This is it. We have reached deepest, darkest realm of winter riding. I applaud those who have diligently plugged away indoors on their trainers. I just don't have the mental fortitude to do such things. I feel like I've been on pretty even footing this winter. Balancing much needed time off the bike with some long, easy rides. I even weathered the blizzard quite admirably as well; going on long hikes through the snow and even taking part in the impromptu SnowCXpacalypse. But then, nothing. The first day of riding in the fresh snow was novel and fun. Days passed and the snow stayed and it was trampled and compacted into rutted, foot-shaped patterns of ice, which as you can guess isn't very fun to ride a bicycle over. Now even with 40+degree weather and somewhat dry roads, I still can't ride because the snow is still sitting on the shoulders of nearly every bike route in the region. Oh, and what's that snow doing? Melting. Great, right? Wrong. All it does is melt until nightfall when it fucking freezes again and becomes black ice. I'm going to get out there eventually. I'm not going to ride fast and I'm definitely not riding near that snow bank that used to be the other half of the road. What concerns me is the natural propensity for black ice to make things turn to shit. Since it looks like a plain wet spot on the road, you never know where it is and because of this you can't react or brace yourself until you're about to eat shit. Even my ultimate ninja skills can't save me from black ice, which is a total letdown. Not only because I really want to ride my bike, but also because ninja lessons are really, really expensive (not to mention hard to find).
It doesn't help that everyone on the MABRA listserv and my team listserv has been posting updates on road conditions and where they're planning to ride "just to see" if the road are clear. It also doesn't help that the MABRA schedule looked full of interesting races, many of which I actually want to do well in. Where is this fitness supposed to come from? To put things in perspective. Jeff Cup is in just over a month. What. The. Hell?
I've been whining about this crap all day at the shop, so I'll stop it here and take a more constructive approach. (ed- What's better than hanging around a bunch of bikes in the winter when you can't ride?) So here's the plan:
1-
Ride anyways. Fuck the roads and the traffic. I'm just gonna ride down the middle of every motherfucking street that I should be riding down anyways had it not been for the blizzard.
2-
Pay someone. There's got to be enough people in the area to pull some money together and pay some John Deer to bring his lifted Bronco with a snowplow and clear the entire loop around Hains Point. I've already found a guy who'll do it for $25/hr and I'll volunteer to run the BikeReg.com site to collect the money. The park service can suck it.
3-
Leave. Maybe not forever, but definitely for the weekends. The plan is to go down south for a night or two over the weekend, maybe race a little but really just ride a whole lot. It might not work with my class/work schedule and I'm sure there might be someone who'll miss me (right?), but desperate times call for desperate measures. Also just so we're keeping track, we are currently 2/2 for Tradezone cancellations. Who's taking bets on next weekend's TZ? I'm putting my money on the RIR race instead. I gotta at least give this whole weekend migration thing a chance. I'm going nuts up here.
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