Marching toward Spring

 On a run with my friend Brian, he recounted that last year I'd said March is my favorite month. That took me by surprise, as I've always considered myself most partial to the fall months when one benefits from an extra layer, but is never truly cold. My friend Amy, Brian's spouse, often extolls the joy of weather that allows running in 3/4 length tights, which given the heat generation of running, is probably just a wee above the temperature when water turns hard.

Happy for me, the hard water is rapidly disappearing, or melting, if you prefer. I kept thinking about what Brian recalled as my love of March and realized my appreciation of the month isn't so much absolute, as relative to the realization it signifies the break of winter. If you've made it to the third month, you've survived the sustained coldest days of winter, and while it isn't yet time to mothball the wool (It's never time for that!), the days are noticeably longer AND WARMER! Mostly.

When I started my ride the morning of March 2nd to join friends for a run, it was still a couple degrees shy of the teens. Happily, a borrowed extra jacket kept me toasty getting there, and running and feeling cold seem not to mix. That said, the day didn't warm much, and after once again donning my riding layers for the trip home, I briefly rolled a couple miles to the next trailhead for a shortcut distance of hiking warmly a third of  the way home. A great aspect of riding in winter: warmth is always just a few steps away!

There were a few more cold days, then a significant shortfall of forecast warm rain, so there's still some ice out and about, but it is diminishing quickly. Last Thursday, I had the pleasure of riding the skinny of exposed pavement on the unplowed section of railtrail, but then bailed off that track when evergreen shading inclined me to skip a mile of solid ice. Returning through that section two days later, I still opted for discretion over valor, but that meant walking only 100 yards of the darkest hollow.

Thursday's ice...

...was far more benign on Saturday,

and sunnier!

 

Then today happened. It happened warm. Warm enough that the windows were open on my house while I attempted to ride Canal Trails, but again opted for discretion when I saw how tbe pines had shaded the lard bike packed ice. It's all good. I just figured I'm still a few weeks shy of trusting the nerve response in my arm to more gracefully fall, so I chose instead a meadering ramble home on the more manageably intermittent ice of the snowmobile trails. It was a fine, warm day to be moving outside. Sproing!