Twenty-three years of February 6th entries and the pattern is unmistakable... this date arrives with complications. Whether it's a head cold throwing a wrench in the routine back in 2003, or the strange melancholy of watching her lights fade into the night in 2012, something about early February demands attention.
But here's the thing about complications, they make for the best stories. In 2008, I'm wide awake at 7,200 feet, too much tea in my system, typing by candlelight while Paul snores and the wind howls outside. By 2009, the ambition ramps up with plans for World Championships hatched over Pipestone rides. Then 2011 delivers a classic, a "relaxing" five-hour adventure that involved boot-skiing down icy switchbacks and spotting mysterious black tents I briefly suspected were alien pods.
The mishaps keep coming. There's the full submersion into Bridger Creek in 2016, groceries and all, discovering exactly how long wet clothes take to freeze solid. Contrast that with pulling out old maps with Snuggles in 2018, chasing groomed trails that turned out to be groomed during weather so cold the snow never set up properly.
The later years get more contemplative. A quiet walk through Cedar Grove in 2023. A strange allegory about a sentient mountain bike wrestling with belonging in 2024. Poetry about a battered balcony in 2025. And now building actual software that pulls all these threads together.
February 6th, it turns out, is a day for pushing through... sick or solo, soaked or stuck on ice. The complications are the point.