There's a great story about the old singer Mel Torme and his writing partner Bob Wells cooped up in this sweltering studio on the hottest day in July when they wrote "The Christmas Song." You know, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." The thought behind writing a song about the dead of winter was to try and think cold thoughts to try and make them forget that it was like a blast furnace outside.
The reason I bring it up is because recently I was in Cincinnati, Ohio for the V-Twin Expo, and as I walked the eight blocks between the Drag Specialties reception and the MC Advantage party it began to snow on me. There I was, a San Diego native walking down the street with snow falling all around-I figured that the police were going to find my frozen corpse sprawled out on the sidewalk the next morning. But instead of curling up in the fetal position on the sidewalk and just giving up, I tried the Torme/Wells trick and started to think warm thoughts.
I closed my eyes and thought about one of those perfect hot summer nights where you feel like you could just point the front wheel of your bike in any direction and ride forever. The kind of night where the warm wind rushing past you actually feels refreshing, and the further you venture from civilization the better the night smells. Fresh-cut grass, pine trees, someone barbecuing in their backyard, and that occasional cool spot where you cross a bridge over a body of water that smells like-well, water. The way the light on the front of your bike just sort of wiggles around into the darkness as the moonlight gives everything else that eerie glow. The kind of night where you don't dare slow down because the heat rising off your motor feels like it is slowly cooking the insides of your legs.
As the miles clicked off in my head, I noticed that the numbness in my fingers wasn't such a big deal, and my frozen nose and ears began to thaw out a little. And with as good as I was feeling shuffling down the sidewalk in the icy cold, I was happy to see my destination up ahead. I may have tricked myself into feeling warm, but it was still freezing outside. And I think that my yearly trip into the frozen tundra is a good reminder of how the folks in the Midwest and the Northeast look forward to that first thaw. It also reminds me not to take any day that I get to ride in good weather for granted.