When you are a kid this time of year is one of anticipation of cookies and treats and presents under the tree. As an adult, I find myself mostly looking forward to having a few days off with family, and towards the riding opportunities the time off will also provide.
She’s ready and waiting...
As is true for many of us, I suspect, my riding frequency is limited not by desire, but by schedule. Work must be performed, I suppose, in order to afford luxuries like food and shelter, as well as necessities like as tires and inner tubes. But having a little time off opens the door for more wheel time than usual.
To that end, I’ve been going over the five day forecast for our region to get an idea of what the realistic opportunity is. Setting aside for the moment the utter ludicrousness of expecting an eight-day forecast to be accurate in the Midwest (home of the saying "Don’t like the weather? Wait a minute..."), things look promising:
Of course, it’s also a suitably cruel trick of midwestern weather that the day with the highest projected temperature - 52° in the last full week of December?!? - is also the day with a 90% chance of rain.
This type of outlook also illustrates why I transitioned from cross country skiing to winter cycling several years ago. We still have snow in the ditches and shady spots from a late autumn snowfall, but the odds that we will have anything worth sliding on are on the low side, to be certain.
Looking back in my Cyclemeter records, last year I managed four rides over the same time period - though two of them were somewhat aborted attempts that I ended up using as a comparison between my upright and my trike in the snow. In 2016 I had only one ride, both during that week and for the entire month of December, and I had similar numbers for 2015.
It’s possible that my intentions and my actions don’t always entirely line up together.
Some people, like Bob Sharpe over at PedalFree (and now at Old Man Gravel ), manage to ride every day, regardless of the conditions. I both respect and envy that grit and determination. I know, realistically, that I won’t even manage every day during my time off over the next few. But hopefully I can do better than the past few years - gotta compare yourself to yourself, after all.