You wake up one day and realize your head feels thick and slow, and it hasn't escaped you that winter's the season of suicides and weight gain, and it's been months since you've driven with the window down or blasted Born to Run so loud even the policeman pulling you over suffers a nosebleed.

In fact, last night, you caught yourself whining about what was on TV, (OK, that wasn't you, that was me), so I dragged my butt down to the Man Cave, said the hell with reason, and got the skis prepped for the coming weekend's Stupidity Run to a Frozen Alpine Lake
-- a horror-show in the making whereby my brother and I ski many miles to a frozen alpine lake and see if we can't chip a hole in the ice to fish.

That doesn't happen for a couple days, so later today I'm filling the car with fly fishing gear, rolling down the window, risking a ticket (because you have to speed when you play Springsteen), and getting the hell off the property.

Dave Roberts openly wondered exactly what obscure point I was trying to prove with the ski trip, but I don't think there's a point hidden in here anywhere.

In simplest terms, this is spring landing a little too late; the season-sized equivalent of a mid-life crisis, writ small in the snow.

Blast and cast Undergrounders. It's time to run. More as it happens.

See you anywhere, but not if I see you first, Tom Chandler.