Friday, October 16, 2009

How to Hold Your Mutant

Recently while riding in to work in the morning I was caught off guard by how cold it was. Most of me was fine, but my bare hands (fingers in particular) were aching. It was one the first days that I was riding "Mutant Winter". I have decided to rename her "Mutant Winter" because I really like saying and typing "Mutant Winter". Mutant & Winter are two excellent words when used together. Firstly, they describe pretty much how the cycling (especially in the worst parts) of winter feels. On the coldest days I look much like a scuba diver, sans snorkel: mutant. On the heaviest snow days I am the only cyclist for miles around: mutant. My bike is a fairly nice dirt jumper transformed into a weirdly fendered, pink cabled, plastic-tub-carrying abomination: mutant. Secondly, it sounds like an excellent name for certain kinds of bands, or maybe a nice scary movie...



background image used with permission from: the-becka.blogspot.com In an act of abnormal respect of copyright, I discovered that the blog from which I grabbed the image was authored by a woman not far from me, here in Southern Ontario! Her stuff isn't for everyone, but I thought it was pretty cool.

Anyway, my hands were really cold, and I had no mitts or gloves with me. So, in true mutant fashion, I grabbed a pair of old spare socks out of my way groovy blue Winter Mutant tub, and stuck 'em on my hands. Nothing says "mutant" like sock hands. That did the trick for the coldness, but shifting was difficult because my thumb was trapped. If only the sock on my right hand had been blessed with the hole I found on my left hand, all would have been well. Please do not comment on how how I could have switched the socks. I had already stopped once to put them on, and I wasn't stopping again, no way. In addition, that would have placed the baggy heel part on the top, which totally goes against my personal rules of hand sock fashion (I honestly thought that to myself at the time, god help me). My left hand sock action was great, so much so that I put it back on and took a picture when I was home that evening:



So, the answer to the age-old question "how should I hold my mutant?" is finally fully clear to me: with sock hands. When you think about it, what other answer could there possibly be?




Please don't stop reading this blog because I am a mutant in thought, deed and written word...


M U T A N T W I C K

PS - I came this close to registering mutantwinter.com and throwing a web page up just for fun, in case anybody tried to go there. I managed to resist, without any help from my sweet wife. I guess I'm not 100% mutant just yet...

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you ever been told you look a little like Matt Damon?

RANTWICK said...

Well, yes, I have. He's got a squinty eye and a big round one too, of course, but lacks the protruding tongue and grey pallor, so I don't really get it.

Apertome said...

Haha, very funny post.

My wife did the sock-mittens thing once, on a hike. Here's a photo.

Big Oak said...

You have sock holes in funny places. My sock holes are all on the end of my socks where my big toe is.

Steve A said...

Pink - by another name. Fickle, thy name is Ranwick!

RANTWICK said...

Steve A - Not so! Her name was never Pink, it was "Winter". I have merely made a mutant modifier, so mellow, my man!

RANTWICK said...

Big Oak - same here! In this case, even the hole was a mutant!

Apertome - she didn't look mutant-y at all!

Steve A said...

Just out of curiosity, is there some particular reason there's a need to carry around old socks with holes in them? If the bike is so light you're afraid it might float away, lead weights would take up less space. If you carry spare socks in case your riding ones get wet, ones without holes would be nicer for the feet. It seems like carrying a sapre tube - that has a hole in it.

On the other hand, there's a lot to be said for serendipity. You'd probably have been reluctant to cut holes in nice socks.

RANTWICK said...

The original hole was quite small. I expanded it by pushing my thumb through.

I don't know why those socks were in there... they were a leftover from last winter!

cafiend said...

Cold can demand all kinds of improvisation. Some of it can be quite indelicate.

GreenComotion said...

Nice sock mitts dude! I have done the same once, though I didn't poke a hole in the sock.

Great idea and cool post!!

I am gonna use a Rantwick pic in my next picture. Hope that's cool!!

Peace :)

RANTWICK said...

Chandra - you hereby have permission to use anything you want off my blog, for the rest of time.

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