Last rides of 2025

 "Second prize is two weeks in Philadelphia." It's an old punchline. I just spent three weeks there, while the cellist underwent a medical procedure at Penn Medicine's facilities.

In matters medical, some things can't be scheduled at your convenience. Thus I got the call to drop everything and get my ass down there at the end of November, to care for her in recovery from a surgery on December second. She would need to go to follow up appointments, lab visits, and any unscheduled turbulence that might hit us as a result of a major procedure.

My annual mileage total is nothing impressive, but it stood tantalizingly close to 3,000 miles when I headed down. With less than a hundred miles to go, I would have nailed it easily. I thought I might sneak in a ride or two while I was down there, because I keep a bike on site, but that didn't work out. I didn't want to stray far from the patient, even though she was making a relatively stellar recovery.

What I did do was drive a pretty vicious stretch of Interstate 95 between Wilmington, Delaware, and Philly, over and over.

I left Megalopolis in the late mid 1980s with no regrets at all. I've devoted my life to quietly advocating against the concept of Megalopolis since I first learned about it in school in the 1960s. I was always a kid who found a patch of woods to play in. I saw early on that they were an endangered habitat. I can do highway driving, but I would rather not.

It's like the line that comes up in various gun oriented movies, where the protagonist declares his antipathy to gunplay. Later on he's forced into it by the triumphant bad guy who assumes that it'll be an easy win. The reluctant good guy nails the baddie with one perfect shot and says, "I didn't say I couldn't, only that I didn't like to."

Drivers between Wilmington and Philly are some of the most aggressive assholes you will encounter anywhere. The worst of them specialize in a maneuver I call "The Delaware Shoot-a-Gap." General traffic may be romping along at 70-75mph, and one of these road heroes will come shooting up out of nowhere, weaving sinuously through the shifting crowd. No doubt they feel proud of their skill at getting ahead of the dubs.

I had to drive the stretch each way multiple times. All of the runs northward were between mid morning and mid afternoon, but the return trips were at night several times. For instance, on the night of her surgery, which was scheduled in early evening, I drove back down close to midnight. The day I visited her during her post-op hospital confinement, it was after 8 p.m. Later, she had a crisis that had us in the emergency room at Penn, and I was driving back around four in the morning, after sitting with her for twelve hours, waiting for her to be officially admitted. One of my jobs was taking care of her cats, so I did have to get back down to her work-season apartment.

I looked like this a lot:

This picture is from the morning after her actual surgery. She texted me at 7:00 a.m. She'd been awake since 5:00 a.m. And she'd had the advantage, despite having a surgical team remodeling her insides, of being under heavy anesthesia, whereas I had been languishing somewhat anxiously in the waiting "lounge" for hours. Then I had to drive on 95. I got to bed after 1:00 a.m.

I figured out within a couple of these trips that the secret to 95 was to merge onto it like you're throwing yourself into a bar brawl, work your way to the left lane to cozy up to the center barrier, and floor it. Do whatever it takes to hold your place. Sometimes you have to wedge into the middle lane to slingshot some terminal asshole who can't find a hole to weave through, but for the most part the southbound key is that left lane, and 75-80mph.

It's fucking insane, but it's their normal routine. Pieces of car and truck bear mute witness to the calamities that their haste brings them from time to time, but in the three weeks I navigated the area I only saw one, on my transit north as I began the trip home. Some idiot in a flashy Porsche with race numbers and shit had gotten tangled with a bland family minivan as we all navigated a heavy rain with gale force winds during the latter part of rush hour. No one appeared to be injured, but the sporty car was badly dented front, rear, and on  the one side I could see. Other than that it was just a daily series of miracles in which I nearly got clipped or nearly nailed someone hovering in my blind spot several times, but made no contact.

The northbound run was trickier, because we had to exit on the right, but needed to avoid getting sucked into a lane that then peeled off entirely. Hugging the left wall could get you trapped over there, but the middle lane makes you everybody's punching bag.

I hate that shit.

Eventually, the cellist was ready to send me back north and rely on her local support team of excellent work colleagues. I had missed a moderate snowfall and some temperature swings that meant my driveway will be a chunked-up mess of frozen ridges until spring, but what can you do?

The best part is that the roads were clear and dry on a day when I could actually get out on them.

Yesterday was sunny and I had a couple of items to take to the post office. Pump up the tires and suit up. Temperature 18 degrees F. Light westerly winds. What would I find after three weeks of basically no exercise? Fortunately, with the air that cold I had no urge to push for high speed.

Snow was forecast for today, but the forecast had it starting later in the morning. Today's conditions were more demanding, with colder air and fully gray skies. The sun isn't strong this time of year, but when it's bright it imparts emotional warmth, and some actual warmth on darker clothing. Still, I managed to push my sore legs around one more time. The storm forecast has gotten bigger and bigger, and I will be pulling more hours at work than I have since the 1990s, so probably no rides until spring arrives. I'll just run the stairs in my house every day. Weight-bearing exercise!

Bread bag technical support

Bread bags on the feet have their own large category on the internet, but in case you don't have your own experiences or an explanation of the principles, here's mine.

In the 1980s, when I started winter camping, climbing, and mountaineering, vapor barriers were the hip thing. Their advocates acknowledged that vapor barriers would turn anything inside them into a swamp, but the benefits of keeping your body moisture from reaching the cold outer layers apparently outweighed the grode factor of marinading in your own sweat for hours or days.

In my particular circles, we limited it to vapor barrier socks, and, for some, a vapor barrier liner inside the sleeping bag. Basically a basting bag for your whole stinky self. I had one in case of an emergency, but I never used it. But the socks became a standard item.

I actually bought a set of coated nylon vapor barrier socks at one point. The coating wore away in a few uses, leaving me with pointless nylon socks I could use as whimsically shaped stuff sacks. Bread bags held up better.

The layers go like this: thin poly liner sock, plastic bag, thick insulating sock, boot. The boots might be military surplus "mouse" boots, classic leathers, or the new plastic double boots. In any case, the VBL kept your foot sweat from saturating your essential insulation. If we were staying out for days, I would have fresh liners for every day, but I would also plaster wet liner socks to my chest when I got into my sleeping bag, to dry them out as much as possible in case I needed them.

In low-speed applications like mountain climbing, you might encounter ferocious winds, but it's still a simpler problem than riding a bike, where you're flying your feet through the air with a minimum wind velocity of perhaps 15 miles per hour, often higher. Heavy, insulated boots provide the real protection, and the vapor barriers just help that insulation stay at peak efficiency.

A winter bike ride is a calculation of acceptable loss. You will get moist, and your insulators will fail if you stay out long enough. If you dress lightly enough to keep from getting moist, or noticing that you have, you have no margin of safety if you can't complete your route quickly enough.

You could try vapor barrier suits like the plastic-coated heroes of the 1980s, but I don't recommend it. Arctic natives don't use vapor barriers. My father overwintered on Baffin Island in the early 1950s, the heyday of the military mouse boot. He ditched those for native footwear right away. He wasn't dealing with the challenges presented by either ice climbing or winter cycling. There's no good breathable option for winter cycling footwear as far as I know. But he also took up native outerwear as more effective than military issue, and the system there operates on the same principle as my winter cycling outfit with thicker, breathable insulators rather than shell layers that will cause condensation on the inside of them.

All factors influence the success of a given system. It's not just a matter of generic human in generic cold environment. Activity level and type of activity completely determine what has the best chance of working.

As I have previously noted, the winter cycling sock system requires more bags. Bagging the outer sock blocks wind coming through the shoe. Even if you do have a winter cycling shoe, it can use the help.

Overboots are okay if the conditions are dry, but any openings for a cleat put a hole where you really don't want it. You could use flat pedals, as long as any aggressive traction spikes on the pedal won't damage whatever you chose to keep your feet protected. I use traditional toeclips and straps, so there's some wear and tear on anything I use as an overboot in wet conditions, but nothing overtly jagged.

Back in 1980, the shop I worked in sold little toeclip tents: fabric fairings that fit over the toeclips to block the breeze. You could probably make something out of all kinds of everyday objects, like those red Solo cups. Just try to make it as sustainable as possible.

If all goes well, I get weeks of use out of a bread bag before it is ready to head down the waste stream.

My love of winter is synthetic

 An ad popped up on some social media site I was perusing, that said, "Goodbye goosebumps, hello, merino," or something like that. I thought to myself, "Goodbye goosebumps, hello hives."

I've tried to be a wool guy. In 1980 I got a Protogs Superwash wool bike jersey and wore it with confidence in the itchless experience promised in the advertising. It was ...okay. I acquired a couple more over the years. But I also rejoiced when a sponsored US team rider I rode with occasionally said that he always wore a tee shirt under his wool jerseys, because it actually enhanced their efficiency. He might just have been playing the expert card to justify his own preference for a barrier layer, but it didn't do any harm to wear the tee shirt.

Protogs offered other garments in miraculous merino. One I bought for backpacking was long-sleeved with a three-button style variously referred to in advertising from different manufacturers as a Wallace Beery, a river driver, or a Henley. I actually tried using it without an undershirt on one trip. The weather was chilly, so I figured out how to ignore it, but as soon as I got back to civilization and had other options I peeled that thing off.

This morning's near-freezing temperatures at dawn got me thinking about winter clothing, and reaching for some of it for the morning bike ride to work.

In the early 1980s, surplus military wool pants were the standard trousers for cold weather adventuring. For cross-country skiers, wool knickers. Not the British knickers, mind you. I also inherited a nicely tailored true navy blue wool shirt from my father's old service kit, and a plaid Pendleton from my grandfather. Those things never got next to my skin.

Wool bike shorts didn't bother me, and I loved my Gianni wool tights. But I warmly embraced polypro and other synthetic long underwear, and each evolution of synthetic outerwear. Fleece pants, fleece vests, pile jackets, each added layering options no longer utterly dependent on a next-to-skin layer of protection, or somehow turning off all of the nerve endings in my skin.

Now, of course, we know that these comfy fabrics are completely evil, sprinkling the earth with nanofibers that are spreading from pole to pole. So now my comfort can be tinged with guilt.

For winter riding, I use a lot of clothing and accessories from cross-country skiing and winter mountain travel. My go-to pant is the Sport Hill XC Pant. It's a great balance of wind blocking and breathability. Wind-front tights make no accommodation for a frigid tailwind. The 3SP fabric in the Sport Hill pants provides uniform protection. The polypropylene fabric also repels water to some extent. The cut is close but not shrink-wrap. Zippered ankles help when layering socks.

I don't ride much in the winter, because I can't count on doing it consistently enough to stay acclimated to the saddle. Hiking and cross-country skiing provide better exercise. A bike is the best machine for translating human effort into forward motion on an appropriate surface like a road or a smooth trail. That's what makes it my preferred personal transportation option in-season. But I've said many times -- and still do -- that it isn't enough by itself. So I welcome the opportunity to explore by other methods in the winter, when I cede the roads to the motoring public. I might bust out for the odd fixed gear ride here and there, but it's fun to get out into places where a bike couldn't go.

I do see the tracks of bikes where bikes couldn't go. You pretty much have to hit a mid- or high-grade rock or ice climb if you want to be completely sure you won't meet up with a downhiller. But steeper hiking trails weed out all but the most foolhardy workaholics who grunt a bike up there somehow so they can launch it back down. The things we do to say we did...

Speaking of layering socks, I get a lot of use out of bread bags in cool to cold weather. I gave up on buying toe covers and overboots that cost a lot of money and wear out far too quickly. For toe warmers, I cut an appropriate size end of a bread bag to put over the front of my sock before putting my shoe on. For really cold rides, I wear a thin synthetic liner with a full bread bag over it, a wool outer sock, and a closed-toe shoe. Sometimes I even double bag, adding another bread bag over the outer sock. The inner vapor barrier keeps sweat from dampening the sock layers. Moisture increases heat loss through conduction and evaporation if it can get out far enough to evaporate. The vapor barrier turns your liner sock into a wetsuit for your foot. Don't waste your time on dreams of perfectly dry warmth. You won't find it.

Winter cycling is the hardest activity to dress for. Riders automatically produce their own wind chill. Exertion on a freewheel-equipped bike ranges from strenuous on a climb to nil on a descent, when wind chill can increase to more than 40 mph (64 kph). You will sweat. Moisture management is up to you.

Some people wear shell jackets. I never used to, preferring multiple fuzzy layers instead. The thickness of the front coverage took the edge off of the incoming frigidity, while moisture could move freely outward to evaporate from the surface, away from my skin. Then I got a Sugoi jacket that Sugoi, of course, stopped making. It had a nice balance of breathability and wind protection, and is a pleasant but visible yellow. It does trap more moisture than the all-fuzzy option did, but all of my fuzzy layers were in muted colors. I vastly prefer muted colors, but I bow to the reality that motorists need all the help they can get to notice and avoid a bike rider. There's a slight risk that a bright, target gives a bad actor a better aiming point, but inattention is more common than actual malice.

This isn't a complete list and discussion of all of the many variations in my wardrobe for cycling. I draw from at least five options just in gloves and mittens. Head covering also draws from a selection of fabrics and accessories. Well. I say accessories, but mostly I mean varying amounts of tape over the helmet vents, and a light mounted on the front of it.

Single gear seeks partner for committed relationship

 

The simplest form of the modern safety bicycle is the trusty fixed gear. On the velodrome, the bikes are pared down to the absolute essentials: no brakes, no amenities. Out in the wild, a wise rider chooses lower gearing, a front brake for a little extra security, and fenders for the crappy wet weather in which the simple vehicle excels. I also recommend a two-sided rear hub, to allow for at least two gear options. Your choices are limited by how many cogs you might securely stack on either side of the hub, and by the length of the dropout to accommodate the difference in chain length.

I see people referring to any single-speed bike as a fixed gear. A fixed gear is a single speed (even with multiple cogs you can't switch quickly), but not every single speed is a fixed gear. It's only fixed if it threads directly to the hub with no ratcheting freewheel mechanism. The difference is critical, because a single-speed freewheel is the worst of both worlds. You only have one gear, but you lose critical advantages of a fixed gear.

With a fixed gear, you can't stop pedaling. This commitment scares some riders. You can get thrown if you forget and stop your feet when you have reached a good cruising speed or you're wailing down a hill. You can get launched if you dive into a corner too tightly and really dig a pedal in. One time on a rainy training ride I had a good line in the corner, but didn't know that the puddle I was aiming to ride through had a pothole under it that was about six inches deep. The front tire dropped into that as the crank came around, driving the pedal into the chunked-up pavement. I hit the road several feet from the bike. I pulled my face up from another puddle in time to watch the rear tire crawl off of the tacoed rim, allowing the tube to bulge out and explode. Lesson learned: never dive into water if you don't know how deep it is and what might be under the surface. Swimmin' hole 101 applies to bike riding too.

That crash was before the Maryland/Delaware district championships that year. The time trial that nasty summer was run in 50-degree weather and a stiff wind, with light to moderate rain. Real nice. The 108-mile road race a week later started under cloudy skies that eventually gave way to another saturating downpour. My elbow was still bandaged from the pothole encounter. And I flatted out of the road race with a couple of laps left.

A couple of weeks after that I slammed an obstacle while bombing around on a warm July night and was out of work for 10 weeks. How does that relate? I actually tried riding on the fixed gear while my right arm was strapped to hold my collarbone onto the top of my shoulder joint and my left hand was in a cast, because I was an idiot who couldn't be inactive. I reasoned -- if you could call it that -- that I didn't need to be able to grab the brake strongly because I could control speed through the pedals. True as it was, I did start to feel like I might dump it and slow my recovery even further. I was also unable to bathe myself because of the combination of medical devices attached to my broken parts, so I didn't want to have to wear congealed sweat for another couple of months. No one available to give me a sponge bath fit the fantasies one might have of such ministrations.

Once I was cleared to return to training -- I mean work -- in September, the fixed gear provided steady pedaling to rehab the lungs and legs. The atrophied, twiglike arms required more carefully selected weights and exercises.

Another nice thing about the fixed gear was that the rear rim didn't have to be dead straight for a good braking surface. I just stomped it basically flat and re-tightened the spokes. I don't remember when I finally got around to rebuilding it, but it was probably years later.

Now here, 41 years after all that, my present fixed gear is not the same bike, but it has some of the same parts. From late 1979, I always had a fixed gear for commuting and bad weather training. Here in New Hampshire, winter and its fringes last longer than in Maryland. If the winter isn't snowy, that means I get out on the bike during those months as well as in late autumn and early spring. With short daylight and cold air, the fixed gear provides continuous pedaling, which helps you stay as warm as you can when you're generating your own 10-20 mph wind chill. Winter riding is one of the trickiest activities to dress for because of that wind chill aspect. I much prefer cross-country skiing for a fitness activity. I would use it for winter transportation if I could.

This fall has presented many obstacles to regular riding. The darkness and winding roads stop my commuting among bulky vehicles that blind each other with their ridiculous headlights, so I have to carve out time from my days off work, when I'm doing every other thing I can't do on a workday. At best I get three consecutive days of riding. Staving off the muscle loss of age, I have to watch how hard I push, but also how much I slack off in between. It seems like there's about a two-day window between good rest and the onset of incurable sloth. A few weeks ago, I blasted out on the fixed gear for twentyish miles, feeling pretty good. The next day I felt a little worn down, so I chose a multi-gear bike. It was the heavy commuter, but it felt heavier than usual. The next day was cold and showery, so I reverted to the fixed gear, expecting to feel even more sluggish. Instead, the direct drive and considerably lighter weight combined to help me drive the bike and the bike to drive me. And there is a critical advantage of the fixed gear: the bike drives the rider. On a freewheel bike, you have to push the crank around. Sure, one crank arm brings the other crank arm around, but only your legs are doing the work. On the fixed gear, the motion of the bike itself keeps the chain moving. The wheel brings the crank around even if the crank isn't bringing the wheel around.

I know the effect well. I wasn't being reminded of its existence when I enjoyed its effects that day. I was only reminded to share it again for anyone who hasn't experienced it. Even my lightweight road bike is more fatiguing to ride than a fixed gear when I'm already tired. If I can ride downhill with a tailwind, or on a route with no climbs and no adverse winds, the road bike is great because I don't have to pedal at all where the going is good. But wherever I have to put forth effort, particularly on a climb, the fixed gear can feel better because of the free lift that my off leg gets on its way back to the top of the pedal stroke.

Coasting on the fixed gear consists of loosening up the legs while maintaining a smooth, precise pedaling circle. You get smooth or you don't last. For a sustained descent, I will stop and flip the wheel to the high gear side. I also have the brake to help, although resistance pedaling and turning like a skier can help scrub speed while maintaining flow. You can't do skier turns with motorists or other riders around, but on an empty road it's a great way to control momentum while keeping a smooth pedaling rhythm. Riding the bike on freestanding rollers will teach you smoothness in a hurry. Just don't try to practice your turns there. If you even imagine turning while you're riding rollers you will end up on the floor.

Twenty (or so) years ago, after my younger colleague Ralph had been fixed gear riding for a while, he applied his analytical mind to it and reported his findings. I had said that you have four speeds: Sitting, standing, weaving, and walking. He observed that pushing back on the saddle and grinding at a low cadence could be a more effective way of climbing than standing on the pedals. While this technically falls under the category of sitting, it's different enough from staying in a more neutral saddle position and trying to keep a higher cadence that it qualifies as its own thing. And you can combine some of these, sitting and weaving, for instance, or even standing and weaving, to surmount steeper grades. As long as you can get the pedals around you're still moving forward. So fixed gear riding expands your power range, making you (possibly) less dependent on shifting as frequently on your multi-geared bike. This applies particularly to grunting in a low gear more than ultra-spin. Diving down a steep descent with a freewheeling system, just coast. 

Decades of riding take their toll. Cycling of any kind is not complete exercise. It does not build bone density, and it uses your legs in one plane and a limited range, regardless of the gear. I notice now as I get closer to 70 than 60, that my hips don't like too much high intensity cycling without mixing it up or at least taking more rest days to break up long stretches of riding. Way back in my 40s I noticed that the end of the commuting week left me feeling a bit ragged. And the arc of the whole season built nicely to a peak in July that felt like it would never end, but in late September I felt like a dragonfly, still fierce but now tattered from the constant flight. This effect has only become more pronounced with age. The continuous pedaling on the fixed gear allows no rest en route except for "fixed-gear coasting": relaxing the legs and letting the bike drive. That still requires a little input to keep everything aligned and smooth, compared to freewheel coasting, where you can actually backpedal a half revolution to drop your heel on one side and then the other, stretching the back of the leg.

Sometimes you just have to hop off and admire the view. Savor each ride.

Nosehair Update

Since my post on January 10, nosehair-freezing cold finally did put in a brief but dramatic appearance on February 3-4. It even spawned breathless news broadcasts and articles because the Mount Washington Weather Observatory recorded a record-setting wind chill factor.

Wind chill is not temperature. Block the wind and it goes away. If you are wearing sufficient insulating layers and a windproof shell, the effect nearly vanishes. I say nearly, because most of the time our bodies and our buildings are losing a little heat even when snugged up adequately for average conditions. Outside of the enclosure, a little thermal gradient fades out from us, reducing the rate of heat loss from where we want it. Wind whipping over this strips it away, removing the invisible insulation we gained from it.

Winter cyclists have to deal with wind chill all the time, because of how we generate our own, rolling along at whatever speed we're doing. Cold-weather cycling is one of the hardest activities to dress for, because the rider is generating heat through exertion while flying along through the cold atmosphere, cranking up hills and coasting down them, with an actual wind that may come from any angle, interacting with the apparent wind created by forward motion.

I don't know anyone who tried to go for a ride on Saturday, when the temperature started out around 12 to 15 degrees below zero F, with a wind gusting over 30 most of the time. In our shop, with the furnace cranked, we spent most of the day with an indoor temperature from 52 to 54 degrees F. We finally got almost to 60 by closing time. The building was constructed in the 1860s, I believe. The walls were thin, and insulation nonexistent. In a Nor'easter, we can feel the wind actually blowing through the back wall. On Saturday, the wind was westerly enough that it didn't come through directly, but it still stripped escaping heat away from the outside. Some insulation has been added in modern times, but the thin walls mean that there's not enough space for much.

The next day, the temperature climbed steadily to the upper 30s and only dropped to the 20s. Today it got even warmer, with a bit of sunshine. Winter reverted to the temperature range it had stayed in since the season began.

The cold stab did get Lake Winnipesaukee to freeze all the way over, but I would not recommend going out on the new ice. "Ice in" is merely a technicality.

The series of storms that finally brought enough snow to open the cross-country ski trails also brought rain and wet snow in a diabolical combination that produced a thick crust on top of loose snow underneath. The crust can't support a person on skis or snowshoes. It varies in thickness so that the way it breaks from one step to the next makes snowshoeing a laborious series of stumbles as the edges of the shoes catch on the crust. On skis, the crust still breaks, and neither the crust nor the loose snow offer any grip. In bare boots, a post-holer discovers that the snow is deeper than you might expect, with the meager accumulations and long warm spells. On the groomed trails, the cover is barely adequate. Grooming reduces the snow depth and steadily wears it away, while the thinned surface is more vulnerable to the sun heating the dark earth.

The roads don't exactly beckon, but they do offer a passable option for a pedaler who has not invested in a fat bike with studded tires. Some snow machine trails are probably firm enough for a regular mountain bike with studded tires. I prefer and recommend changing to weight-bearing exercise for part of the year, but even the less helpful exercise of pedaling is better than none at all.

I don't have time on a workday to fit a ride in at either end of it until commuting season, and my days off seem to get eaten up with all the things that I don't have time to do in the margins of a workday, so I'm just deteriorating steadily until the daylight gets long enough to start getting base mile rides. I salute all you people with the strength of character to ride a trainer on a regular basis. I do not envy you in the least, but I respect your gumption. That's a lot of sweat and bike abuse.

Ride in the New

 

Thanks to climate change, I had New Year's Day off for a change. The snow had been obliterated by rain in a storm right before Christmas. The lake and pond ice had been obliterated by a later surge of warmth. The local indoor rink would be closed for extensive remodeling through January 3. With nothing to stay open for, upper management opted to give us all the day off.

While lows had dipped below freezing most nights, every day ran well above. On New Year's Eve, the temperature never went below freezing, after a midday high pushing 50F. So once I got the morning chores out of the way on Sunday I suited up to head out for my first ride in almost a month, and my first purposeful exercise in 15 days. There's always a bit of wood splitting, and snow removal as it happens, but snow hadn't happened since December 16-17. That stuff had been the most heinous cement imaginable: disc-rupturing, hernia-ripping heart attack snow. It broke a lot of trees and took the power out for hours in places, and days in others. Only a few piles and patches of it remain. Like a horrendous battle, a storm can seem like it's never going to end, as it wounds and kills, but it does end, and the signs that it ever happened grow fainter and fainter. The lost are still lost, though, for whatever it was worth.

With the roads fully clear and a mild day, the only discouraging factor was the gusty wind. A rider learns how to manage the local winds. Around here there aren't too many attractive routes to take advantage of an upwind start and a downwind finish when a strong westerly blows, but I can ride a good few variations to the east that take the flying tailwind early and then tack back upwind on roads largely sheltered by trees.

Keenly aware of my advancing age, I wonder after any layoff how much fitness I will have lost. Coming out of a commuting season into the late fall and early winter, will the body remember the strength of the regular season or already have slumped into off-season sloth?

The first few pedal strokes on the trusty fixed gear didn't feel too ominous, although the mysterious aches that have plagued me for years teamed up with the rapid atrophy that pounces on aging, unused quads. It was manageable, but not a glorious hammerfest, joyously reuniting with the bike in exquisite synergy of muscle and machine. Nope. Just trudging doggedly to get to the real tailwind stretch on Route 25.

With gusts to 30, the elderly cyclist spun along at 20-plus for much of the three miles to the next turn. The next turn is onto a dirt road called Loon Lake Road. That's about a mile and a half unless I take a diversion onto a longer section of mostly dirt, that goes along the Ossipee River for a while before connecting to pavement again to head out of Freedom Village to hit Route 153.

The freezing and thawing had softened Loon Lake Road an inch deep in places -- mostly inconvenient places, like climbs. The route is basically flat, but there's this one little jumper that has a southern exposure... The dirt felt like a glue trap. But embedded in it were sections of ice, so I might be grinding hard just to keep moving forward upright, and risk hitting well-lubed compacted snow. When a dirt road is well frozen or only slightly thawed, sand kicked onto the icy stretches often provides more than adequate traction. With the road more softened, the icy parts looked like they had been rinsed fairly clear. They lay as traps that I had to avoid wobbling into as I slithered toward the next paved road. I skipped the river run in favor of a quicker return to pavement.

With a mild forecast for the second day of 2023 after a frozen night, I went out again to get a few more miles before the weather reverts to more wintry offerings. I wondered whether the saddle would punish me for my month of idleness or if I had retained saddle conditioning from the season that didn't seem so long ago.

I hadn't. Oh yeah. I resolved to ride rollers two or three nights a week for the rest of the winter, just to keep my sittin' parts in shape. We'll see how that really turns out.

Because the dirt road had stiffened up somewhat from the freezing night before, the river route provided a scenic variation with only one glue trap. Of course that was on the climb from river level to the paved road.

On the New Year's Day ride it struck me that I might not have ridden on New Year's Day since 1980. If I had, it probably was before I moved to New Hampshire, where weather and priorities would have made riding on that particular day less common. This was especially true once I had a job where New Year's Day is often one of the most busy, and what passes for lucrative, in the cross-country ski business. When I dredged through old training diaries I discovered that I recorded a New Year's Day ride in 1986 in Maryland, as well as a couple or three on January 2 in various years up here when time and weather allowed. I never wrote down the tequila-fueled fixed-gear slither through the outer environs of Alexandria, Virginia, that spanned midnight as 1981 came in on a light snowstorm.

I never cared much what I did on the first day of any year, aside from still being alive. But sometimes it's almost interesting to review how one has spent time.

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.

Winter Frustration

On Wednesday I arrived to begin my work week and found a road bike clamped in the work stand. With the persistent lack of snow, its owner had decided to begin riding outdoors. His timing wasn't very good. Late Wednesday night, snow began. It changed to sleet and freezing mist not long after sunrise. This transitioned to more significant icing after nightfall on Thursday. But he's ready if winter falters again.

Winter has mostly faltered this year. It has managed to dish up a tasting menu of wintry tidbits, including some skating and ice boating, but not a lot of any one winter pleasure. The snow last year, though below average, was dense and durable. The cold, though not bitter, was persistent enough to put together longer stretches of wild skating, and keep the ski trails just holding on. For your cross-training outdoor athletes of any level it provided a seasonally-appropriate selection much of the time. This year has been much more frustrating.

I used to switch readily to riding when I was already doing more consistent training of all kinds. Since I am the absolute worst at indoor exercise, I hardly did any, but I could always find something to do outside. However, as I've gotten older, I really notice how cycling alone does not provide complete enough exercise. It actually hurts you if all you do is pedal. It neglects too many other muscle groups and does nothing for bone density, flexibility, and core strength. A false start on riding season just makes me repeat saddle toughening multiple times before the real season sets in.

Road riding has one massive advantage: convenience. There's a road right at the end of your driveway. If you happen to live where there's a trail -- bike, hike, ski, or what have you -- right outside your door, that's great. But most of us don't have that. Okay, I do, but I know that it's not the norm in most places. But a road rider on any form of the machine can walk out, hop on, and pedal away. My winter choice is the fixed gear, but you have to develop a taste for that. The guy who brought his road bike in this week has a fixed-gear that I built for him, but he doesn't automatically think to go that way. He used to compete in triathlon at a high level, so his introduction to cycling was on sophisticated, multi-geared machines. He seemed to enjoy the fixie when we rode together a time or two, but it didn't win him over.

When riding season actually gets close I will start the routines of riding and supporting exercises. But riding has always fit my schedule best when I use it to commute to work, so that it eats less time out of the rest of my day. The supporting exercises are fairly minimal. When I can get on top of my seasonal depression, I do them even when I'm not riding. But if I can ski regularly it takes care of everything I need until early spring.

Cross-country skiing is the ultimate one-stop shopping for general fitness. It goes beyond the obvious cardiovascular benefits. Classical skiing especially works the limbs through a nice, full range of motion, while the core is exercised symmetrically in support of the stride. Skating is less satisfactory, but still better than anything else outside of a planned and varied program in a gym, using specific exercises to isolate muscle groups and boring the shit out of you until you quit. But you can't get up and go on your skis if the trails are brown, or if thin cover leaves subsurface obstacles that could dump you on your face.

Just trudging around on cross-country skis provides a muted level of the muscular benefits, but less of the cardiovascular aspect, unless you really go out and bulldoze on your heavier boards. You will get your heart rate up, but I find it hard to persist at that level when I'm not making much headway through the landscape. Also, groomed trails get chewed down to nothing when they're not refreshed with new snow at regular intervals, so your trudging is likely to be done off-trail. Mature hardwood forests offer many passable spaces. But it's now more of a hike than a swooping flight in pursuit of a sleek physique.

Even the trudging had started to suffer from the lack of a consistent surface. On a recent bushwhack up the mountain behind my house, I rediscovered the sensation of actually walking, when the steeper slopes turned out to have melted off. It was downright pleasant. The snow that fell Wednesday night won't improve the skiing enough up there, and it will make the walking harder. But that's New England. It might freshen up the smoothest of the groomable Nordic trails for a low-grade version of  the high-grade experience. And I might even get a shot at it before it turns into some other weird, half-frozen thing.

Dinky little lights

The early onset of snow and ice forced me into the car more than a month sooner than in past years. This has given me a lot of time to look at fellow road users through the windshield, the way the vast majority of road users view those of us who aren't in a motor vehicle.

I've seen the whole range, from people with no lights to people with conspicuous outfits combining illuminated and reflective elements. The more brightly lighted are certainly more noticeable, but even the most conspicuous is hard to see.

I've discussed the drawbacks of aggressively conspicuous lighting before. That's a different problem. What I noticed most recently is the way night lighting and reflectivity for non-motorized users fails to define them even if it makes them quite noticeable.

Starting at the dark end of the spectrum, pedestrians and cyclists start right out with different minimum recommended lighting. Way back when I was a kid, my father said we should carry a flashlight when walking the dog at night, so that drivers could see us when cars came by. Flashlights are a lot better now, and pedestrians are a lot rarer. I appreciate it when I'm in my car or on the bike and people on foot have a light. But from the car it still doesn't provide instant and definite positioning. The same goes for cyclists with the minimum required lighting, or even a notch better. Any oncoming motor vehicle blasts out the smaller lights of the non-motorized travelers and narrows the space in which to pass safely. More than once I have pulled over and stopped completely rather than go forward into the visual field of blaze and blackness. Any normal driver will just bull through and hope for the best.

More powerful lighting definitely improves the situation for a bicyclist at night. The most powerful head and tail lights define you as a vehicle better than in daylight. But the sheer size of the headlight is never as large and definitive as the lights on a car or truck. If you're on a road where it's inadvisable to take the full lane, you're off to the side a bit, ambiguously lighted and generally moving more slowly than the large, motorized sensory deprivation tanks in which most teens and adults spend most of their lives in developed countries.

The lights on motor vehicles are designed not only to allow drivers to see where they are going in the absence of other light. They also define the shape and size of the vehicle. They are a symbolic language and an aid to navigation. At a glance, a driver can identify the other vehicles by their lights, determine their direction of travel and approximate their speed. Non-standard lighting causes immediate confusion. You will notice this at accident scenes where emergency vehicles are in unusual positions and emergency responders with reflective vests and lights are moving around a scene, particularly early in the response, when drivers are still flowing through the area. You'll see it at construction zones. You'll see it when a motor vehicle is escorting people on foot who might for some reason be using the public right of way for something like a long-distance charity relay or similar event. I have been unable to dig up a link to a story about it, but I recall years ago -- pre-internet -- that a mixed group of fraternity and sorority students were doing a charity run, escorted by a truck with floodlights on the back of it. They were in the right lane of a four-lane, divided highway when a driver ploughed into the runners, killing several. The white floods on the back of the escort truck made it visible, but not identifiable.

At highway speeds -- and even at the lower speeds -- drivers need automatic cues that trigger automatic responses, because they are so conditioned to business as usual. Are they wrong? Of course they're wrong. Drivers should be on the alert at all times for unusual circumstances that require them actually to pilot their craft. Wrong they may be, but they are also normal. The vast majority of the time, they only encounter each other, normally lighted and operating within a fairly narrow range of deviations. Even the speed changes and weaving of a texting idiot fall closer to the norm than the dinky little lights of a bike or pedestrian, or the bright but unfamiliar look of a motor vehicle engaged in non-standard activity.

Take your super-equipped rider with fully reflective garments and lots of lights. You will trigger reports of space aliens, but you still don't give drivers a quickly assimilated spatial reference that they can use to set up a seamless pass. You're just weird looking. I don't say that you shouldn't do it. Just don't be surprised when it fails to provide anything close to perfect safety and confidence. On the approach, even that display can be obliterated by the lights of oncoming traffic. And it didn't really claim your space in the first place. The illuminated human outline of a full reflective suit does reinforce that you are at least humanoid. But that very spectacle might lead to target fixation, as the driver gravitates toward you, gaping in fascination at this apparition floating through the darkness. You're little better off than the rider with just a really decent head and tail light, reflector leg bands and an odd couple of blinkies.

Are there statistics on this? Probably not. Someone would have to care, and get the funding for the study, tabulate and publish the results. I base my conclusions on my own observations as a prisoner in my car, going off to grub for my pittance each day.

Out of the car, we riders and walkers have adapted to the night. It's easy to forget how invisible you are under even the best of circumstances. That's why I don't feel like a pampered pet of the machine age, wallowing in my privilege as I loll in the recliner and pilot my chariot. I feel like I'm making a sacrifice for the team, performing anthropological and sociological research by spending time as a motorist, and studying its effects both physical and psychological. I would prefer to spend more of the time as a brave outrider, facing the elements and making the world a better place one pedal stroke at a time. But the world isn't there yet. Someone has to guide the transition.

Autonomous elements in a semi-autonomous vehicle would improve the passing situation independent of lighting at night. If motor vehicles had sensor systems that could identify the size, speed, and direction of any object in their space, both oncoming and overtaking vehicles could take over from their meat pilots to slow down and make space for a bicyclist or pedestrian. With the push for fully autonomous vehicles, and new models advertising range-finding features, this could be a reality fairly soon. Meanwhile, most of us poor schmucks have to drive vehicles from the current fleet of rust buckets, and depend on our own poor senses to get us safely around.

Evolution could be hastened -- albeit harshly -- by equipping the newer vehicles with weapon systems that would identify and destroy older motor vehicles and their occupants, thus reinforcing the de facto minimum financial threshold for full participation in society and making the roads and highways safer at the same time. I'm not saying this is a good idea. But I guarantee that someone, somewhere, has been thinking it, along with plenty of other judgmental prescriptions for "improving" our species. Real classic antique cars would have to be equipped with transponders to mark them as better than old junkers driven by low-income dregs.

Of course in America the powers that be would rather keep requiring low income people to dig up some kind of personal transportation, preferably a junky car, than expend public monies on public transportation or alternative transportation infrastructure. There's no profit in that stuff, and profit is God.

Robbed of the last of autumn

After a genuine winter-style snowstorm late night Thursday through a good bit of Friday, the roads cleared enough for me to snatch a ride before the next set of snowstorms. The snow has trashed the trail conditions, so my park and rides have become inconvenient. The next stage is to park and walk, which requires a longer drive to get within efficient walking distance. And I'll be walking back out in the dark. I would be riding in the dark anyway.

Some people just submit to the inevitable and ride the trainer in these conditions. I'm not sure what would give me sufficient incentive to ride the trainer or rollers on a regular basis. I would always prefer to be doing something real, outdoors. Not to disrespect the trainer riders. I salute them. The poor bastards.

Just over a month ago it was nice enough to stop for photo ops along Lake Wentworth.

New England says, "You knew what I was like when you moved in with me." It's true. And for the most part I just roll with it. Only after the park and ride became a realistic option did I get used to it and come to rely on it. And, every year, the park and ride season gets interrupted by some amount of snow. Early snow has tended to go away quickly enough to let the season continue, but the current storm pattern may blow that average.

Winter riding is best when conditions are "freeze dried." Dirt roads are firm and fast. The brine stays locked in the roadside snowbanks. It evaporates on the pavement to leave the classic white dust.

We're looking at a high of 19 and single-digit lows on Thursday. This follows snow chances starting tonight and running through Wednesday. With the sun approaching its lowest angle, it has no strength to attack even a small accumulation, and it's not up for very long anyway.

This time of year reminds me of my early years out of college, training and commuting in all weather in Maryland and northern Virginia. The winters are milder down there, but it's all relative: I was reacclimatizing after eight years in Florida. Beyond mere meteorological reminiscence, I can also tap into the blend of hope and desolation that permeated the period. There were roads, but no clear path. I was gathering information, while others in my peer group charged forward with learned certainties. The system works for those who do not question its validity.

That's not necessarily a good thing.

A raven spread its wings and wheeled above Route 25 as I rode toward the Ossipee River. A mountain rose to my right. Woods and fields dominate the scenery there. The cadence connected to every spin through every cold landscape in the same gear, year after year.

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.

The Evolution of Cross-Training

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then it snowed

After dwindling away to nearly nothing, winter jumped back into the game with 15-20 inches of snow. Depth varied with your location. I measured about 16 at home. The ski center claimed 18.

Before the snow, I could have launched the commuting season as soon as Daylight Relocating Time moved light to the evening. Yes, I have lights, but I've said numerous times that you could set yourself on fire and some drivers still would not notice you.

In the shop, we had to drag out rental equipment we had started to put into storage. This isn't a real money maker, this late in a mediocre season, but it's our core winter business, so we have to meet whatever demand presents itself. I hate when bike and ski stuff jam together in the workshop, because the substances they use are so incompatible. In that equation, bike lubes are worse for ski bases than ski waxes might be for most surfaces of a bike, but we're still trying to fit awkwardly shaped objects into a shared space without damaging any of them.

Timing of the snow and other items on the schedule meant that I did not shift seamlessly back to an athletic routine of workouts on the snow. Back to? I never established one at all, this winter. Muscling the snow thrower around provided a couple of days of exercise. Later there was some shoveling.

The strengthening sun hasn't made the snow miraculously disappear, but it does modify it much more quickly than the weaker rays of deep winter would. The surface becomes slow and sticky, while the full depth remains fine-grained. Skis pick up moisture on the way through the top layer before dropping down into the powder to clump up and slow down. Or you could go to the groomed trails, if you have time.

If we move relatively steadily into spring conditions, the roads will melt clear, the snowbanks shrivel again, and I'll be able to get out of the car. No doubt there will be a few bad jokes from the weather during the next month and a half. But the darkness and its attendant cold have to follow their fixed schedule. What we get may not be balmy and inviting, but it will probably be doable.

Bike commuting is to train for

Whenever someone tells me that something basically trivial is "to die for," I am briefly tempted to make them do it. But the vapid assertion provides a take-off point for more substantive ones.

Here it is, the end of February in northern New England. Around my house and in the woods, the snow is anywhere from six to 24 inches deep, except in places where it is deeper because of windblown drifts or created piles. But these are the remains of the much deeper snow we received in two storms very close together just before the middle of the month. That was before the temperature went above 60 degrees for a couple of days, in the middle of a longer period when the nighttime lows hardly got below freezing. The jet stream giveth and the jet stream taketh away. That's not to mention the other factors making New England's typical gyrations even more bizarre.

The thaw has shriveled the snow away from the road edges, clearing the bikeable area. At the same time, it destroyed the groomed trails on which one might have laid down a winter rhythm of alternative training.

While I have not seen riders, some of them have reported to me that they have been out and have seen others out. Calls to the shop for bike tuneups began while the snowbanks still slumped into the lanes. Road salt made those puddles as briny as the ocean. But people fixate on the temperature alone. Warmth is the deciding factor, even when they'd be better served by cold.

We did need the thaw to shrink the snowbanks back. But once the whole travel surface is clear, a freeze keeps things dry. I know a couple of things from years of experience: first, someone who gets their annual tuneup now will need more work by May or June to deal with the effects of salt and wet grit; second, when the weather turns cold again -- and it will -- bikes brought in for early service will be forgotten until June. Most of them will be forgotten in our shop, where we will have to work around them until their owners feel the urge for them again.

Riding in the grit and brine is probably only a little more abusive than pounding on a trainer, with a rain of sweat flowing down over the machinery.

I surveyed the route on my way home from work yesterday. If the roads stay this clear, I have no excuse not to launch the commute as soon as Daylight Relocating Time kicks in. With that in mind, I headed out for some base miles on the fixed-gear today.

The first hundred yards reminded me what a crappy winter this has been for exercise. But then I also did several sets of squats yesterday, in anticipation of the anticipation of the beginning of riding season. So the fried quads owed a little to that, as well as the time spent on the couch in a pile of cats.

I used to dream of glorious endeavors when I trained, especially during the first heroic rides coming out of the winter. Now I dream of surviving and thriving in my commute. The commute was always there, but I took it for granted. It's not good to take anything for granted.

The weather may change again. March can be snowy. Once we pass the equinox, however, the sun really gains the advantage. Even now, it is much stronger than it was a month ago. It quickly attacks late-season snows. And if the pattern remains dry, or the wetness comes on warm air, the road will remain clear.

Freedom isn't free. To be free from the car, I have to be strong enough to claim it. It's to train for.

Fat biking vs. skiing vs. snowshoeing

"I really miss my bike," said Big G today. "This winter is getting too long."

Out in the parking lot I watched a local fat biker finishing his ride on this sunny, mild day. I weighed more pros and cons of year-round pedaling.

When I considered myself a racer I trained on the bike from early March into about October and commuted on the bike year-round. But the fall and winter were my chance to do other things: hiking, backpacking, some climbing, and whatever snow sports I could get to from central Maryland. Eventually, an interest in winter skills drew me north. I spent more time on my feet than on wheels for a few years.

To me, exercise should serve to enhance a broader life. Easily bored, I prefer to get my exercise on the move, outdoors, rather than in a building, pounding away repetitively, going nowhere. So I try to get a mix of self-propelled activities. At one time these included propelling myself up rock faces some of the time, calling for upper body strength; propelling myself on water in a kayak, also relying heavily on arms; cross-country skiing, which exercises the whole body with excellent balance and symmetry; and hiking, usually on mountainous trails. I could stomach a little bit of weight training and other resistance work, as well as stationary aerobic training machines for short periods to bridge to my next opportunity to get outside and cover some ground, but not for long periods.

Weight-bearing exercise is important for bone density. If all you do is ride a bike you will not maintain or build bone mass. Hiking, snowshoeing and cross-country skiing do build bone mass. The fat bikers who regularly snowshoe-pack their trails will get the benefits of that weight-bearing exercise, but riders who only pedal will not.

The change of seasons feeds you an automatic excuse to shift your mode of locomotion. On skis or snowshoes you can choose whether to push yourself with a racer's intensity or go for the more deliberate pace of a hiker. If you make a day of it you will need to carry a load of essential gear and supplies.

Snow is not guaranteed, even in what we used to consider snow country. The winter trainer might spend a lot of time running or hiking, depending on physical limitations or temperament. The important thing is to spend time on your feet. And when the snow hits you can add the gliding flight of skiing.

I suppose fat biking is better than nothing, for someone who simply would never use snowshoes or skis. If the choice is between sitting around the house or pedaling around a trail, get out and pedal. If you have the time and the budget to have and use skis and a fat bike, party on. Since I have to choose, I continue to choose my usual winter alternatives. The snow melts eventually, and then I will roll.

The thaw approacheth

Looking at the extended forecast, we get one little dip into the frigid, but after that the trend climbs a couple of degrees each day. Daytime high temperatures get above freezing. It's sap weather for the maple trees. Sugar houses will soon be steaming.

March is a winter month around here. Spring begins on the 20th, according to the calendar, but we may get snow into April, and sometimes May. Set aside years like 1816, when it snowed in every month, crops failed, famine and misery stalked the land. In any year, New England might get in the way of some orphaned bastard of winter, chasing its parent season through what you hoped would be spring. But in general, skiing is moving toward its conclusion and dry-land biking -- as opposed to what is now being called "snow biking" -- gets easier and easier.

I'm not one to throw elbows with winter traffic. Nor do I like salting up a bike with the brine that flows down the roads when the air finally gets warm enough for the road treatment to work at all. When the snow is good I prefer to use its surface, away from crowds, on skis or snowshoes. I'll use groomed trails to train, but on my own time I will head for the boonies. Thus the fat bike has little appeal, since it depends on pre-packed or naturally firmed conditions, making it a consumer of other people's efforts. Its rider may contribute by joining a pack of fellow enthusiasts packing a trail with snowshoes so they can then ride it, but that strikes me as ridiculously labor intensive when you can get on skis. Other than that, the pedalers depend on some sort of motorized grooming equipment to build them a playground on which they are essentially parasitic. They require that nature be adapted to them more than they adapt to nature.

As fat bikers evolve, will they become bow-legged as they try to fit around fatter and fatter tires? Salsa is up to five inches now. Who's got six? Come on six! Do I hear six? Six, Six, okay 6.5. Six point five, six point five do I hear seven?

Perhaps the evolution of the fat bike leads to seasonal adaptations: 3.8-inch tires in the warm months, 4.5 and up in the snowy months. One bike, essentially a 29-er based on outside tire diameter, which will even take a 29-er wheel with a slick tire if you want to use it on the road. How about some aero bars on that thang? Make the fork blades really aero and put time trial wheels on it. Test it in the wind tunnel. Maybe the aero bulldog would stack up surprisingly well against the carbon fiber greyhound.

For the moment, there is still snow to play on or contend with. It was so fine and dry this winter, that the impressive depth will shrink with an almost audible sizzle when strong sun gets on it, but for now it remains. Time for some rollers to alert my posterior to what lies close ahead.

Fat Bikes: from obscure to annoying in 24 months

Fat bikes started out as sort of a secret society. Now they're incredibly hip. Maybe that's the secret to success in America: Get fatter. The original mountain bikes were fat-tired, fun-loving and durable. Then they became tweaky and expensive. But once you go fat you can never come back. So only a fatter bike can capture the public's affection. And with popularity comes misunderstanding and come-lately "expertise."

As the fat bike bus gets larger and picks up more idlers from the sidewalk, the cacophonous chatter of misinformation rises in the background. And news of misbehavior filters in, like the report brought to us by a fat bike rider from Barnstable, Massachusetts, that fat bike tracks across fragile dunes in the Cape Cod National Seashore have brought unwelcome scrutiny from law enforcement. When popularity surges, idiocy increases.

A bike shop in the 1990s needed good answers to semi-informed questions from newly-minted experts who got their opinions from the plethora of magazines that blossomed to provide them. Now a bike shop needs to deal with another crop of enthusiasts who want to see fat bikes and hear about fat bikes even if they have no intention of buying anything. A shop's credibility rests entirely on having the latest cool thing.

I wonder how many people who are getting fat bikes now will use them enough ever to replace a set of tires. From an industry standpoint, who cares whether a customer actually uses anything, as long as they buy it? From a human standpoint, I just see more waste.

The fat bike in winter takes advantage of the snow-packing efforts of others. Some intrepid souls may pack down their riding trails by tromping on them in snowshoes first, but the majority of snow preparation is done with grooming equipment, unless the snow type and temperature swings have led to a naturally condensed and firm trail surface. Many miles of trail are prepared for snow machines and other motorized vehicles. The trails and logging roads provide access for human and animal travelers. These trailways were the fat bike's initial habitat. Only recently have the rising number of riders in a coincidentally difficult economy opened the dialog and debate between riders and cross-country ski areas.

The common characteristic in all these potential fat bike venues is packed snow. It's the winter equivalent of a paved road. Thus the fat bike is doing what the automobile did in the early 20th Century, taking advantage of road surfaces improved through the lobbying efforts of bicyclist organizations to take over those roads with heavier wheeled vehicles that would eventually try to make the bicycle extinct.

A fat bike would be good winter transportation if the roads were safe to share, but they're not. So fat bikes become another indulgence for a toy-crazed culture. If you happen to live where bike routes actually go to practical destinations, and someone makes the effort to keep them passable by plowing, snow blowing or grooming, bike on. But around here we're lucky if there's room for two motor vehicles to squeeze past each other in some of the snowier places, let alone maneuver past a cyclist none of them are happy to encounter.

IF humans in general -- and industrialized-nation humans in particular -- suddenly changed their transportation mindset and started providing for winter bikeways and other winter transportation options that did not require bare pavement, winter-adapted bikes would not just be toys. Unlikely as that is, it's not impossible. I like to imagine packed-snow travel ways on which someone could commute by ski or fat bike. I would pay tax dollars for that. Take it out of the road salt budget. Economically, it might make more sense for people in snowy regions to put the car up on blocks in the winter and use tracked vehicles rather than bathe the automobile in brine for six months. But then the tourists wouldn't be able to get around up here to shed money on us. Damn. It's always something.

Fat Bike Ethics

When an activity based on self-reliance becomes popular, self-reliance is one of the first casualties. It happened with backpacking, cross-country skiing, winter hiking, mountain biking, kayaking...people are attracted by some element of the sizzle, but still expect someone else to cook and cut the meat. Where a few people would come in, seeking to learn the skills and master the craft, the masses come in looking to own the gear, get the tee shirt and project the image.

Fat biking is taking its turn in the spotlight now. It's still a narrow spot, but interest is on the rise. And the most frequently asked question is, "where can I go ride this thing?"

Operators of cross-country ski areas have to tell fat bike owners whether their machines are allowed on touring center trails. The bike advocates consider this a reasonable question. Some of them get a little snivelly when the answer is not an immediate and emphatic yes.

The fat bike of today started out a decade ago as an expedition bike. It was a go-anywhere machine for someone who might want to ride through the interior of Alaska, or across a desert, or some other place where a rugged machine with ample traction could make its methodical way from place to place. But, like so many other pieces of expedition and exploring equipment, the bikes proved fun or useful in less drastic situations. The subculture took hold.

Fat bikers: ski touring centers owe you nothing. Fat biking evolved in the wild, away from groomed skiing areas, and it flourished there for a decade before the public began to take notice. A fat bike was a tool for riding in venues that already existed, not a novel toy based on a mere idea, which then had to find a place in the real world. Fat biking venues already existed and continue to exist.

The wide tires may make little or no impression in some trail conditions, but in others they gouge up the trails so that re-grooming would be needed to make the trails usable again for the skiers for whom they were built. In some conditions, even normal skier use hacks things up pretty well. But tire tracks create a new pattern of disruption that can seriously impact trail conditions.

If a touring center allows limited fat bike use, someone has to patrol to make sure those limits are respected. Fat bike riders will need to pay fees sufficient to offset the expenses generated by their presence. But it doesn't end with the exchange of funds. The ski area has to patrol the trails, assess conditions and repair them as necessary, in addition to the normal maintenance and grooming schedule familiar from ski operations.

Many ski areas are making some effort to accommodate --or even attract -- fat bikers as another source of income. With natural snow becoming unreliable, cross-country areas have to figure out how to monetize what they've got, or put in costly snowmaking systems that still rely on sustained temperatures below freezing. So fat bikers look like a viable cash cow. But there's no escape from the logistical realities of trail maintenance when snow brings skiers and current fashion brings fat bikers at the same time.

In our area, uncommonly sustained low temperatures have brought deep powder this year. This is snow that does not pack readily to a firm surface for skate skiers, let alone solidify enough to allow fat bikes to pass without digging deep into the corduroy. It may not look like much damage to a non-skiing bike enthusiast, but it might as well be a ploughed field for someone rocketing along on skinny skis.

In other years, or even the later part of this one, conditions could change to favor the fat bikers. Whatever happens, those who take up the super wide tire need to remember that their machine started out as another way to travel freely, not another way to depend on the continuing efforts of trail groomers who work for someone else. Sure, the bikes require a somewhat compacted surface. Such a surface can occur naturally or artificially. But just because someone is creating such a surface doesn't mean they'd be tickled to have you on it. Nor are they a bunch of killjoy old fuds if they seem reluctant to fling wide the gates.

When winter collapses and takes the ski industry with it, within a decade or so, fatties can rule the Earth. Bide your time. Be kind and polite to the cross-country skiers as they enjoy their declining years.

Training to be "not a cyclist"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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