Near Perfect Spring Roads Companions

  So I'm sitting here in my living room.   Just finished dining on home made pizza courtesy of my wife and daughter.  Now, my wife isn't a bicyclist.  She rode as a kid because it was her only means to get places when she was young.  She was raised in farm country.  The distances to her friends were orders of magnitude greater than my own treks in my suburban environs.  My daughter is old enough to drive but still gets on two wheels on rare occasions.  We ride together a few times a year but that's about it.  Not their thing.  Same with my son.  I get it.

  On the other hand, the older I become the more two wheels and pedals appeal to me.  See, I'm a reformed motorcyclist.  I love to ride... somehow.

  A warm winter brought an early spring.  And I have a bike set up for these wet, gravelled and pothole pocked spring roads.  An early version of a comfort bike, I think it was...  A Trek Millennia in ice blue with crème lettering. Sufficiently fat tires, Longboard fenders from an outfit in Cali known as Rivendell.  Drop bars and friction stem shifters installed by the wizard who owns Rod's Bicycles in St Cloud MN.  The thing isn't a snow bike, but it's damn near perfect as a slusher.  I aim for every water hazard the way every golfer prays to avoid them.

  Most of the snow is already melted and gone.  The roads are clear.  But they're gritty and gouged.  Sticky tar beetles ride the tread only to let go inside the fenders, producing a rattling undertone against the tires' molding to the road's unevenness.  A droning hum with irregular cacophonic snare drums arguing with each other.

And then the tarmac smooths.  It's weird how, for maybe the length of a football field, the road is torn up unsympathetically, and then everything's fine for the next quarter mile.  The old Trek with its comfort width tires is the best companion I could ask for in such conditions.  But its fenders are the icing on the cake.