'It feels like 70 out here'

This winter has been like the jog up the 10th Street hill, the one James Hendricks dreads because it goes on and on, and halfway up the hill he is half-sure he'd rather die than keep going.

And yet here is Hendricks, pounding the pavement Thursday morning past the ConAgra campus, dodging the last patches of black ice, huffing and puffing his way up that long incline toward the Durham Museum.

Here is Hendricks when he finishes his four-mile run: He unzips his black Nike running jacket and laughs.

Feel free to join in, Omaha.

Unzip that parka, dump your de-icer onto the driveway and cackle directly into Old Man Winter's face.

Never mind that it is 10 a.m. and barely above freezing.

“It feels like 70 out here!” Hendricks jokes, channeling all Nebraskans and Iowans who heralded 40-degree weather like it was a heat wave.

Then the runner quotes an Omaha boy who became president.

“Our long national nightmare is over,” he says.

Borrowing Gerald Ford's famous line about Watergate to describe Omaha's winter may seem a stretch, but then again, have you been outside since mid-December?

First it froze solid, and then — Merry Christmas! — it snowed two feet.

Then it got stupid cold — a crisp minus-20 on Jan. 4 — and then it snowed some more.

Then the sun went on strike — there was only one cloudless day in February — and it stayed cold. And we grumbled our way through gray skies and parked next to dirty snow mountains and shivered our way through smoke breaks and shoveled and pouted and scraped and ... .

“Over now,” says Hendricks, a matter-of-fact type and self-described running addict who spent months working out inside on a treadmill before resuming his outside runs last week. “Time to look ahead.”

So let's turn our eyes to that distinctly middle-aged male symbol of spring and interrupt Fred Hinsley as he prepares to take his first outdoor golf swing since Thanksgiving.

He strikes a 7-iron and it flies high and straight, curves downward in a gentle and beautiful arc ... and plunges directly into the gigantic snowdrift that blankets the driving range at Miracle Hill Golf Course.

So it's not exactly spring yet at Miracle Hill. The course is covered in a half-foot of snow — you'd need an Alaskan caddy, four sled dogs and a golfball-locating Predator drone to actually play a round.

But they've cleared the driving range, and three hardy souls are hitting shots by 1 p.m.

Hinsley wears a shirt under a hooded sweatshirt under a fleece jacket and doesn't deny that he's a tad bit obsessed.

The infoGROUP employee is used to practicing five days a week. He played at least once every calendar month from March 2008 until last December.

And, like a true golf junkie, he sets himself firm rules.

No golf until the thermometer hits 40. Unless it's sunny — then no golf until it reaches 35.

Hinsley tried to ignore his golfing pangs during the long winter. He regularly worked out at a gym for the first time in several years. He practiced his putting stroke.

He thought about asking his wife if he could move her car outside so he could swing in the garage. He thought better of it.

Now he's back where he belongs, and he barely notices that he's standing in the shade and hitting golf balls off a mat drenched with snowmelt as a snowplow rumbles behind him, clearing the parking lot.

“You're cold?” he asks a visitor. “I feel pretty good.”

Pretty good. That's how Sarah Johnson feels, too, as she pedals to her new job as manager of the just-opened Greenstreet Cycles in north downtown.

She ditches the stocking cap she's been wearing under her bike helmet. She joyously pedals down 50th Avenue, cuts over to Leavenworth Street and zips toward downtown. She notices that her ears are getting stiff. She hits black ice. She barely avoids biting pavement.

“I was a little overly excited,” she says. “Like, ‘Yay, it's spring!' and forget about the slick patches in the shade.”

Johnson wasn't so lucky in January, when she refused to stop riding despite the constant snow.

Until she hurried to make a left turn on 50th Avenue, hit an ice patch and spilled right onto the street, her feet still clipped to the pedals.

“Just bruises,” she says. “Mostly my pride.”

She tried to stay sane with some cross-country skiing and the occasional short bike ride to the grocery store.

But the ice pack on the side streets wouldn't melt, and the urge to ride wouldn't go away.

You think those potholes are bad in a Toyota? Try 'em on a Trek.

Johnson will admit it: The winter got her down.

Which is exactly why she's happy to be helping customers pick out new bikes on Greenstreet's first week of business. The bike shop, next to the Film Streams movie theater on Mike Fahey Street, opened Monday.

She's excited about planning some group rides. She's excited about celebrating spring, whenever it truly arrives, with a long ride across the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge and over to the Wabash Trace in Iowa.

Take that, winter.

“The cool thing is, now everybody is chomping at the bit,” she said. “We're ready. It's time.”

Contact the writer:

444-1064, matthew.hansen@owh.com

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