Reverting to winter

 

Anyone who has lived in northern New England for a while knows better than to put the shovel away before May. Maybe June up in Aroostook County, Maine.

The forecast for the storm moving in tonight and lasting into Saturday is for 4-8 inches of snow, with a lot of rain mixed in. The snow is good news for depleted ground water, because it hangs around and percolates in, rather than running off into streams and rivers, to make its way back to the ocean. There will be some of that, too, which is good news for lakes that had not ended the winter brimming with excess. Local rapids stopped rushing and were merely hurrying slightly, months before they were due to be so quiet.

Several inches of gloppy wet snow isn't such good news for biking. It will melt quickly, making the interruption brief. It's worse news for trail users, whether on the stone dust rec path or the constructed courses of mountain bike trails.

Back when we mountain biked on found surfaces, we rode on anything. The trails were mostly woods roads, what we referred to as "double singletrack" because the ruts created parallel courses that you could sometimes ride as separate entities. In many places, even though the road was wide enough for a truck, the surface was made of New England's signature jumble of rock, so it was plenty technical. We also rode on snow machine trails, wherever they were not routed over something that absolutely had to be frozen. Rotting ice, mud, wet rocks and logs were just routine challenges to the early season mountain biker. We came home chilled, wet, and grimy, as did our machines. Sometimes we would find motorized mud aficionados buried to the wheel tops -- or worse. As the trails dried out the surface would stiffen as it had been left. Users would then wear it down into dry season configuration just by negotiating the ruts and ridges of dried soil. Where the soil was sandy, some wetness helped compact it to make it easier to ride on.

Depending on when the snow retreated enough to make riding on trails possible at all, we would begin like this:

Then the bugs would come out.

Now, mountain biking groups of various levels of organization, from a few friends with hand tools and leaf blowers, to non-profits small and large, go to lengthy trouble and expense to construct courses that they are understandably protective of. Trails will be closed due to mud. As much as road biking was being called "the new golf" a few years ago because of all the rich lawyer types getting into it, mountain biking is much more the new golf, with its $4,000-$10,000 machines and professionally constructed courses. We road riders still just go out on whatever we find, and can have a completely satisfying experience on a bike that's 40 years old. Just not in the next few days.

Fat bikers will chuckle indulgently. I suppose it's a tortoise and hare situation: they can go out and maintain their 7 mph every day, come what may, and rack up more distance than riders who wait for firm conditions and go faster for less time. Probably not, though. And if you want to have a fat bike in the lineup just for the conditions at which it does the best, you end up investing in a bulky bike that needs to be housed when you're not using it, and transported to the riding venue if you don't hop on the pedals right from home every time. Even eBay deals started out as something some idiot paid full retail for, somewhere. Chances are, you'll throw down $1,000 and more -- sometimes a lot more -- for your blimp-tired bomber.

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.

The Omnivorous Shop

As our meager snow cover takes a pounding from heavy rain, I wonder what kind of work is likely to come through the door. Thoughts turn toward the coming bike season, such as it may be, but we could as easily see someone with a snowboard or alpine skis to wax, or skates to sharpen. Or, as happens too often, no one at all.

This shop has had to piece together many products to pull in enough money to get by. While cross-country skiing and bicycling remain the principal endeavors, we've also sold ice skates, downhill ski clothing and accessories, some hockey and lacrosse gear, field hockey, tennis balls and inexpensive racquets, badminton, ping pong balls, day packs, hiking accessories... The hockey and lacrosse clientele quickly became too serious about themselves to come to a little omni-shop like this, so we no longer stock more than tape and mouth guards, and a few cheap sticks.

One thing unified our clientele during the last of the 1980s and throughout the 1990s. Back when mountain biking was really big, the vast majority of our riders did at least one of the other sporty activities. Most of them were in the youth hockey program that was expanding rapidly, but some raced downhill on the school ski team. A few raced on the cross-country ski team. Among the adult riders were lift-served and cross-country skiers, and adult hockey players. Almost no one stuck to pedaling something all year round. There were non-competitive skiers as well, and outdoor generalists who might do a bit of climbing and hiking.

Both the bike and cross-country ski industries have done a lot in the last few years to make those lines more complicated and less profitable. The bike business has been at it since at least 1990. Cross-country skis were actually a welcome refuge until about 2005 or '06, when they really started to screw with things. We'd always had to put up with Fischer's weird ideas, but then Salomon started messing with their solid and successful binding line to see if they could sabotage it, and they did a great job. Meanwhile, Rottefella was pursuing the Shimano strategy of flooding the market with inferior stuff that was made widely available, shortstopping a lot of money before consumers knew what their options were. The better marketed product will always defeat the better made product. It's about convincing consumers. As long as the idea sounds good enough and works well enough to get past the warranty period, you can convince people to "upgrade" to your next piece of crap when the old tinsel falls apart.

The first waves of technofascism seemed to enhance the experience for riders inclined to push the limits or try to compete. Only one or two overactive sentinels like me pointed out that proprietary enslavement was going to end up costing us more than it gives back.

Addicted riders today, in any category, think they're in a glorious age. As long as you can afford to keep up, sure. Keep that needle in there until they find you dead with it, or you finally hit rock bottom and go into rehab. Meanwhile, my low-tech persistence is probably comparable to drinking Sterno and huffing aerosols out of a plastic bag, with only affordability in its favor. I beg to differ, but I know it's open to argument.

Back when a casual participant could enjoy mountain biking to its fullest extent, riding was popular. But the imposition of "improved" shifting systems and the rapid evolution of suspension ambushed many riders who had to take more than a year off and then wanted to pick up where they left off. The only way to keep up would have been to stay on the bike and evolve with the equipment more gradually.

Proponents of engineered trails and over-engineered bikes have suggested that a fancy trail network will attract "younger people with disposable income." They seem not to have noticed that what the area has already attracts retirees with disposable income, because that's the age group that has the money right now. The mountain bike demographic in this area is a few aging young adults whose kids are finally moving out, people in midlife crisis, and athletic retirees who go out whenever their internal organs want to behave for long enough. It's not a place for people on the rise, it's a place for people doing their best to arrest their decline. And some individuals have already expressed their intention to pull up stakes and go someplace warm to live and ride before too many more years pass.

I've lived in a lot of places. When I was a kid we moved so often that I'm not even from where I was born. I never had a home town, or even a town to call home for more than four years, max. Usually it was more like two. But we moved because we had to, not because we wanted to. So when I settled here, it was as much because I had had enough of moving as because this area is any kind of perfect.

Perfect places don't exist.

The bike industry let the demands of the hard-core ruin the experience for everyone else. I don't know how to reconcile the advancement of technology for the gear weenies and stunt riders with the needs of the many, except to say that excruciatingly technical bikes should cost even more than their already inflated price tags and be made in small enough numbers to reflect how many people are actually using them as intended, while the happy masses deserve to get solid, simple, reliable machinery that they can enjoy for many years with minimal mechanical intervention. It doesn't have to be internally-geared hubs. It does have to be more durable than the plastic and sheet metal crap we've been seeing more and more of.

That being said, I acknowledge that shifting derailleur gears seemed to mystify the majority of people who owned them. Indexing started to give them the firm stops they were looking for. One thing led to another, and here we are. But back on the junk heap of history lie simpler machines that allowed for simpler fun that many more people could take up and set aside repeatedly over the course of years. Now if it's been a year you have to wonder whether your brake fluid is still up to its job, and worry whether your shock is holding pressure, and renew the sealant in your tires. Or you could just wing it. That's what most people do.

Bike work would be the most difficult to perform up to in-season standards right now, with our lone work stand half buried in the rental ski rack, and the bike tools pushed safely aside to keep the bench clean for ski wax. The few jobs in waiting are not a rush. The owners of the bikes wanted them stored somewhere out of their way until bike season is undeniably here.

Gale force winds sweep heavy showers against the windows. Notifications on my phone tell me that the power is out at my house. I look forward to an evening by candlelight, trying to drag a cartoon out of myself for my last remaining print outlet. And maybe I'll see if I can make chocolate chip cookies in a cast iron frying pan.

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.