Bear Down. Or, Ease Up.

For all those who have something left to prove, who are sure that your salvation lies out there one half-wheel ahead of the rest:  Bear down.

For all those who are a little burnt out, sick of training in the frigid cold, dealing with too much elsewhere in life, or are just generally in need of a little more lighthearted, two-wheeled exploration: Ease up.

Now you know why they call me the Velosopher.

Dismissed!

Art, the Cure for Chronic Winter

What do you do when it snows for the umpteenth time, and on the day before the first day of spring?

Why, that's easy. You go out in the snow and make art out of it, just to show Old Man Winter you don't care, he can snow all he wants, makes no diff to you. Then, like a bored bully, maybe, just maybe, he'll leave you alone.

From Tuesday:

A Note to Myself

Don't ride in order to become something that you're not now. Ride as yourself, for yourself, today. Ride where and how your legs tell you, your heart tells you. Where the wind blows you.

Pack up your beautiful new handlebar bag or your snappy new pannier and hit the road. Seek adventure, seek fun. Chasing fitness, trying to compete or fit in, has always led you away from yourself, from joy, from health. You've ended up with pneumonia, knee injuries, glum and isolated on the couch. That's not where you belong.

Listen to your body, your heart, and the terrain, and follow them over the next hill.

American Youth Hostels tour of the West Coast, summer1981

Lucky Us

They told me low 40s. That's what the weather site said yesterday. And yet, as Todd and I rolled out from my house this morning -- not early mind you, late enough that the frost should have been gone -- it was 30 degrees. Oh, well, another long, cold one.

Which turned out to be lovely -- of course. This is New England.

Winter provisions, including precious Thermos of hot tea

Thirty-five miles of New England peace and quiet, frosty farm fields, snow-capped hill tops, a small country reservoir with ice skein melting, glints of flowy reflection peeping through. Horrible road surfaces (March in Massachusetts), reasonably low winds for the season, and even a beam of sunshine here and there to warm our backs.

Amherst, Leverett, Shutesbury, Montague, Sunderland, Hadley -- names out of a hoary past, roll-calling the English settlers who carved a rough living out of this undulating, alternately frigid and steamy, scenic land. How lucky they were to be here, and how lucky we are, gliding along in their cart-prints, retinas absorbing the long, winding mirror of the Connecticut -- a swerving slice of sky embedded in the land. After the climbing was done, we followed that sweeping mirror home.

Lucky us

Azure All the Day

Thirty base-face miles today in unseasonably warm and welcome temps. Thermometer stayed in the forties all the way, and the skies were azure all the day.

I wended my way to the other side of the Connecticut, on a route I've titled Rive Gauche. Gave me a chance to check in on how the other half of the Valley weathered the winter. All the hills were still there. The long, steady incline of North Farms Road was quite the same, the foothills of Haydenville perhaps a bit steeper than I remember, the sweeping views over the river to Sugarloaf and the hills of Pelham was still inspiring (even in the stiff late winter wind over the snowy fields) and, as I approached the river on the way home, Sugarloaf loomed to my left and Norwottuck was way off to my right, to reassure that I was headed east, toward River Road, and the 116 bridge, from which I snapped a memento of a chill, bright, day and a good pre-season ride.