La, la, la, lull

I don't really think about this blog when I'm busy. I think about it during slow periods. The slow periods when you realize that it's not just the lack of income. It's the lack of that adrenaline, the rush from doing things that to the untrained eye look downright dangerous. To make life more fun we had a bit of a warm spell. Things melted some refroze. Miles of roads cleared including most of the core but what ice remains can be downright evil. Slick and lumpy. The best set-up for that kind of ice involves a somewhat wide flat profile studded tire, a wide rim is nice. This same set-up sucks ass on pavement. The same two hundred plus studs that were your tungsten-carbide little buddies grabbing on and helping you along are now dragging on you and slowing you down like worthless in-laws during your wedding. The nice thing is you develop a kind of slow flow, almost like a skilled fixed gear rider only slower. You go to great pains to never come to a complete take your foot off the pedal stop. It's a pain to get the thing going again. You learn to anticipate a little further in to the future. All in all it's a cumbersome beast on pavement but sometime you surprise yourself with how much speed you can coax out of her. On ice she rides like she's on rails and with memories of shittier tires and such in your head your surprised how fast you can go and not stack. Or you go with skinnier tires and apply a great deal of skill, concentration and finesse' on the icy bits and just maybe you don't go down but the paved part is easier.
A little trick for the young people. The key to riding on ice is to go fast enough that if you do fall you'll slide instead of dropping with a sickening thud but not so fast that a slight lump in the ice will knock your front wheel out from under. It's a fine and delicate balance and you need to pretty much learn by doing, you learn through pain, you fall to learn how not to fall.
Now about that lull, lulls have been a common thing. They can be the daily lulls like around lunch. Even before electronic filings and when the client list was bigger and more diverse and the economy was pretty good, there would be lulls sometimes lasting days. Even if we took the financial sting out of them they'd still drive me bug-fuck. I try to make the best of them. I read, I catch up on correspondence, I take care of little things around the house and spend some time with the cat, I've even ridden my bike just for fun on the outskirts of Downtown. All that time I am the coiled cobra ready to strike waiting for the lull to break.
BTW In case anyone is wondering I lose clients mostly to retirement, carer changes and death.