Iced In

When you have two boys pestering you to check the school closings at 6am every morning in the winter, it's not hard to have some of that enthusiasm for an unscheduled free day rub off and indulge in the possibility that today might shape up as something completely unexpected. 

Yesterday was that kind of day.  A half an inch of ice on the Honda, winds blowing snow at 25mph and a whole day stretching out in front of me.  My first thought was to strap on the skis, maybe at the Colesburg golf course (yes, of course our small Iowa town of 412 inhabitants has a nine hole golf course).  The wind and ice canceled that idea.  So it was going to be a good workout on the rollers. 

First, though, finish the latte and check in with school and the other cyclists on my daily diet of cycling forums.  A current favorite is www.RoadcyclingUK.com where my cycling mate from Rousillion is a regular poster, blending Cockney, a bit of wit and a veteran competitor's deep urge to make other people hurt just a little bit.  Old Sog Smith's latest post, Bike Test Dummies, has gotten the dander up among the site's regulars.  After a good chuckle, I give him a call and we laugh about the forum and folk's reactions to his language. 

Giving Geoff a call brings back the memories of our four months in southern France two years ago.  Our family's time there was important.  Karl and Johann still talk about learning to ride a bike through the vineyards and groves of cork trees on our mountainside, hiking up to see the Romanian monks living at the top of our road in their building built on top of a Roman shrine to Dionysus and the Canigou peak looming over the Perpignan plains. 

Geoff and I laugh as we talk about folks we rode with, his new club in Le Boulou, the rain pouring down in the Languedoc and the ice coating northeastern Iowa, and he says, "That was a good time, wasn't it?"  

That ain't a Porkie Pie.