If you can't think of others, at least think of yourself

 (Partial cross post from Explore Cross-Country)

Ski season began with a little storm in mid December that got the trails operating. Warmer weather and wet precipitation ended that, icing up the trails. Like magic, someone brought in a fat bike for service. With thin cover now, I never know which apron I will need.

The bike apron weighs 2 1/2 pounds. The ski service apron weighs eight ounces. Ski service has dominated, despite the meager amount of trail we have to offer, but it's all subject to the whims of the public. We're ready either way. But dealing with the public's other whims has made the job much more stressful.

 In one significant way, the winter of 2020-2021 was much better than the one we're in now. We had stringent pandemic precautions in place, and people abided by them or they didn't get to come in. We had enough people on staff to deal with the huge volume of rental business. The snow cover wasn't great, which is a new trend in the changing climate, but it was good enough for us to operate. The main issue was crowd control, and we had that well organized.

Last winter, there was no vaccine yet. The consequences of infection could be severe enough that we could make a case and make it stick. No doubt we lost some business, and invited some ridicule, but we're all still here. 

Over the summer, we relaxed our protocols as everyone else did. For a few months we even went maskless, until the Delta surge. When I had a close call with exposure through my position on the zoning board I serve on, we all started covering up again. We didn't go to the full system of baffles we'd used during the uncontrolled phase of the illness. We did not re-institute our mask mandate for incoming customers. But I really appreciated any customers who wore one anyway, and I appreciate them vastly more now.

The omicron variant has created a new realm of anxiety, aggravated by the fact that we now have fewer employees to run the business. Ideally, the staff should be no less than three. Most days we only have two. Because of that, I can't do service work as efficiently during business hours, because I have to drop it to deal with direct customer service needs on the retail floor and in rental, as well as covering the front while the other guy tries to shove down some food.

The other guy -- who actually owns the place -- is also the groomer. Get him sick, and we not only have to close the shop, you also don't get any groomed trails until he's off the disabled list. So, even if you aren't afraid of the illness, think it's trivial, and believe that we should all just snuffle each other's snot and get it over with, remember that your good time at our ski area depends on us being there to serve you. If you get us sick, we may not be dead or dying, but we're not at work.

 Mask up, keep your distance, and don't be a jerk. It's called enlightened self interest.

Endless weekend

 We've reached the part of summer where every day feels like Saturday. Saturday doesn't mean the same thing in a bike shop as it does in the normal world, especially in a resort town. Saturday is peak intensity, the opposite of a day of leisure.

A particular day might seem like a slow Saturday or a busy one, but any summer day can bring in a sudden crowd of people with the day off, looking for something fun to do. It's a very different pattern from winter's ski business, in which the peaks are solidly on the weekends, or on designated short vacation periods.

Particularly now, in the Summer of Denial, a population restless after a lost year is ready to push the limits of safety and gather with their naked faces, as case numbers spike in some regions and crawl gradually higher in others. Our particular part of New Hampshire has notched up to Moderate, while an adjacent county has reached Substantial transmission. We're seeing more masks, and wearing our own again much more of the time, but it's not general. 

Last week, a local man came in for some repair work. In conversation it emerged that he had never masked and he refuses the vaccine. He told us that all you need is hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, and that masks clearly don't work because the guidance on them has not been consistent from day one. He is always affable, even when he can see that we disagree completely with his position. He's the same guy who wouldn't buy a Fuji Wendigo fat bike because it was named for a demon and he believes in God. And yet his regard for the gentle savior does not extend to such small gestures as wearing a face mask. He's a member of the Superspreader Church of Christ, down the street, where they gathered throughout the early rise of the pandemic until they spawned their very own cluster.

The shop remains shorthanded. It's always hard to find competent help, because we need someone smart enough to do the work and dumb enough to do it for a living. Failing that, we at least need someone who can show up on a regular basis and perform many of the basic mechanical tasks that confront us. We have no new bikes to sell, but repair demand is still high. Parts can be hard to get, but enough come through to keep us going. We're getting killed on freight, because we have to pounce on things as soon as they are available, rather than waiting to fill out larger orders at longer intervals.

COVID surge meets consumer demand

 As goes the nation, so goes New Hampshire. Cases of Covid-19 are surging. The church we can see from our back windows finally managed to turn itself into a super spreader. Mask use has become almost universal. That's the only good effect: a majority of people are now willing to do the simple things which, if adopted much sooner, would have kept disease spread low enough to make us wonder what the fuss was about. But Americans love to run full-face into crises just to prove to themselves that the danger is real. Then we can brag about our valor, display our scars, and weep ostentatiously for the dead.

Meanwhile, demand for winter recreation equipment is matching the public enthusiasm for bicycling that swept the country during the traditionally warmer months. Here it is, December 1, and the temperature outside is almost 60 degrees (F) at dawn. But this is usually a wintry time of year. People are buying cross-country skis and snowshoes in anticipation of something like normal winter weather at some point between now and May. They're getting their existing equipment serviced. At the same time, riders continue to ride, or want one last tune up before storage, or want their trainer bike spiffed up for its months under a rain of sweat.

Because I haven't had a hair cut since... I don't even remember, I have taken to wearing a bike hat at work. The short brim is less likely to get stuck in something when I'm working close, and I refuse to wear a baseball-style cap backwards. The flip brim also handily holds alternate eyewear when I have to work at the computer.

The bike industry was blindsided by the sudden demand for their goods in the spring. Production had been hampered by the disease breaking out in Asia, where most of the products are made. Then transportation was disrupted by many aspects of the disease and the efforts to contain it. This was on top of smaller production in an industry that has been technologically hyperactive, but economically stagnant, for at least a decade, maybe two. But the winter sports industries can't claim to have been surprised. Our own reps were telling us to beef up our orders months ago as we all observed what was happening in the spring and summer market and extrapolated to fall and winter. In spite of that, now we're not even getting everything we ordered in our routine preseason planning, let alone the extras. We've sold through on some categories and no more is in the pipeline.

The cross-country ski industry has been in decline for even longer than the bike industry. A really nice ski set is still way cheaper than a corresponding bicycle, and is much easier to store, but there's no way to avoid the need for some skills and agility to use them. Also, skis come in categories just like bikes. Each category has its own skill set. A skier might do any number, limited only by budget and time. It makes sense to have two or three options because snow conditions can vary enough to favor one or another within a day or two. But in most places skis don't fit into a multi-mode transportation model very well. I tried to figure out a way to ski to work, but it was always going to take about three hours each way and involve a lot of sidehill slogging on salt-splattered embankments next to a highway.

Because the shop is slammed and our technical staff consists of mostly me, the days are a blur of varied tasks seen through fogged glasses over a mask. If anyone says "it's good to be busy" I always point out that there are limits, and that surge workloads are like getting your whole year's worth of meat intake by having a couple of large pot roasts shoved down your throat. Dry.

Helmets and face masks

In the 1970s, a helmeted rider was a rare sight. Only racers wore helmets. This persisted into the 1980s, fading gradually in the decade after that. Now they have become a normal sight in our culture.

After telling us for months that masks do little or nothing to prevent the spread of disease in the general population, the official position seems to be shifting in favor of masks. At the same time, masks are in short supply for the people who need them most, caring for the sick or for first responders attending to people who might be sick. We're told to improvise. This does open the field to fashion statements and home hobby projects.

One guy in Italy posted a video using a feminine sanitary pad. I don't know if there are any of those hiding in a cabinet around the house, but there may be some leftover tampons I can shove in my nostrils.

I did notice in the grocery store that the empty toilet paper shelves were right next to fully stocked displays of adult diapers. They could be used for really heavy breathing.

A breath helmet would seem to be a minor concern for a cyclist flying free in the open air, six feet or more from anyone else. When traffic thickens up, however, we end up close to the occupants of motor vehicles, who might have the window down, and fellow riders on crowded paths. Air movement should make any contagion highly unlikely in the moving environment of a road, street, or bike path. The slower the speed and the more calm the air, the greater the chance that a cloud may hang. Stopped adjacent to each other, people could exchange sneezes.

Judge the odds for yourself. With incidents of door handle licking and targeted coughing, cyclists might want to take extra precautions because we already suffer the bad jokes and outright malice of motorists who don't think we belong out there. In this area, business traffic has diminished, but with many people released from their workday schedules some of them have nothing better to do than drive around. I haven't launched my commute yet, but I'm hoping to do it soon. Training rides are part of that preparation, so even though I'm not in the workday riding groove I'm still putting myself out there. My favorite training loops go in a fairly serene direction compared to Elm Street and the Route 28 corridor. Drivers are always more aggressive on that trade route to the outside world. I don't look forward to that. But driving sucks.

Back to the subject of PPE, I did not see many mask users in the grocery store yesterday. I had wadded up a couple of bandannas in my pocket, but I wussed out and didn't tie them on. I did bring in my own bottle of alcohol to douse the cart handle and periodically rub on my hands. Reusable gear is only as good as your cleaning procedures. Disposable equipment needs to be replaced regularly. And people being people, they're chucking used gloves wherever they feel like it: leaving them in a cart for the next person to deal with, or overworked and under-protected grocery store personnel to throw away, or just ditching them in the parking lot. Roadside litter and the contents of any trash can are now biohazards.

Stay classy!