Category: cycling

With the recent thaw and freeze the deep snow of the last two weeks has been replaced with pleasantly hard ground and a light dusting of snow over ice; perfect conditions for winter riding with studded tires. The new single track at River Bends was like pavement with trivial bits of ice and far, far more fun than the last time I attempted to ride it.

Tonight’s ride netted just under 16 miles, which is not bad for the first ride of the year, only one day later than last year’s first ride of the year. It was pretty uneventful, save for some weird car traffic in a local neighborhood. First I had someone pass me then pull in front of me while turning into a driveway, but this wasn’t close enough to be properly threatening. Then, a few seconds later, someone turned right in front of me, realized that they’d just pulled in front of someone and pulled over, then almost rear-ended a parked car while doing so. It’s really silly, especially considering that I’m essentially wearing a car headlight on my head and with a multiple-mile-visible blinky red light on the back of my bike. I guess it’s better than daytime riding when people just don’t see you at all.

Tonight I finally also tried out the Pearl Izumi Barrier GTX shoes that a friend of mine is trying to sell. While my toes were numb after 1.5 hours of riding they were just fine for the first hour, and they seem to be quite a bit better than my Sidis with neoprene shoe covers. They also come with toe studs, and it won’t be possible to get snow inside of them like I can my shoe covers, which makes my feet rather wet. The whole shoe is insulated, they fit reasonably well (perhaps a little loose), and were quite comfortable when coupled with long tights and tall wool socks. I think I’ll purchase these from him.

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Today I headed out for an afternoon ride up to River Bends on the Titus fitted with studded tires. Thanks to my neighbors who seem to feel they have no obligation to clear the path/sidewalk that runs along their house, much of the riding near my house was absolutely terrible. The lack of snow clearing was not the issue as I can easily ride through 5″ of snow, but with most of the sidewalk being partially frozen, lumpy footprints covered with dusty snow riding on this segment was simply unfun. Due to the balance, constant pushing, and careful pedaling required riding this stuff was more difficult than the hard climbs at Holdridge.

After making it to River Bends the ride was rather uneventful and typical for the park. The pavement was snow covered but smooth, and the two track had a nicely worn 12″ wide flat section perfect for riding. I attempted to ride the single track, but it was snow covered, soft, loose, and generally unfun. I think I’ll leave that to the hikers until things thaw or melt a bit.

While out in the park I saw fresh trails and the car of a friend who I know from MMBA group rides, but I wasn’t able to catch up to him and only saw him driving out of the lot as I finished riding through the park. It’s good to know that there other folks who are getting out there to ride this time of the year, even if it’s not on the single track.

As residential streets and some sidewalks (mostly business and township-owned) were cleared the rest of the ride was uneventful. I encountered the typical surprised drivers who didn’t expect to see someone at a crosswalk, much less someone on a bicycle, but there were no notable encounters. Weirdly cars seemed very cautious about passing me on the residential streets, but perhaps they saw me riding on icy patches were afraid of me falling in front of them. I’m really glad they chose to be cautious of just plowing past.

Final stats for today’s ride were departing at about 14:30, traveling 13.08 miles over 1:22:50 for an average of 9.47 MPH with a max speed of 19.97 MPH.

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Today I headed out towards River Bends to try out the studded tires on the single speed (VooDoo Dambala), but as the sidewalk was more impassible than I’d thought I ended up riding around the partially-iced roads in local neighborhoods. The Nokian Gazza Extreme W294 studded tires worked out very well, but problems on the sidewalk showed that a geared bike is likely a better choice for deep snow winter riding. (Being able to shift down to a very low gear and slowly push forward through deep snow is rather nice.)

While riding around the neighborhoods I was able to get a bit over 10 miles in and explore some areas I hadn’t been to before. Not long before getting back home I felt like I was having a harder (than normal) time pedaling, but wrote it off as winter riding on super-knobby tires making me tired. It was only once I got home that I noticed an extreme amount of drag when pedaling backward. removing the chain showed that the cranks were rather hard to turn; a sign that the bottom bracket has failed. After sitting and warming slightly things are moving a bit more freely, but I think I’ll be replacing it before the next ride. Unfortunately it’s an Octalink [Edit] ISIS Drive, which may be a little harder to find.

One upside was that the CamelBak Podium Chill bottle that I was given at Iceman did a fine job of keeping my beverage from freezing during the ride. I’m still not convinced that insulated bottles are useful during the summer, but if they keep beverages from freezing in winter I’ll probably keep using them.

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