Winterlude

Back to the good stuff. Winter that is. I returned from the UK last Saturday afternoon. The sky over Mpls was covered in a perfect flat blanket of low clouds. The plane plunged into the mist and emerged below. What opened to my view was the familiar white frozen landscape I'd left 9 days earlier. Welcome home.

Traveling abroad is always fun. I often get to visit bike shops and observe riding styles, gear and the overall bike culture in these destinations. It never ceases to get me even more fired up about bikes. I come home thinking of the modifications I've been meaning to try, projects I've temporarily postponed or the next new frame/bike I want to put together. I was eager to get back on the bike for the ride to work.

On Monday we had a steady shower of snow all day and temperatures hovered in the teens. I quit keeping a bike log some time ago, but if I had one I would have recorded something like: "Perfect snowy ride. Enough precip to make things fun but not so much that the going was miserable. Warm most of the way. No rude drivers. Plenty of beautiful, quiet solitude."

The next morning Sylvia came out to help with clearing the snow. It was light and powdery with distinct flakes that glistened in the bright sun. In short, it was a serendipitous expression of winter's beauty.


You may say I'm a dreamer, but I swear I can feel spring starting to blow in the air. We are on the downhill side, looking into the light. I'm gonna hold my chin up and keep pedaling.