, walking and running are our natural forms of locomotion, but the genius of the bicycle was that it adapted those motions to the circular pedal stroke. The bicycling position has evolved so that it places some potentially destructive demands on the upper body, but the general concept remains completely benign. If you ride a lot in a forward-leaning position, you will want to do some stretching and strengthening exercises to prevent neck and shoulder pain. And a little core work is never a bad idea.

I wonder who first came up with the idea of strength and flexibility training. There we were, scruffy hominids scrounging in the landscape for things to eat, devising tools of various kinds. Life was an endless camping trip. We walked, we ran, we climbed. We picked things up. We figured out how to build things. It was all based on walking, running, and moving things into useful configurations. Some people were stronger than other people. Who first figured out that strength and physical efficiency could be enhanced with specific exercises?

It doesn't matter. We know it now. Ignoring the whole noisy industry and marketing campaigns promoting specific programs and products that will make YOU, yes YOU, STRONGER, HAPPIER, SEXIER, AND MELT AWAY EXCESS POUNDS LIKE MAGIC, we know that using your own power to get from place to place will make your body work better. Rest is a vital part of the training cycle, but you can actually be too rested. Crawling toward this year's bike commuting season, I wondered if my accidentally sedentary winter might actually have shortened my life. In a country that considers health care a luxury, who can really afford to live an unhealthy lifestyle?

People who try to live gently, self-propelled and modestly housed, end up looking like parasites in a consumer-driven, wealth-obsessed economy. We slip through the small spaces, gleaning our sustenance like mice. We don't have much of a wallet with which to vote. It makes us an easy target for the contempt of the worshippers of hard work and self advancement. No one is questioning those sacred precepts. Hard work in the service of destruction is not a virtue. But voices of reason are drowned by the noise of traffic, industry, and broadcast media.

Many hands make light work. We could be taking turns doing short stints at the destructive labors that need to be done, rather than trapping some people in those destructive endeavors until they are crushed, and letting others evade that contribution to the general welfare. Like any simple solution, it's too complicated to arrange, so we will continue to live haphazardly and let evolution take its course. I just thought I would throw the idea out there. We could have arranged things in that way and coasted our population gently down to a sustainable level. Instead we live by instinct, as always. The result will reflect our true nature and potential, as will be evident from the ruins we leave behind.

Four to Two

You'd think that, after 27 years riding the same route, making the transition back to bike commuting in the early spring would be a simple matter of putting on the clothes, pumping up the tires,and pedaling instead of driving. It's not.

The car is a great enabler. You can throw things into the car on the off chance that you might want them. They can rattle around in there for days and weeks, unless you live in a high crime area. You can slouch out there in whatever you're wearing, flop into the driver's seat, and off you go.

My commute, at around 15 miles each way on rural roads and highways, is more of a journey and a real bike ride than someone would face on a shorter, perhaps more urban route. The transition would be easier at distances and on terrain more suited to riding in street clothes. Even so, the car still functions as a big barge full of junk. That can be seriously habit forming.

When I was more of an athlete than anything else, shifting from one mode of transportation to another was less daunting because I was in habitually better shape. But the time allocated to my obsessive fitness routine was time I did not have for anything else. To be ready to bust out of the snowbank and sprint down the road, I had to maintain the training wave all year. A writing teacher of mine, as he faced his own challenges to physical vitality, said to the class, "a man's only got so much juice. He's got to watch where he squeezes it." As with every enigmatic statement of the wise, it could be interpreted in a few ways. I took it as a metaphor for time and energy.

This winter was particularly difficult. The weather kept shifting radically between snow and thaw. If your schedule fit the changing conditions, you might leap back and forth between dry-land modes and  snow-based modes. If not, you would have to resort to indoor machines.

Indoor training is even less convenient than suiting up to go outdoors. You have to get psyched to marinade in your own sweat for as long as you can force yourself to stand it. If you don't go hard enough to get drenched, you did not go hard enough. You might make the case that you want to do some lower-intensity sessions, but then you have to stay on the machine for much longer, because that's how the training wave works. It's really easy to find better ways to spend your time. It's only a day. It's only a couple of days. Hey, it's been a week, but I was in good shape. Holy #%%, how did it get to be April?!

I look out the windows at a landscape still mostly white. It's not frozen, but the slush pile is still more than a foot deep in some places, and much deeper where the snow thrower or the shovel made piles beside areas that I cleared. Outdoor riding conditions were better in late February than they were for all of March. And then we started April with 10 more inches of snow.

To go to work by bike, I have to pare down to the essentials. This means not just the vehicle and its cargo capacity, but the bag I carry, as well. The handy day pack holds impulse items, just as the car does.

Then there's the time in transit. Riding takes just over twice as long as driving. While that's beneficial exercise, it also gets me home half an hour later than when I drive. Evening routines take longer with the addition of a shower. Supper time and bed time move closer together. There's less time for unstructured activity or free-range thought. I want to get back into the routine of self-propulsion, because I know that sitting too much is deadly, but -- after a winter of it -- I'm afraid I might discover that I'm too far gone. Having once had a high standard, how far below it will I find myself?

In memory of Sachs Sedis

Ordering chains the other day, I sifted through the offerings from SRAM, KMC, Shimano, and others. Our default chain has been SRAM, because their chains are descended from the legendary Sedisport, the sleeper deal chain of the 1980s.

Very little can be seen of the original Sedisport in the SRAM chains of today.  The formerly flared inner plates are now straight.

The outer plates are shaped very similarly to Shimano's Hyperglide and Uniglide chains, which the Sedisport once outperformed. The change was gradual, and the chains are still functional and durable. But the reflex to choose them is probably more emotional than anything else.

Vintage Sedisport. Burly side plates, cleverly flared inner plates to facilitate shifting. Born when drive trains were moving to six speeds. My, my. What will be next? Gears that click into place?

Look at the opportunities for advertising, recklessly squandered. The side plates of the chain are completely blank. It's as if they expect their distinctive design to speak for them.

The 1990s saw the introduction of the Sedisport ATB. The links shown here date from after the merger with Sachs, as the stamping on the side plates shows.

The outer plates were straight, with beveled edges. The pins were starting to be riveted in ways that led to the development of closure links. Shimano, of course, had their persnickety special pins. Sachs developed a closure link shortly before they were bought by SRAM.

Ten- and eleven-speed drive trains need straight-sided chains because the spacing of the gears is so tight. Differences, if any, are subtle. Because I don't indulge, I depend on the feedback of those who do to decide what to supply them with. I know what I favor, but that can change every year as the industry removes options.

Chain shopping was tangential to larger games of componentry chess I started last fall, when a couple brought in their Seven touring bikes to be reconfigured with more practical drive trains, and another customer wanted to dress a new frame with an 11-speed racing group. His Specialized Roubaix had cracked, and Specialized had sent a warranty replacement. Same brand, same model name, but of course it had some different specs. That game was more a matter of cost-benefit analysis, working within his budget and a couple of specific requests.

Interesting indoor activities help pass the time as winter reclaims March. This happens every year. We complain that the mild weather won't stick around, but 20 years ago these conditions would have looked like the beginning of April, not the beginning of March.

The hard freezes after springlike warmth have pretty well wrecked the cross-country skiing, even in the nearby woods. This limits alternative training activities to things that are more boring, and therefore less likely. Despite the fact that I can literally feel that sitting on the couch is killing me, I still slouch in front of the computer, teasing my mind with little jabs of electronic stimulation. Old friends, new friends, hopeful signs, terrifying trends, ads for diseases you, yes you, probably have...

Back to the hunt for bike parts. Look at that: Specialized has multiple road models that list for $10,000. Way to grow the sport! When civilization collapses, where will we charge our electronic shifters? I know, I know: personal solar systems will continue to work, as long as you can find a place to soak up some sun in between attacks by various desperadoes unleashed by the apocalypse. And you'll be able to scrounge hydraulic fluid for the brakes for quite a few years before things have reverted to more medieval conditions. Brake pads, on the other hand...

I've gotten out for a few fixed gear rides. The return to cold weather puts me back to scrounging kindling and pine cones to start the evening fires in the wood stoves. Scavenging wood is best done on skis, as long as there is any snow cover. It's not a high-intensity workout, but it combines some basic exercise with a practical need. That's been my guiding principle for my entire adult life.

I hate sharing the road

Driving season is grinding me down the way it always does. Sitting behind yet another ambling piece of flotsam as I'm trying to get the hell to work on a two-lane highway with lots of curves and steady traffic, I pine for the freedom of bike commuting. The vast physical, emotional, and psychological benefits outweigh the little bit of death fear that always accompanies cycling among motor vehicles.

Every year, I explore the motorist mindset. I absorb and radiate the impatience of the throttle-pusher forced to curtail speed because other legitimate users are on the road. The idiots staring at their phones, who somehow think that their weaving and speed changes aren't totally obvious make me wish I had a device with which to break in and blast them with a loud reminder to pay attention to piloting. One guy was so bad, I flashed my high beams at him repeatedly whenever I saw his face turn downward toward the touch screen. Flashflashflashflashflashflash! It seemed to work. He may have hated me, but at least the finally gave up on his phone until our paths diverged.

Critiquing other road users has become more dangerous this week, since New Hampshire did away with concealed weapon permits, releasing any gun owner to carry a concealed weapon with no restrictions or oversight. Hell, everything became more dangerous. Gun lovers like to say, "an armed society is a polite society," but fear creates reticence. The idea that anyone might be armed means that  speaking up when you see an injustice now calls for a higher level of courage. No one need fear that they will be stopped and questioned because law enforcement caught sight of a corner of a gun butt.

I've considered packing heat in the past. I had a concealed carry permit under the old system, but I did not renew it when it expired. Now I don't have to worry about the permit, but the reasons to forgo armament remain. If you pull it out, not only do you have to be ready to use it, you will have increased the chances that you will have to. Anyone even catching sight of a weapon you are carrying may use it as justification to take preemptive action. And guns weigh a lot. I'll be better served by an extra bottle of water.

Speaking of water, I've been hydrating desperately since the kidney stone. Unable to afford the defective product known as health insurance, I have to treat myself for things as much as possible. When I consulted my primary care provider a couple of weeks after the stone passed, because I still had residual twinges and wanted to get at least a cursory examination, she did not recommend investing in the expensive and inconclusive imaging procedures that might detect remaining stones until I had pursued many weeks of assiduous hydration. I had told her that the twinges were gradually subsiding. They ramp right up when I let myself worry. Those with the most to fear in America's pay-to-play health care business have the most incentive to suppress those fears, so that stress does not trigger the illness that will ruin everything.

The good news is that beer turns out to be a health beverage. Do not exceed the recommended dosage.

Lacking the resolve of my younger years, I find it hard to get my 10,000 steps a day. We're about two weeks away from Daylight Relocating Time. Depending on the weather, that may enhance exercise opportunities attractive enough to overcome my depression. I have to hope that the hits have outweighed the misses in this hit-and-miss winter, when I begin to lay down a more regular rhythm of effort and recovery on the bike.

Actual phone call, conjectural scene

Taking steps to stay fit

As long as I have a job to go to, I will have to spend at least eight hours a day, at least five days a week, stuck in a building, responding to whatever customer or employer needs arise.

Working in a bike/ski shop, I do get to cut out onto the trails when snow conditions are good enough. This makes up for the loss of bike commuting and lets me try out equipment and techniques to stay current with the products. It also keeps my eyes bright and coat shiny, and my arteries relatively clear for the next bike commuting season.

When winter does not cooperate with either cross-country skiing or continued bike commuting, your dedicated riders will hit the trainer. Picture yourselves, my heroes, churning away, dripping sweat into the towel draped over the top tube, listening to music or watching a video or simply grinding through the tedium with only the whir of the machinery and the rasping of your labored breath.

When I used the Nordic Trak, I discovered that it was easiest for me to endure in a completely dark room, with or without music. Sensory deprivation was better than trying to distract myself with entertainment. Better yet, I've left the Nordic Trak in the crawl space for several winters now, because it's just so hellishly tedious.

Don't try to ride rollers in the dark. I need a fixed frame of reference to keep me from zinging off the side into the nearest piece of furniture. The Force fails me.

The other problem with indoor exercise is that you have to suit up -- or strip down -- for it and do just that for the designated length of time. You might say this is no different from going out skiing or taking a bike ride, but those are both fun and potentially practical, whereas indoor exercise is simply chopped out of your life in a sweaty, boring chunk. Note: if you pedal a generator to provide some of your domestic electrical power, or otherwise power some useful machinery with your exertions, you get to claim practical applications beyond mere fitness. But if you build that into your domestic energy budget, then you are a slave to that treadmill in any season.

Because I like to sit around drawing pictures, reading, writing and peeking into other people's lives on social media, I have to watch out for creeping sedentariness. A day goes by, and then another, more and more in a string until the the pile of coffee cups and beer bottles, and line after line in the training diary shows that weeks have slipped away.

Fortunately for me, my house has three levels. In a stairway winter, I take a convoluted path like a character in Family Circus going all around the neighborhood to travel ten yards.

When the cellist was here full-time, my work area was in the loft. It still is, but things have tended to collect on the main floor, where the wood stove and the kitchen are. It's really easy to remain down here under a cat.

The main wood stove is in the basement. That's another set of stairs I add to the route. It can be a real thigh burner by the end of the day. Hopefully it will be enough to give me some base line and offset my new baking skills.

That's apple crisp and sweet potato pie. I don't have pictures of the brownies, because they don't last long enough. A cup of fresh, home-roasted coffee and a nice warm brownie? I might never leave the house except to get more ingredients.

Fortunately, poverty leads to austerity. The last grocery run consisted of cat food and vegetables. I can't afford to get the medical conditions that accompany slothful consumption of sweets and fats. The uninsured and under-insured live like animals. And we die like them, too. If I get something as simple and treatable as appendicitis, my choices are bankruptcy or death. Any variable I can control, I will control.

I've also discovered that indoor temperatures in the mid and upper 50s are endurable if you dress like a mountaineer. A bit of vigorous scurrying around helps generate body heat. Temperatures like that discourage one from sweating on a stationary trainer, by the way. As if I needed more excuses.

Closer to spring I'll get on the rollers to reacquaint my butt with the saddle, unless conditions have opened up enough to resume the park and ride for a few weeks before launching the full road route.

Exercise is a drug

This is not news to a lot of you: exercise acts like an antidepressant and stress reliever. Those of us who have experimented with a variety of forms of self medication will have figured out that exercise needs to be managed like a drug.

Setting aside the addictive substances famous for monopolizing users' lives, your lifestyle enhancers, legal and illegal, all create a cushion effect in which the user requires more of whatever it is to reach the desired level of whatever you're going for, whether it's mellow relaxation or euphoric energy.

Coincidentally, exercise can provide both of those, whereas most mere substances specialize in one part of the energy spectrum. But I digress.

The experienced user will know that occasional periods of abstinence improve the effect of "the stuff" when its use is resumed. In training we call these abstinence periods "rest days." Yep. You're just managing your habit so you get more high on less stuff. At the same time, hard-core exercisers may be using other substances to improve their performance, particularly if they've been sucked into the competitive side. That complicates their equation, but it need not complicate yours. Racing is the best way to turn any fun activity into a neurosis. A little is educational. A lot can make you delusional.

When I first took up the 30-mile commuting day I would ride 50-80 at least one day a week and try to mix up the pace a bit on other days to make 30 seem shorter. I don't remember when I ate and slept. I know I did. I had been a racer, so devotion to distance seemed normal. If you want to ride more, ride more.

When long and longer rides don't fit the schedule, you have to shorten some days. The Schedule has a way of eating away riding time. As long as the habitual exerciser maintains the basal level necessary to function, the mind and body absorb the fluctuations. And when circumstances taper riding down to zero, the gradual process takes care of detox and withdrawal. Or so it seems.

Schedule and circumstances brought me to zero a month and a half ago. Once you reach zero it's really easy to go a day at a time through weeks and weeks. The thing that got me into transportation cycling in the first place was the knowledge that if you don't put exertion right in front of yourself, between you and whatever you want next, you'll probably walk past it. Or more likely drive past it.

Have you ever been so completely exhausted that you could feel the energy you get from every breath and feel it leave you with every exhalation? You will only reach that point if you have to stay awake for some compelling reason. In my case it was usually a road trip. Back when gas was cheap and hotel rooms were dear, and I had no money anyway, I would drive straight through to wherever I was going, whether it was four hours away or 24. If I absolutely couldn't go on I would pull off and sleep in the car for a while.

Hotel rooms are still expensive. I hate shelling out for what's basically just a bed and a bathroom I'll use for eight hours or less. I can sleep as well in my car as I can in some overpriced roadside fleabag. At least in my car I know who raised the fleas. But I digress again.

A body habituated to exercise, that has been deprived of it to where real deterioration has set in, will react to the faintest breath of it the way that exhausted driver does, rousing on the inhale and nodding off again on the exhale.

My ordinary activities do require a certain amount of exertion in the winter. I have to split some firewood nearly every day, and carry loads of it twice a day. When snow falls I have to shovel, sweep and snowblow it from the area around the house and garage. But that never creates the sustained rhythm that generates the surge of well-being you get from regular riding, running, walking or cross-country skiing.

On Thursday I had a Dutch three-speed on the stand. I was running the Sachs Torpedo hub through its gears and laughing over the name "Sachs Torpedo." Wanna see my Sachs Torpedo? It does not provide a handy adjustment window like a Sturmey Archer or Shimano hub. You have to go by more subtle indicators. Sheldon Brown and Sutherland's were my guide.

Because the parking lot was finally clear and the weather was reasonably mild, I could take the bike out for a test ride. When I muckled onto it to left it down from the stand, the erector muscles on either side of my spine clamped down in a spasm. The wages of inactivity. I set the bike down without dropping it and dropped into a couple of stretches to relax the knots. Once the pain settled down to a dull ache and spread across my whole back I carried the bike down to do the test ride. When I came back in I ran through the warmup exercises from a tai chi class I took years ago. I don't remember anything else, but the warmup set loosens up arms, back and shoulders really well.

At home that night I lay on the living room floor to do some deeper stretches. I used to stretch a lot. While no one would be impressed with my contortions compared to a real professional human pretzel, I did have pretty good flexibility. Not anymore. But I did manage to roll and unroll my spine a few times and then run through another set of tai chi warmups. The feeling afterward compared closely to the way I would feel after a much more vigorous workout and longer stretching session back when I did those several times a week instead of a few times a year.

A body that had never exercised, or never been pushed to the high-intensity dilettante level that I used to maintain would not have gotten the same bounce. One thing you learn about getting high is to recognize the symptoms of being high.

A little does not go a long way. The lift is palpable, but brief, barely longer than the lift of a single breath in that deep exhaustion I talked about. If I don't get some sort of routine going I will fall further and further into the pit of lard, lethargy and despair that is modern industrialized life. Enough time passes and even the hack athlete forgets what power lies within. Even longer and the power itself is essentially gone. We all lose it eventually, but you can give it up much sooner.

Training to be "not a cyclist"

Those of us who can't just light up a cigarette, push up the kickstand with our fashionably booted foot and zip off on our latest short-hop errand in all seasons have to keep our engines in shape even if we don't nurture competitive urges. We have to train.

Even an inanimate engine holds up better when it gets run occasionally. And when the engine is muscle it really deteriorates if it sits idle. When the riding season is limited and the distances are long, you have to tune the engine somehow.

The cellist has been home for the holidays. As soon as she got over highway fatigue she dug out her fixed-gear and suited up for a spin on one of the mild days we've been having. When I got a couple of days off we went out together. The days are their shortest, but just barely beginning to lengthen.

These outings used to feel heroic. Since I gave up on my legend it's harder to feel justified going out on a bike ride to nowhere in particular just for the exercise. But I know I'll wish I had.

Yesterday I shot a video on one of the climbs, illustrating two techniques, Stitch and Grunt.

I'm Stitching. The cellist is Grunting. The Stitcher has to keep an eye and ear out for traffic, but the rhythm appeals to me. I'm basically indolent, and stitching is less work than grunting. I grunt on the last bit because it's too close to the blind hill crest to keep crossing the lanes.

A little farther along we got to a nice fast stretch.

The fixed gears make you pedal the whole way. The single gear limits your speed, which is good for controlling wind chill as much as you can. You get a lot of value for your time. This is important when the weather is uncomfortable or dangerous.

Today the temperature was in the teens in the morning. It was still around 20 when I headed out alone. The cellist has a lot to do to prepare for her return to Maryland.

About three miles down the road I saw a small sedan stopped in the oncoming lane. In front of it was what looked like a lump of dirty snow. It was a small cat that had been tagged by a car, which had sped on. The occupants of the sedan had stopped and called the police. I stopped, called the cellist for a cat carrier and blankets and then called our vet. But it turned out that the police were going to take the kitty to the same vet, and have the advantage of police markings and flashing lights. We wrapped the cat in a blanket and placed it carefully in the warm back seat of the police SUV.

I held out some hope for the animal because it was sitting up, meowing, rather than lying there with insides hanging out. There was blood, but not a lot of it, and its limbs felt intact when I lifted it in its swaddling. I had petted it while we waited, slowly moving a warm hand down its back. I could feel it purring, which they do to soothe themselves when sick or injured. It was still engaged in being a cat.

I rode back to intercept the cellist and tell her how things had worked out. She had gotten out of the house too quickly for me to get her by phone as the whole thing was evolving. I thought about just going home, but I went on instead. These were going to be my last miles of 2014, for whatever that's worth.

It was definitely more like winter out there. I had gotten a little chilled while attending to the wounded. I rode hard to generate heat. At least the wind had gone down. I tooled dutifully through my old faithful 15-mile loop and home to a warm shower and some food.

Hard to say what happens next in the training department. I'll do a lot, including just say screw it and drink beer, to avoid spending too much time on a stationary trainer. The Wolfeboro Cross-Country Ski Association is making snow on a two-kilometer loop. I might just have to take my headlamp off the bike helmet and put it back on its headband for some laps of night skiing. We only just got the cold weather, so that won't be ready for a few days.

Commuting Season Fast Approaching

Bike commuting season never ends for some lucky or absurdly dedicated riders, but I would venture to say that the majority of riders in regions where winter conditions bring a halt to the easier riding conditions for at least a short time have to or want to hang up the bike for a while. This winter that would include most of the country.

My own routine purposely included a shift to snow-related activities. It was a relief not only to use my body a little differently but also to get around without the sudden intrusion of someone's hostile opinion. I don't ski on snowmobile trails because I don't want to think about motor vehicles when I don't have to.

As snow-related activities have faced various challenges the routine has taken a beating. But this winter factors combined to bring somewhat regular cross-country skiing back into the mix early in February. It was not quite enough to make up for the loss of bike commuting, but at least it helps lay down a base so I'm not coming straight off the couch and car seat right into 30-mile riding days. And it underscores the effectiveness of moderate aerobic exercise as an antidepressant.

If I could figure out how to commute on cross-country skis I would do it. I've said many times and will repeat it often: exercise in commuting time is the perfect combination. You have to be going to or from work anyway. There's no way to salvage driving time. You shouldn't be doing most of the things people to do to try to combine driving with social or work-related communication. So you might as well be getting that beneficial exercise. Then when you get where you're going, work or home, you're ready to do whatever needs to be done there, whether it's work or fun. But I can't ski from home or from my park-and-ride starting point. So it becomes a bit of a luxury, something to fit in around more pressing responsibilities.

I do recommend cross-country skiing to anyone who can manage to arrange it. It provides the best full-body conditioning, much better than bicycling. Not only will you come out of it with a very usable physique, it also cranks up your metabolism enough to let you turn the thermostat down in your house a bit to save on heating expenses. Try it. You'll be amazed. Any physical activity does that to some extent, but I feel the warmth from skiing for hours.

Winter seems like a massive, unstoppable force this year, but of course it's not. So anyone who likes to use cross-country skiing as a winter program needs alternatives. These include hiking and running -- with or without snowshoes depending on conditions -- indoor spinning, weight training, swimming, running up and down stairwells, various exercise machines, drinking and bitching. Really vigorous bitching, particularly if you get up and pace around, can burn some calories and get your heart rate up more than just sitting around moping. And if you keep your beer in a fridge on a different floor or at least as far as possible from where you consume it you will get some exercise going back for a refill.

Obviously if you are below legal drinking age or otherwise disqualified from participating you will have to work around that. I'm only tossing out suggestions.

Whatever March does, Daylight Relocating Time kicks in this Sunday, shifting usable daylight later in the day. This would allow bike commuting right away. But I want a little saddle time before I charge right into the whole route. And icebergs line the roadway on most of my route, seriously limiting my options when dealing with early-season motorists who have happily forgotten what a cyclist looks like. In the best of years there's always a little friction as I retrain them. I prefer not to be dealing with narrowed, icy roads and my own lack of fitness while smacking down fractious drivers. But we're getting there. Regular riding will return.

Weather and time

Just as November can break out during any month of what we used to think of as winter, so can Sunday break out during any day of the week.

Sunday is absolutely the most tedious day of the work week. A busy spell on any other day will move the clock forward miraculously, bringing lunch time or quitting time pleasantly quickly. The same level of activity on a Sunday ends with the clock hands frozen where they started. Through this fall and winter, Sunday's time has spread to the other days. The silence is deeper. The sense of abandonment more complete. The desperate feeling of being in some absurdist hell settles like a weight on the chest.

It seems funny to talk about attacks of November when we're locked into a week of subzero nights and bitter, breezy days, but the National Weather Service forecast calls for a warmup to the 40s by next Wednesday, with rain showers. This is the new climate: if it gets cold at all it gets ridiculously cold. Storm fronts bounce off the frigid dome of high pressure, dumping their bounty on places that would prefer to do without it and then blundering out over the ocean. The wind shifts behind the front and drags a moist southerly flow over us. The first bit of precip might fall as something frozen, but the temperature keeps rising.

Longtime residents of the area all said you never get two skimpy winters in a row. I didn't bother to remind them of 1991 and 1992. I should check my notes. As meager as those winters were, they may not have been as bad as the last one and the one we're in. And a few others have only been one snowfall away from being epic disasters as well.

This puts the cross-training cyclist in a tough spot. I don't have much enthusiasm for a dawn patrol on icy roads at 6 degrees below zero, which was this morning's temperature. My previous winter stand-bys, cross-country skiing and hiking, suffer from a lack of snow on one hand and a lack of time on the other. With good snow and somewhat normal winter temperatures I would ski around the woods at home with a headlamp just for a little something.

It's indoor training, running or nothing. I'm cool with nothing. Reading, writing, bludgeoning the fiddle, maybe some drawing, not to mention sitting around under a cat all seem worthwhile enough as long as I move around a little during any given day. As bike season seems like more of a possibility in a week or a month the more focused training will seem more like it's worth the trouble.