Slush Fund

Winter's cruel joke

The day had been the kind that leaves your brain feeling like overcooked oatmeal. Mind numbing doesn't quite cover it. So when evening rolled around, I didn't think. I just grabbed Hope, the fat bike, and pointed her toward Blue Mountain Road. Quick and dirty. Groceries could wait. The mind could not.

The look of a man who forgot he still needs groceries.

Missoula in winter is a special kind of torture for someone who just wants consistency. Snow falls, you get excited, you imagine perfect packed trails and cold crisp air. Then you wake up and it's forty degrees and everything's turned to gray pudding. The next day it's frozen solid but wrong, all rutted and chunky. Then more snow. Then more warmth. The cycle repeats with sadistic precision. You can't commit to fat biking. You can't commit to anything. The weather here has the attention span of a toddler with a sugar high.

A lone snag stands guard while Missoula pretends to be a snow globe.

I did make it to the point, Hayes Point. Doesn't matter. Somewhere up on that snowy slope, the city started twinkling below like someone had scattered Christmas lights across the valley floor. The clouds hung heavy but parted just enough to let that strange dusk glow through, almost moonlit, almost magical. The snow crunched under my tires. The trees stood there like they always do, patient, unbothered by whether it's twenty degrees or fifty. Good friends, those trees. They don't cancel plans when the weather shifts.

Forty thousand people down there, none of them as cold as me.

Here's the thing about getting out on the bike, even when conditions are garbage, even when you're just running an errand with wheels. It always works. The brain unsticks. The day's fog lifts. You find yourself grinning at city lights like some kind of sentimental fool. Missoula might be the worst place to live for weather consistency. But a place that forces you outside just to prove it wrong... maybe that's not the worst thing.