These things find me.

 Here I go again. One of the perks of riding a bike, in addition to being fun and destroying the planet we need to live a little less than other mechanical modes of transport (Did you here? Copernicus declared 2023 not just the hottest year on record, but likely the hottest in 100,000 years, which is a lot of zeroes, which might be what we're batting on climate saving. If you didn't hear, you can here on the BBC podcast.), one gets to collect fun bits people lose while performing the unfun task of driving.

After that opening, hey, it actually felt like winter for a couple days, with over ten inches of snow falling on my home.  Ah, memories, like seeing everyone last minute shopping on Saturday before the dread storm. Yup, I forgot about that, so I did venture near the shopping Mecca of Hadley, but I avoided most traffic by partaking of serene rail trail, which took me out, away, and through Belchertown, where I found my second Gerber multi tool in less than six months, although to mix things up, this one I found in black versus the original silver.

Unlike most Gerber products these global days,

Made in the USA.

And yes, they are a little bulky compared to the pocket knives I always used to carry, but fortunately, an intentional roadside free pile had already given me the perfect sheath to hang one off my belt. To co-opt one of Vonnegut's lines, so it comes.

Yes, of course, both my handy carry options were road finds as well.

I even lost and refound the top one at least twice, including in the 2022 accident.

But please, let me divert this post from tools before you start to think I am one. Drat, too late? Oh well, with it recently feeling like winter for a day or two before forty degree rain quashed that, I did get to test my hypothesis developed last winter during our brief stint with snow and my running in those conditions. I know about over-the-shoe traction aids, even have some, and sometimes even use them, but I'd made the guess that what might, just might, be perfect in the white stuff is soccer cleats.

Soccer players run, right? And the white stuff is soft, so even is Soccer shoes have less padding, that might be fine in a more padded world. I put a pair of cleats on my thrift shopping list, and today I had my first test of the idea on the remains of snow and lots of sodden leaves. Wow, yup, works great!

One correction to this tale: not a thrift store, but another roadside free pile.