Winter Is Coming... No, Wait, It's Here

Thirteen degrees outside this morning. Somehow I'd talked myself into believing that the riding season would never end, that somehow I'd just skip this year's hibernation. I was wrong. Truth be told, though, I'm almost okay with it. Except for the fact that I almost earned a return trip to the hospital on Sunday.

I'm on a bit of a personal mission at the moment, and that mission reads like this: Get the odometer on the CB1100 to the 3000-mile mark before you put it up for the winter. As of Sunday morning, I was at 2,924 or something like that. Therefore, when a consulting customer of mine asked me to come up to her office that afternoon, thirteen miles or so to the north, I made sure to take the big Honda even though it was 27 degrees outside.

The ride up was chilly but not impossible. My new Hillside jacket is good down to thirty-two or so but I had a pullover on underneath. My Allen-Edmonds Sturgis 2.0 boots are so warm in the winter it concerns me about the hellish hotboxes they'll be come June. But here's the key thing: I rode up in daylight. As I left the client, two hours after my arrival, the sun had set.

I knew I was in trouble when I pulled out onto the two-lane between Delaware, Ohio and my hometown of Powell. The snow was blowing thick but that didn't worry me. It was the shine on the road. I tried a little roll of the throttle and the CB1100 responded with a zisssssss! of the rear tire. Okay. I needed to search for dry pavement like I was in a NASA race at the beginning of a rainstorm. I looked down the road and plotted my trips between dry spots where I could adjust my direction. When I hit each dry spot I'd wrench the bike towards straight, and then I would do nothing at all until the next one arrived.

Thankfully these old farming communities are connected by county-line-style roads that are as straight as legislation and human effort can make them. Unfortunately for me, the mirrored visor on my Arai was too dark for me to see the dry spots in the twilight, so I raised it and enjoyed that 19-degree weather blasting my face at 50-60mph.

It's a habit of mine, while I am riding, to simply sing a line or two of a song over and over again in my helmet, sometimes for hours on end. I remember the whole summer of 1994 that I had my 600 Ninja, singing the Frente song:

Why do I feel like I can never find you? Why do I feel like I'm the only survivor? Why am I thinking of you and me and the labor of love?

This time I found myself repeating the post-Waters Floyd tune:

Ice is forming on the tips of my wings Unheeded warnings, I thought, I thought of everything No navigator to find my way home Unladen, empty and turned to stone

There were two sources of trouble ahead. One was the likely arrival of a car or truck behind me that would want to do more than sixty miles per hour. Thankfully, one never arrived. The other was the certain arrival of a big S-curve north of Powell that joined one old straight road to the one that led to my house. When that curve showed up, I checked my mirrors, sat straight up, and slowed down to about 30mph. Moved my lazy ass off the seat to let the bike turn without leaning. Both the front and rear tire seemed to be coated with Teflon and they squirmed beneath me.

I envisioned myself hitting a patch of ice and low-siding out into the farmer's field behind me hard enough to snap legs and rip bolts out of bones. I practiced my suave report for the emergency-services personnel. Being suave in those situations is important and the only time in my life I haven't managed it was when I was holding my son in knee-deep snow, my broken hip grinding audibly in my ears and my eyes half-blinded by the powder of the airbags. But this time I'd do it right, and I would say:

"My Tauntaun froze before I could reach the first marker."

No need, alas. In the space of twenty uncomfortable, self-critical seconds the big curve was behind me and I was free to ride straight all the way to my neighborhood. My face was beet-red when I made it to the comfort of my dinette table and there was ice coating my visor. Took a solid hour for my legs not to feel cold to the touch.

The odometer reads 2,949. Thursday is supposed to be 46 degrees and rainy. I guess that's the day to get those final miles. Then it will be time to close the blast doors and let Ohio impersonate the planet Hoth until March.

Winter is a good time to think, and to write, with deliberation and care. In a perfect world, I'd finish the original content for my book and release it just two years later than I said I would. We'll see. In the meantime, stay safe, everyone.