Seasons

1st frame is welded as of Sunday. Ruination IPA for celebration on the deck in the spring sun.

I grew up in a place that didn't have seasons...ok...it had two seasons, rainy and sunny.  Norcal winters are foggy, rainy, damp, GREEN, beautiful and summers are hot and dry and brown.  I moved to a place with four seasons, albeit some are pretty short...like springtime. Springtime in the rockies is an amorphous combination of waning winter and quickly approaching summer, it's hard to know when it's really spring here.  The few things that characterize this are:

1. Big dumps (snow, that is).  I love big dumps.  Although this year is an exception, we usually get a couple of 2-4 feet dumps in Ned in March and even April. 
2. Temperatures can get up to the 60's, but lows still in the 20's at night, and the appearance of the pasque flower. These purple flowers are the beacon of spring for most up at 8,000ft elevation...and really do signify and end to the wind, cold and snow.  Our house has no pasques yet, we are the latest to get them in this area as far as I know.  But the "banana belt" where I used to live has them already showing up. 
3. Trails on south-sides are dry as a bone but all other aspects are still closed off by snowdrifts, downed trees (the wind here is insane in the winter).

I feel more ready for spring this year than other years because of my new insanely expensive hobby - bicycle frame building.  I am really excited to ride a bike that I personally created.  I'm excited to create more bikes of different types - CX, MTB, touring, maybe even a road bike - and keep on experimenting with new designs and testing them out on the local singletrack.  After the ski trip to Jackson Hole, my feet haven't been in the ski boots and I haven't ventured into the backcountry even once.  The Indian Peaks are there, awaiting some spring ascents and descents, and that'll happen eventually, but for now I'm happy dreaming of riding my new steel steeds around the 'hood and finding out, perhaps the hard way, how my framebuilding skills add up.