The towel is thrown

The Wolfeboro Cross-country Ski Association picked a good year to institute snowmaking. But it wasn't a great year. Atmospheric conditions were so poor for snowmaking during December that we had nothing to offer during the Christmas vacation period, which is one of two major blocs of income for the ski business in the northeast US. Downhill areas fared somewhat better, particularly ones a bit farther north, with more elevation to augment the less than ideal temperature and humidity. And then we had record-setting rains in January that caused flood damage to trails for every winter activity.

By February we had the snowmaking loop up and running, but it hasn't survived the first week of March. Snowmaking isn't magic, and key sections of it lost cover in the warm weather that has dominated the winter. The trails are closed and the shop has gone to spring hours. Even if we get a late March blizzard, it will be falling onto bare, saturated ground in many areas.

In a strange twist, I had more opportunities to get out for a concentrated workout in prime time this winter because of the wretched conditions. I haven't come into a bike commuting season with this good a fitness base since we shut down the shop at Jackson Ski Touring in 2009. Up there, with trails right outside the door and a narrower scope of operations, it was much more convenient to rotate each of us out on many days to get that beneficial shot of conditioning. It enhanced our efficiency and kept our credentials fresh, while also providing a great launching pad for the next season's riding.

The ski/bike alternation changes muscle use in ways that help the cyclist more than a year-round cycling routine would. But in the transition from one to the other, you notice what you're missing. At the start of skiing I would have to build upper body strength and all of the steering and stability muscles that take the rest of the year off. At the other end, going back to the bike, I find myself in the lower portions of a hill climb with only my legs to propel the machine, carrying all of the muscles used to push the ski poles now providing mostly non-functional weight.

In addition to the ski sessions, I got out once or twice a week to climb the neighborhood mountain. The trail is listed in an old Appalachian Mountain Club guidebook as 1.4 miles to the summit. Elevation gain is 1,144 feet. The trail climbs gently for about the first third, and then steepens. A preliminary effort brings you to a traverse of a couple of hundred yards along a contour to reach the base of the most rugged section. Above that the grade lets up slightly on the way to a more or less level few yards approaching the summit. There's a fire tower that is not abandoned, but is usually unoccupied. During the winter there is never an observer. The trail is popular enough that the footway is reliably packed down. People do it in a variety of inappropriate footwear, but so far none of them have had to be evacuated by emergency responders. 

From the first hike in late January until the most recent one yesterday, the surface has been different each time. The first time it was a well packed snowshoe trail firm enough to go up without wearing the snowshoes. It's very rude to posthole a trail, stomping deep footprints into it because you don't bother to bring snowshoes. Going up it's easy to place your feet lightly and commit your weight gradually. I wore snowshoes to descend, because your body weight always arrives with more force as you step down. 

Snow fell before I got out on the second hike, but other hikers had a few days to pack it down before I got there. From that point on, no new snow was added. When the weather stayed somewhat cold, the trail changed only a little. I did see the tracks of one intrepid skier one day, and on another the unbelievable signs that someone had ridden a bike down it. I didn't see clear signs that they had ridden up it. And the tires didn't look super wide, almost like plus-size, 3-inch rather than full fat. Mixed in with tracks from snowshoes, hiking boots, and ice creepers were the prints of street shoes and sneakers. 

I was going to begin riding this week, but the forecast indicated that I won't be able to be consistent enough with it to make the initial discomfort worth it. I banged out one more tower hike instead. This is prime hypothermia season. Temperatures above freezing, ranging either side of 50°F (10°C) fool a lot of active people because we need very light layers while exerting, and may feel comfortably warm for a few minutes after stopping. The temperature on the summit that cloudy day was solidly mid 40s. I felt quite comfortable on arrival. I put on a fleece jacket because I knew I would want it soon. Indeed, with a fairly light but persistent breeze I soon felt like I wanted more clothing than the fleece. Rather than dig out the extra gear, I gathered up my stuff to head down. But I had the layers if I needed them.

Hypothermia gets you when you don't expect it. You get cold on a winter hike, it makes sense. We do hear about poorly prepared people who get into trouble and even die out there in the winter. But most people have some idea that they should bundle up a bit at the height of winter. It's in the transition time, into early spring, when acclimated outdoor types might overestimate the mildness. It happened to me one April day decades ago, on a cloudy afternoon with some showers in the forecast. I set out around the mountain on the fixed-gear, wearing sufficient clothing for the best of predicted conditions, but with nothing extra in case things deteriorated. They deteriorated. Sprinkles began before I has half a mile down the road. Those turned to a steady rain. I kept going. The route is all or nothing. There is no way to cut it off. Once you reach the halfway point on the far side of the mountain you need to keep going the rest of the way.

Theoretically I could have gone up to one of the sparsely distributed houses along the route and asked for shelter, but apparently I would literally rather die than bother anyone to bail me out for my stupid decision. I don't know what kind of shape I would have been in if my spouse at the time had not thought to go out and collect me. She correctly guessed my route and drove it the opposite direction to intercept me. These days I am alone most of the time, so I have to pay closer attention to the list of essentials any solo traveler should have.

The roads will now present the best venue for consistent activity for maybe as much as a couple of months. Back when mountain bikes were relatively cheap and definitely simple, we rode on found trails rather than courses designed and constructed at great and ongoing expense. We would charge out on the rotting ice of snow machine trails and woods roads, crashing into icy water, grunting though deep mud, and laughing about it. Not anymore, though. You don't put in hours of labor on loamers, or thousands of dollars on more elaborate trails and then go ride them when they're wet and soft! Horrors! And the bikes themselves demand such loving care to keep them ready to throw off of 9-foot drops that you don't want to crap them all up with a bunch of abrasive silt on mere dirt roads. The gravel demographic might be a tad more open to muddy roads. Fat bikers might try their flotation on some of them as well. My fixed-gear is still coated with adobe from my ride on New Year's Day, when the dirt part my favorite local loop was sloppy from the rain we'd gotten during Christmas week. Mud season has to come sometime, but I try to avoid having to do too much cleaning over and over again.

If I can get straight into commuting, I won't have to ride the muddy dirt roads or stick to the entirely paved options to get base miles before undertaking the more serious effort of lugging my tired old ass and my day's load of crap to work and back. My 30-mile daily commuting distance puts the day's effort into the realm of a real ride, even though it's split roughly evenly into 15 miles morning and evening. That work day in the middle keeps me on my feet. The rides are also in what passes for rush hour around here, so I'm dealing with hurrying drivers on all sections of the route. I need to be combat ready.

Fortunately, most motorists just want to get past a cyclist with the least delay. A honk, a yell, a thrown object -- these are impulsive acts not meant to delay overall progress. If a rider is careful to offer no greater offense than the mere audacity of claiming some space on the road, the vast majority of drivers just want to go by and get on with their lives. Only their fellow motorists inspire the urge to have a tank battle right then and there. But that's a story for another day.

Throwing our bodies in front of the machines...

 Two women ran side by side along the edge of Mill Street on this sunny morning in meteorological spring. They were facing traffic, as they should when no other infrastructure is provided, but there is a sidewalk on the other side of that street. I expected them to divert into a parking lot entrance a few yards ahead of them, because that's what pedestrians on that side of Mill Street usually do. Instead, they continued to run up the traffic lane itself, toward the intersection with Main Street, a corner that motorists regularly round as if they're being filmed in a chase scene. It may be a driver yanking a quick left from Main Street southbound or snapping a quick right just past the last parked car on Main Street northbound.

Most motorists are unaware of how fast they're actually going in their machines designed to isolate them from the wind of their passage and the roughness of the pavement. Locked into the flow, we all have a tendency to focus on stopping only where we had already planned to, or wherever circumstances force us to. Drivers scan constantly for objects the same size as their vehicles, or larger.

The runners would have had to pass a retaining wall that gives them nowhere to go except right up the lane past a small building to get to the little section of parking lot beyond. And that section of parking lot is used as the entry to the bigger parking lot behind that small building, by drivers careening off of Main Street. With piles of snow crowding the roadway at that corner, the runners would not be able to walk across the worn dirt and trampled grass for a few yards to get to the sidewalk along Main Street, as they could do in the summer. This would bring them right up to the corner of Main Street itself. I couldn't see them once they passed the lower end of the little building, but I knew what their options were.

Their trajectory didn't end with a screech and a thump. One reason that people continue to do risky things is that they usually get away with it. In my observation, most drivers are aware enough to avoid hitting anyone. But are they happy about it?

Whether drivers are happy to see us doesn't matter unless you encounter the one who is finally having a bad enough day to engage in assault. You can't know who that is. So, if you want to use the roads you have to put yourself out there.

My first thought was that these women were idiots to place themselves at risk like that. But then I considered the challenge of creating traffic systems that accommodate all users. Unless a jurisdiction has the space and the budget to separate all users, we're going to mix. In Wolfeboro, not every street has a sidewalk. People walk where they can, because otherwise they would have to deal with congestion and parking for short hops in the village, which is already crowded with vehicular traffic. And, especially in the summer, the dinky sidewalks are so crowded that pedestrians spill over into the streets, or cross wherever they happen to be.

Pedestrians and bike riders are mobile traffic calmers. We aren't made of concrete. We aren't crash-absorbing barrels, although we will burst on impact, splattering liquid all over the place, if an inattentive motorist plows into us. Drivers know this, too. Most of them don't want to be grossed out like that. So our mere presence serves to remind them to be more alert. Our presence in larger numbers creates friction in their flow, automatically slowing them. Our bodies in front of them confront them with humanity.

The women did not get hit, but they did remind drivers that we exist. Every non-motorized road user reminds drivers and transportation planners that people do something besides drive. I would not have taken the route that they did, nor would I have advised them to do it. And I don't think they did it to make a statement. I think they were pretty oblivious. That makes it an even more powerful demonstration that walkers and pedalers need to figure in planning and in the perceptions of drivers. If no one is seen out there, the people who make the plans don't perceive a need. Drivers happily forget how to act around us. If you hang back and wait for the perfect facility, you will wait a long time. So we throw our bodies in front of the machines.

With Daylight Relocating Time starting this weekend, all I will need is some base miles and halfway decent weather to start the bike commuting season. This used to involve a distinct period of retraining motorists. For some reason, for about the past decade, drivers have seemed to adapt more readily, with less hostility than they used to. That can change at any time, though. No rider on the road can ever assume that the troubles are over. Just be grateful for times when they seem to be suspended. No doubt around here the transition is eased by people like those two women, who just go for it, and by the handful of riders who take every opportunity throughout the winter to grab a quick spin. We owe them reinforcements, these defenders of the people's right to self-propulsion. Not every struggle for freedom fills the news with flames and mass casualties, mobilizing national governments. Your own world is right here for you to shape.

Train like a pro

 In 1980 I was somewhat sketchily employed and had a chance to ride regularly with a sponsored "amateur" bike racer. While he did not receive a direct salary for riding, he had reached a high enough level that he was able to ride as if it was his job.

During the spring and summer he was often around Annapolis. He welcomed company on his long, easy days, and on many of his interval training days, the pattern of effort and recovery allowed a few riders far below his level to play along anyway. When he had something really serious to do, he generally did it somewhere else, with riders in his category.

Because he had to ride, but he had complete control over his schedule, he mostly rode in the nicest part of every day, if the day actually had a nice part. I did go with him on one rainy day, for hours, getting steadily more soaked and gritty, but for the most part we went when the air was mild, and the gentle sun shone just enough through perfect puffy clouds -- or so it seems in memory. He did say that he preferred to train during his highest energy level, which was the heart of the day. It was a pretty seductive life. Eat well, sleep well, ride a lot, tune your bike...

He did have an obligation to perform in return for this indulgence. I got a small closeup of it one day when the group wanted to go long and mellow, but he needed to do a time trial effort to prepare for a race. I went with him when he peeled off to do this on the way back to Annapolis from south of town. We were on Route 2, for anyone who remembers what that was like in 1980, with the classic Chesapeake southerly wind behind us. He accelerated steadily to top gear as I stayed an inch off his wheel, as he had taught us. Then he pulled left so that I could ride through on the inside to take a turn at the front.

I felt like a flag in a gale. I clawed my way past him, with a bit of shelter as he dropped back. He looked down at my bike.

"You've got two bigger gears," he said.

I knew that, but I was finding out that they were mostly decorative. I shifted into them and promptly roasted my legs. I lasted about seven seconds out there before he pulled through. We tried to switch off a couple of times after that before he just told me to stay back and hang on.

There's a reason that the time trial is called "The Race of Truth."

That day offered a rare chance to see a tougher part of the process. When I was in an actual race with him, the district road championships, I saw him depart on his breakaway with a couple of other riders, and saw him no more until we were back at the parking lot when it was over. He had a job to do. I was just playing.

I think of those days now as I try to train up for commuting season more than 500 miles north of central Maryland. I try to ride in the nicest part of the day, but with a regular job, and with early season niceness often less nice, for shorter periods, I'm out there with a cold wind leaning on me on the few days when I have the option to ride when it suits me. Even so, I find it easier to dress for a slog in the frigid gale than for stationary riding in a room that is too warm and too cold at the same time.

After a lackluster winter, we're told to expect a cold spring. Once I get into the commute, the ride time is set and the weather just comes along with it. The nicest part of the day often takes place outside the shop windows in the middle of the work day and is gone by the time I head out into the chilling evening.

Bike riding is seen as a hobby and an indulgence in this country, but for me it has been a vital part of a life less reliant on fossil fuels, and more conducive to physical fitness -- not for vanity, but for the ability to live more economically within humanity's global family budget. It has also helped me to survive on really pathetic paychecks by reducing my transportation expenses. If I could go back to living without a car, I would. However, by the time our urban areas are redesigned actually to support the workforce, I will be a very old man, or the decomposing remains of one. So for now I indulge myself in rural surroundings, and push my rusty old car through the seasons when transportation cycling is not practical in this climate.

Season 31: A leap into summer

 Here we are in the transition from early to mid-April, and I wore shorts at work. Not to ride, mind you. The morning was still chilly in the river valley, and the rest of the ride in was manageably cool. The heat hit me after I arrived. No way I was going to pull long pants over my sweaty legs. I had considered following the full summer standard, dealing with the chilly start in light garb so I wouldn't have to lug the unused layers home at the end of the day. The problem is that it is April, the month of deception. If the later part of the day cooled quickly from its mid-day high around 70, I could find myself rolling down the north slope of 28, balancing my desire to get home quickly against the discomfort of cold wind cutting through insufficient layers. This is where commuting differs from scheduling a single ride in the nicest part of the day.

I would have liked more base miles, but my ancient car really needs some rest and professional attention. This is a good thing, really, because it blows me out of the motorized cocoon and forces me to propel myself around. This was the intent with bike commuting in the first place: to offset my family tendency to sloth and carbohydrates.

My winter training consisted mostly of squats. Like, "I did squat today." I got out to ski around on the mountain out back a few times, and had isolated outbreaks of other exercise, but it was way too easy to find other things to do. A day passes, and then another, and a few more. Suddenly it's time to launch the commuting season and I don't know if I'm ready.

The first thirty yards felt pretty good. After that I knew I shouldn't push my heart rate. I felt hollow, and wondered if this was a good idea. But since when did I let that stop me? "That which does not kill me makes me stronger" is not always true, but it is true in the pursuit of early season training miles.

The surprise came at the end of the day, when I set out for home. Rather than feeling depleted by the morning effort, I felt like I was a few days further along in just a few hours. I expected to grovel up the hills, but some sort of muscle memory had kicked in during the day. I wasn't sprinting after trucks, but I had enough to complete the routine journey.

We'll see how it holds up. I could fossilize overnight. The temperature drops back to a more normal range after tomorrow, too. At least it isn't reverting to winter the way it does sometimes. Not yet, anyway.

A neatly-kept village full of wonderful people...dammit.

 Even the simplest of bicycles has moving parts. Add to the trusty fixed-gear a rear rack and a set of real fenders, and there are even more little details to keep track of.

Just far enough into my ride so that I did not want to turn back and make proper repairs, I noticed that the  bolt holding one set of rear fender stays had vanished. The fender rattled against the rack, which made me look down and back to see the fender stays poking out into the slipstream, totally screwing with my aerodynamics.

Mentally reviewing what I had on board for tools and parts, I decided to scan the roadside for a discarded bit of wire or an old bread bag tie that I could use to secure the stay until I could complete my planned route and dig up a nice nut and bolt. A nice nut and bolt wouldn't help me along the roadside, because I didn't have tools to install them. Even a shoelace would have worked. 

Coming out of Ryefield Road I saw nothing useful. Out on Route 25, the litter was all cans, bottles, cigarette packages, and the occasional piece of scrap metal or wood. Here and there were pieces of fabric, bedraggled lengths of webbing too fat to fit the frame eyelet, Dunkie's cups, plastic straws, and shreds of surveyor's tape. Approaching my scheduled turn toward the village of Freedom, there were several disposable diapers, invitingly opened like a taco bowl, rather than tightly wrapped like the classic turd burrito. Highway travelers along this stretch are a classy bunch. There was even a 750ml Jack Daniels bottle. Yee haw.

I held out hope for the side road into Freedom. You never know what might vibrate off of someone's work truck. But the roadsides even in the outer environs were almost devoid of litter, and completely without the specific pieces I sought. The closer I got to the center of the village, the more manicured the shoulders looked. It was beautiful and peaceful. Placards and banners of love and inclusivity decorated lawns and homes. The road edges looked as neatly raked as a zen garden. What a great community! Would it kill you to toss one lousy bread tie?

Since the loose fender didn't present a danger, it only bothered my sense of order. The further I went, the less important the perfect piece of litter became, but I still scanned for it, which brought my average speed down. I stopped multiple times to investigate possibilities, which I then had to dutifully pick up and bring with me for proper disposal.

Re-entering Effingham across Route 25, the roadsides were a little cruddier. Some drivers on highways tend to hold their litter until they turn onto a side road with a lower speed limit, because it's easier to chuck the stuff without a 60 mile per hour gale shredding past the window. I also see it where Elm Street enters the woods just after Duncan Lake. Drivers passing through from Route 16 fling tons of crap onto the first 50 yards where nothing is built on either side of the road. The litter tapers off as you get further from the highway junction, although there is always some.

People who give a crap are always cleaning up after people who toss their crap.

Spring Avalanche

Just as March looked like April again this year, so did the repair load go from zero to backlogged in a matter of days.

With only 1.3 mechanics on duty most days, we get buried more easily than we did in the boom times of the 1990s, but even back then the amount of repair work this early in the season would have been remarkable.

I did manage to finish the crash repairs on that Pedego.

The battery case takes a long time to install, because it is held together with eight little Phillips head screws that are mostly inaccessible. Inaccessibility is no excuse, however, so you have to use several different screwdrivers and contort your wrist to coax the fastenings down to seat fully. This was after rewiring the damn thing. Sliding the battery into the case was an appropriately satisfying insertion. Bit of an anticlimax, really.

The fun had just begun there, though. Pedego had changed their wiring harness (of course) since the bikes were built, so the new light and control unit had to include the adapted fittings for the old harness. Even the wire from the brake levers, that cuts the motor when the brakes are applied, had the connectors reversed. Most of the work was not complicated. It just took time to collect all the necessary little bits, from Pedego, from the hardware store, and from the crash-damaged parts that still had useful wiring.

Mixed in with the earliest arrivals was a Motobecane from the 1980s with a classic corncob freewheel.

Back when 52-13 was considered a big gear, and we only had six in the back, the 13-18 was the mark of the racer. Anyone old enough to have a freewheel like that now is not pushing a 42-18 up the hills of the White Mountains anymore. Converting this bike to lower gears required not just a wider-range freewheel, but also a derailleur that could handle the cog size and chain wrap. We're still waiting for the crankset to convert the front end to 110 compact. Adaptable old bikes can have new lives. They'll still be rolling along when the exoskeletons of the most recent marvels are already lying cracked and discarded, the batteries in their shifters dead, hydraulic fluid and tire sealant seeping into the ground.

I do like the 1890s leather on 21st Century carbon fiber on this Trek road bike:

Carbon fiber the bike may be, but it's such a relic that the cables are actually outside the frame! The poor bastard riding it is getting by with only ten speeds in the cassette and has this weird device that moves the chain between two chainrings on the crank. Old people have weird stuff. They say things like, "By cracky!" and "Jehosaphat!" too. And they do that weird little jig with their elbows out when they're excited. This guy still has all his own teeth, though. I can say things like this because I'm pretty sure I'm older than he is.

A couple of posts ago I said that only a rare old codger wanted me to build a wheel anymore. Then two wheel jobs came in. One of them was for the Trek above. The 24-spoke Easton rear wheel had a cracked rim. No rims were available, but we could get a 28-spoke hub and rim to build him a complete new wheel. I'm not a fan of low spoke count wheels, but they do go together more quickly.

                                                                   Hub porn

The All City hub is very nice for the price. I thought about stockpiling one or two for future wheels of my own.

The other wheel project used hub, rim, and spokes provided by the customer. I couldn't figure out why the wheel had been completely disassembled in the first place. The spokes were bundled and labeled right and left side for the disc hub, but even though they were supposedly the correct lengths the wheel was difficult to tension evenly. The rim had taken a couple of hard shots. Also, the customer had told me it was two-cross, but it turned out to have been three. It's easy to overlook that first cross down by the hub flange.

In the repair mystery department, a bike this week was completely missing the return spring assembly on one brake arm.

It wasn't a model with plastic parts that could break easily and allow the spring to fall out. There was no sign that the brake arm had been removed. I had nothing in the salvage bin to replace just the missing pieces, so we had to install a complete brake set. This tends to happen on repairs where the customer has set low financial limits. We agree to a minimal repair, trying to ignore anything off the script, and then find something we can't let go. Fortunately, the customer accepted the necessity.

Salvaged parts featured prominently for another repair. A road bike turned out to need a cassette after a new chain did not play nicely with the original gear cluster. The bike has nine-speed brifters, from back when that was respectably middle class. The cassette was a 12-25. We can't get one. We had an 11-28. The derailleur theoretically could be coaxed to handle the 28, but couldn't handle the chain wrap. I went to the cog farm to piece together just the cogs on which the chain had skipped. In the process I discovered the intact low-gear section -- 17 through 25 -- of the exact cassette we needed.

Save old cogs. Most of the time, a cassette is not completely chewed. Even if the chain skips on more than just the cog with the fewest teeth, others less used in the cluster may have lots of useful life left in them.

Finally, I was looking for videos on a repair procedure on a smokeless moped. At the end of the YouTube video, the montage of stills for "videos I might like" included this excellent accidental pairing:

Remember those words and heed them always.

The temptations of Marpril

Today's high temperature was about 62 degrees at my house. In a forecast discussion one day last week on the  National Weather Service site, a meteorologist had written that the pattern looked more like April than March. It's true. The high temperatures have been consistently well above freezing, tagging the 50s on occasion. But 62 -- that's the territory of May.

Freakishly warm days can hit at any time. I've seen it hit 60 in January, and turn warm and wet enough to melt off the snow cover all the way to the highest summits. That was 1995. But the odd warm day or two can pop in and out in any month of winter, with less dramatic consequences. Still, the closer you get to the real end of winter, the more these benedictions make you yearn for more like them.

I yielded to it today. I overdressed, of course, but not so much that I was gasping for breath and pouring with sweat. My route passes through one well-known micro-climate where I was glad of every layer I had on, for the seven seconds that I was in that shaded hollow full of snow and spruce trees.

The temperature drops back to more Aprilish conditions starting tomorrow. Tomorrow's 50s with clouds and developing showers mimics the latter half of next month, while the progressively lower temperature waves take us closer to the beginning of it as the week goes on.

The early meltdown has drawn a few riders out. On Sunday, a woman brought in her thoroughly modern gravel bike to investigate a flat tubeless tire. David diagnosed it as just a dislodged bead due to low air pressure. The rider had been told to run 'em soft because it's faster, and it absorbs shock. Because she works out of town, she goes to an excellent shop in Concord. She described her mechanic there as "hard core." Based on his equipment recommendations, I would add "trendoid." But looking back over my life I realize that I have lost every war I was ever in. The industry sold its soul to planned obsolescence in the 1990s, and the addicts who depend on it live in a world viewed through their perceived need.

You don't have to be hard core to be dedicated.

Clearly almost no one respects my opinion about the technology. I do enjoy riding my archaic shit. I love how it works. I do not yearn for anything more sophisticated. All the gimmicky bullshit has not bought us any more respect on the roads, or recruited sedentary legions from the sidelines. The only technological innovation that has stirred much interest is the addition of an electric motor.

How many times over the years did some smartass look at the price of a high-end bike and say, "For that kind of money, I want a motor!" Well, here you go: put up or shut up, asshole.

You can get hassled or run down just as easily on an e-bike as on one powered by meat alone. Think that a motor enhances safety? Ask a motorcyclist about that.

For today, I made it around a nice little 15-mile route on a fixed gear with no parts on it newer than the late 20th Century, except for the tires. They're more recent, but they may not even be from this decade. Oh, and the chain was new within the last couple of years. I could tell I had no strength, but I had enough. A utility rider doesn't need to maintain 20+ miles per hour for hours. You don't need to be first up the hill. You just need to get up the hill.

One ride leads to another, or so you hope. And so begins a season.

The fine old tradition of sneering at people

The weather has been unusually mild for the time of year. Mild is a misleading term; the nights have gone well below freezing for the most part, and the days have been warmer than winter, but hardly balmy. In sum, they act more like early spring than late winter.

People who hate winter are always ready to dance on its grave. Even people who enjoy some winter activities are ready to see the end of a disappointing one. If winter won't be winter, we're ready for it to change. We all want to believe. Anyone who has lived in northern New England for a long time knows better than to rely on the change, even into April, but it's okay to know what you'd prefer.

Killjoys  -- like a guy who came into the shop yesterday -- like to snow and sleet on that parade by calling the early thaw "fool's spring." Fool's spring. You are all fools. I am the wise one. I need to make sure that you realize that, when or if the weather shifts back to something wintry, you were a fool to have enjoyed the fantasy that the pattern might instead have marched steadily toward the usable conditions of warmer seasons with the briefest possible period of mud and slush. He'd been reminded of the term that day by some TV meteorologist, but it has the ring of old New England about it. They could simply call it "false spring," but that's no fun, because it doesn't insult anyone.

You can't do anything about the weather except dress for it. As a bike rider, you can prepare your bike of any type for the riding surfaces you hope to use. The end of winter makes soft trail surfaces vulnerable to ruts. Wet, rotting ice can be mildly or majorly hazardous, as one gravel rider learned the hard way in a previous early spring. He was charging down a descent when the tires broke through, sending him down hard enough to bang him up pretty well. I don't remember the full catalog of his injuries, but I think they did delay his further training for a while. Pushing the season can ruin your season. But also: speed kills.

My commute route options use varying amounts of the unpaved rail trail. I don't have the funds or inclination to invest in a fat bike, so I do my best to maneuver through whatever combination of ice and mud I find. I have the option of a long route out of town that uses all paved roads. Before the trail existed, that was the standard route. Since I already own more bikes than the average person, I should be able to figure something out.

If the weather does hold its current trend and proceed more or less steadily to true springtime, I'm sure the wise ones will come up with some other reason that they were not fools for doubting it. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice and I'll never admit it.

The convenience of Daylight Relocating Time

Daylight Relocating Time arrives this coming Sunday in the states that observe it. Let the whinging begin!

I get that it's disruptive. It may get worse as we age. But throughout my childhood I looked forward to the later daylight. As an adult racing cyclist, I found it very useful as well, for training rides after work. Even without training in the mix, it extends the safe(r) period of riding on the road by putting daylight where a lot of us have to use it, in that span between quittin' time and supper time.

If anyone with the power to set policy is listening, if you decide to stop playing with the clocks, please leave them in the DST position, for this late daylight. I have had to ride in the predawn darkness at times, but riding toward and into the coming day is still better than having to deal with early sunset. Or we could adopt Universal Time overlaid with local time, so that things that need to be scheduled will all be on the same clock (see you at "14:00" for that morning meeting!), but each locality has the option of responding to its own photoperiod and sun angle in a more natural way. Sounds like a mess, but at least it would be a novel mess. And whatever number we set on our alarm clocks, we wouldn't have to shove it one way and then the other twice a year.

I think about this today, because it's totally beautiful outside, and I was considering a bike ride. The weather looks conducive for the coming week, and the long range forecasts indicate that the pattern may have shifted for good. Even more importantly, a man at the conservation commission meeting last night, whose family has been here for generations, wished us all a "good mud season" as we adjourned, meaning that, in his experienced observation, this winter has run its course. That means that any saddle toughening I go through now will probably be good for the rest of the season, unlike years when I make false start after false start and go through that "kicked in the ass" feeling multiple times.

The hitch today was that I was up late last night after the meeting, so I got a slow start this morning. And the best of the day came after the sun got up far enough to put out real warmth. There's no point in going out when it's still in the 30s when the middle of the day will be so much nicer. But it's also my last day off before the work week resumes, so I have a list of things that need to get done, plus some residual paperwork from last night's meeting. I calculated the time needed to gear up, get out, and put everything away again, and substituted some ski-trudging as the quicker and easier activity to launch.

On the subject of freezing and thawing, I might actually plan to ride when the temperature is below freezing, if my route includes dirt roads. We're entering the notorious mud season. Even though the scant snow cover means that the mud season will be short and mild, dirt roads will still be better for riding when an overnight freeze paves them for a few hours.

Daylight Relocating Time would have allowed me to knock off a bloc of time-sensitive chores and still have enough light for a worthwhile ride before sunset. We're not quiiiiiiiiite there yet. It's close, but DRT would make it a very comfortable margin.

The frost heaved roads don't present much of a problem to me actually piloting my bike, but they do make drivers even more erratic as they bob and weave through the hummocks and holes. That occupies more of their attention than the unexpected sight of some bike rider's lights in the dusk. All through the winter I have seen pedestrians in the dusk and darkness, while I was driving, presenting what they think are adequate lights. In every case the display has been more confusing than anything else, even if it was bright. None of them were bright enough to stand out against the glare of oncoming vehicle headlights blasting me at the same time I was trying to keep track of the flickering fireflies of foot traffic.

I know my bike lights are bright enough to gain me a measure of respect on the road, but they're still a lot smaller than car and truck lights, especially some of these new trucks that have four low beams blazing at all times. Whoever is responsible for designing those should be strapped in a chair with his head in a clamp and his eyelids held open with alligator clips, and be forced to stare into that sociopathic wall of light until his eyeballs turn into raisins. Right next to him should be whoever is responsible for the shitty light dispersal pattern of LED headlights in general, staring into a bank of those. They just made a bad situation worse.

The 24th Century Bike Shop

It's a sunny day in early March. The entry alarm beeps as two people walk through the front door of a little, independent bike and ski shop in a small town in northern New England.

One of them, a tall, robustly built man, says, "I'm interested in looking at what you have for bikes." He looks puzzled as he scans the floor for rows and rows of them.

The shop attendant leads the customer down to a corner of the sales floor, where eight or ten bikes are clustered together. "These are the dribs and drabs left over from last year. None of our best sellers are here because they...sold."

"I was hoping to replace my old bike with something that would be good for riding on the rail trail and places like that. Looks like you don't have much."

"At one time, that would have been a problem," says the shop attendant. "Not now, though. Computer! Recreational path bikes size extra large!"

The replicator hums and growls. The portal opens and disgorges a row of hybrids and comfort bikes. The customer walks up and down the row. He selects a couple to test ride.The replicator swallows the others and dissolves them into their constituent particles.  After test riding and summoning a few accessories from the replicator to add to his purchase, the remaining reject bike is reabsorbed as well, to await the next curious customer.

Of course you don't need to be told that this is not the 24th Century. We don't have a replicator. We do have a crowded corner stuffed with the remnants of last year's stock. All of our best sellers sold through before the end of September. Our stock wasn't too deep even at the start of the season, because that's the reality of a small independent shop in a frequently intemperate part of the Temperate Zone.

The apparent death of winter this year has brought out three seekers so far, all of them in the core demographic for this area: older adult path riders. Like most customers in any category, they are profoundly surprised that a shop would not have full stock at the moment they're looking for it, whether they've been anticipating it since last fall or the inspiration just struck them as they sat at a sunny window table in the nearby coffee shop. But the customer before them was equally disappointed that we did not have full stock in snowshoes this late in that season. Virtually all customers are understanding when you explain all the factors that lead to the unfortunate necessity of low stock levels, but I do have to wonder if, inside, they're not grumbling about a bunch of bullshit excuses.

Regardless of when winter ends, bike manufacturers don't offer long enough dating on early season purchases for a small shop in an uncooperative weather pattern sell enough bikes fast enough to pay invoices on time. Ninety days on a shipment received at the beginning of March would be due at the end of May. Briefly in the 1990s our selling season might have been active enough to meet a deadline like that. Now there doesn't seem to be anyone around until about the Fourth of July, and they've pretty well petered out by late August. In any recent year we've had to try to keep people patient until late April no matter what a winter looks like at the end. We're aided in that when the weather reverts to cold and nasty for a while, even though it complicates life in general to deal with late season snow.

This year is more complicated, because tariffs have driven up prices on products sourced in China, and there's that new disease keeping factories idle. How much was already manufactured and on the water before that? Will we be able to get bikes when we're finally able to order them? Will we even be able to get repair parts and accessories?

I guess while it's quiet I'll work on developing the replicator. It can't just be some plastic 3D printed bullshit. It has to be full quality at any price point. This may take a few weeks.

Time for black pants

For the coming week, spring is running early previews. As stated previously, any kind of work could come in here, but the management has decided to ring the dinner bell for bike service. That means no more light colors in the wardrobe.

How many people will actually bring bikes? Early warm spells have always roused a few riders, but it usually takes warmer weather a little bit further into actual springtime to inspire much of an influx. Almost always, these early rushes fizzle quickly when the weather turns a bit chillier again. We don't get the money for our efforts until the riders finally return to pick up their machines.

I'm always happiest when we can go ahead and put away the rental ski equipment. Until we do, it crowds the work stand and takes up space we really need to set up the flow of bikes from the waiting area, through the repair stand, and back to hooks to await pickup.

Today and tomorrow are seasonably wintry. They would be good days for speedy hiking on well-frozen trails. Just remember your Microspikes -- or similar product -- for the icy surface. Or you can roll out on the studded tires of your choice if you prefer to pedal. I advocate mixed activities and weight-bearing exercise, but it's your call.

Because the hard-core riding crowd is no longer impressed with us, any of them who are not already doing their own work will probably go someplace where they feel that the mechanics really know what they're doing.  The members of a subculture look for people who share their identity. Back when the subculture was "biking," bike mechanics competed on a more equal footing among different types of rider. Under the influence of categorization, biking has been broken up into insular smaller subcultures under the tattered umbrella of the former larger subculture. Even a generalist mechanic has to devote many more hours of precious life to learning about the latest and the later latest, and the soon-to-be-released.

Way back in the early mid 1990s, a small group of us was discussing the rise of expensive, proprietary shifting on road bikes.

"If you really love riding, you'll spend whatever it takes to have the latest and greatest stuff," said one rider.

"If you really love riding, you don't need all that shit," another one replied. That's the dichotomy right there. Either you accept new technology only after it has proven its worth as a genuine improvement of lasting value, or you chase the leading edge, which will always be a step ahead of you, pulling you by your wallet.

Winter to the end

The two toughest months of winter around here are March and April.

No matter how substandard the principal months of winter may have been, nothing is going to get warm and nice until well into May. Maybe July. Although astronomical spring doesn't officially start until the equinox in late March, meteorologists consider March to be a spring month. With the change of daylight in the second week of the month, the mornings will look like January, but the afternoons will look like April. There will still be nothing to look at, but you'll be able to see it.

There have been exceptions, but the only ones I can think of were 1988 and '89. And I was a lot younger then, spending most of my spare time in winter hanging out in harsh mountain environments until the season shifted enough for me to get back into bike commuting and a bit of sport riding. My sense of what was cold and nasty was probably considerably influenced by that.

In 1990, I began riding the commuting route between my little spot in Effingham, and my jobs in Wolfeboro. In 1992, jobs became job, but the schedule was still usually at least five days a week. Because the roads around here are not well suited to bicycling in winter weather, I did not push my luck in snow, ice, and darkness. Even with improved lights and studded tires, the danger in the dark and frozen months is much greater as roads are narrowed and drivers are less patient. And they weren't all that patient to begin with.

My precarious economy depends on the money I save by using my bike to commute in the nicer months. I will get out there before the weather is very inviting, because it's the best way to get in shape while reducing car use. It also means that I have more of the rest of my time to devote to other things I think are important. But the best of it is definitely high summer, when I don't have to deal with layer upon layer of snug-fitting clothing for the ride at either end of the day.

Commuting takes place in the margins of the day. One of the cruelest things about early season commuting is that the middle of the day might be stunning, but the morning is frozen and the evening is raw.

Park and ride commutes salvage some riding when I might need a car for other things at either end of the day.

Trail-dependent riders have to deal with difficult or impossible riding conditions as whatever we got for winter melts away. As mountain bikers have to invest more and more money in engineered trails, they're actually voluntarily staying off of their own riding surfaces when heavy use would rut them up horribly. Meanwhile, the road is just the road. Frost heaves are much less of a problem on my bike than in my car. Potholes are a problem for everyone. Even there, I manage to skinny past most of them with only minor course corrections. Stay alert!

Back in the olden days, when we just went out and rode our mountain bikes on whatever we found, other users were doing way more damage than we were. The only limit on our willingness to ride in slush, ice, and mud was our willingness to clean our bikes and ourselves afterward. Indeed, one of our local riders who slunk off from the mountain group in the late 1990s said that he "just got tired of cleaning (his) bike all the time." I was already starting to think of mountain biking as a bit of a good walk spoiled, so I was fine with the group's focus shifting back to the road.

After a couple of seasons making the effort to join the Sunday road rides, I flaked off from them because it was interfering with my commute. My life's work turns out to have been riding to work.

I have chosen employment based on whether I could ride to it. I was so committed to the concept that I would actually show up for job interviews on my bike. Later on I drove like a normal person. That alone did not seem to enhance my success. I got some, didn't get others. I have ridden my bike at least a few times to every job I have ever held. The better world for which I strive is one in which bikes are fully legitimate, accommodated users of the public infrastructure. You should be able to pedal to virtually all locations that you can reach by other individualized transportation, without fearing for your life from the negligent and hostile acts of other road users.

Yeah, I know: people are shit, and you will always be in some peril because of this. But there could damn sure be less of it. It dulls my joyous anticipation of commuting season, but just one drive to work behind some idiot drifting down Route 28 like they're piloting a hot air balloon reminds me of how completely unimpeded I am on the bike. The drifting idiot at 43 miles per hour isn't slowing me down when I'm giving it all I've got to maintain 17. More likely 15.

All that lies far ahead, beyond the laborious crawl through whatever late efforts winter throws at us, just to reach the drab gray weeks that follow. Hey, if it was nice here it would be crowded.

Swarmed

Like the arrival of the black flies, bike repairs start with one or two that suddenly turn into a swarm.

Dressed in surgical grubs

The brake replacement on that Cannondale F900 went very smoothly. The calipers practically hopped onto the mounting tabs by themselves.

The bolts in the spacer kit were too long, but the hardware store is a short walk down the sidewalk. This was just part of the test fitting.

To bleed the brakes after trimming the lines, I removed the rear caliper from the frame and fastened it to a fixture I made years ago for bleeding the rear brakes on some e-bikes.

I had to redirect the line slightly to get a continuous rising path for the air bubbles.

The next bike in the queue was not as lucky. The bike had SRAM Guide RS brakes that had been silently recalled several years ago by SRAM. The master cylinder pistons stick, preventing the brakes from retracting properly. He's actually arranged to get them fixed for free where he bought the bike, so that's working out nicely.

SRAM brake guy had initially asked us to reseal his tubeless tires. They had the usual giant scab of dried snot in the bottom of each tire, along with a peeling crust around the inside of the casings. I cleaned things out, poured in ample doses of Finish Line tire sealant, and inflated the tires to installation pressure. The customer has had to travel a lot, so he hasn't needed his bike for a couple of weeks. This is good, because the tires are not sealing quickly. The sidewalls are very porous. Each time I repressurize them they seal a little more, but it's taking time and a lot of follow-up rotating and flipping to make sure that sealant gets distributed evenly and stays in place long enough to flow into all the little holes.

I use a lot of medical metaphors in the backshop, but now we actually have tires that need post-op care and physical therapy. We need nursing staff to handle of all of this follow-up care.

Another bike came in to have tires sealed. These Maxxis tires are definitely tubeless ready. Seating them was pretty quick and easy.

Next on the stand after the $4,000 Kona was this Columbia boat anchor.

Just another tuneup. It isn't even old enough to be a real classic, so they had to label it as a classic:

After threading internal cables on this fancy road frame, I'm ready to try building a ship in a bottle:

I'm starting to enjoy working on all this shit that I would never want to own. Working in the bike shop used to be like working in the candy store. I saw lots of stuff that I might like to have. That took a real nose dive in the rise of technofascism in the 1990s. I fought the fascists for as long as I could, but they know how to appeal to the technolemmings. Now I just keep my own simple stuff running as best I can and take the money from the lemmings as they queue up and troop dutifully over cliff after cliff. The rise of acceptable complexity was subtle. Each new generation of riders knows only what they find when they take up riding. That's their base line. The industry keeps trying to entice with technology when what the bike business really needs is 90 percent advocacy and education, and 10 percent technical refinement.

With the proliferation of tire sizes, not even bike hooks are simple anymore:

We had to take time to substitute a selection of new hook sizes in both the sales and repair areas to accommodate the range of wheel sizes.

It's been a crappy spring for training. Here's my trusty fixed gear being held up by nature's kickstand a few weeks ago on a side trip into the woods:

It hardly seems believable, but the snow is gone now, replaced by repeated storms of raw rain and cold.

In the triage of repair jobs, I will often take one or more out of sequence because they seem straightforward. It makes sense to cut the queue down as quickly as possible. But these are often the jobs that turn into total tar pits.

This cheap mountain bike was in for a tune up. It had a very loose bottom bracket. Because cheap bikes often have cup and cone bottom brackets made to look like sealed cartridge units, I had to pull the crank arms off to do anything. Fake sealed bottom brackets don't have wrench flats or pin holes, so you have to pull the crank to adjust them.

Because the bike frame was full of water, everything was corroded in place. It wasn't obvious, dark rust, just a binding roughness of initial oxidation. It still required extra leverage. The bearings were a cheap cartridge unit. But we didn't have the size (73x113) in stock. The cheapness of it actually offered a slim chance at repair. You can knock the cheap units apart to separate the bearings. But we didn't have those in stock, either. Because the bearings are designed to fit inside the cartridge that fits inside the bottom bracket shell, they're smaller than any of the bearings normally used in bike repairs. I could order them from a bearing supply company, but that defeated the purpose of battlefield surgery. We can -- and did -- order a new complete unit. The only reason I went into it was that the repair tag had an expedited deadline written on it.

When we get slammed, we tell people that we are backed up at least a week to ten days. Some customers are fine with that and more. But then we get in-fill, with people who come later and need it sooner. Because some customers are fine with the long wait, we can slot these other jobs into the spaces. But the spaces don't really exist, because the long wait was based on the time needed for one overloaded tech to dig through the pile. I could pour a couple of months of my life down the mineshaft of other people's wants, but I have had a lifelong addiction to my own time. The job I took for supplemental income 30 years ago has turned out to be my primary income. I'm still at it because not too many people want to do what I do. But I have become no more valuable for my rarity. It's hard enough to be there for the length of time that I am, let alone flushing away more irreplaceable time on a job that almost no one respects, for a class of vehicle that most other road users despise.

The majority of riders now have no intention of ever riding on the public right of way. Bicycles used to be vehicles of freedom. The original mountain bikes were appealing not just because a rider could go on trails, but because a rider could now go anywhere. The first waves rode like kids again, down the street, across the park, into the woods, over and through anything they could. But after a while it evolved into a way to make bicycles go away. And that's where it's headed today. As more attention is paid to transportation design in built up areas where "the bicycle makes sense," anything outside that evolving norm becomes a bike-free zone in popular perception. Bicycles are being put in their place. Anything out of place is fair game. It's early in the process, but bike advocates need to pay attention to where it's headed.

The repair queue keeps growing. It ranges from a cruddy Columbia to an $11,000 Specialized Tarmac. El Queso Grande had surgery on his wrist and arm, so he's not turning any wrenches. And he has to do everything else to run his business. A shop that can barely function with three people, preferably four, keeps slogging along most days with only two.

Breaking the ice

With the temperature barely 40 degrees (F) and the wind gusting to 30 mph, the day was hardly more inviting than the previous week. But you have to start somewhere. So I did.

Base miles used to be a token thing. We had to remind ourselves not to push big gears before we'd spun the legs for a few hundred miles, one short ride at a time. Short is relative, too. Fifteen or 20 was   nothing. But that's the point of base miles. They were the nothing that adds up to something; the body's reminder of the shape and rhythm of the pedal stroke.

Speaking of the pedal stroke, apparently a recent study has made a high pedaling cadence obsolete. The article I read described the study and did indicate that more work is needed to see how the new information fits in with decades of practice by millions of riders. As usual, a search for answers has turned up more questions. Meanwhile, we all have to live in the real world. I'm going to maintain the cadences that have served me well throughout my cycling career.

Every rider learns the activity from the practices of the riders they know. You learn from your friends.   Maybe you learn from educational programs like Cycling Savvy, Smart Cycling, or a book like Effective Cycling. Most people just start with an interest, buy a bike, and start riding. There are also plenty of magazines and websites. Lots of people who ride and write and need money are happy to find an outlet. There's no shortage of talent.

Anyone who has forgotten to be obsessive about fitness over a long winter will need to take the base mileage phase of the bike season more seriously. I'm physically incapable of going too hard, so that's not a temptation. It's a true rebuilding process.

When I started riding with more than the attention of a child, the people guiding me shared what they knew, including the use of fixed-gear bikes as part of developing a smooth pedal stroke across a wide range of cadence. We didn't focus on that point. The initial challenge was to ride the fixed gear after growing up with bikes that would coast, especially as those bikes offered more gear options as well. The fixed gear seemed like a humorous challenge. It also shaped us as riders without making us think about it. Only after a while did someone more experienced point out the built-in benefit.

A generally human-powered lifestyle will provide a fitness base in that same unconscious way. The fact that I got drawn into the outdoor recreation industry meant that I was doing professionally what people outside the industry have to pay to do. The fact that the outdoor recreation industry pays poverty wages meant that I would never be able to afford the activities any other way. If I wasn't selling the gear and teaching what I knew of the skills, I would not have been there at all.

My mentors in bicycle mechanics were the kind of people who learn how the machinery works and use that knowledge to fund their participation. As skillful tool users, they managed to do a lot of things because they could refurbish old equipment and build some new things with the tools and knowledge they had acquired. They didn't have to follow the more conventional route of making as much money as possible in some unrelated but sufficiently lucrative field and then spending the money on equipment they didn't know much about, to enjoy an activity that they had to fight to find time for. Their interests went well beyond bicycles, and included boats, motorcycles, and airplanes.

The mushrooming crises caused by the consumerist lifestyle make all recreation look extravagant. But at the heart of any human powered recreational activity is the concept of human power. If you are accustomed to getting around on your own feet, or powered by your own exertion in or on a vehicle made for that, you'll be more ready to slide into a more human-powered existence in general.

The separation of human exertion into categories of beneficial exercise, destructive overexertion, and sedentary occupations has led to a general physical decline in which we have some phenomenal athletes, a percentage of fitness hobbyists who are fairly well toned, and a large percentage of people who are so entrapped in the machine age that they have lost most desire and ability to function without a cocoon of mechanical assistance. Labor-saving machines have become barriers to activity. People given leisure face financial demands that make leisure a burden. Free time is just another word for unemployment. Leisure is for the leisure class.

I have always welcomed time to think and to appreciate the beauty that I see around me. But I have had to acknowledge that I pay for this with my precarious financial state, and the likelihood of an impoverished old age, should I live to be old. Perhaps this is the real deal that we should all have been acknowledging. It seemed like we could do better for everyone with our technology, had we been able to convince ourselves to give up the winner-take-all mentality that we had been led to believe was best for us. I've been observing competition for more than 60 years now. I can tell you that it improves nothing but itself. It's a good thing to push your own capabilities. It is not a good thing to build your life around beating other people. It may be natural. It may be the inescapable seed of our destruction. But it ain't good.

In our bloody past it was normal to torture captives and criminals, and to enslave the vanquished. Peel back the technology of weapons until you get to spears, clubs, arrows, and crude blades. At that point, competition for resources makes sense, because hostilities can be contained to more or less natural methods on a short-range battlefield, protecting territories defended by slow-moving ground forces. Border skirmishes keep everyone honest. Start adding alliances and evolving better weapons, communication, and transportation and you reach the point where we perch today, teetering over two or three precipices.

What does it mean to all of you out there? It means that there's a better reason to go for a bike ride than not to.

Mettle fatigue

This was the kind of winter that makes owls starve to death. It was not an epic snow year, but the snow we got was dense, and melts slowly. The weather has not been very cold, but cold enough to make the winter very long. Snow arrived in November and never left. It's still here, more than a week into "spring."

Owls have been unable to reach their prey under snow too solid for their bird-weight to penetrate.

Until a couple of years ago, I would have been out there already, claiming my space on the road. As soon as the ice retreats fully from the pavement, I figure all's fair. At least I did. I needed base miles, and no one was going to stop me.

On my last days off, the temperature was supposed to top out in the mid 30s (F), on sunny, slightly breezy days. That's not inviting, but it's not bad. Dress for it. But on Monday I woke up with a weird digestive ailment that made me cold, depressed, occasionally lightheaded, and reluctant to venture far from the house. The malaise receded overnight, but enough effects lingered on Tuesday to make me stay off the bike then, too.

Each additional day off the bike gives me more time to contemplate the steadily increasing size of pickup trucks. Traffic looks less intimidating when you join its flow, but the big beasts are dangerous nonetheless. I have held my line with my elbow inches from tractor-trailer tires a number of times. It’s all part of the experience. Not a good part, mind you, but it will happen in the traffic criterium. It’s one reason that biking isn’t always a great way to see the sights. You need to concentrate on what’s in front of you while you try to herd what’s around you. You want to see the sights, take a leisurely walk or ride a tour bus.

It could be better. But any time we try to increase our speed using a wheeled conveyance we increase the risk of an unfortunate event. Balancing on two wheels is more precarious than squatting on four. You could stuff it riding on a separated bike path by yourself.

It’s not about the crash. I hate to crash, and I refuse to consider it inevitable, with experience and due care, but I have burned in a number of times, and always gone back to riding as soon as I healed up enough.

Mostly I dislike the public exposure of riding. We remain a minority, a bunch of weirdos who go without engines, on devices most people consider a phase of childhood, or perhaps don’t consider at all. We are simultaneously ridiculous super athletes and ineffectual dorks. Nothing we do will make us respectable. The best we can hope to be is tolerable. I did not understand the terms of this agreement when I committed myself to bicycling at the end of the 1970s. All of the idealistic bike nerds of the day thought that our time was coming. Surely the world had to notice that practicality and fun coexisted perfectly in the bicycle. It was true then and it is still true. Just because we haven’t won doesn’t mean we’re wrong.

The weather warms grudgingly. As usual for this time of year, warmth brings wetness, followed by resurgent cold. It used to be easier to take, when the whole world didn’t seem so cold in general. Funny thing to say in a warming climate, but you know what I mean.

Coulda used good news. This ain't it.

From the National Weather Service today:

...WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH
THURSDAY EVENING...

* WHAT...Heavy snow possible. Travel will be very difficult to
  impossible, including during the morning commute on Thursday.
  Total snow accumulations of 6 to 12 inches are possible.

* WHERE...All of New Hampshire and western Maine.

* WHEN...From Wednesday afternoon through Thursday evening.

* ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Snow covered and slippery roads, and
  significant reductions in visibility are possible.

_____________________________________________________________________________

The daytime highs hop right back up to the forties immediately after this bounty of slop. And it falls in many cases on bare, thawed ground. Spring skiing is not done on spring snow.

Astronomical spring, marked by the equinox, is not meteorological spring, measured from the beginning of March. While by one measure we are still in winter's province, the sun grows stronger even before the day lengthens to 12 hours and beyond. Winter-type precipitation is likely from any storm, but it falls into a more hostile setting than it would find under the long nights and brief days of January and early February.

A quick inch last night was just a foretaste, and something to mess up the roads for anyone rashly contemplating a morning wobble on the fixed-gear. I should grab one now, though, as the sun has warmed the roadway sufficiently to clear it. Six to 12 inches will not go as quietly.

Reclamation

Morning low in the mid 20s. Sunday's snow shrunken to a coating where the sun shines strongly through the leafless hardwoods. I considered hiking without the need for snowshoes or skis, but a few deeper areas remain. It's not enough to be worth skiing, and certainly not enough to require snowshoes except in a few spots. Rather than stomp sloppy postholes in it after the day had warmed to the 40s, I pulled the trusty fixed-gear off its hook, and pumped up the tires.

That's the nice thing about the fixie. About all you have to do is pump up the tires. Then I just had to pump myself up to go find out just how much I had deteriorated since my last park 'n' ride commute in early December.

In the theme of reclamation, I talked to my father, age 90, on the phone last night. Last year he got his hip replaced. He receives regular injections in his eyeballs to hold off the effects of macular degeneration. He's determined to keep living as well as he can. He was never a big exerciser just for its own sake. He needed a goal or a standard imposed from outside. But he's joined a 24-hour fitness center. He told me I had been an inspiration to him. So I figured I should start acting like one again. I salute anyone who can consistently go to a fitness center and keep to a routine. But then that's his strength.

High clouds filtered the sun ahead of some unsettled weather drifting toward us for the middle of the week. A little of this, a little of that, none of it supposed to leave piles of anything, it does not alter the trend toward days solidly above freezing. Since the big climate news is open water in the Arctic right now, with temperatures above freezing, our own mild temperatures aren't astounding.

Years ago I learned that New England is at the approximate latitude of the French Riviera. The fact that we had legendary winters at all reinforces the saying that location is everything. Where we sit relative to our continent, the nearest major water body, and the former routine meanderings of the jet stream, combined to make us feel more kinship to the Arctic than to any place famous for rich and famous people in sunglasses. But then we do get a smattering of those, as well. They keep manufacturing new ones... and they have to go somewhere.

Speaking of location, I live near some of the only relatively flat roads in the area. The route I picked took full advantage of that, and the light wind, and generous shoulders on Route 25. I'm not reshaping muscles adapted to vigorous use in cross-country skiing. I got nothin', or nearly nothin'.

Gratifyingly, I seemed to warm up and settle in after 20 minutes of pedaling. I have no depth, but at least I got around the route and finished feeling better than when I started. The twinges of atrophy and anxiety abated. Exercise is good for your mental and emotional health. It also takes longer than drugs or other shortcuts, which explains the continued popularity of those. Quick and easy and back to the rat race. Hell, time budgeting was why I quit working out in the first place. I wanted to work on other things. Something had to go, and work and sleep couldn't be reduced.

The bike commute is based on time budgeting. It provides physical benefits greater than the cost of the extra time in transit. It has more advantages than disadvantages. This would be true for anyone who only needs to transport their own self and some fairly compact cargo. I wouldn't expect someone to throw a $10,000 cello onto a BOB trailer and tool off for a day of teaching. But for a person whose main equipment for a day of work is simply their presence, it offers a lot.

Last year I was starting to lay base miles around this time, and we got shut down in mid March. One never knows. But no two winters seem to be exactly alike, so maybe this underachiever will go ahead and fade away, so we can get on to the next thing.

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.

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.