Go through the motions, count the short days, lament the long nights, bitch about how the endless slop is indescribable. No that’s not true, we just don’t want to talk about it. Fantasise about early Spring instead.

Sun on your face, trails dry-ish under leaf still a bit sticky but no longer greasy snot death. Climbs not demanding 100% effort with tyres muck spreading water cosplaying as soil until gravity kicks in with a half hearted effort to make things easier.

You’re still pedalling but that’s not really the issue at hand. A hand gently pushing a grip or carefully caressing a brake. No precision tooled summer lines, more a broken compass occasionally pointing in the right direction-  sometimes as a direct reaction to rider input, but mostly handing the whole thing off to luck.

That’s the reality of riding right now.

It’s kind of fun. Until every part of the bike is either broken right now or merely waiting its’ turn. The washing machine is on suicide watch, and with a weather forecast predicting clouds full of rain and days full of bone chilling cold, you wonder if this is the year to fuck the whole thing off.

And then you get a day. After 10 previous of hardly any rain and those drying winds. You’re hoping for something like a dry line but you pretend you’re not. Don’t want to jinix it because today might just be that day. The mid winter miracle.  When an extra trail isn’t a chore, a favourite corner loams itself out of the mud, a tricky obstacle can again be a brakeless giggle.

Yeah we had one of those days. And by god we’ve earned it.

More pragmatically, this is the first time i’ve ridden the BFE in the dry and it just came alive. Set of bends I love and the steel frame throws itself into the apexes in a way that’s hard to describe, but desperate to repeat. Grip is still mutable, but mostly  banging the stops on the fun-o-meter. Speeds ramp up, misery is tamped down.

There are – in my view – mostly heavily medicated riders who embrace the winter in a way I cannot. They talk of a skills upgrade when trading speed for grip. They offer up nebulous benefits of bastard muddy climbs and plastercine fire roads. For them this is not a season to be ignored, but to cherish as an antidote to summer dust.

We’re a pretty broad church on the hedgehog but there are lines never to be crossed. Places we cannot go. Fake news that shall not languish unchallenged. Hills on which we shall righteously die. And this is absolutely one of those. Winter is horrible. Its four months or more of enduring the grim. I know this to be true, and one day of riding dry trails confirms I am the only sane man amongst a bunch of lunatics.

Or night. Three days later just Rex and I headed out onto our local hill. Not only had the Wednesday night crew been denuded by injury*, no other rider seized the opportunity for a dry ride. You can count those on the fingers of one foot most winters, so we’re in good spirits climbing into the woods. This local patch of goodness was exclusively ours, and we were going to make the best of it.

A plan had been formed. As it had been formed by me, it wasn’t a great plan but we were soon shouting “hey this bit is dry, it’s NEVER dry in winter” at each other rather than concentrating on trails crispy under crinkly-dry leaves. Which made finding the dirt a little challenging, but this seems a churlish observation to make on otherwise brilliant conditions.

Rather than just poking the Weather Gods with a stick, I’d gone full frat-boy and pulled down their pants while flicking V’s by riding my how-many-pivots-no-forgotten-going-to-have-to-start-counting-again Rascal with summer-y tyres and no rear mudguard. Way beyond brave and long into stupid, we were lucky not to be drowned.

Instead the skies cleared, the wind dropped while the Earth did her stunning organic planetarium thing. We gave that a nod before turning our attention back to riding as fast as we could before winter again slapped us icily in the chops. This involved recalibrating how quickly stuff was fired into the aged optics, and how little braking was needed to deal with that. This is my kind of problem.

Even when my helmet light ran out of amps at the exact point a gap jump should have been its entire point of focus**, I couldn’t stop marvelling at how fantastic the trails were. This time of year we’re pining for summer rides, but after this one Rex and I agreed we’d happily ride these conditions every night without worrying about sunlight and warmth.

Life affirmingly good. As I explained, at length, to a – temporarily – broken Matt in the pub. I promised myself I wouldn’t gush how great it was out there, because he’s two+ weeks away from getting back on a mountain bike. Yeah, about that.

Will it last? No of course not. It’s not spring or even pre-spring. we’re a long way from emerging blinking out of the dark. But it’s a marker, a memory of better things, a signpost for what is to come, a reason to keep buggering on in the face of bike destroying shitiness. And for that I’ll happily take it.

Chinks are good. Full spectrum light will be better. Right now tho, two dry rides has me desperate to go long. The weekend awaits 🙂

*some post medical procedure, others long term sick, one nursing injuries entirely attributable to significant alcohol and a detailed facial analysis of the local tarmac while under the misapprehension that physics doesn’t apply to drunks!

**luckily my trusted technique of closing my eyes and hoping for the best defused any danger of a lie down and some performative groaning.