A Disappointment

Our foot of snow is ending up to be about half that. That isn't so disappointing, but the attempted bike ride today was. It was incredibly slippery. The winter beater has fat tires with studs on them, but those really don't make any difference. Riding on the street was treacherous, even with only 4 inches of snow. We have a powder on top of a kind of sleety mix, and the combination is pretty awful. You are constantly correcting the for slipping, which can put you in the middle of the street, not a good thing. There are a couple of schools of thought when it comes to riding in snow. Some people ride skinny road bike tires that cut through the snow. The other option is to go with the 4 inch wide tires on a specially built bike (ahem, a Surly Pugsley with Large Marge rims and Endomorph tires for about $1900.00. If you, faithful reader, win the lottery and can waste money on me, I will gladly take your charity). Oh, well. I'll just wait for the City of Minneapolis to plow the streets and go riding when they're done.

It's funny, I really don't feel like I was prepared for snow. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind of person who whines about winter (in fact, I hate those complainers, just move the hell away from here if you don't like the weather). To me there is something spiritual about going through the cold death of winter and being revived by the new life of spring. But today, when I look out the window at the white landscape, I feel like I'm looking at something that just doesn't belong. Maybe I'm in denial. I've been riding bike for a year and 4 months, and even though I rode last winter, I guess I just assumed that the white stuff was not going to factor into my little, insular cycling world. Well, it's here and now, and I have to deal with it.

Speaking of dealing, the Xmas season is upon us, and I don't deal too well with Xmas. Here is what I like about Christmas. 1) Getting together with family is by far and away the best part of the season. 2) "A Charlie Brown Christmas," half hour television special and kick-ass soundtrack. 'Nuff said. 3) Time off from work. That pretty much sums it up, the rest is pretty much crap. Oh, wait - 4) The Christmas tree - with the advent of the soft-needled, good-smelling, needle-retaining Frazier Fir, Christmas trees make my list. But the actual celebration of the birth of God Incarnate .... that has been reduced to an irrelevant footnote.

There is a rule that I have laid down in our household - no Xmas music until Thanksgiving has passed. Well, we are past Thanksgiving and now I'm subjected to the seasonal music. Don't get me wrong, there are some lovely Christmas tunes. It's just that they're 300 years old, and every fading pop music luminary has decided that the way to boost sales is to release an Xmas album of crappy rehashes of these songs. That being said, there are some Christmas albums that I do like. The aforementioned Charlie Brown Christmas. I don't know about Vince Guaraldi but I'm glad Charles Schulz picked him to do the music for this teevee special. Bruce Cockburn, "Christmas." If his version of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" doesn't take your breath away, just count yourself as an indifferent agnostic. By the way, Cockburn wrote the best Christmas song of the 20th Century, maybe of all time (even better than "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer"). It's called, "Cry of a Tiny Babe" and you can find it on his "Nothing But a Burning Light" disk. This song packs so much theological meaning into the Christmas story. It brings tears to my eyes to listen to it. Finally, for pure indulgence, listen to Harry Connick Jr. "When My Heart Finds Christmas." He sings more than one verse of "O Holy Night," which you just don't hear from everybody, and which has some great lines. Unfortunately the production is so over-wrought and dramatic, it comes close to to degenerating into schmalzy dreck. Other than that, there is some fun stuff on that disk. The dude has some talent. Unfortunately for me, our iPod Xmas playlist is filled with a whole lot of stuff that I could care less about. Therefore, when I started this post, I was listening to "Nevermind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols."

One last music related item. If you haven't listened to Mike Doughty's "Haughty Melodic," please, please do so. I am obsessed with that album. Favorite line:

My circus train pulls through the night
Full of lions and trapeze artists
I'm done with elephants and clowns
I want to run away and join the office.