a midway bikelog

When people outside of Minnesota complain about Minnesota weather, they’re generally talking about the deep cold of January or the piles of snow or maybe the sometimes suffocating humidity of late July. They’re all wrong. March is the worst month of the year.

March is a tease, giving us a glorious clear day of sun and rapidly melting dirt/snow piles, then smacking us back down with a foot of snow or freezing rain. We know we’ll come out of it and it’ll be glorious, but it’s like weathering a breakup; that middle period is awful. March is our meteorological ‘it’s not you, it’s me’. The rollercoaster of weather and the month-long thrashing of our weather-pinned hopes against the craggy rocks of the tenacious winter beats us down so that first day in just a t-shirt hearing a robin singing is like being reborn. But we still have to get through March before we’re there.

I’ve tried simple optimism, even taking the studded tires off my bike last week, but the reality is that they should probably go back on for another month. Damn that stubborn freezing point! Optimism and hope for spring are not enough, so i’m turning to the healing power of ska.