Metric Thunder News

What Biker's do in the winter...

Now that we bikers are heading into the heart of winter, thought I'd pass on an observation about passing the time while waiting for the snow to melt...

Although I live in southern California and ride year round, a large contingent of our customers live further north and are "bike hibernating" for several months.

To put some real perspective on this topic, had a guy drop in the shop last winter who lived in the Northwest Territory of Canada. His family was on vacation spending the day at Disneyland just down the street from Metric Thunder. He'd heard of us in a magazine before heading south and got a one hour pass from the family to drop in and see what goodies he could pick up for his cruiser.

We spoke for quite a while and he told me that he's only able to ride about one month out of the entire year. Apparently they are almost inside the arctic circle and the outside temp doesn't get above freezing too often.

I asked him how he passed the time during the 11 months he was off the roads. He told me it really wasn't that bad, gave him the chance to tinker and modify stuff on the bike for summer. He did say something that really stuck in my mind...

"Although I only get about one month of riding out of a year, I enjoy each day as you might enjoy a week or month of your riding season."
He could have been sour grapes about the lack of riding time, but instead he chose to see the upside.

At the time I felt a bit guilty for our good weather. However, the guilt did pass after about 20-30 seconds!

To all our friends in the colder climates, happy holidays and keep on tinkering, sooner or later the stuff will melt!

If you have any thoughts or opinions on this subject, send 'em to me at bob@metricthunder.com and I'll post 'em.

MTB

December 20, 2005 10:51 AM