The difference between bears and humans

 First off, there isn't just one difference between bears and humans. But as I begin to emerge from my own hibernation, I'm forced to contemplate a particular difference: Bears fatten up in the fall and emerge in spring having burned off their reserves during their winter inactivity. Humans who hole up in the burrow for the winter fatten up on all of the tasty comfort foods one can make or buy while huddling close to the fire.

My winter routine used to involve a lot more playing outside. Now, most of my exercise comes from splitting firewood. My house also has a lot of stairs to climb. This is probably all that interrupts a continuous conveyor belt of baked goods from the oven to my plate. It's even worse at work. Unless I have to deal with a busy ski rental day, I have plenty of opportunities to nibble. I even wrote a song called "Snacking out of boredom and depression," about the tedious days when work hours just feel like incarceration.

People are exhausting. What makes a busy rental day interesting is the process of feeding them through the system smoothly and quickly. When the shop is going really nuts, I'll have three or four things going at once, between rentals, calls for reservations, ski service check-ins, and sales questions. When it's kind of a party atmosphere, the time passes lightly. 

A massive workload in the repair shop in bike season does not alleviate the urge to snack. However, thirty miles of bike commuting a day does a lot to melt away the excess calories. Hey, if I'm burning them, they aren't excess.

Daylight Relocating Time began last Sunday. It has the weird effect of making the month of March disappear, as the morning moves back to January and the afternoon leaps forward to April. It's a beacon on the voyage to riding season. A brief spell of warm weather adds to the illusion, but the longer range forecast shows a reversion to more wintry temperatures. New England teaches you to leap at opportunities but not lean too heavily into what look like trends. What season is it today?

While I have switched the clocks and adapted my schedule, I still react to the light more than the official time. It's just as hard to wake up in the dark in March as it was in January. It's not full-on jet lag, just odd moments of time displacement that follow for the rest of the day.

Lacking base miles, and facing weather that might not support outdoor riding, I haven't bothered to get on a bike seat yet, but I have to do it soon.

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.