Welcome Home, Studley

Last Friday, as in a week ago, just as the sky was about to dump the season's first good batch of crystal ice, and the mercury was doing a righteous butt pucker, I bailed out and jumped on a plane for warmer climes. Well, it wasn't exactly like that . . . it was a planned business trip, but excellent timing, if I do say so myself. (It would have been perfect, if you bastards would have gotten this ridiculously cold and snowy stuff out of the way and ordered up some decent weather before I returned. Isn't a week of this krap enough for you guys?) Anyway, I lovingly reminded Patty where the snow shovels were as she dropped me off at the airport. Not sure if that had anything to do with the fact that the locks had been changed when I got home.

But anyhoo, . . . back to bikey stuff. In a moment of semi-panic, and just because I was already late, the last thing I did before I left for the airport was to buy a pair of studded tires online. It wasn't exactly an impulse buy, because I had been contemplating the purchase more and more seriously as the weather reports became more and more ominous and I was thinking about last winter and even though you delude yourself into thinking winter is one way when it is really the other way when it gets closer and then finally gets here you can't hide from the truth and you have an idealistic idea but in your heart-of-hearts you know better because you've been-there-done-that and you know it's going to get ugly and you start remembering your cracked ribs glare ice crash and you begin to need studs and this sentence pretty much describes my thought process and did I mention I think I really need studs and so then I finally hit the 'buy now' button and I could finally be at peace and all it took was some money which I can't take with me anyway and now I can get on the plane that doesn't have internet and not have to ask the flight attendant for Nyquil so that I can go to sleep and go across the ocean without the torment of knowing that I finally decided that I really need studs and can't buy them and why the hell didn't I just get them coming when I had the chance???

Done deal. And as planned, they arrived in time to become a "welcome home" gift to myself. All is well.

So. Mounting them took WAY longer than I planned. Thank you Shimano for the fine engineering you call Alfine. Whatever. They're now mounted up and even though it's 2:09 am and Patty went to bed many hours ago, my body clock says it's 2:09 pm and time for a ride so I'm headed out and if you are sitting at home in your pathetic warm living room then you are soft and not at all what this nation was built on and all I can say is see-ya-wouldnt-wanna-be-ya, which in less than 10 minutes will become see-ya-wouldnt-wanna-be-me and all I can hope is that when some freak pounds on your door at 2:15 am you will open up and let the comment about how you are soft slide just this once and let me step into your living room and use your phone and then hang around and lie down on your sofa and wrap myself in your blanky while I wait for my wife to come pick me up. I'm not asking, but if you have some hot chocolate I wouldn't turn it down. Ride on.