So while it was a bit tough to give up these bags, the sales garnered enough money to buy a new custom messenger bag from a new San Francisco bag maker, Rickshaw. The new bag arrived today. It’s much less tricked out with pockets and such than my old Timbuk2 bag, but the simplicity is nice, the construction seems solid, and it appears to be plenty big enough:

Then arrived the horrible winter of 2011-2012 happened. The lack of snow kept me from training and hurt both races: the CoLL race shortened and staged on a short loop in Theodore Wirth Park earlier today, and the Vasaloppet was canceled outright. I didn’t even bother to go up to Minneapolis for the CoLL. I have no ski fitness at all, and skiing laps on a golf course didn’t sound appealing.

Trying to put a positive sporting spin on the day, though, I did go for an hour-long gravel ride – kicking off my training for the Almanzo 100 on Saturday, May 19.

It was a solid ride – not long, by any means, but I averaged just over 15mph and, most importantly, I felt pretty good, except for my frosted toes. I can’t wait to do some serious training over the next three months.

This year, we’ve had almost none of that. With only a few brief exceptions, temperatures have been unreasonably high since November. Even worse, we’ve had just a few inches of snow, and plenty of long thaws in between the one set of flurries and another. And we’ve certainly had no all-out storms to enjoy.

All of this has brought me down, man. Most importantly, I’ve only been able to ski once – for half an hour, in my backyard. Absolutely unjust. Being horrifically under-trained, I’ve decided to abandon any plans to ski the classic-technique races at the City of Lakes Loppet this Sunday and the Mora Vasaloppet next weekend. I *had* been looking forward to both event for a long time, but already the Loppet has been shortened and confined to a loop course – not its full, full, wonderful point-to-point route. I don’t know what the Vasaloppet organizers are planning, but I do know there’s no way I could enjoyably do the 42k race I’d been anticipating for months.

In short, this winter sucks. I hope it’s a one-time thing, and that next winter’s back to something like normal. If it isn’t, I might have to invest next year in some sort of U-SAD mitigator, like a backyard snowmaker.

It sure did. The bright yellow sun and 40°F temperature were nice; the 20-mph westerly wind and my disturbing lack of fitness were less so. But any time spent riding is time well spent! The gravel was dry and pleasingly fast, the lack of clouds or foliage made for endless vistas, and there was plenty of fresh cold air to inhale.

So far this winter, I’ve skied one hour, a couple weeks ago, just after we received our only significant snowfall of the season. This is the sorry snow situation around here right now:

The only “snowy” stretch of Arb trail.

All that’s left of our sledding-hill jump.

The dwindling bank of plowed snow at the end of our block.

Today I fulfilled a longtime dream (really!) by building a little jump at the bottom of our small backyard “hill.” This slope has maybe five feet of rise over eight or ten feet of run, which means sledding runs are maybe three seconds long, but that’s perfect. The girls make up for the short length of runs with a high number of them. I’ve long wanted to make things a little more interesting by putting a small bump into the run – something like the jumps we would build on our sledding hills in the U.P. – but the girls always seemed to little and/or timid to be right for it.

Until yesterday. I dumped a couple sled-loads of snow into a pile at the bottom of one of the runs down the backyard hill, panked the pile down into a smooth six-inch ramp, and asked Vivi to try it out. Being the more adventurous kid, she did, and loved it. A few minutes later, Julia tried it too, and also loved it. So satisfying!

They laughed for literally a half hour straight, putting everyone they could think of into the game: themselves, their friends, classmates, fictional characters. And on and on. Santa’s a pretty soft touch; he hardly ever gives anyone – even the Ingalls girls’ nemesis Nellie Oleson – a poor rating.

But my god they loved it.

This morning, Mary showed up at 8:30 with a huge stack of decorations, but rather than starting, she told the girls that first they had to have  ”design meeting” at the coffeeshop downtown, to discuss the decorations over hot chocolates. The girls’ excitement meter went up to about 12 out of 10.

At the coffeeshop, I sat nearby (because Vivi was still a little nervous), but not too close (because I wasn’t supposed to hear about the actual plans).

After downing the hot cocoa (Mary’s treat!), we headed back home and the girls got to work. First, they untangled a few of Mary’s many, many strings of lights.

Then they started wrapping the lights around the tree

and adding other stuff, like huge glittery silver stars, shiny tree boughs, and pink ribbons. In short, they girlified that tree.

Mary seemed to enjoy the whole experience as much as the girls did, and they loved it. I was worried about Vivi, who’s not always so good with people she doesn’t see a lot, but she did great. And Mary didn’t even balk when both girls, complaining of cold fingers, went inside to lounge in front of the fireplace while Mary finished the tree – which looked great after dark. This photo doesn’t do justice to its warm pink glow, but my goodness am I thankful to have great neighbors like Mary!