After way too many years of butting heads with New England weather, Ive decided to give in to real cross-training and give up on trying to ride tons of base miles. Outdoors. In the middle of January. A big part of this (if the weather cooperates) is going to be cross country skiing. There will also be some swimming and some running involved. The only biking I’ll be doing is commuting to work here and there. I’m telling myself that what I may lack in early season cycling fitness, I’ll make up for in mental freshness. Hey, Lance won five out seven of his Tours on mental freshness. Or so I have read. And by “read” of course I mean “hallucinated after a dinner of dodgy day-old Sushi.” So I went out and bought myself a pair of what I’m pretty sure are the ski equivalent of a Huffy; although I made sure to get them 3″ longer than the standard ski…

As I stood there at REI, about to purchase one of their basic ski packages, I put in one last desperate call to a couple super-skier friends (one of whom has written a very comprehensive how-to-get-into-skate-skiing-for-moron-bikers piece on his blog. Which I entirely ignored). Neither of them answered, so I went ahead with what am I sure they will deem a bone-headed purchase. Hell, I didn’t even get them skatey skis, I got the silly-old “classic” ones. In my defense (I think) I won’t be doing much groomed course type skiing. Mostly just heading out my door and either cutting trail or track or whatever they call it. Or using the tracks my earlier-rising neighbors laid down while I was still in bed, dreaming about waffle fry nachos.

In fact that’s what I did just last night and today. Last night M and I went out with headlamps for about an hour. The lamp wasn’t even necessary. Gliding (or lurching and wobbling) around in moon-lit woods is a good way to find some magic. So is getting lost in what is basically your backyard. I’ve ridden these trails hundreds of times. In daylight. Without snow covering them. Somehow in the snow in the dark, every hill seems steeper, every stretch of trail seems longer, and every raccoon seems like a werewolf.

This afternoon I went back out on a bit more ambitious mission. I made sure I was dressed like the biggest barney possible — running shorts over tights, with gaiters, and my 29er Crew wind-vest of course. I’ve always been a big proponent of looking like you don’t know what you’re doing when you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s way cooler to be the guy with the jean shorts kicking ass in the elite race, than to be the guy rocking the carbon wheels in the sport race. I traversed the southern section of the woods near my house, taking off my skis and portaging across a the road to the next, larger section of woods. The section of woods where my TT training loop is. I don’t think of it as a particularly challenging piece of trail…on a bike.

Suddenly this loop seemed very hilly. Not so much the ups as the downs. I got to the top of hill, started sliding down, started sliding a little faster, and by the time the thought, “what the hell do I do now?” crossed my mind I was already ass-braking on a huge rock. I wouldn’t recommend this stopping technique.

The photos above aren’t of me getting “sick air,” they’re of me lying flat on my back, trying to figure out how to right myself without launching back into a totally out of control slide.

When I was down is Costa Rica for my honeymoon I took surf lessons. The next day I was sitting at a table with some wicked hardcore surfer dudes from L.A. and Seattle. We got on the subject of bikes. I told them I know a lot about bikes, but next to nothing about surf boards:

Me: “Ya, those surf-school guys coulda had me on the Huffy of Surfboards and I woulda been like woo! This is sweet!”
Surfer-Dude: “Did they like have you on a soft top?”
Me: “Ya, I think so.”
Surfer-Dude: “Yup, that’s pretty much a Huffy…I mean I’d never ride one.”

Then later that night I saw one of the Surf School teachers, who looked so frickin’ awesome in his element down on the beach, out riding waves. He was pedaling home on a clapped out full-suspension Next (like-a-Huffy). And you know what? He looked stoked!

My point? Maybe that regardless of how much of a barney I might look like on a surfboard or skis I am still stoked to be out there doing it. I just have to figure out a less painful way of stopping

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