Adaptive Curmudgeon

I went about my day’s errands trying to remember that my shop minefield of 4 traps had a tan mouse needing disposal. When I finally got home I turned on the light and gingerly fished out one trap among three still ready to snap on my finger. It wasn’t tan at all. It was a darkish colored mouse. WTF?

I wish I’d been carefully writing down the mouse colors and counts but alas I’m just too haphazard. That’s on me. Aldo Leopold would have a full notebook with graphs and charts by now. Henry David Thoreau would have written a poem about it. Teddy Roosevelt would have mounted several and sent them off to the Smithsonian. I do notice but don’t pay close enough attention to derive conclusions.

As far as I could tell the little fucker was a brownish mouse in the morning and a darkish one in the evening. How could that be?

That night I turned it over in my head. I came up with an outlandish theory that somehow a brownish mouse had been trapped enough so I could glance it in the morning, but during the day it had wriggled loose and somehow a darkish mouse had got himself caught in the same trap by mid afternoon. I dreamed that night about heroic Rambo brown mouse escaping his almost certain doom and dipshit dark mouse falling headfirst into the trap… which is clearly nonsense.

The next morning I looked at my trap minefield carefully. There is no way in hell there had been a mouse switcharoo. It surprised me how hard part of my mind wanted to stick with my half dreamed mouse switch hypothesis. It was obvious bullshit. Yet some part of me was invested in it.

Regardless, the conclusion was inescapable. During my hurried morning I’d made an observation that was incorrect. In the evening, at leisure, I’d made a contrary observation that was correct. I shrugged my shoulders. Shit happens.

You think that’s the end of the story? It should be. It’s not. Lets veer into a whole new world!

That evening I had an appointment with a guy to buy some IBC containers. (An IBC container is a waist high, somewhat cubical, industrial liquid hauling “tank”. People repurpose them to many uses. I wanted to test the use of one for my firewood. More on that later.)

The guy, who I know and respect, texted me. “I can’t do the IBC container today. I’m sicker than a dog. Missed work for two days.”

I texted back; “That’s fine. Get well and text me when you’re ready.”

I didn’t really want details but he sent them anyway. “I got the flu shot and the Covid booster a few days ago. It feels like my chest has a weight on it and it takes some effort to breathe.”

Jesus! What does a one say to that? I didn’t know how to respond so, being a guy, I didn’t.

A few minutes later another text came in “This isn’t a good pitch for a vaccination but you should get yours anyway. I’ve had the same symptoms before. I’ll be fine in a day or so.”

Great googly moogly!

The guy took an action that has made him feel sick before. Unsurprisingly, it’s making him feel sick again. There is undeniable evidence that the “vaccination” doesn’t provide immunity against future sickness. There’s clear experience that (at least for him) it has caused past sickness and now he’s repeated the experiment with current sickness. Yet he did it anyway. And he’s encouraging me to do the same thing. Why? Presumably whatever motivates him to act this way is such a good idea he thinks it’s in my best interest to copy his actions. Well I assume he’s thinking of my best interests, but then again how do I know? Suppose I get sick just like him, then what? Is that a “good” outcome? I feel fine right now. What’s the logic of approaching someone who feels fine and instructing him to do something that has made yourself ill… twice? It feels kind of cult-like.

I texted back “Thanks”. Then I turned off my phone. The whole thing made me sad.

It was poignant. Remember, this isn’t an idiot I was dealing with. He’s intelligent, well read, friendly, and I like him. If his actions are self destructive that’s his business but what about encouraging other people to follow his lead. Why? This nice guy has willingly taken multiple doses of a thing that made him ill. He, in his intelligent and friendly way, encouraged me to take doses of the thing that made him ill. Presumably if I took his advice I would feel ill too. Is that the goal? How does one react to a world where discussions like that happen?

I thought about my stupid mouse theory. I’d made an observation in the morning but found further evidence that disproved it. The next day I really didn’t like admitting I’d been wrong. Yet I’d been wrong. So I admitted it, adjusted my thinking, and continued on my merry way. It wasn’t that hard but it wasn’t default human behavior. If that was just my goofy theory about mice, what was happening with a much more serious construct in my friend’s head? How hard will he cling to his theory? He’s having trouble breathing… again. Because he took the same action… again. Breathing is a big fucking deal! Repeated interference with breathing wasn’t enough for him to see the pattern and come to a different conclusion. What would it take?

Our minds are a work in progress. We are monkeys with cell phones. Herd animals with 401(k) accounts. We evolved for a world we no longer inhabit. Who knows what internal processes work just fine for picking fruit out of a tree but are deadly in a world where some of us have learned how to lie. And how much worse has it gotten now that since smart people with databases turned social media into a monster? It’s not just one skeevy douchebag lying to one innocent victim; it’s an army of skeevy douchebags creating an entire environment of deception. Our monkey level processing hardware seems to be up to the task of self preservation but only when we’re paying attention. Left on auto-pilot, mass deception exceeds the monkey’s coding. You wind up stuggling to breathe (again!) and encouraging other people to do what’s making your breath labored.

You have to keep on your toes. Nobody can monitor your monkey mind but you. You must practice thinking. Practice with irrelevant shit. Think carefully about small things so you’re ready when big things happen. You don’t have to fret over mice. Choose your own practice ground. What matters is you interact with external forces and learn from them. Don’t just stumble around “feeling good”. Don’t become an idiot; forcing reality to comport with your internal theories. If you’re wrong, fuckin’ figure it out!

Someone injected my friend with a substance that made him feel ill. He volunteered for this. He’s done it before. It made him feel ill before. He encourages me to do the same; presumably so I’ll feel ill too. Then I’ll be just like him. Is that his goal? Does he even have a goal? Was he encouraging me to get the shot that made him sick for no other reason than he was told to do so? Was he just following programming; saying words laid down in the fertile ground of his mind? How pissed off would he be if I tried to reason with him? “Hey friend, lets sit down with a beer and I’ll tell my story about mice…”

Nope. It wouldn’t work and it would be rude on my part. He’s entitled to make his own decisions. I’m not arrogant to think it’s my task to save anyone from themselves. (I wish he’d reciprocate and offer me absolutely no advice about vaccines. But then again how much self-reflection can I expect from a guy literally suffering at his own hand?) All I can do is maintain my dumb little blog. I write stories (this one is true!). I hope most readers “get it”. Folks might come up with conclusions that differ than mine and that’s fine. So long as they’re reasoned conclusions I’m happy. However, I won’t (can’t?) drag folks, kicking and screaming, out of their cage. In fact there’s no cage at all. 2020 might have been a maelstrom of coercion but in 2023 nobody made my friend go get the shot… he drove himself to a facility and had it done for reasons which surely made sense to him.

Next fall maybe I’ll to start taking photos of mice in traps and maintain a proper count. Or maybe I’ll Google Rodentia. Or not. It’s small potatoes in the real scheme of things. I’ve plenty of opportunities to keep my mind sharp. The point is to use the opportunities. Keep your wits keen lest you lemming yourself off a cliff.

Good luck y’all.

A.C.

Mice are a fact of country life. My crappy old farmhouse doesn’t do a good job keeping them out. My rickety workshop is worse. Feed stores in the barn (for the farm animals) can get ridiculous if I don’t keep them tightly sealed. Ironically, mice don’t live in my woodpile. That’s the only truly mouse free place. It’s the territorial domain of the chipmunks (who loudly complain about my annoying presence). Chipmunks seem to police mice out of their turf. They also leave stashes of pinecone tailings in my stacked wood. I’m chill about it because pinecone bits burn and I’m happy the ‘monks stay out of the house.

Mice show up irregularly but invariably, in unwelcome spots. There’s only so much I can do about it. Even if I kill ‘em off, more will show up. Their origin is varied. They might be vagabonds from the barn, explorers from the subbasement, or wild critters looking for the easy life. Cats do an inadequate job keeping them in check. In fact my current cat is comically unimpressive as a “mouser”. Like everything, if nobody else does it, it’s Curmudgeon’s job. I use a lot of mouse traps because my cat is a lazy asshole.

Every fall, the dial goes to eleven! Things get crazy for a few weeks. As the weather turns cold, the outside mice invade. All forests and fields have mice so there’s an endless supply of critters just a few steps from my door. When it’s chilly, the mice (reasonably enough) start looking for better shelter. They wind up in my workshop or house. This annual wave happens sometime around Halloween and it always pisses me off. Luckily it dies down as soon as there’s a nice deep blanket of snow to insulate & protect the outside buggers. This year it has been seasonally cold but the snow is barely an inch. No insulating snow = a continuation of the mouse wave to annoy Mr. Curmudgeon.

Until the situation changes I’ll have to deal with an invasion; which means I’m setting lots of traps and swearing about it.

I feel like folks who don’t live near nature but dream about it need to know the annoying parts too. Just as suburban neighborhoods have monstrous HOA busybodies, quaint rural homesteads have mice. There’s a yin and yang balance to the various annoyances… though I prefer my annoyances to urban annoyances because I can and do kill mine outright.

There’s more to the story. Without bringing in a team of Rodentia biologists or going down a rabbit hole I have this idea I’m seeing two variants of mice. Some of my trap catches are a darker colored “house mouse” and others are a brownish tan “field mouse”. Maybe this is all in my head? Google certainly isn’t backing me up on my observations; so I might be completely full of shit. (Mrs. Curmudgeon’s theory is that an artifact of bad lighting in the places I set traps.)

It’s hard to learn from observation and I could be making up stories around random variation in fur color. Regardless the dark/tan variant idea is my working theory. I think the brownish mice (literally) “come in from the cold” while the darker mice were already there (probably scheming to chew my tractor’s wiring and steal the dog food). In case you’re leaping to your keyboard, I also know about voles and moles… they’re easily identifiable.

I don’t know if the dark/tan thing is true or my human mind recognizing a pattern in statistical noise. It’s a conundrum. The sort of thing I like to think about even as I’m tossing another dead rodent into the trash can.

In my shop, I have four traps. I set them up in a little Rodentia minefield. One morning I was in a hurry, I glanced at the traps and saw that one had caught a brown mouse. My only thought was “that’s a brown mouse, how many is that compared to the black mice?” I was in a hurry so I left it there to be handled later.

You have no idea where this is going but I do have a point. Stay tuned…

[In my last post I explained how, in a world where people go broke trying to buy the newest cell phone, I got all ecstatic to find a couple small dead standing trees. Why? Because they were perfect for firewood right now! They came to my attention when I ran my tractor over a much larger but freshly dead tree (not appropriate for firewood this winter, but fair game for 2024).]

In case you think I’m the kind of guy that’ll leave dollars lying on the table… the log I found was NOT ignored. The next weekend was much colder and there was a dusting of snow but I was out there with my real saw and the tractor as soon as possible. Normally, I remove rear implements and use a chain to drag complete logs toward the woodshed. Since I was still doing the “brush hog a swath every time you pass between woodshed and forest” method I kept using the bucket. The tree wasn’t huge but when I cut the 16” diameter bole into tiny workable 5’ lengths it was much harder to load! It takes a lot of grunt to get a 16” x 5’ log into a bucket. My earlier loads had been modest, a battery operated chainsaw lopping up logs the size of a fencepost. With the real saw and the real log it was definitely a harder day. Also it was fresh wood. I could feel the extra weight of all that water! Even so, God invented Ibuprofen so who am I to wimp out on something I can (barely) manage? I hauled short logs to and fro a few times (running the brush hog each time) and amassed a small truckload of chunks (not split yet)… this is a head start on next fall.

They say society is at it’s best when old men plant trees in which shade they’ll never rest. Maybe that applies at the personal level too. A person is at best when they’re preparing for 2024’s challenges even as they’re reeling from 2023’s ass kicking? Hard to say but I’m giving it a shot.

[In my last post I explained how I was driving my tractor, with the brush hog on the three point hitch, through deep weeds. I was simultaneously fretting over my inadequate winter firewood supply.]

Unexpectedly, the front tire popped high and the whole tractor tilted wildly to the side. WTF? I clicked off the PTO, hydraulically lifted the rear implement, and jammed on the brakes. I did this all in an instant. That’s the way to be good to your machinery! The front tire hadn’t come crashing down yet. I hadn’t run over whatever I’d just found. No harm, no foul! I throttled down and gingerly backed up. Then I set the brake, shut down the motor, and hopped out to investigate.

There in the weeds, absolutely invisible from above but totally obvious as I stood there, was a tree trunk. It had fallen sometime this summer. The weeds had covered it with flawless camouflage.

I paced down its length and found the spot where it had uprooted; cleverly hidden behind some tall ferns just inside the forest edge. I sat down on the log. Now what?

Are we not reasoning monkeys? Can we not weigh options?

Plowing and planting a deer plot is Springtime Curmudgeon’s problem. This tree was not the solution to Current Curmudgeon’s firewood dilemma (green trees need time to dry before they’re good firewood). But the log was part of the solution to Next Fall Curmudgeon’s firewood problem.

I thought. And I rested. It was the weekend after all. The tractor waited patiently. The leafless trees looked pretty in the pale sun. If you wait long enough usually a chickadee will show up. I love chickadees. I waited.

No chickadee showed up. But I became more aware of my surroundings. I had removed myself from the constant fret of civilization. I was happy sitting on that log. Peace!

There is nothing more beautiful than peace. I decided to do a solid for Next Fall Curmudgeon. Why not? He’s a good guy, right? As soon as I decided to attack the fallen log and prepare it to be firewood in fall 2024, my brain picked up other options I had heretofore missed.

Off in the forest, away from the shabby field where the tractor was parked, I noticed a dead tree. Nothing special about that. If you’re paying attention, you know forests are loaded with dead trees. However, this was my favorite kind of dead tree; perfect firewood! It was dead, the bark had sloughed off, it was still standing, and it was 100% sound. It wasn’t big, it was about the diameter of a roll of toilet paper. This is also perfect. Larger diameter trees are more efficient when you’re hauling tonnage out of the forest but they require extra labor to split them to the right size and they have to dry after splitting. When wood has dried just right for firewood it gets a gray tint. I could see the tint on the bare wood from 30 yards away.

I try to be appreciative whenever I find a tree that’s perfect for firewood right now. This little find wasn’t a lot but it was something Current Curmudgeon needs and it was sitting right there!

Who am I to deny good fortune when nature sends it my way?

Back on the tractor, I turned around and headed for the garage, with the brush hog shredding another 6’ swath behind me (why waste time?). At the garage I have a little electric chainsaw. I topped it off with chain oil, grabbed a battery, and headed back. I cleared my third brush hog swath as I went.

I cut down the little dead tree and bucked it into unimpressive 5’ lengths (suitable for my 5 ½’ tractor bucket). Since the tree was small, the logs weren’t heavy. I filled the bucket, drove it to my woodshed (clearing yet another brush hog swath while en route), and dropped the mess into my sawbuck. (A sawbuck is a crude wooden frame that holds short small-ish logs about waist high so they’re easier to saw into pieces. Firewood is hard. It’s double hard for a man working alone. Every little labor saving trick us evolved monkeys can invent is worth its weight in gold!)

Optimistically, I went out again. Sure enough I found a second small tree; twin to the first. Huzzah! Into the bucket it went! By then it was getting dark and the game had to end.

It doesn’t take much to dice a pile of small logs already balanced on a sawbuck and my pole light was sufficient to see. I used my real chainsaw with the sawbuck. Then I hauled the results to my house and stoked up the fire. Being a nerd I checked the water content. It was about 12%. That reading totally made my day!

(In case you’re a nerd like me, here’s the details. Wood is (or was) a living thing. It is complex like all living things are. It is not merely a uniform man-made material like a bar of aluminum or a brick. Live trees contain a stupidly huge amount of water; often more than 50% of a log’s mass. Burn that crap in your woodstove and you’ll get a lot of smoke and plug your chimney with creosote. Not good! Dead trees you find in the forest may have more moisture or less moisture. If a dead tree is elevated off the wet soil and under certain conditions… it can be quite dry; like what I’d just found. If a dead tree is in contact with the soil it’s often wet and will therefore need a while to cure. If a dead tree stays wet long enough it rots and becomes useless as fuel.

With firewood the goal is to air dry usable sized chunks of wood until they’re under 20% moisture content. Ideally I burn stuff even drier than that. It generally takes at least a year for the wood to “cure” down to <20%. Its final content is actually dependent on atmospheric conditions. In case you’re wondering, the kiln dried shit you buy at Home Depot was officially 15% when it left the kiln and it slowly adjusted to ambient relative humidity wherever it was shipped. The final complete end state depends on whether you live in a rain forest or Death Valley.

Now you know why I was so happy to find a standing dead tree that clocked in at 12% moisture content.)

So yeah, it’s just a damn log but I was delighted. Discovering a couple tiny dead trees that were exceptionally dry felt like a lottery win. I burned them over Thanksgiving and was nice and warm. Mrs. Curmudgeon and I spent much of Thanksgiving evening basking in the heat of a toasty fire. That’s what it’s all about!

I’m still going to run out of firewood sometime in March. But maybe I pushed back the day of reckoning a week or two?

I welcome winter. I’ve had a rough year and winter, no matter how harsh it may be, inevitably ends what was. It paves the way for what will be. Ice and snow is the price you pay to encounter spring. Whether you intend it or not, life begins anew each spring. I’m pretty beat and look forward to renewal.

You’re thinking “no shit Sherlock, it’s rough for everyone” and I get it. I don’t intend to get in a pissing match about who’s life sucks more. 2023 didn’t pan out well for me but it could have been worse. Everyone has complaints and they’re all heartfelt.

The question for all of us is “what are ya’ gonna’ do about it?” I’ve made my decision and it doesn’t involve getting black pilled and bitching about politics. (Sometimes I can’t help but bitch a little, forgive me. I try to keep politics on a short leash but we do life in the crazy times.) Politics isn’t that big of a deal in the overall arc of things. So there’s always hope. If you can get back up off the mat, do so. I have. I’ve been deliberately trying to be happy. I’m succeeding. Part of being happy is moving forward. For everyone else who’s 2023 sucked, I hope it’s working out for them too.

A week before Thanksgiving the weather turned unseasonably warm. The small amount of snow on the ground dissipated. I set out to “un-do” a fuck up from the hectic spring/summer. I have some land and I ignored it. Despite what suburbanite Karens and University dweebs have been made to think, the earth is not a delicate flower. It doesn’t crap out on the fainting couch if we don’t cut enough checks to the right charities. Life will find a way, and ignored fallow land goes apeshit! You have to keep up with it because nature never sleeps. My half assed little deer plots had turned into a sea of weeds. A chunk of my lawn, which is never really that nice anyway, had devolved into a feral shaggy jungle. Unbeknownst to me, several trees had fallen under all those weeds. That’s just scratching the surface.

Usually in November there is naught one can do about vegetation. You have to wait until the snow melts, then wait until the muddy soil dries enough to drive a tractor over it… by that time the spring’s orgy of greenery is well ahead of you. That’s a fact of life for a homesteader, you start the summer behind the eight ball.

This year the weather threw me a bone. Weeds are in their winter dormancy yet still exposed and vulnerable to my brush hog. If I act now, maybe next spring might be different? I formed a theory that if I shred the weeds before they lie all winter under the snow, the biomass might decay instead of clogging my disk in the spring. (A disk is a tractor implement that turns dirt, like a plow. It does great on tilled fields but sucks balls if the dirt becomes sod. If the vegetation is tall enough to wrap around the disk’s axles it’s even worse. Little details like that are the meat of living close to nature.)

So I put the implement on my tractor and started driving around with my Cuisinart of Submission. Brush hogging isn’t my favorite task. It’s a bit of a rodeo; fraught with chaos that just cries out for broken parts. You’re mowing shit you can’t see and the ground is uneven so you’re either bouncing all over the place or slowed to a crawl. Who knows what’s underneath chest high foliage? There’s an internal inconsistency in trying to go easy on the equipment while performing an inherently violent operation.

Every now and then the brush hog lets out a mighty “thump” as it impacts with… something. This isn’t always a big deal, brush hogs are designed to “give rather than explode” when encountering a rock or a stump. But still, it’s nerve-wracking. My tractor is adequate but expensive. It’s not yet paid off. I try to baby it.

While I was gingerly picking my way through this mess, other thoughts got in the way. I don’t have enough firewood.

I’m not complaining; merely acknowledging the math. Good intentions don’t mean shit and I’m absolutely going to run out of wood heat. It takes a shitload of labor to fell, haul, buck, split, and stack enough firewood to heat my drafty old house. This year my labors were spent in the service of higher duties. I stacked some wood but not enough. It is what it is.

In case you’re wondering I do have an oil fueled furnace. It heats the place enough to keep the pipes thawed and so forth. On furnace heat alone the house is “habitable” but it’s never cozy or pleasant unless the wood stove is lit. Also, the furnace is expensive as hell. The best situation is when the fire is going most of the time and fuel oil is cheap enough to take off the edge or fill in when I’m sleeping or out of the house.

Speaking of the Thanksgiving season, I had a few years “living easy” with the furnace and I truly appreciated them as they happened. I didn’t take it for granted. I miss them now that they’re gone. During those years when everyone was freaking out about horror of the Orange Menace and his mean tweets, oil was cheap. It gave me some breathing room. I could afford to buy extra fuel oil to “fill in the gaps” and stretch a somewhat limited firewood supply. It was just one of many bits of “breathing room” that I miss. If I ran low on firewood during the Glorious Reign of the Perfectly Creased Pants the cost of fuel was high and my ass was in a sling. Then again I was younger back then. I mostly got ahead of the situation through pure grit. Now that Captain Dementia has won the most votes of any president in American history, fuel is expensive again. Also, I’m a little older and slower to stack the tonnage. I didn’t manage it well last winter and did even worse this year.

The whole cycle of induced unpleasantness feels grim but also unnecessary. I didn’t like the cold forlorn 1970’s. I don’t like reliving it all over again for more or less the same reasons. Then again, I’m not in charge of such things. Neither are you. If we must relive Carter’s malaise lets do it with aplomb; pop open a can of Coke and play Nintendo, pretend it’s a can of Tab and pong. We will all spend a few years freezing and that’s just how it is. Perhaps cycles of failure are a necessary part of life?

Despite these less than pleasant thoughts, at least I was clearing brush. Solving one problem out of 99 is better than wallowing in failure. A shaky step forward is still a step forward.

Stay tuned for part 2 where I run over a tree.

“Was looking for one of the PC 800’s, but wanted to ask an actual owner (who is not trying to sell me their bike) how reliable they find it and what sort of mileage you get in actual riding?”

The comment above came from this post. I just happen to have real world data from my 1989 Honda Pacific Coast 800! Also my PC800 is not for sale! 🙂

In June I kept gas receipts on a 451 mile trip and scrawled odometer readings on them.

My 1989 Honda Pacific Coast 800 got 46.9 MPG.

Details? I’m glad you asked! Since the bike is new (to me, it’s used and from 1989) I’ve been running non-oxygenated gas. I don’t think it needs that. I’m just being careful during a “honeymoon” period. One gas station had nothing but sketchy 87 octane sludge. I was desperate for fuel so I topped off. That probably lowered MPG a smidge.

About 45% of the miles were on two lane country roads at about 65-70 MPH. About 45% was fighting crosswinds on an interstate in 75-80MPH bumper to bumper hell. The remaining 10% was crawling city gridlock.

You might do better or do worse, but my number is real world. Expect to easily break 45+ MPG over the whole range of conditions. (Note: I’m riding one up.)

As for reliability I haven’t had it long enough to “test it out”. However, I have a good feeling about it.

I put only 1,500 miles on it this summer (I had plans for more but was distracted by non-motorcycle life). The day I bought it used, I rode 300+ miles. I did this without blinking. I’ve done absolutely no maintenance. I haven’t even washed it.

I figured out how to check the oil, verified there’s oil in it, and that’s it. I haven’t lifted a finger otherwise. Nor do I plan to. I’ll do an oil change next spring and probably (hopefully) nothing else.

I don’t know it’s reliable. I think it will prove to be so.

The bike is tuned mellow. For any machine that helps reliability. It’s not working hard when you operate it. It doesn’t get hot. It doesn’t roar. It doesn’t mind blasting out of the red light but it doesn’t seem to taunt you into it either. It starts cold without bitching (manual chokes work fine y’all!). It starts every time. Everything seems well built. It’s very design and appeal is for adults riding at reasonable (not slow but not crazy) speeds.

I do find myself riding a little faster than with my cruiser. My cruiser sounds like a stampeding mass of piston driven mayhem. The fact that all that kinetic energy is bolted, somehow, into a Honda (which should be smooth), makes it feel faster than it is. Ironically, that’s a Shadow ACE 1100 which is bulletproof. I’ve put on a lot of miles to prove it. (Honda’s genius engineers built the Shadow 1100 unkillable and then tuned in vibration and sound to mimic a certain competing brand. It’s a lot like making an aerodynamically flawless car and then bolting on tailfins from 1950. But what do I know? I bought it!)

The PC800 is also a Shadow (somewhere inside there is a bored out Shadow 750). It’s proof that Honda nerds can do anything. They were ordered to engineer “chill” and they did it. It’s so smooth that the RPMs feel “perfect” when it’s zipping along at 75 MPH or so. I have to be careful because it’s easy to overdo it in towns where speed limits are lower.

The PC800 is a no-drama ride. It doesn’t have mood swings like a lot of machines. It’s happy with any speed. The ergonomics aren’t flawless but they’re pretty good. Fit and finish is great and it runs like it was built to run until the end of time. On the two lane rural blacktop (my favorite) I like it feels like it’ll run until continents drift, the planet’s orbit deteriorates, and the sun is about to flare out.

I get your concern. Buying a PC800 feels weird. They’re funky, rare, and old. All that plastic is nerve wracking. You wonder “what if this thing needs wrenching”. I’ve no answer for that. I’m a shitty mechanic. The guys at my local dealership would fake their own death and move to Bolivia if I asked them to work on a PC800. I sure as hell don’t want to get into that Rubic’s cube of a bike anytime soon.

The thing is, it may not happen. My Shadow 1100 lets it all hang out in a way mechanics adore; but I’ve never had to do jack squat with it. Something about the PC 800’s weirdness encourages us to fret that the bike will ultimately demand attention. Yet once I got over my apprehension I realize I’d parked it next to a 24 year old bike that never needed much more than tires and oil. One can fret over the unknown but there’s a good chance the weird little PC 800 will roll for ten years or 50 without the rider touching a screwdriver. If not, I’ll piss and moan but then figure it out.

Some other details of interest to a PC800 shopper. My bike has been dropped… though probably gently. It’s not “showroom perfect” but it didn’t explode on contact with pavement either. (It was probably dropped decades ago.) The scratches are ok with me and I feel like I got a false start looking for showroom / museum level plastic when I’m not a “showroom” type of guy. Once I was seeking cheap and no-mechanical issues and was willing to accept slightly dinged I had more options. All the dings did was shave a few bills off the seller’s price and they’re really quite irrelevant. They have no effect on anything and you can’t see them unless you’re looking hard. When you buy a bike you practically crawl all over it freaking out over every scratch. I did. Within a week I couldn’t remember why I cared. I wanted a mile-eater, not a display piece. And it looks flawless at 5′ distance.

In return for overlooking (a tiny bit of) cosmetic scruff, I (hopefully) got a bike that is probably in the sweet spot for reliability. It had under 16,000 miles on the odometer. That’s peanuts to a bike like the PC800. They have a good reputation for high miles. Anything under 75,000 miles is probably “young” for a PC800.

Exceptionally low miles is sometimes as much a red flag as exceptionally high. However, the previous owner is the one who took the risk. He bought and “resurrected” a bike that had been idle for decades. He (not I) paid to have it “gone through” by a mechanic. A few years later he aged out of riding and I purchased it. I think that it worked out well for him too. Potential issues from sitting idle never happened. My understanding is that he swapped tires and fluid and it was more or less good as new. Buying a “running daily driver” I hoped that if it formerly had rats living in the air filter, such things had been resolved a few years ago. As always Caveat Emptor. Also, chill out; this ain’t a $20 grand financial payment with wheels, nobody’s dropping megabucks on a PC800. I’d be happy with mine even if I’d had to pay double the actual purchase price.

It’s only fair to add some negative comments but I don’t have many. People complain that the gas tank is small, and it is. (I’ll eventually get a “spare gas carrying solution”.) I spent $20 to put an air pad on the Corbin seat; which improved ass comfort at the cost of a miniscule increase in air buffeting to the top of the helmet. Occasionally a motorcycle guy will freak out that I own an abomination but who goes around trying to impress other dudes? An equal number of people are enthused to see a “new high tech 2023 scooter”. Is there anything else from 1989 that looks “futuristic“? If so what would that be? A Walkman? A VCR? I’ve had a few women call it “cute”. I feel like the bike is small, but when I park it I realize it’s quite portly. I need to use two hands to open the trunk which is the very slightest inconvenience when I’ve got a helmet in one hand. That’s about all I can bitch about.

Positive comments? I could write a book! Mostly it does the miraculous thing of not being a pain in the ass. It performs without the slightest hesitation, drama, or hassle. Don’t worry about the “little” 800cc engine. Unless you’re towing or weigh 900 pounds it’s the  Goldilocks perfect size. You won’t beat a GL1800 (or most other bikes) in a drag race but you don’t want a PC800 to do wheelies and hooligan about anyway. If you’re doing actual sane road riding it’ll keep up with the biggest GL1800 or HD bagger and carry about as much gear. I wouldn’t hesitate to ride mine coast to coast right now. (Curses that it’s winter!)

Personally I love the way it was designed and wish more mikes were like this. It’s not “as good as” a Goldwing, but (in my humble opinion) better. ‘Wings are the touring boss and I expected to love them. But when test driving used ‘Wings they “got in the way”. I want to hop on a bike and roll without drama. A Goldwing starting felt like a fucking laptop boot up. All that high-tech stuff on modern bikes turns me off. They feel like gadget heavy Christmas trees. The PC800 is the opposite. It leaves me alone to enjoy myself.

Here’s a quote I took from Jalopnik:

“Honda wanted this motorcycle to be all about the riding experience without any of the downsides. The engine isn’t encased in plastic and rubber mounts to hide it away from a car driver, but to attract someone who may not want to wrench on their own motorcycle. It’s why Honda went to great lengths to make it as maintenance-free as possible.”

That’s kind of what I’m trying to get at. The PC800 doesn’t get up in your face. Mine doesn’t even have a radio; which is cool because I don’t want a radio. Even the dash makes me happy. For example, the Neutral indicator light isn’t a post-literacy ideogram; it says “NEUTRAL”. Real letters that make an actual English language word! See what I mean? When was the last time you had a car where the “high beam” indicator said “HIGH BEAM”? Why the hell not?!?

The PC800 steps into the background and just lets you ride. It feels like cars quit leaving you alone years ago. Most touring motorcycles followed suit. The absence of bullshit on the PC800 attracts me. It repels folks that want to Bluetooth synch their cell phone into their motorcycle’s navigation GUI. Where you fall on that spectrum is up to you.

I’m sure I will have more to post next summer. (I bought some “moto-camping” gear and daydream of mellow camping/touring.) Be patient and you’ll surely find a good quality PC800. Also, don’t pressure yourself to jump at the first one you see or freak out paying a few hundred more to get one that you prefer. They’re good bikes that a public failed to recognize and now Honda makes so much bank on Goldwings they may never make a “smaller tourer” again.

Good luck.

A.C.

My snowshoes were bought in Kittery Maine about 35(!) years ago. I don’t know if the store still exists. I barely know if Maine still exists. I’m not sure why I remember the purchase location (the mind is a weird thing).

Over the years they dried out but thankfully they weren’t too dried out. The wood frame hadn’t cracked or split. (Once the wood is shot, traditional snowshoes are done. They become decorative wall hangers.) The dry rawhide and wood was easily remedied, as I’ll discuss later. Bindings was the harder and more immediate task.

My snowshoes (and most traditional snowshoes) have bindings made of some sort of artificial leather-ish substance. This material didn’t hold up as well as “natural” stuff like wood and rawhide. It got dried out and brittle and just generally “yucky”. Here’s what the top part of the binding looked like after removal from the snowshoe.

Shot bindings are not fatal, they can be replaced! The binding on a traditional snowshoe and the rest of the snowshoe are almost different beings. They need to work together at a pivot point but beyond that they can have different materials and varying design… most importantly, you can replace bindings without too much drama. (In my case, the hardest part was finding a guy selling snowshoe bindings.)

The pivot point on my shoes is unusual. At the time I thought it was a cool design. (I still think it’s a cool design.) I guess it wasn’t popular. I’ve never personally seen another snowshoe like mine (I didn’t search Google looking for their long lost twin or anything).

All snowshoe bindings must have some pivot or flex. Mine have a “spinning on a metal axis” approach. Most traditional bindings pivot on a knot tied in some sort of strapping. (This makes sense for a technology invented by peoples who had lots of leather and cordage but limited metal.) The strapping flexes, which is definitely the whole point of certain kinds of cordage, so it does work. But it seems odd to me in our modern world.  I don’t try to make car axles out of neoprene, why would I use that material as the flex point on a snowshoe? (Then again what do I know? I think belt drive on Harleys is weird and they work just as well as shaft drive; which is what I think of as “normal”.)

My bindings (which I’ve already admitted are unusual) had aluminum cleats underneath; facing down into whatever I’ll be stomping on. This is a photo from after it was removed and cleaned up and lightly sanded.

Bolted to the cleat was a little “axle holder”. It had a small plastic(?) bushing that goes between the pivoting cleat and the metal rod that’s solidly affixed to each snowshoe.

This was all covered (on the underneath side) by a yellow patch of neoprene (?). I think that was to keep ice from building up on the “axle”. It definitely “cleaned up” the look.

I’m astounded how well all those parts survived decades of age and use. The axle assembly thingamabob was held on by two stainless steel screws with two locknuts. After all those years I expected a struggle with corrosion. It popped apart like it was brand new! Nice! I reused the screws and lock nuts.

Aside from the two bolts holding the “axle thinbamabob” there were four rivets holding the grizzled old neoprene (?) bindings to the aluminum base. I cut the rivets off with a Dremel tool.

The replacement binding wasn’t intended for my odd snowshoe. It’s designed to be laced onto a generic snowshoe using the slots only. I got creative and drilled two screw holes in the front and four holes to match the holes in my cleats (the ones that formerly had rivets through them). I also bought big bad pop rivets. I wound up using about the biggest pop rivets I would want to do by hand.

I paid something like $75 for these bindings, which is a fair price for something so rare. (The guy selling them gave “build your own snowshoe” classes. He kindly gave me advice on my project and also sold me the bindings.) The pop rivet tool was about $15 and I’ll surely use it again in the future.

Here’s a photo of a binding taken after I’d attacked it with a leather punch.

Skipping topics and going back to the snowshoes. This is what mine look like without the bindings. The metal rod is apparently uncommon. Also, that’s corned beef hash with eggs cooked over a Coleman burner running on unleaded. Breakfast of champions!

It was easier to fix the dried out rawhide and wood than I expected. The solution is to slather it with a lot of spar varnish. Use a lot! You could just slap it on with a paintbrush but you really want to lay it on heavy. It’s probably pretty wasteful of expensive varnish. Did I mention you can’t use too much varnish? Ideally you should do this more often than every three decades(!). I guess some people do it once a year. I might start doing that.

The snowshoe building class guy had a container filled with several gallons of spar varnish. That shit ain’t cheap and dumping 3 or 4 gallons into a container is a real investment! When people make their own snowshoes (in his class) they need to “dip” their new creations. For a fee, the snowshoe guy “dipped” my snowshoes too! To “dip” is a lot easier than using a paint brush and if you dip many snowshoes it’s far more efficient. Ideally you’d have many snowshoes ready to dip at a time to avoid wasting varnish.

You can’t see it in the picture but my snowshoes turned from “old and worn” to “gleaming with potential”! It was a sticky gross mess for a while. Hanging them overnight in an old barn had them 95% dry but it would take a little longer to fully dry out. I like the smell of varnish. They looked great and I was delighted! (Note: Don’t “dip” binders in the varnish. Remove the binders before you get varnish on them!)

In my case, the metal rods (I got no idea what kind of metal) got a little bit sticky from the varnish. Assuming friction on sticky “axles” would be a bad thing, I sanded them smooth.

Here’s a test fit of the finished binding with a big honkin’ winter boot.

Conclusion:

I spent a little under $100 and made old snowshoes just as good as new. It hasn’t snowed enough for me to test them out but I’m confident they’ll do fine. I’ve never wanted mukluks more than when I look at the gleaming rebuilt snowshoes. (Boots work with snowshoes but I wonder if mukluks work better. I’ve never owned mukluks. God I love that word!)

For comparison here’s a cell phone from roughly the same era as my snowshoes. Ha! Wood and rawhide has beaten plastic and circuits once more!

Happy winter y’all!

The thing about traditional snowshoes is that you’ve got to take care of them like the delicate equipment they are… ha ha ha… bullshit! I abused my snowshoes for years and then rebuilt them without a lot of drama. I spent under $100 on maintenance after three decades and there’s a good chance I’ll die before they wear out again.

Here’s a photo of my snowshoes leaning against my tent. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take photos of them before I started messing with them. This is the only photo I’ve got from “before rebuild”.

Yeah, there’s no snow. I was carrying them around because I was looking for parts. I don’t know about you but I can’t find “snowshoe parts” locally. I didn’t have enough information to buy parts online. So I carried them with me, bouncing around in my truck, whenever I happened to road trip past a likely seller. It took a while to find what I was looking for.

Of course, you shouldn’t be a slob like me. Treat all your gear like it’s important. Also you should eat your vegetables, stop swearing, and hit the gym. I’m not going to feel guilty about beat up equipment (at least snowshoes). I think sometimes people get a little “into” their stuff and become “maintenance bots” for gear that practically owns them instead of vice versa.

Snowshoes are tools; like a dumptruck or a shovel. Mine serve a purpose. I don’t think of them as an heirloom so much as a “favorite tool”. (I have a “favorite” shovel too.) I’ll happily beat the living shit out of my snowshoes because they’re not decorative wall hangers.

Daily care:

When you get out of the woods, shake off the excess snow before it freezes on. Then dry them out in your house. Or don’t. If you’re going back out there soon, it might be a good idea to shake them off and leave them cold.

I learned this from experience. A million years ago I had a job where I worked on snowshoes day after day. I’d try to dry the snowshoes overnight but instead they just got wet but never quite dry; over and over. The rawhide got a little grunky being wet over and over again… like a rawhide chew toy that’s been gnawed on by a Rottweiler. I would have been better off leaving them froze and just thawing / drying on weekends. What can I say? I was young and stupid. No worries, the snowshoes survived my mistreatment.

They say you ought to treat your snowshoes with spar varnish every year or as often as possible. This is excellent advice which I didn’t follow. (This only applies to traditional snowshoes that are made of stuff that can dry out, not space age plastic/neoprene/aluminum hybrid modern snowshoes.)

Storage:

My big advice is hang snowshoes on the wall when you’re not using them. They can sit on the wall, covered with dust and cobwebs, indefinitely. If they’re leaning up against a shelf or whatnot, they’ll get in the way and you’ll invariably step on them and break them. Plus snowshoes look cool hung on the wall! It’s probably best if they’re out of direct sun but they obviously don’t suffer from being cold. (UV messes with stuff.) Don’t leave them where they’ll get wet (hence the hanging part). It is perfectly OK to hang snowshoes in a drafty old woodshed for years at a time… provided the mice don’t eat ’em. Mice never gnawed on my snowshoes. I don’t know if that’s normal or I was just lucky.

More in my next post.

In my last post I talked about “traditional snowshoes”. These are the wood and rawhide devices that look so “old school cool” that people hang them on walls at rustic bars. If you’re traversing Greenland or packing out a caribou, you probably want traditional snowshoes. Also, if you’re traversing Greenland or packing out a caribou you shouldn’t be taking advice from some rando on the internet!

On to modern snowshoes. Traditional snowshoes aren’t rare but you can’t pick them up at a box store. Conversely, you can buy modern snowshoes just about anywhere, even Amazon. That’s a hint that they’re a different critter.

If you’re a svelte person, more likely to wear spandex than wool and are more likely to be “recreating” than “working”, modern snowshoes make a lot more sense. Slogging around with wood and rawhide is cool but it’s unnecessary for your needs. There’s nothing wrong with new technology and they’ll probably save you money.

Modern snowshoes are a lot tamer and yet in some ways look cooler. You can find 10,000 variants but they have similarities in appearance (if not specific design and materials). Some modern snowshoes are serious equipment and some are more like toys. They all look like something from the Jetsons compared to traditional snowshoes.

Modern snowshoes have a much smaller hoop, usually made of aluminum tubing or something similar. This is spanned by a piece of neoprene or similar artificial flexible fabric-ish stuff that covers most or all of the whole area. This is a big difference from the wider spread lacing of a traditional snowshoe.

Modern snowshoes are (usually?) lighter, cheaper to buy (unproven?), and still last a long time (though not as long as their unkillable ancestor). Being lighter and cheaper they’re the vast majority of snowshoes sold. Remember how I said all things are a compromise? The big traditional snowshoes may wear you out but the smaller snowshoes will sink deeper if the snow is deep and fluffy. Life is like that.

Here’s a photo of modern snowshoes from Amazon (I haven’t tested these myself). Just look at them! Compared to me clomping away like Jeremiah Johnson, someone on modern snowshoes looks like they’ve got jet powered footwear. They’re orange fer Chrissake! Kids and recreationalists who sneer at bent ash frames readily get on board with modern snowshoes. The ones in this photo even come with a carrying case and poles. I completely understand why people like modern snowshoes.

However, it’s all about floatation and compromise. Ready for me to say a statement that will piss people off? Here goes…

I theorize that the vast majority of miles hiked are done on traditional snowshoes. Yet the majority of sales are modern snowshoes.

Now I’m going to duck for cover as people hurl rocks at me.

Don’t worry though. There’s a time and a place for a simple easy to carry “backup snowshoe” or “recreation snowshoe”. If you’re running a trapline and cover most of the ground by snowmobile, it would make sense to have little snowshoes strapped on your sled and only use them for the last few hundred yards between the sled trail and the trap. Same for maple syrup operations on the wet slushy end of winter. Their small size makes them perfect as a backup in case your tracked ATV has an electrical gremlin and won’t start.

They’re also perfect where you need some flotation but aren’t trekking a million miles in deep drifts. A windswept lake with packed snow interspersed with open areas or a heavily treed area that doesn’t get a lot of drifting is where a small modern shoe is perfect. Same for where a trail is already broken for you. If eleventy zillion snowmobiles have packed the trail, modern snowshoes are an excellent option.

I’d probably go for them if I were climbing something steep and icy too. (Modern snowshoes can have more jagged gripping surfaces than the wooden framed traditional style.)

Also, they’re great when you’re light. Not everyone is dragging 50 pounds of beaver pelts across the Canadian Rockies. If you’re a light person on a short jaunt like birdwatching or whatnot, why go overboard?

So that’s my two cents and it’s worth what ya’ paid for it. If you’ve got modern snowshoes that are plastic and came from Walmart yet you used them to cross a glacier during a two week Dall Sheep hunt… I bow to your different experiences.

Also, lets back up and mention safety. Deep snow can kill your ass dead.

You should never be more than a mile from your truck wallowing around in deep snow without a plan; either modern or traditional snowshoes are better than playing Donner Party six miles out. Most people have no idea what wading through 5′ drifts can do to you. It’s horrible! Snowshoes aren’t obsolete! Unless you’re nine feet tall to stride through deep snow or have mastered the ability to hover, have a plan! Also, your snowmobile isn’t invulnerable.

I’m linking to a few YouTube videos comparing modern and traditional snowshoes: here and here.

More in my next post.

“When life hands you lemons, quit making analogies about fruit drinks. Get off your ass and do something.”

Winter is already here. I hardly remember summer. It was all a blur! Oh well, winter’s undeniable so so there’s naught for it but to make the best of it. Winter comes with snow. Snow, if you live far enough north, is more or less impassible on foot. Most people hardly notice this because they never venture beyond cleared paths and manmade (plowed) areas. I try to get out there where God intended… with mixed results.

I don’t have ten grand to drop on a mid-level used snowmobile (and I know little enough about snowmobiles that I’d probably get screwed in the purchase). The solution (or rather one of many adaptations) is a set of snowshoes.

This ain’t my first rodeo. I already got me some snowshoes. However, they’re beat to shit. Thus, life’s video game offers a side quest. “Your snowshoes are shot. Buy new? Or rebuild?” I decided to rebuild ’cause that’s how I roll.

[Note: I have experiential knowledge using traditional snowshoes. I don’t know about the market for them and especially new technologies. I just bought a pair and used them for 35(!) years. If the newfangled ones are God’s gift to mobility I simply haven’t experimented with them enough to know. Forgive any inadvertent error in my upcoming advice.]

Broadly speaking, snowshoes come in two types: traditional and modern. (I’ve no idea what some REI salesman would call “modern” snowshoes. I do know that nothing REI sells is “traditional”. Virtually any big box “sporting goods” store might stock a zillion modern snowshoes but no traditional ones.)

Ugh… I just know someone is going to pedantic me into the ground for this topic…

Deep breath. Here goes:

Traditional snowshoes (like mine) are based on a largish elongated wood hoop, usually but not necessarily ash. This is crisscrossed (laced) with a mesh. The mesh is either rawhide (hard core traditional) or something that looks like a flattish widened shoelace. The hoop and lacing (regardless of material chosen) is slathered with a big dose of waterproofing (usually varnish). YMMV but I think the shoelace stuff is both cheaper and lighter than rawhide. I’m not implying the shoelace material is inferior. My snowshoe is laced in rawhide; which was a lot more common 35 years ago.

They come in an array of shapes. Here’s an image with three different shapes of traditional snowshoes. I found it at “Snowshoe Magazine“. The important point here is that there’s a magazine about snowshoes! I did not know that. Did you know that? I’m sure they’re super experts compared to me.

The job of a snowshoe is to float on the top of the snow. Snowshoes vary in this because snow itself is highly variable. A snowshoe will work best under condition X and less well under condition Y. None are perfect for everything.

Traditional snowshoes generally float more than modern variants. Thus, they’re better for deep snow. This can be a big deal if the snow is soft and fluffy. If you’re sinking into snow that’s balls deep, life can really suck. It’s easy to get exhausted flailing around in the drifts. Waist deep snow with no or inadequate snowshoes will feel like crawling through cement. After 100 yards you’ll be battered and a mile of that shit might kill ya’!

On a traditional snowshoe, some snow pushes through the mesh with each step (at least if it’s fluffy snow). That’s ok, it’s a game of percentages. If 95% stays underfoot and 5% comes through, it’s great. The snow will (hopefully) fall back through the mesh on your next step.

If the snow is wet and sloppy, sometimes the mesh will get gummed up with packed snow. It’s not a big deal. Periodically kick your snowshoes clean and pray for colder weather.

If the snow is tightly packed, a snowshoe can often walk on top like it’s a sidewalk. That’s the best!

Also, and I’m not recommending this at all, snowshoes will spread your weight out if you’re on thin ice. (It’s better to never go on thin ice of course!) At least once in my life, snowshoes have “saved” me when I “walked” right over an open well! It had a thin layer of snow and some brush covering it. It was more or less invisible. Without snowshoes it might have sucked me in like a pit trap! (I still shudder a little when I think about that!)

The point I’m trying to make is that floating on top of snow is a good thing but to do so requires an uneasy compromise between forces. Traditional snowshoes lean towards always floating in the worst scenarios at the expense of being larger and a little less ideal for “easy” conditions.

I tend to assume traditional snowshoes are heavier but that’s not necessarily the case.

Part of the weight is the same for both kinds of snowshoe. With any snowshoe, you’re going to be wearing big honkin’ boots. Big boots are heavy. I’m thinking of getting mukluks. I don’t really need them but I really like saying “mukluk”.

All snowshoes have bindings. (In my opinion all snowshoe bindings suck.) Bindings tie the snowshoe to your pre-existing boot or mukluk. They pivot when you step, often dragging the rear of the snowshoe like a lizard’s tail. They adapt to any boot; the exact opposite of downhill skis where you need special boots to match the crap you’re strapping to the boots.

Traditional snowshoes are tough. They’re pretty much unkillable. Within reason you can use them as improvised snow shovels or balance them on top of a drift at the edge of a plowed area to give yourself a place to sit. You can probably beat a wolverine to death with them.

My limited experience suggests that flat out hard core winter trekker / camping people (which has got to be the smallest % of the population you’ll ever find) prefer traditional snowshoes. I’m not 100% sure of that because I go alone and I’m no longer super hard core about it. But that’s how I’d bet. If you’ve got a neighbor planning to “winter hike” the Iditarod Trail, he’s probably using traditional snowshoes. Just to be sure, ask him for me.

Traditional snowshoes are probably best for heavy loads. Weight sinks. If you’re a beefy (Curmudgeon sized) woodsman, the smaller modern variants might not help you as much. And by the way, heavier weight doesn’t mean you’ve been sitting on the couch freebasing Twinkies. It could be from a heavy pack, fifteen layers of jackets, ice fishing gear, or carrying stuff. If you’re lugging a chainsaw or an elk quarter, you need big snowshoes.

I’ve run a chainsaw while on traditional snowshoes! I’m not saying I recommend it, but it works. Smaller modern snowshoes might not help you with those kinds of challenges.

If you’re in deep snow, far from the packed trail (thus encountering all sorts of changing conditions), and possibly working or carrying a load I recommend traditional snowshoes.

Also traditional snowshoes make you look like a mountain man! Who doesn’t want that? It’ll match your beard. If you don’t have a beard but snowshoe a lot, you will grow one. (As for the ladies, the workout of snowshoeing means you’ll eventually have an ass like hardened steel. Go for it, you hot nature goddess!)

Traditional snowshoes come in a million shapes. Some are narrow and long, for snaking through the underbrush. Others (like mine) are wider for drifts. Every shape is a compromise between opposing forces. Wider snowshoes (like mine) will have you walking bow-legged like a cowboy.

There are many kits and workshops to build your own traditional snowshoes. I think this is cool and they look like a fun project. Don’t assume the thing you’ll build will be inferior. It may be just as good as anything you can buy. My snowshoes were purchased so I don’t get brag about building my own gear. Then again my snowshoes lasted a long time and have earned a place in snowshoe Valhalla.

In my next post, I’ll talk about “modern” snowshoes.