MOVE…
Yesterday was a good day to ride. If I get out of my garden, I’ll go for a ride tonight also.
Tom, rode this morning.
I think you just need to toughen up that soft southern body of yours.
Hahahahahahahahaha! That’s EXACTLY why I scammed my way back out here to Hawaii from good old Mich-ee-gan 
T.
As a matter of fact, I’m talking to my wife on the phone (she’s a federal employee out in Livonia), and she says it’s 52F and raining back in Southgate. Good lawd…
Still, my time here will probably end come late-November. I’m being offered a senior management position back at our hub in Detroit and dummy me will probably take it.
T.
You get no sympathy from me. I’m in Maine where we get the “gentle” coastal breezes to go with the rolling hills. I did a time trial last weekend that the 2nd half was mostly up hill into a 25 - 30 mph headwind, light rain, & 42 degrees. I got lucky & just beat the rain both yesterday & today, but it was still only about 45 degrees.
Plus, we get the thrill of knowing that we are one of the lowest paid states in the country, 49th last I knew, & one of the highest taxed. What a great combination. I’ve got about 1 1/2 years before I’m fully vested in my 401K and then I’m out of here.
I grew up there, and don’t miss the seven months of annual slush at all. My “I’ve got to get out of this place.” moment was senior year in high school. First weekend in May, annual Greenville Relays track meet, and someone is trying to put a positive spin on the fact that not only it’s snowing, the ground is still enough it’s sticking. At that point, I didn’t care if the snow was making it very easy for the event staff to give us correct distances for our discus throws, I wanted to not have to worry about feeling my fingers. In May.
There are about eight wonderful weeks there during the summer when everything is warm and beautiful, and you get the boat out on the lake or the Big Lake and all is good.
Then you help a friend piece together a child’s Halloween costume that is designed to be worn over a snow suit.
That Maine weather is amazing. What’s funny is that I had my fastest IM distance times back when I was living and training in the Connecticut area, down near New London. You could count on a defineable set of seasons, and I was always able to ride on the roads regularly, come early April and all the way up through October, without it being too cold too early.
If I had any sort of intelligence, that’s the place I should be looking to move to. Not back to near the “Mogadishu of North America” (which is what my wife refers to Detroit as).
T.
i reached two conclusions reading your rant:
1 you have a hard time smiling in general
2 you really should move
no need to go point for point but you really are off target on most of this. if you miss hills, come to the Three Rivers Triathlon, or do Mark Mellon. we’ve got plenty of hills, just gotta open the eyes a bit and get off the trainer. wind in your face while training means faster times racing. water is a good thing. lots of water is even better. the only folks i know around here who are in denial are the ones who still think they need the Red Wings to survive.
Still, my time here will probably end come late-November. I’m being offered a senior management position back at our hub in Detroit and dummy me will probably take it.
Nooooooo!!! Don’t do it man!!! As another people who moved from one of the best places on earth (Seattle) to one of the worst (central Illinois), I can say: Stay in Hawaii! Don’t take the promotion! Climb Haleakela (sp?) with the time you would have spent at the new job!! Make the rest of us jealous!
My “gotta get out of this place” realization comes each winter, when we get things like highs of 6 degrees with wind chill of -5. And then again every spring, when the wind and cold are in full force, but I’ll feel like a wuss on the trainer because it’s April. Then again in the middle of summer, when it’s 90+ with 90+% humidity. Seriously, I believe very strongly that the midwest should not be populated. I do not understand the people I know who grew up here and describe themselves as “good midwestern folk.” Oh well, I guess they just don’t know any better. That just leaves more places with mountains, rivers, alpine lakes, and beautiful green hills for the rest of us.
-Colin
I will give you an A+ for your rant. Very well done. I’ve lived there for 44 yrs. Sometimes it sucks—mostly for biking. I do enjoy running in the warmth of spring, the hot summers, the cool sometimes dry air of fall–(leaves blowing all around). Fall is my 2nd favorite. The best time to run is during is after a nice, big snowfall.
Im in MN. Michigan weather sounds mild. I’m getting out of here too.
Went on a long bike yesterday and for the first time this year it didn’t snow on me. It rained 5 times at 40F.
It really is usually very nice here in July(except for last year) and usually the first half of August. So 30 great days a year! That first tri at the beginning of June is a real doozy as far as the swim.
I think a.t. lives down in S.E. Michigan, which is where I still keep a home and where I was born and raised for my first 18 years (the next 21-odd years were in the Navy). Many was the day that I spent riding the Willow, Lower Huron and Belleville metroparks (over and over and over…) for lack of a normally-sane place in which to do long outdoor rides. And there’s really not much in the way of hills to either run or ride on. Besides which, the low-grade concrete they use to pave the roads tended to buckle from frost heave over a winter season and make it an adventure trying to ensure that you wouldn’t bend a rim or throw your wheels out of true within a week of having them centered.
Ahhhhh…the good old days!
T.
Oh, I hear ya, man! I’m getting married in four weeks in Saline Michigan… outside!!! Wasn’t my most brilliant choice, but my fingers are crossed…
After that, the wife and I are moving back to San Diego, and we won’t miss Michigan one bit. If you’re the kind of person who likes to be outside, Michigan weather makes a fulfilling life a tough task. For those who live here and disagree, you’re fooling yourself, or you’ve never lived anywhere else.
Wow, you are more of a man than I to head out yesterday morning. I looked out my window in Northfield at 7:30 and took my cycling gear off. This has been one terrible week for weather in the Upper Midwest.
The real impetus for the rant was being inside on the trainer, looking out my window and thinking about how much I miss riding on the wonderful summer days we have in mid-Michigan. Michigan is an outdoors paradise- when the weather is right. It seems that living here is the perfect example of a Catch 22. Sleeping Bear Dunes, Traverse City, Port Huron, the entire westside of the UP, Isle Royale, Pinckney, Waterloo, all the great triathlon venus at Big Fish, Seahorse, Grosse Ille, the list just keeps going. But until this miserable weather lets up, the gates are closed on all those fun places.
Three Rivers and Mark Mellon are good, but Petoskey is the best and hardest. And we’ll agree to disagree on the wind. I find the wind only makes for riders with poor rhythm and a pedal stroke that’s front heavy; it’s the hills that make great riders and I miss the Appalachians more than anything else in Georgia.
You’re sooo close to insanity! Embrace despair!
BWAHAHAHAHA!
Wanna buy a house in Northville? I’m paying two mortgages, which can’t go on forever. I don’t think too much about it, though, as I round the corner on my morning run and am greeted by a stunning view of Pikes Peak.
On a more serious note, Michigan has a lot to offer: a great tri community; beautiful, not-too-hot summers; a great county and state park system; Bikesport. If the rest of the country could get over the “rust belt” stereotype of Michigan, it would realize how beautiful it really is and property values would go through the roof. Some of the best people I’ve ever met live there.
Not a good day for the bike I agree. It’s still early season, and typical for michigan. You will soon learn that summer weather in Michigan is great monday thru friday. Got to admit though, Last years tri season was perfect all summer. Today? Nice day for a run.
big kahuna,
Its meech-ee-gan, ala Bob Ufer, not Mich-ee-gan. This causes me to wonder if you were really here in the first place or just claiming to have been.
Class of 74
Isn’t there a joke about the four seasons in Michigan being fall, winter, construction and hot as hell?
But, last weekend wasn’t that bad. The 15+ mph wind on Sunday did add a little challenge to the bike ride on the first half of the ride, but I figure that I must have been going almost as fast as Demerly or Eric Fernando normally rides when I had it at my back on the way home. Saturday afternoon was very pleasant after the rain ended, and I only had the wind in my face on part of one curve of the track.
I moved here from Pennsylvania to go to law school in 1986 and have never left. There are some odd things here, just like anywhere, but the weather is only marginally colder than where I group up in Pennsylvania and only slightly flatter.
It’s not that bad here. We had an excellent ride here yesterday morning and we’re about to leave on another now.