FREE WHEELIN’

BRIAN RATHJEN

THE DARK TIMES

My window-pane is starred with frost, The world is bitter cold tonight, The moon is cruel, and the wind Is like a two-edged sword to smite.

A Winter’s Night – Sara Teasdale

Here it is… Winter. I am not a skier, and we don’t own a snowmobile and if we did - that would mean a bigger truck, a trailer, and hours of travel just to start to have fun. Avoiding travel from more urban areas to the far more desirable roads in the country is precisely the reason we chose to live where we live. Indeed, when this time of year arrives here in the northeast, many get set to hunker down and look longingly to the return of the sun. But, even with the colder temperatures, there are many who still ride on; as a good electric liner and gloves can keep you riding for all but the most treacherous of days. Still, some of us use this time to make riding plans for the Spring, Summer, and Fall. For sure, making plans was a hit or miss affair the last two years; and here we are in the third calendar year talking about covid. How would you have felt if you were told that in March of 2020? Here at Backroads, we did our best to walk a thin line between doing what we were asked and doing what we wanted. Mandates of any kind do not sit well with me – and this year my own personal mandate is to put all this far behind me in the mirror.

I’d rather ride the curve than atten it.

But, as bleak as winter is for some of us there are some interesting little facts, stats, and occurrences that make winter stand out from the rest of the year. So, instead of bitchin’ about it, I thought this month we’d explore some of the more interesting things about Hiems… The beginning of winter happens at the Winter Solstice. The word “solstice” means “sun stands still.”

People born during the winter months are less irritable. Says you! It turns out that people born during the spring and summer months tend to have “excessively positive temperaments,” and they’re also “more likely to experience rapid mood swings. What the heck does that mean?! On the other hand, those who made their entrance into the world during winter are “less likely to have irritable temperaments.” Really? Well, you can kiss my… (sorry) Let it Snow, Let it Snow… A single snowstorm can drop 39 million tons of snow! At least a septillion snow akes fall from the sky every year. To put it another way, that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 snow akes or a trillion trillion; and they fall at speeds of one to six feet per second. The biggest storm on record, at least in our part of the planet, happened in 1993. Known as “The Storm of the Century,” a blizzard and a cyclone Continued on Page 8