On March 2, 2016

Restless as the winter that never really was continues

By Brady Crain

In mid-February, enough snow fell to make it possible to ski  in the trees! But then the rain came to wash it all away, again. March is typically a snowy  month, will we get a storm?

Spring is nigh. I can feel it rattling around in my lungs. As much as I hate to say it, hopes for a cold spring look futile, but I am eager to get back outside in some uphill adventures.

Altitude Sickness Brady CrainThis season has been pretty closed out for climbing uphill on things (I haven’t started with ice yet, but I’ll bet that has had fits and starts of being good), and I have not managed to put together a way to get back into the Taekwondo gyms in Burlington, so I sit on my cycle trainer, ski every day, and wish that I could get radical with some heart-pumping uphill travel.

I am warily eyeing the local climbing gym, thinking that jumping around on some climbing holds might relieve my itchy fingers, or at least tire them out.

Some say their body is a temple. Some say their body is an amusement park. Though my body could be both of these things, I know that the true nature of my body is a working dog. Sometimes I think of my body as a really happy Rottweiler: a shambling, effusive, slobbering beast with enormous appetites who is fearful in a fight, and left alone for too long will eat your entire couch just because it can. Make me resent you, and I will chew up your favorite shoes and take a crap on your bed. When lonely or anxious, I will strew garbage all over the joint.

Trust this. When you see me, and I am jabbering nervously about what I am doing or the new girl that I like or my next plan for how to destroy my body, just tell yourself that it’s the cold medication. But really what it is is that I am getting so stir crazy with lack of beautiful delicious soul-reaffirming winter, that I am overrun with vitamin D. I am close to going into a vitamin D-fueled rage.

I was also, apparently, very distractible and forgot to turn in my article last week! In that time, I crested 100 days of skiing, and skied some nice powder (even in the woods!!!). It’s been a good few days, and I am placing my chips on the roulette spot for a snowy March (and really, the glacier is getting so thick, I almost don’t care).

Now get out there and ski!

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