More Snow

Although winter officially just happened on the 21st, it's about this time of year when it feels like the winter part of the year has lost its charm. I think about riding in the summer in a t-shirt a lot this time of year. And how nice it is to just be able to jump on the bikes with the family and go. Riding in the winter requires gobs of suit-up time. At 4 years old, Maddie tires of riding in the Burley trailer -- she's actually a bit big for it now. She can no longer stretch out her legs in there. Hauling the trailer through snow is a work out. On ice, it's slow and deliberate.

For Liza's 33rd birthday yesterday, we loaded the bikes on the bus and went downtown, rode to the MAC, then rode to a new Indian place for lunch buffet. The arterials are clear, with slush and ice on the side of the roads. The secondary streets are a combo of slush, ice, packed snow, and slippery man-hole covers. We had a great time and ate way too much for lunch, but riding this time of year is now getting a bit tedious.

We woke up this morning to about 3 inches of new snow, with new snow still falling. Maddie and I got up early and shoveled and enjoyed the brief quiet. Predictably, the quiet was soon broken as folks fired up the snow-blowers to clear their 20 feet of side walk. We've got to the point in America where every single outdoor chore where folks used to get some basic exercise has been replaced with loud internal combustion 2-cycle engines. It's such a bummer: snow blowers, lawn mowers, leaf sucker-blowers, hedge-trimmers, weed eaters, edgers, pressure washers, etc. Think of how quiet the neighborhood might be if gas shot up to $10/gallon.

Maddie and I decided that walking to Manito Park to sled didn't sound like fun. But our neighborhood is flat. So, we rigged up the bike-sled and took a couple laps around the block. She was singing "Jingle Bells" at the top of her lungs the whole way. That's good neighborhood noise.