Winter Blues

The warmth of Puerto Vallarta seems to be so far in the past. Lubbock is just emerging from a fairly hard winter storm that saw our temperature stay below freezing for three days or so, and I'm starting to be sick and tired of the combination of wind and cold. In the past four weeks I have barely ridden 100 miles—either I was traveling, or the weather was so atrocious that I simply couldn't make myself go for any kind of ride.

I suppose I have become soft and unmotivated. When there were still goals to train for (i.e., when I was still racing) it was so much easier to bundle up and face the elements. But with every passing year I have had less and less desire to be miserable and torture myself. I hope that with progressing years I won't start feeling the same way about cycling when the temps are more amenable to going out!

Birthday boy posing with cake and flowers
that waited for me after a chilly ride

I mentioned travel. In the second week of January I felt a distinct urge to get out of town, and with nice weather in the forecast I set my sights on Santa Fe, NM. Knowing that my friend Beth had had a totally disastrous trip to Seattle a few months earlier I asked her whether she wanted to tag along, and she was ready to leave the Hub City. During our time in Santa Fe we went for a hike west of town to catch a glimpse of the petroglyphs; my new hip definitely doesn't feel in its element scrambling in the cold among big boulders. Another little blow to the ego....

Hiking at Santa Fe's La Cieneguilla petroglyph site

Since my last visit to Santa Fe a few new breweries had sprung up, and so I was able to add to my ever-growing list of cervecerias. Not quite ready to leave New Mexico after just two days (and Beth not having to work on that Monday) we decided to roll down to Albuquerque for a bit more hiking and beer sampling. A detour via the Muleshoe Wildlife Refuge and its thousands of Sandhill Cranes rounded out a nice weekend get-away.

Hiking at the foot of the Sandias in Albuquerque

A week-and-a-half later it was time for the first NICA high school mountain bike race of the season, to be held in Troy. I really like that venue because it allows me to stay with Martha and Alan in Temple, just 20 minutes away. I made it down there on Friday afternoon, and we indulged in the usual food-and-wine orgy. It's always so much fun to see them, and on Saturday night we went over to their friends Jay and Campbell for a repeat of the gluttony. The race—for me the first one since January 2019 before the pandemic started and my ill-fated season last year—came along fine, and I really enjoyed being part of the entire production. It was so nice to be remembered by all those coaches, and to be part of a new crew of volunteers led by the new League Director, JJ, and the new Race Director, Kim. Cool folks!

On the way out of the ranch I somehow managed to hit a rock and damaged the BMW's oil pan severely enough that just after a few miles the low oil light came on. Instead of driving home that Sunday afternoon I had to call Alan who came out to rescue me, called AAA for a tow, had to go back out to the car, and then follow it to BMW of Temple's service department. That night I started my claim with Progressive, and early Monday morning I called the dealership. I'll spare you the handwringing on when an adjuster might be assigned and eventually come out. Even though I was lucky in that I could stay with M&A I was on a tight timeline since I was supposed to fly on Thursday to Fayetteville for the UCI Cyclocross World Championships!

In hindsight, under the circumstances I made all the right decisions and things worked out as well as they could. Almost miraculously I took possession of my repaired beemer on Tuesday afternoon at 5 pm and drove back home to Lubbock where I arrived a bit before midnight—beating by a few hours a predicted incoming snow and ice front! Man, those two extra days in Temple were not the way I wanted to spend time with my friends, not knowing how it all would play out. The monetary damage was large enough that even after the insurance paid for the bulk of the repair I still will be working the first two races of the season "for free." Well, thus it goes.

Heading home into the night.... 

Wednesday was an unpack/repack day, and Thursday I drove the good old truck out to the airport and hopped on a plane to go to DFW and onward to XNA, the airport that serves Bentonville and Fayetteville, Arkansas. Luckily the cold front had stopped just short of Lubbock and not brought the promised ice and white stuff. So, thankfully my flights were not affected by what about a week later would wreak havoc on a large portion of Texas as well as most of the central US, with thousands of flights cancelled all over. But when that monster hit I was already safely back in Lubbock.

This time the snow just barely missed us

Fayetteville, of course, was the venue of the 2022 UCI-Walmart Cyclocross World Championships. Loyal readers may remember that just a few months back I had traveled to the same place for the World Cup in the same discipline. Back then, the weather on race day had been atrocious with rain and mud and filthy athletes whose race numbers one could not read. This time around it was just cold, but sunny and dry. A reported 7,000 paying spectators showed up on both race days (Saturday and Sunday) to see the world's best cyclo-crossers—with the blue of the Belgians and the orange of the Dutch dominating the fields.

Negative COVID tests and virtual Team Managers Meetings—
all part of the 2022 UCI-Walmart cyclocross World Championships

My friends Linda from Portland, Carol from Rio de Janeiro, and Ludwig from Mexico City had journeyed to Arkansas, and together we had three busy, busy days. It is always fun to be part of the Team Managers Meeting (because of COVID conducted in a virtual manner) and to be close to such gifted athletes as what one finds at a Coupe Mondial. Even with all the work, the four of us managed two dinners together and enjoyed a few IPAs, catching up with each others' lives that unfortunately intersect far too seldom. As for witnessing the racing action, sorry: Apart from seeing a few starts I was stuck in an RV, doing what I do at such races.

After flying back home about a week ago it was time to brace for the aforementioned winter storm, so riding the bike was out of the question and my life was taken over by drinking cabs and malbecs while watching ancient episodes of first Seinfeld and Third Rock From the Sun and then later a lot of curling at the Winter Olympics. (Don't laugh! Have you ever really watched a curling match?) What is a man to do when the temps are below 32 F and the wind is howling out of the north at 25 mph? And so the blues sets in....

But let's look forward, hopefully. This weekend brings the second high school race down in the Burnet area, and the weather is promising. (I've been assured that the road access is beemer friendly.) And then two days after my return on Sunday night I will fly to Lisbon for a week-long stay in what looks like a rather cool Airbnb in Portugal's capital, which I have never visited. If that's not reason to shake the doldrums of winter, I don't know what is.

Jürgen