Montreal does this thing where for four months of the year your days are slush and darkness. The monotony seeps in and the state becomes immutable. You no longer mind, you adapt and deal. Winter biking, impervious to the biting cold, skiing on the mountain to remember what the world outside the window looks like, drinking mugs of spiked everything and wearing grandfather's sweaters, you let grayhaze depression say hello but fight to not quite let it settle in. You get goodnatured validation looking at all the wellheeled Tranochildren who feel the need to wear $700 polar expedition parkas and $150 galoshes in the city while your outdated kamiks and softshell hold their structural integrity but turn greyer and filthier as the season wears on. You get slippers for the math building so you never have to go outside. You think about replacing your bike chain for an entire month.
Then one day the thermometer peaks just above zero and you notice it's four pm and still not dark and for the first time in months you take off your gloves and bike barehanded, the pleasure of the contoured handlebars under your softening callouses hard to explain. So you buy sausages at the butchershop and barrel down the streets off the Main with groceries on your back and your head full of the melodies and noise of the Talking Heads, grit from the salty snowmelt in your hair and glasses and teeth, hearing the ices finally crack.
