This really blows

“It's always something. If it's not one thing, it's another.”
—Roseanne Rosannadanna

The thing about riding in seriously cold weather is, there’s always shit to figure out, always something to refine. How do you keep a hydration tube open? How do you keep a free hub from seizing? How do you keep your toes warm? How do you keep your camera batteries working so you can shoot pics for your stupid blog?

The most common solution—with accessories like water tubes and cameras, at least—is body heat. Keep ’em inside your clothes and hope for the best.

Now I’ve found out that I have to start getting cozy with an aluminum tube during my nocturnal adventures (and you thought this post was about frigidity).

During Saturday night’s ride at -15F, I offered my Crank Bros. Power Pump to another rider in our group, who needed a few strokes to firm up his flaccid Endomorph. When I turned the head of the pump, the rubber valve seal was too frozen to compress, so it blew right through the threaded plastic ring that was holding it in place.

Wham, bam, thank you ma’am, we have a Dead Pump In the Middle of the Road.

Or, more accurately, on the trail. In the dark. At 15 below zero. Someone else got another pump working, but this could have turned unpleasant. Especially if it had happened on a solo ride.

After polling other winter riders for recommendations on a better pump, I found myself right back at the old solution: It’s not the pump, it’s the lack of heat. So now I’ve installed an aluminum lock ring for added strength, and will find a way to start carrying the pump inside my jacket, at least on sub-zero rides.

It’s either that, or take Pete's tip on warming up the valve seal to restore its flexibility: “I just give it a good long, warm blow with my breath and that rubber responds quickly,” he said. I’m sure his technique would work, but it might take a few minutes, and I'm really not eager to go all Monica Lewinsky on a tire pump in the middle of nowhere.

If it’s painful and embarrassing to freeze your tongue to a flagpole, can you imaging getting your lips stuck on a pump?

The Cutters

Saturday afternoon's Ice Cutter Crit was a rare January event: Bike racing in the sun. Four 2-man teams did 20 laps around Goose Lake, with each racer riding two laps before handing over his boxer shorts and sending his teammate out on the course.
The day was spectacular.
A soft spot meant the racers
really were ice cutters. It deteriorated
into slush, making the cold weather
feel even more zesty and refreshing.
Racers were debriefed after every two laps.
Sometimes in life, we encounter
images that will haunt us for years.
Ice build-up was a problem
that required innovative solutions.
The next time Manny's key doesn't work,
we'll know why.
Tony and Tim K., winners of the maillot lingerie.
Real men wear Spongebob drawers.
(Even if you never know where
those things have been.)

She rocks

It was suggested that I sounded like a grumpy old stay-off-my-lawn guy in my last post. Maybe I did. That's OK. People who break glass on bike paths deserve an good ass kickin', in my opinion.

But don't get the wrong idea about my view of teenagers.

Not long ago, I stumbled into the garage at the end of a tough day, after a tiring commute home in fresh snow.

As I stood in the garage shaking snow off my my clothes, my very cool daughter walked out and put a big mug of hot chocolate in my hand.

Teenagers ain't all bad. Mine isn't, anyway.

She rides a mountain bike, too. I don't think it's a coincidence. Most of the coolest kids I know are kids who ride.

Teach your children well. Take 'em out on rides.

Shattered

I like this tunnel. It runs under a street close to my house, and because I typically ride it in only one direction, passing through it usually signals the end of my work day. Two more blocks, and I can eat dinner.

Neighborhood teenagers also seem to like this tunnel. It's close to their houses, too, and because so many parents are too lazy to walk a couple of hundred yards to find out what junior's doing, it's a good place for a kid to drink a bottle of beer without getting caught.

Unfortunately, juvenile delinquents seem to think that the only thing cooler than starting every sentence with "dude" is drinking a jacked bottle of Bud and then breaking the bottle.

Maybe I shouldn't be too hard on them. I almost never see the little cretins, and they don't cause any real problems other than a little graffitti and leaving shattered glass in the path of bicyclists. It's not as if they're mugging old ladies or doing drive-by shootings.

But come springtime, when thousands of tube-piercing shards are scattered across the bike route, I'd like to make some of those little shits walk barefoot through the tunnel a couple of times before I carry my big shop broom down there to clean up their mess.

3,000 words

Some days, there just isn't much to say.

Then, it's best to just shut up and ride ...

And let the pictures do the talking.

A matter of perspective

A former neighbor and I work in the same building, and I ran into him a couple of days ago as I was arriving on my bike. He climbed out of his pickup and made a joke about how he was going to tell my life-insurance company that I ride in winter. Then he noticed the wheels and tires on my Pugsley.

He stepped closer and started checking out the bike and asking a questions. He said he had recently seen a fat bike when he was in a local shop. I know he rides in the summertime and uses an indoor trainer in winter, so I rattled of a couple of bits of information about the bike and how great it is for winter riding.

As he continued toward the door, he said the Pugsley looked like fun, but that he couldn’t justify the expense for something he’d use “on a lark” a couple of times a year.

I tried to tell him he might be surprised. Winter riding is certainly more fun than spinning on a trainer for six months. Then I told him my fat bike was one of the best investments I’ve ever made.

He laughed and said, “I have a couple of two-thousand-dollar bikes, too. I just don’t call them ‘investments.’”

Poor guy.

Warming up to winter

My wife recently gave me one of those wireless weather stations. It came with a little doo-dad I had to mount on a bracket outside, and two digital monitors so I can have one in the living room and in the garage, where I finish gearing up for winter rides.

The unit in the garage has come in really handy whenever I've wanted to start feeling cold before getting on the bike. Especially over the past week or so, when temperatures have frequently been below zero.

One thing Alaskans like to do when it's really cold is talk about how warm it's going to feel when it gets a little less cold. This is what keeps us from removing the trigger locks, if ya know what I mean.

When a bunch of us rode the Hillside trails last Saturday, the temperature in that area was 13 degrees below zero. Yeah, I know my last post said it was -10. I was estimating. But friends pointed out that a weather station in the area had recorded -13F.

According the weather dudes, Wednesday's high should be in the teens or mid-20s.

Now, in some parts of the country, bicyclists call 25 degrees "cold."

I call it 35 degrees warmer.

In the morning, I plan to throw a leg over the Pugsley and ride to work. Hopefully on an inch or two of new snow. I can't wait to feel that refreshing, 17-degree warmth.

When you don't have a tropical beach on your winter travel agenda, I believe in taking your cheap thrills wherever you can find them.

I'd kill for a ticket to Moab right now

Last week's big snowfall has turned the Hillside into a fat-bike-only zone, at least for now. Until the trails firm up again, it'll be torturous for anyone on skinny tires. Combined with sub-zero cold, the soft trail conditions turned Saturday night's Frigid Bits race into a social ride because everyone without Endomorphs stayed home. Come to think of it, most of the people with Endomorphs stayed home.

Grillmeister Kelly led a four-rider group on Fatbacks and Pugsleys, and Endo Rando joined us out on the swamp loop, where the temp was about 10 below zero. We were out for 90 minutes or more, which would have been enough if I hadn't convinced myself earlier in the day that I should ride round-trip from home for a good, long workout.

I left home at 5:30 in the afternoon, and rolled back in the driveway just before 11 p.m. while feelin' the pain of being out nearly five and a half hours in the dark (and cold), with damn near all of it spent turning the pedals.

That's the kind of night on a bike that makes you feel really good in a day or so ... after you've regained some energy and forgot how you spent the last couple of miles muttering to yourself, "I'm gettin' too old for this shit."

(Thanks to Steve for the frosty pic taken at the end of Speedway Singletrack.)

Thanks, but I'll ride

I’ve lost count of how many times co-workers have offered me rides home on rainy and snowy days over the years. It doesn’t happen much any more, because I’ve been working in one place for a long time and most everyone knows I’ll decline the offer. Even my wife has stopped calling and offering to come pick me up unless she knows I’m facing a headwind strong enough to stop my forward momentum.

People who drive to work every day have a hard time understanding why the rest of us voluntarily subject ourselves to wind, heat, rain, cold and snow instead of climbing into climate-controlled steel bubbles for the trip home. I blame this on the tendency that people have to describe weather as “bad.”

Just this morning, the local newspaper’s website contained a headline about “bad weather” putting cars into tailspins during yesterday’s rush hour.

Unless it’s severe enough to wreck your house or kill people, there is no “bad” weather. There’s just weather. Some is more comfortable, and some is less comfortable. It’s what you make of it.

A woman who sometimes chats with me briefly by the back door as she walks to her car happened to see me gearing up to ride in several inches of new snow last night. She laughed and yelled, “You’re a madman!”

No, I’m not.

I’m not even all that tough, or brave, or any of the other things that some people call bike commuters (to our faces) when they’re impressed by what we endure. I’m just a bike geek who likes getting exercise and having fun.

When I plow through the snow in a busy intersection, surrounded by drivers in their idling cars, I know I’m the sane one. Because a minute later, I'll drop away from the street and roll down into a dark, quiet bike path through the woods.

Riding in the snow might look cold and miserable when seen through a windshield, but I’m one of the few people having fun while commuting at rush hour.

Vicodin: A Guide for Illicit Users

Since my recent accident, the ol' blog's been gettin' hits from people Googling things like "how to get Vicodin in an ER." As regular readers know, this blog is all about serving the public, so here is ...

Rev. Tim's 5-step Guide to Salvation Through Kick-ass Narcotics:

1: Obtain a bicycle. Any functional model will suffice. Just don't steal it.

2: Go outside and ride it really fast in the dark until you crash into something that stops your front wheel instantly.

3: While soaring through the air, carefully position yourself for a facial landing.

4: Proceed to your favorite emergency room.

5: Drip blood and wince when the doctor prods at your face or sticks an implement through any orifice you didn't have prior to Step 3. (Important tip: don't raise the doctor's suspicion by actually asking for the drug, just appear to be in significant pain. Better yet, actually be in significant pain—it worked for me!)

Have fun, boys and girls! Before you know it, you're gonna be a happy pile of mush on your couch!

It has been my pleasure to ensure that your accidental, drug-seeking visit to this blog was not in vain. Please proceed to the nearest exit in an orderly, near-catatonic fashion.

Frosty Weekend

The Man.
Greg "Thirstywork" Matyas,
Frosty Bottom 50 Champ
and owner of Speedway Cycles

I don't even know where to start. The sub-zero cold in the Campbell Tract portion of the course? The fact that twice as many people showed up to race this year, compared with last year's inaugural Frosty Bottom 50/25? The frozen free hub that forced me off the bike to spin the pedals by hand three times in the first few miles, trying to get the pawls to engage?

Or maybe the frozen toes that forced some riders to stop at the halfway point? Or the frozen hydration tubes that deprived racers of critical fluids and made them look like zombies at the finish line?

After riding the 50 Saturday, working on the house all day Sunday and downing a couple of beers during the evening awards ceremony at Chain Reaction Cycles, I still can't figure out what to write about the race. In the end, it had all the elements of any good mountain bike ride: some suffering, some highs, some lows, some fun, some stories to tell.

Sometimes, a good day on a bike isn't measured in miles or hours. It's measured by the number of empty Clif Bar wrappers and shredded, sticky Gu packs in your pockets; the feel of cooked legs; the satisfied feeling that comes with overcoming any bullshit that got in your way, and still reaching the finish line in a respectable time.

Add it all up and you have a good day, because it was spent riding a bike with a bunch of cool people.

Thanks to Bill and Jamie from Chain Reaction, and all the volunteers who stood outside in the cold to help make it happen.

Sunday's post-race party

at Chain Reaction.

Joe's Jugs

Can't afford pogies because you just spent
three or four thousand bucks on a new Fatback?Take a tip from Broken Toe Joe
and make your own handwarmers
with a few pennies worth of duct tape
and discarded plastic jugs.

Maybe Joe needs a new name.

Ghetto Joe?

(Update for those of you who arrive here from LobsterGloves.com:
Don't try this at home. I never saw Joe use the jug pogies
after the day this photo was taken.)

Frost your bottom

Last weekend when I posted an online notice for a New Year's Day ride, I told a friend it was a ride that would “thin the herd.” How many people were likely to show up at 11 a.m. on the morning after the biggest party night of the year?

I was guessing about five.

But one should never underestimate how much more fun it is to ride a bike than to stay up guzzling champagne on New Year’s Eve. Or how much cooler mountain bikers are than loud drunks. (Trust me. I’ve been both).

We left Kincaid Park with 13 people Tuesday morning to ride the Frosty Bottom 50 course in preparation for this Saturday's race. Along the way, we picked up riders who had opted to pedal from home and intercept us on the trails. We even absorbed two riders we’d never met—Marc and Gayle just saw us and decided to join the mob that was growing to 17 or 18 riders.

And for once, Nordic skiers instinctively got out of our way. Some of them even abandoned their usual disapproving scowls and stood back with smiles on their faces as they watched us roll by on more fat bikes than most people have ever seen at one time.

For several hours, it was a rolling, evolving fat-tire peloton as riders came and went.

It was a beautiful thing.

Memorable moments of 2007

Building the Pugsley***

The fun of riding it
***
Early spring rides on my new road bike.
***
Making one bad joke
about dancing in my arm warmers,
and never hearing the end of it
***
The cold rain during the Fireweed 100
***
Making sure I remembered
a really foul joke all summer,
so that I'd be ready when I finally
ran into Leonard
***
Heather actually showing up
for a couple of rides
***
64 piles of bear shit in 22 miles
on Russian Lakes Trail
***
The beauty of Lost Lake Trail
***
My 13-year-old daughter
dropping me on a hill
for the first time
***
The thick, slimy mud
of Johnson Pass Trail
***
The young worker at the Kansas City airport
who rolled my bike case into the baggage-claim area
and asked, "Is this a gun?"
***
The sound of a bike flying
off my brother's roof rack at 70 mph
***
The guilty relief of realizing it wasn't mine
***
Octaginta
***
Riding en masse through Spenard,
in the dark, after a rainy game
of bike polo
***
Beer and movies at Speedway
***
Drinking beer around
the Frigid Bits Burn Barrel
***
Watching my daughter ride ice and snow
on her first pair of Nokians
***
The Face Plant
***
Everyone who let me share a ride
with them.
This is the coolest cult
on the planet.
***
Happy New Year, and thanks
for reading this little pile
of bike-related stuff.

See ya out there.

Cookin' the Goose

I've heard the rest of the nation spent the night watching some freakin' football game, but for anyone into the Anchorage winter riding scene, the last Saturday of the month can mean only one thing: Frigid Bits Tailgater.

Bikes, beer and beef, baby. To hell with televised spectator sports!

This time it was back to the roots of the Frigid Bits series—racing criterium laps on Goose Lake—and Tim "The Grillmeister" Kelly's trusty NRS was the star of this show with 1,000 watts of face-melting, skin-tanning, little-ol'-lady-scaring halogen brilliance. He cooked up this contraption in his home shop a couple of weeks ago, and it was so cool, it just had to be part of a Frigid Bits event.

Tim provided the legs and lights, and I provided the 50-pound Honda generator for him to drag around the lake for five laps while he looked like a 737 on final approach to The Ted.

Along about my fourth lap, I found myself staring down The Grillmeister's twin 500-watt lamps as we went head-to-head on adjacent turns. Those suckers were so bright that, for a second there, I thought my overworked heart had finally exploded and I was "moving toward the light."

After the race, it was time for beer and bullshit by the burn barrel. This is the good stuff.

Sports on TV is for suckers.

Rebooted

I started riding on snow and ice during the winter of 1996-97, my first in Alaska. That first year, I went riding one afternoon at -5F, and froze my toes so badly that I spent 20 minutes face-down on the carpet of a crappy little apartment, groaning and sweating from the pain as warm blood returned to my feet. I was afraid to pull off my socks and look at my toes for another half-hour.

I've been trying—and usually failing—to keep my toes warm ever since. It was only in recent years that I started thinking of myself as a winter rider, after having marginal success at keeping my toes from freezing. I've tried neoprene shoe covers, chemical warmers, multiple sock combinations, riding in pac boots rated to -93, and wrapping my toes in everything from aluminum foil to plastic bags.

But I think I've found my Holy Grail—the one piece of footwear that can keep my toes happy. The Neos Navigator 5. Holy shitballs, do these things feel good.

I first heard about Neos overboots about three winters ago, but was reluctant to blow the cash on something that didn't look substantial enough to overcome my poor circulation. Meanwhile, I threw away three times as much money on various failures.

I finally broke down and bought a pair a couple of weeks ago and, from what I can tell so far, I have finally found the solution. They're insulated, waterproof, lightweight, rated to -20, and they'll work with my snowshoes on those rare occasions when I venture outside without a bike. I don't even have to put on cold shoes when I get back to my car: I wear regular shoes inside the Neos, so when I kick off the boots, I'm already in walking shoes.

I’m almost looking forward to a sub-zero ride so I can see how they do in real cold instead of this relatively balmy 15-degree stuff.

May your rides be merry and bright.

And all your new bike parts be light.

Bad Karma

My friend John called from the North Slope tonight with a simple piece of advice: Lose the new name!

You see, a couple of years ago when I set up a user account for the Alaska forum at mtbr.com, I just used my real name. So I recently decided to cool up and get a bitchin' screen name like all my friends. The best I could come up with was "Bad Karma," which I stole off a Warren Zevon CD. Being a big fan of the Z Man, I was already using Old Velvet Nose as my forum avatar, so one of his song titles just seemed to fit.

Shortly after the name change, I went out last weekend and took my chin-mangling, jaw-bruising, concussion-inducing faceplant. Then I went out for a ride today with John's wife, Maura, and my seatpost bolt exploded two or three miles from the trailhead, forcing me to pedal standing up for a fairly long stretch at the end of a four-hour ride.

John thinks bad karma has started following me around. He said I should punt the new name. Maybe he's right.

But I'm not convinced. As all my friends will tell you, I'm one of those optimistic, sunny-dispositioned, glass-is-half-full people. I'm always smiling, whistling show tunes and petting cute puppies.

OK, the crash sucked ass.

But today's ride was a hoot in spite of a tiring challenge at the end.

After a week of pain that slowly migrated around my jaw, neck and chin, and concussion-related spells in which I was alternatingly foggy-headed and irritable, I got to spend the day with a friend riding fat bikes on snow. We ran into several biking friends on the trails, and I even got to chat briefly with a couple of former co-workers I hadn't seen in a long time.

And the worst thing that happened was a little extra exercise because I broke an old component and then got to drive to Paramount and upgrade to a sweet Thomson Elite.

And come to think of it, maybe a little good karma was kicking in, because my store punch card was full and I got my new $100 post for only $70.

I think I'll go pop a painkiller and skip through a pretty meadow while tossing flower petals into the air.

Enough, already

I've ridden outside only once all week,
but I'm packin' the Pugs
for Friday morning's commute.

Resting sucks. It's time to get back out there.

CSI: Anchorage

Parts of my Saturday-night crash
were bothering me. I needed to know
the cause, and figure out why I couldn't
remember falling, or making my way
up a bluff and to a road.
So I decided to do my own little
Crash Scene Investigation.

I always dreamed of being a detective.
Let's take a look at the evidence, shall we?
First, I found what my post-crash
tread track (above), then
followed it back to the scene.
That's where I found a shallow
drainage channel (foreground)
that's difficult to see in low-light conditions
—especially if you happen to be looking
beyond it to a much larger channel
that's somewhat visible in background
of the photo below.
The smaller channel is where I found
my impact site. See that fat Endomorph
track in the foreground? See how it runs
smack into that freshly exposed
ledge of frozen, bike-stopping silt?
Just above the silt is where I
pulled myself to my feet and
staggered around while making
cell-phone calls and climbing back
on my bike.

That's where
the ol' memory switch somehow clicked
to the "off" position. The
next 15 minutes are pretty much gone.
Exhibit A: The silt ledge and the
icy imprint that my pant legs
left on the snow as I tried
to get up. (Sorry, ghouls, but my
droplets of blood seem to have
disappeared, so no photos for you sickos.)
Exhibit B: The snow-covered channel
from the opposite side.
See a pattern here? Yeah, I thought
you would. Other riders have
been going around it, but some dumbass
left that big, fat Endomorph track
leading right into it.

The obvious verdict: I screwed up
by riding too fast in bad light. The
coastal flats are full of hazards
not typically seen in other
parts of town, and I temporarily
forgot that. I got blissed-out
and started riding too fast.

I paid big, landing on my chin and jaw,
which my friend Heather
has since explained is a bad way
to fall if you want your
brain to have a shock absorber.

She happens to be an expert
on brain injuries and
called my memory lapse
"post-traumatic anterograde amnesia ...
one of the best indicators of concussion."

That's a fancy way
for a mountain biker with
a PhD to say, "Dude, you're
brain-damaged and I am going
to have sooo much fun with this."

Milkshakes and Vicodin

I'm still not quite sure what happened Saturday night. One minute I was cruising fast across the South Anchorage coastal flats trying to catch up with the group after I had stopped to shoot a couple of photos, and the next thing I knew, my face was meeting snow and ice. My brain didn't register anything in between.

It's not a good feeling to combine blinding pain with total confusion. Confusion as in, "What the hell just happened?" and "How bad is this going to be?" I pulled myself onto my hands and knees as best I could with my feet tangled in the frame of my Pugsley, and started watching the snow to determine how much blood was dripping onto it, and whether there were any teeth involved.

The next few minutes are a bit of a blur, but they involved quick cell-phone calls to the guys up ahead, and to my wife and daughter as I asked them to grab my 4Runner and meet me at a nearby road. Somehow I also managed to be concerned about littering, so I pick up my busted helmet visor and stuffed it into my fanny pack before pushing my bike up a bluff that I knew would take me to the road.

A quick stop at a 24-hour clinic involved a doctor shoving one end of a wooden swab stick from the inside of my lip out through the front of my chin so that she could tell me, "You've got a through-and-through," before she looked at her young assistant and asked, "Are you OK?"

The girl who was holding a light on my face then explained that she's generally OK with seeing blood, but has a problem dealing with bloody faces.

Me, too, when it's my face. Especially when someone's putting a stick in my mouth and then telling me it's popping out through the beard on my chin. And oh, by the way, my jaw might be broken.

(I thought the hole meant a tooth had penetrated my lip, but my wife, who is a nurse, corrected me today by explaining the angle was all wrong -- something pierced me from the outside in. Probably ice, or a rock.)

A little later, I was in Providence ER being told my beard would be shaved off for stitches, and a big, musical machine that sounded like an arcade video game was rotating around my head to scan my jaw.

The result: No breaks, but a damn sore jaw. My teeth are all still there. And stitches wouldn't have helped much, so the beard stayed on. I went home with a tetanus shot, and prescriptions for penicillin and fresh supply of Vicodin. I'm swollen from my neck to the top of my nose.

But every cloud has a silver lining, as they say.

The Pugsley's OK, and I have a license to get high and drink milkshakes.

Tune in, turn on

Back in my New Mexico days, I once aimed the ol' Toyota pickup onto a forest road and headed up Pacheco Canyon for a solo ride. Scanning through the local radio stations, I came across one that had signed off on Friday in preparation for launching a new format on Monday. Just to keep the airwaves occupied, they had set each song to play 10 or 12 times in a row before switching to a new song.

I happened to tune in during Patsy Cline's version of the Willie Nelson classic, Crazy.

Don't ask me why, but couldn't stop listening to that thing play over and over as I drove through the forest with my windows down and the aspen breezes blowing through the truck cab. I cranked it up and even sang along a few times, undoubtedly scaring the shit out of any living thing within 200 yards of that gravel road.

These days, I often grab a CD as I head to the car to drive to a trailhead. It doesn't really matter what kind of music it is—Lyle Lovett, the Grateful Dead, A3, or anything else—it just sounds better on the way to a ride. It even sounds a little sweeter than normal on the way home after a ride.

I never listen to music during a ride, but I see other people pedaling along with their iPods cranking. I've heard them say that music helps them ride better.

Whatever.

As far as I'm concerned, it's the riding that makes music sound better.

Yeah, I've got a carol for ya

I'm not a morning person. As a matter of fact, morning pisses me off. I'm opposed to it on general principles.

The only thing that sours my morning mood more than waking up is ignoring my bikes and having to drive to work, or reading a lame newspaper story about how no one is having fun outdoors because the weather sucks.

I'm not mad that the weather sucks. I'm mad that another deskbound reporter didn't bother to get outside and find out what's really happening. Tuesday morning's Daily Snooze said the only people having fun right now are runners with studded shoes.

Excuse me?! Runners?

Let's see, how many runners have I run into on the Hillside trails lately? Hmm, let me think now ... oh, yeah, I remember ... ZIP! Nada! Zero! Big zilch, baby! It's mountain bikers I've been seeing, usually with big, shit-eatin' grins on their faces.

Sure, there might be some runners out there, but from where I sit, it's the people on bikes who have been having all the fun while most of the cross-country skiers sit inside stroking their waxes because they don't want to go up to Powerline (where the snow is) and ski in the dark.

The Snooze offered some tips they called "15 things to do when it's dark and dreary." They suggested, among other things:

"Light candles."

"Have an eggnog latte."

"Go caroling."

"Visit a tanning booth."

"Paint a room."

I have to stop now, because the suggestions are so stimulating they start to make me hot. I mean, really. Painting a room? Mmmmm, baby, what a rush! And I'm sorry—really, I am—but if you go caroling, you need an ass-kickin' and that's all there is to it.

Here's a tip for ya. I call it "Tim's list of things to do when it's dark and dreary."

1. Man up, Nancy. Quit whinin' about the weather, and get out there.

2. There is no Number 2

When the going gets weird ...

Sometimes, you just feel like a ride shouldn't even happen. Friday night's insane, warm wind ruined Goose Lake for Saturday night's Frigid Bits race, and it put a new glaze on the Hillside trails, making them slicker'n snot—and they were already slippery to start with.

To top it off, I was up most of Friday night with a sick kid. By the time I dragged my groggy ass out of bed at noon, I had no intention of touching a bike for the rest of the day. But late in the afternoon my wife suggested I get out for a ride, so I decided to head out with the social-ride crew during the trail race.

Funny how a bike a six-pack of Alaskan Amber in the back of my 4Runner can perk me up.

The trails are an icy mess. You can't ski on 'em. You can barely walk on 'em. But you can still clatter over 'em on studded tires. It's good to be a mountain biker in a winter like this.

Sure, I'd rather have some snow. Sure, I miss riding the Pugs. But hey, we're still riding, and Mother Nature's keeping the post-ride beer cold for us.

One more in a sea of morons

Further proof that most elected officials—past and present—are lazy dipshits.