Commuting Season Approaches

Daylight Relocating Time begins this Sunday. With my groovy light system I should be more independent of daylight, but people worry about me and the dark rural highway is riskier at night.

Two weeks ago we got a foot of snow in Wolfe City. The shop owner declared loudly and confidently that we had so much snow that we would certainly be skiing well into the spring. In 20 years I have seen that prediction come true a mere handful of times. Sure enough, torrential rain within a couple of days of his brash statement scoured away a foot of snow in 24 hours. More rain and thaw weather have continued the attack.

Years ago I would have thrown my body across the snow to protect it. I would have raged against the gods. I'm too practical to keep that up, though. I soon learned to adapt to conditions. Conditions obviously were not going to adapt to me.

The early commuting season demands patience. Snowbanks and encroaching ice still narrow the roads in critical places. Deep drifts of sand fill the margins of the pavement. Blocked drains lead to flooding with briny melt water. I won't charge out and abuse my bike when I can abuse the car. Soon enough the weather will shift completely to the gray gap after winter has been dismantled. Then comes the gradual green of spring. All the while the sun vaults higher, so you get a good long look at the fugly and the early hints of returning life.

The toughest part is slogging through the slush in leafless woods to answer inopportune calls of nature on the long commute. Fluid balance is an art.

It's time to set up the rollers. I have to get my favorite old training tunes from vinyl and cassette tape to MP3. That could be cumbersome. I think I know a way, but I don't know if I have the requisite cords to play amp output into laptop input. I'm not even sure it would work. I certainly can't use that project as an excuse to delay training. I can always use the old Walkman.

The recent sudden death of Jon (who was a regular reader and frequent commenter on this blog) has taken a lot of the fun out of things. As much as you might tell yourself that life is fragile and can end in an instant, when a loved one is snatched away it creates concentric waves of distress from everyone who knew him. These waves cross each other, blend and reflect. They wash in from odd angles at unexpected times. Jon was a son, a brother, a husband and a father. His loss affects each person differently because of these roles and the ages of each person left behind. Because other family members have the illness that took him, we wonder who might be next. It's a pretty nasty frame of mind.

Aside from taking reasonable precautions to avoid the obvious, stupid things, you can't spend your life wondering when and how you are going to die, or how and when someone close to you will die.

The most dangerous thing you will ever do is love someone. You can't really control that,though. We humans tend to clump together.