April Rides

[north woods gal]

Emily, it sounds like you two had a very nice Easter. Good for you. It really is nice to know you're having some mild weather. Makes me feel, better, knowing there is such a thing as nice weather, right, now.

I'm trying my best to keep my spirits up, but it's touch and go. For me, the best therapy is always to get out and get physically active, so I started the day with some skiing, but the snow was lousy for skiing, so I switched to snowshoeing. That just felt more like trudging and slogging, today, though. Just not in the mood.

Next, I just grabbed a fat bike and rode around the area paved roads for 10 miles, riding as hard as I could, full out, as much out of frustration as anything. Even deliberately aimed for ice and snow patches, just daring them to stop me. They didn't.

Feeling pretty bold, I next dared myself to try some trail riding in the snow, which was now melting, but still deep. Got only twenty yards, though, fishtailing all the way. Talk about an unforeseen predicament, compliments of all our snow. The fishtailing is something I can handle. I'm good at it. Have even been known to practice it. Crazy me, I now think it's kind of fun.

The problem, now, is that the snow is so high on either side of my narrow trails that it's piled high, up to my thighs, now, when pedaling the bike. I can't even shovel it, because I'm not strong enough to throw the snow over those high walls. It really is like riding down a narrow hallway. Those walls are the problem. As soon as I sideswipe one of the walls of snow on either side of the narrow two-foot wide trail with the rear wheel as I fishtail, it stops my forward progress and I stall out. I could make it and keep going if I had more room via wider trails, but who knew we'd be having such a winter? Just nuts.

Okay, how many bicycle riders have ever had the problem of sideswiping snow walls? That's one for the books.

Any, yup, snowing, again as I write this.