Hey y’all! I hope the winter doldrums or whatever yuck might may come your way hastily abates. It is always a matter perspective, and we’ll get into that and more blather following. January was mostly blustery (blather’s windy cousin, huzzah!) and cold even down here in the deep South. Lots of real and fake snow daze as ATL is notorious for dealing poorly with the cold. Seemed like a perfect time to go to someplace even colder, so a pal and I went up to Snowshoe for a long weekend of snowboarding.
This was oddly the first time I’d ever visited there in the winter as I have mostly gone up over the years to ride in the bike park and the surrounding backcountry trails. However, I was bitten by the snowboarding bug last year. While I took to it quickly, I am still at best a beginnermediate, and as such I spent a great deal of time on my tuchus with have plenty of bruises to show for it.
Despite being rather sore, I had a great time and learned a ton. I feel way more comfortable now with my board handling, linking turns, carving and reading terrain. Hell, I even managed to catch some sweet air! I’ve mentioned before that snowboarding has a great deal in common with mountain biking and especially if you revel in the more rad-tastic, aggressive end of it. That is what keeps me going when I feel like someone has been beating me with a 2 x 4 for hours in the snow. That along with the learning, the progression.
Accompanying all the learning, bruising, split seconds of exaltation wrapped in minutes of pain, I managed to have a long-held belief of mine dispelled. More to come on that, but first…
Music Selection: Love Battery: Dayglo This record came out during “peak grunge” from Seattle but has more in common with shoegaze’s noisy pop along with a nice dose of slide-guitar psychedelia. I was a huge fan and got to see them not too long after this came out. I had not really listened to this in many years, but this episode’s title came from me hearing the track of the same name from their more recent and excellent turn with KEXP from a half a dozen years ago.
I can change. I attended a very old and strict private day prep for high school. Boys had to wear collared shirts and ties (or turtlenecks; maybe cool, but this was even before that, and I couldn’t pull it off) no jeans, no long hair, etc. One of the standing rules was zero tolerance for gum-chewing. We were literally told that chewing gum showed poor breeding (racist/classist much?) and being caught doing so got you an instant four demerits and detention (3 hours after school cleaning locker rooms). I basically stopped chewing gum right then and there and continued to view it as a disgusting habit. That is until this weekend.
As noted above, I spent the weekend beating myself up and while it was all very difficult there was one thing I found more egregious than anything else I faced on the slopes. Dry mouth. The cold air and the high intensity exercise level made my mouth feel utterly disgusting, and when I’d get whiff, I sickened myself. This was despite my extra persnickety oral care habits as I always brush my teeth prior to any exercise. I avoided getting anywhere near anyone while talking on that first day. Big yuck, and that combined with falling nonstop left me rather demoralized. On the next day however, I remembered that last year when I had gone riding, my pal offered me gum which he said was crucial. I bummed a few sticks of Wrigley’s Extra and was peachy for the rest of trip. I still fell a-plenty, but at least my craw was not a blast furnace of death. I suppose you could use mints, drops or other dentifrices, but the gum that would have had me detailing toilets really saved the day. I will keep some available for all future boarding adventures. I might even become less judgy. Maybe.
Changing viewpoints. Spectacles in some incarnation have been in my life since fourth grade. I happen to like glasses, and I wear them daily. I’ve never really found corrective ones that felt/worked great for riding, and this is mostly due to them becoming covered in sweat or filth all too soon rendering them impossible to see through. As such, I wear contacts for these endeavors and then any sunglasses can work. I became enamored with the concept of being able to quickly remove and deploy my glasses from my helmet during my cyclocross daze and that carried over to mountain biking.
Certainly, I could wear any eyewear for this purpose, but there are a few factors at play. One, they must fit into the helmet vents with some degree of ease and stability. Two, they need to be big enough to protect your peepers from debris, yet not so big that they interfere with the brow of your helmet dislodging them. Finally, and maybe most important, they need to have at least okay optics for whatever conditions you ride in, mine being generally moderate to low light. I have used the fancy stuff for years including Julbo Fury’s most recently, but the top end eyewear for cycling can get expensive quickly. I bought those used on eBay for half price. The optics and functionality are great, but I finally found a lower cost option that works well, some Tifosi Moab’s.
Tifosi is a Georgia company (yeah c’mon!) and tbh, I knew very little about them when I grabbed the Moab’s from a shop down in FL last fall. Their retail price was less than the used price of the Fury’s, and they came with 3 different lens options, a hard case and a soft eyeglass wipe/pouch. It was their purple frames that grabbed my attention, though, as I’ve added more color into my cycling attire and appearance over the last year.
Looks aside, their functionality is top notch. Variable light transmission lenses are available as an extra option, which they call Fototec, but I have not found them to be necessary as the included lenses have worked so well. Form-wise they are the eyeglass goggle-style that has become all the rage of late, and they play well with multiple helmets I’ve tried them with. The Moab’s1 have proven to me that you can get high quality spectacles and save shekels for snacks in the process without compromise. I’ll keep you posted if I decide to dip back into my fancier cache, but my purple people-eater2 hued Tifosis have become my go to.
1 I get it. Moab is an iconic mountain biking destination, but I feel like Tifosi could have gone with a Georgia riding locale for a name. Maybe the “Blankets” after Blankets Creek or “BC’s” after Big Creek. I’ll be standing by for marketing consultation.
2 “Plum Passion” is Tifosi’s colorway name, but again I’m ready to assist in marketing efforts.