The biker awoke before dawn. He put his slippers on. And he ... walked on down the hall. The blogger awoke before dawn. He put some coffee on. And he ..... walked on down the hall!
I've been waking before dawn a lot this year, two or three hours before dawn in fact. And with all of that extra time on my hands, one might think I'd get out on my bike. But you won't find me out on the streets. You'll find me on the couch, contemplating the dark world, waiting for that black blanket of sky to transform into ... a slushy gray blanket of sky. It's been a dark February, and those white mountains of Minneapolis are now studded with brown clumps, becoming irregular, jagged, brown forms themselves, capped with the crystallized residue of frozen waste -- exhaust vapors from passing automobiles and the blood, sweat and tears of winter bikers.
Yes, it's February, that time when I find myself, like so many others, getting a little tired, a little sick of the winter. The remedy is obvious, yet I still haven't straddled a bicycle in 2011, unless you count those clunky approximations at the gym that go nowhere and attempt to pacify with sets of rolling red digits.
But there was light at the end of my tunnel. I found relief from the February Blues along with some 8,000 others. And we found it not on two wheels but two planks of wood; not on the street but on a frozen, snow-covered lake; not in daylight but at night. Yes, with a couple of good friends and a thousand strangers I took part in the "Luminary Loppet," a simple circuit around Lake of the Isles on cross-country skis, our path lit by a thousand columns of ice.
What a night it was, with mild temperatures and no wind to speak of. After getting our "bibs" at the crowded registration area, we skied down the mall, down a short hill, and onto the frozen lagoon.
I heard a familiar voice and noticed that I was skiing next to none other than the mayor of Minneapolis. And by all appearances he wasn't here for any political reason; he was here, like the rest of us, for fun, for the communal celebration, for the moment, for the chance to escape Dark February.
Soon enough we were on the groomed trail (trails actually). It was like multiple lanes of traffic moving in one direction, along with snowshoeing pedestrians, and some plain old walkers. This created the same issues as driving does: slow-movers and sudden stoppers creating traffic jams; lane-changers without signals causing confusion; on-comers and off-goers causing jam-ups when not choosing an opportune moment to merge; wild teenagers weaving in and out of traffic unpredictably. All this made for a few snags and snafus, but that turned out to be part of the fun.
We skied around to various ice monuments lit from within by candles, such as the ice Acropolis and the ice pyramid and what looked like an ice Stonehenge. We even made a stop at a Canadian embassy ice outpost. It was effortless and timeless.
True, it wasn't profound and it was not extreme and it was not even quite sublime. Not quite. But it was, undeniably ... mellow. It was enjoyable and relaxing, and while not initially soul-stirring, I did actually pause to consider how ... especially in light of the ongoing events in Egypt ... how almost incomprehensible it was that so many people could crowd together in one place in the depths of February and all get along so well. I felt some strange sense of communion on that frozen lake, something that seems to be mostly missing from American life.
For a time I wondered if I wasn't really in Sweden. I felt proud and satisfied to be a Twin-Citizen, where people actually turn out for events such as this, and turn the doldrums of winter into a celebration of the season. We have these beautiful lakes and this beautiful snow, so why not honor them properly?
Sure, we had friends who skipped this event like so many others, with a typical ho-hum attitude. But strangely enough, when I told my Egyptian friend about it the next day, he positively lit up. "If you ever do something like that again, please take me with you," he said. "I really want to try that."
