Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Stuck in gear

Sometimes I wonder where all the “bad” days went. Those days when the weather was considered crappy, giving me an excuse to stay inside and catch up on a backlog of tasks I’ve sat aside for months.

Summer in Alaska is manic. We pack all the fun we can into each long day, so only the must-do chores get done. I usually have a pile of things I intend to do when summer ends and the weather turns hard. Problem is, some of the items on that list have been ignored for a couple of years now.

I recently realized that this coincides with my decision a couple of years ago to purchase a few new pieces of clothing to keep me warm and (relatively) dry while commuting in autumn’s freezing rain. It also matches up with my decision to buy a fat bike so that I can keep rolling after a fresh winter snowfall, instead of taking a few days off until the trails get packed again.

Yeah, there are still some days when a glance out the window is enough to quash any thought of going outside, but those days seem fewer and farther between than they used to.

The better gear gets, the easier it is for us to get outside.

Maybe some of the stuff on that list just wasn’t meant to be done.

4 comments:

Speedway said...

Hey Tim,

Wishing you a very Beatles Christmas! Damn, if I have to hear Mannheim Steamroller again I'm going to lose my will to live. It's like chemo for my ears.

Thirsty

Unknown said...

http://tinyurl.com/right-of-way

Tim said...

Man, I didn't realize how much Mannheim Steamroller could suck until this week, when I downloaded a free holiday "sampler" album from iTunes. It has the worst M.S. song EVER -- and that's a big statement!

Have a Grateful Dead Christmas, Thirsty!

Yours in Beatles Hatred,
Tim

WheelDancer said...

I hear ya on this one. Studded commuter tires got me riding to work all week and I just picked up some Nokian Extremes for the mountain bike and somehow I'm not even concerned that the xc ski season can't quite seem to get started