"I'm SO Into Neuter Clinics!"

Short Version:
We give thanks for things, including snow, bikes, and beer.

Long Version:
Thanksgiving Day in Amerika is huge. We'd not realised quite what a big deal it was, and had some confused and confusing notion of what it was about which involved people dressing up as Pilgrims and giving each other turkeys to say "Thanks" for royally screwing the Indians.

Apparently we weren't entirely correct, and Thanksgiving in Amerika is more about gathering together with friends and family to stuff yourself far too full of delicious foods for comfort. Hence the huge numbers of vehicles caught on Amerika's highways and byways without chains or snow tyres when the weather got cold fast earlier in the week. They'd be facing official sanctions, ticketing, and potential vehicle impoundment if they were that irresponsible in Canada, where iciness is taken much more seriously. Need proof? Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently visited Quebec City, home to 750,000-or-so people. Admittedly it's in Quebec, which makes those 750,000 people pseudo-French, but even so the PM's decision to snub meeting the mayor of this, the capital of Quebec and the province's second-largest metropolitan area, so that he could spend more time with a giant snowman is pretty awesome.

Not as awesome as riding* a titanium single-speed bicycle up the side of a snow-covered mountain, drinking beer at the top, and then riding** back down again, in company of Corvallis Carl and a bunch of folks from nearby Salem***. That was a pretty excellent way to spend Thanksgiving morning. Next time I'll take a flask of something stronger to the top, and sip small sips whilst looking out over the awesome views of the Corvallis area, floating dreamily beneath banks of fog lit by bright orange morning sunlight. I'll also bear in mind that those soft-looking piles of snow on either side of the trail are a) made of cold stuff that's wet when it gets warm, and b) not always composed entirely of snow (the ones made mainly from rock, especially, defy their pillowy appearance when employed as landing zones). Several times I watched others disappearing up hills on their one-gear machines while I walked the walk of shame. I shudder to think how little of the uphill I'd've been riding had this taken place towards the front end of our trip! And once again I found myself entrapped by attempts at caution: riding slower than usual, due to an unholy combination of unfamiliar bike and end-of-trip Murphy's Law paranoia, caused me to crash a bunch more times than I would have under more normal circumstances.

Of course, the snow didn't help much on that front either, and I found myself at one point looking down the hill towards where the trailblazers were gathering (variously picking themselves up, licking - or bandaging - their wounds, or standing around chatting and sharing further pulls on flasks) and thinking "Yes! Their sliding has cleared the snow from this hillside! I can ride down it!" The assumption that the ground they'd uncovered would be less slippery than the cold white stuff turned out to be fallacious; it was, in order of appearance:
- Frozen mud
- Wet leaves
- Frozen puddles
- Unfrozen, wet puddles
- Unfrozen, wet mud

All of these things were at least as slippery as the snow that had been moved aside by the wheels of the frontispieces, and, adding insult to injury****, we were riding beneath and between conifers.
Beautiful trees, smell really nice. Those ones.

That bugged me for some reason. Took me a while to figure out why: Conifers = evergreen. So where the hell did the Andre-the Giant's-palm-sized wet, slippery leaves that carpetted the uncovered ground come from?*****

When we arrived back at the cars it was both all- and none-too-soon for my liking: I'd loved the ride. It was great to ride a singlespeed, and especially a handmade one. Riding in the snow was awesome, the scenery was great, and the trails were pretty amazing. Having said all that, I was knackered! My legs were so weakened by their exertions that just standing up to drink my delicious post-ride beer was a challenge. Having interesting folks around to chat to helped, though.

Eventually (soon) the beer was gone, and we made our way back to Carl and Shaun and Mary's house on Canterbury Circle, where Janine and Mary had returned from their run, and Shaun from his deer-hunting expedition*****. The house was full of the odours of delicious foods being cooked (until we dragged our smelly selves on in, that is) and the construction of The Nest was in progress.









* = May have involved walking, through what was, in places, shin-deep fresh powder snow.

** = I'm told that following me was kind of dangerous, on the grounds that the entertainment value of watching me was distracting people from concentrating on what they were supposed to be doing. I'm not sure what the big deal was: surely the forests of Oregon are chock full of shabby beardy guys sailing through the air to faceplant into snowbanks, cartwheeling (with bike attached) down near-vertical slopes, sliding sideways towards sheer drops, and bouncing off tree after tree? Maybe the grinnin' and hollerin' was unusual, although I saw and heard others doing likewise.

*** = Not the one with the witches. I asked.

**** = I managed to escape relatively unscathed. The biggest scare I had was when I landed on what turned out to be a snow-covered branch, which snapped. Loudly. I thought I'd snapped my femur, and that the sound of the break had reached my ears before the pain had hit my brain. I'm learning to like being proved wrong*******

***** = Vine Maple, apparently

****** = No deer this time, which was a shame, but also no being menaced by a cougar, which is an improvement on his last time out

******* = Probably a good thing, being married to Janine.