Feast of Saint Patrick 2020

Coach had to shutter the best Irish bar in town due to COVID-19 measures. Doesn't feel right not toasting with Coach. Managed to scavenge some food from the empty shelves to eek out some bangers n mash to celebrate the holiday while enjoying some Boston live-streaming Dropkick Murphys. Here we go Murphys!

Rabbits in the Valley - Social Distancing the Right Way

Collision Course

Got out for a good ride Thursday with Eric again. This time a paved, dirt, gravel, dirt loop since the wind was down and the temps were up. All in all it was perfect except for 20% of Cow Creek. I'd heard it was dry and good to go. It mostly was, except for when it wasn't. Which when it wasn't, it really wasn't. Either way it was fun. Like cross racing without the cross racing and just the fun mud.

 

 

Once the road cleared up it was smooth sailing until the near assailing. I happened to look over and saw a herd of deer racing parallel until the road turned across their path. We stopped to avoid calamity and witnessed 1 or 2 get temporarily hung up in the barbed wire with misjudged jump attempts. They kept cruising once across the road as well.

A few miles later as we were making our way up the paved climb back towards town the same running herd crossed in front of our path again. Silly deer. Must have been looking for Eli, they always seem to love to take him out on his bikes.

Shoulder Season

It has been an adjustment coming from two-season Tennessee to six-season Steamboat. TN was either wet and cold season or wet and hot season with a few perfect days interspersed just enough throughout the year so you'd forget how really miserable the two weather seasons were. If the few perfect days weren't enough to convince you, winter would throw in some really horrid ice storms or snow storms to remind you to be grateful the two miserable weather seasons weren't worse. 

Not only do I get the full 4 seasons to enjoy here: winter, spring, summer, and fall, but I also get 2 new bonus seasons called "shoulder" or "mud" seasons. They pretty much exist in between winter and spring, then again between fall and winter. This "shoulder/mud" season is when trails are either wet from snow melt or wet from not-really-good-for-much snow.  

Magically this year we have experienced 8 seasons, with 4 full shoulder/mud seasons interspersed between the other 4 seasons. Yay! What a load of crap. We had winter, then mud season, then spring, then snow for another mud season, then summer, and then on the summer solstice 24" of snow and another few weeks of mud season, then fall, then 60-some inches of early snow shoulder season, and winter is still yet to come.

Luckily we have a lot of mixed surface options to keep us busy in between seasons. What better shoulder season activity than shoulder seasons urbangrabblecross. Timing is key. Gotta hit it when it's warmer than 20 out but early enough to not be completely shite from freeze/thaw, but back in time for the sun not to go down and thaw/freeze catch you out. 

Shoulder seasons aren't that bad really. The dry alpine air temps combined with all of our 300+ days of sunshine make 30-40 degree days feel like a TN 60-70, so you can actually enjoy being outside and active. The only thing that sucks is that all the dirt options are covered in mud or un-fun snow (as in more mud and slime than snow even for fat biking). Living dreams.