here in ebmud’s own country the soil is intractable in the wet, or indeed while it remembers the wet. in the summer it’s usually dust on crust, but it’s gluey when it gets wet, to the extent that it can’t be traversed even in soccer cleats. so in this blessedly rainy winter, the window for getting a ride in is narrow, and narrower given my tardy realization that the bike I’ve been storing in my parents’ garage is not quite trail-ready, lacking pedals–I’m sure I put them somewhere.

there’s no chain lube, either, for the obviously dusty/rusty chain, but, frothy as I am, it’s not critical to the mission. I find some deprecated candy 2s in a box of some other random crap. amazingly there’s some grease for the pedal threads, a tube of phil wood’s with a faded sticker on it reading $4.99, the only outward indication of its vintage. though that’s hardly mission-critical, either, I’ll take it.

it’s sixty degrees, weather for t-shirt and shorts. I put on a helmet I remember buying with my father and brother in the oh-something decade and hop on my favorite bike. it’s nice to be home.