S.A.D. for the motorcycle rider

Seasonal Affective Disorder! That's gotta be it. Right? There has to be a psychological explanation for us northern folk that can't ride our motorcycles in the winter!

We've been having some arctic cold spells in northern New Hampshire off and on over the past month, and I'm actually surprised that I hadn't had my usual stare-at-my-motorcycle-in-the-garage moment until this past week. But man, this time it hit me hard. Think about the sad man staring at his beautiful black Honda VTX 1300 in the garage with really sad violin music in the background. Maybe show the scene in black and white with Italian or French subtitles.

Now I actually do know a couple people that suffer from the real form of S.A.D.  Most of these people could do with some outside winter sports fun in my opinion. But I'm not a psychologist, so maybe my advice shouldn't be taken all that seriously. Apologies to them if my humorous attempt at the plight of the motorcycle rider's winter blues makes them angry.

Maybe the S.A.D. motorcycle version hit me harder since my girlfriend  and I have only gone out for a snowshoe hike once this winter. The super-cold arctic chill coerced me to stay indoors on certain days.

Might try cross country skiing again, but need to find a less-steep place to try it and get some practice, since our usual trail area has some pretty steep hills. And the less I fall on my ass the more likely I'll be to try the cross country ski stuff in the future.

Just a few more months...

One New Year's resolution...

Got a few resolutions for the new year, but on this post I'm just going to mention one of them.
I recently bought the Rosetta Stone program for French. Being as how my ancestry is nearly 85% French Canadian, I've been kind of ashamed that I never really learned the language. My great grandparents on my father's side moved to the US in the early 1900's, when my grandfather (Pepere) was born. The area where I live has a lot of Quebecois people that speak the language, particularly the elderly folks.

French got passed down to my parents generation, but not mine so much. Just how it goes becoming assimilated to America. With my job and all the Quebecois old folk in my area, being a Paramedic that can understand them will help somewhat. Also, I've got a new "pen-pal" on Facebook from northern Quebec that shares some ancestry, who also likes to hike and ride the motorcycle. He's also a Paramedic! He speaks English pretty well, but he primarily speaks French way up north where he lives and when he visits I'll have another person to help me with my French.

I'm gonna recruit my father as well when I call every once in a while. He speaks if fluently and can also point out the subtle differences between the Quebecois and the Parisian style speaking.

And if I get comfortable enough, may even post this blog in French. We'll see...
Happy New Year!