sNOWride

Snow rides are lots of fun for me. This winter 2010/11 is showing us some variation. We had plenty of snow before Christmas and I got in a ride or 2 with friends. Then it rained and the snow was gone for about 3 weeks. It was bitter cold most of the time to boot. I didn't ride.


Then we got a dusting and I got fired up to ride again.

Went on a couple of rides with friends. I've been taking the Monocog 26er while my friends all have geared bikes. Even though we ride mostly bike paths and streets, I still tend to ride faster than them.

I'm going to try some techniques with different clothing set ups and different riding speeds and such to keep my sweat down. Getting this dialed in will keep me warm during an emergency stop. Fixing a flat while drenched in sweat in 15 F temps with the wind blowing is not my idea of a fun ride.

I drove down to St Charles instead of riding so the full ride would be with Trotta. Some times I ride to pick him up, we ride together back towards my place and then he rides home solo. It turned out perfect as neither one of us has our rear blinkies on our chosen bikes. Riding together at night is safer too because the rear rider's headlamp will reflect off the rider ahead.

Trotta has these monster tires on his bike and I comment on them as we ride towards the trail. He tells me to be careful after we descend because there is ice.

Not 5 minutes later as I'm riding next to him over the icy section he wobbles, says an expletive and goes down hard. Owch. I don't even know how it happened as we were riding a flat straight section with known ice. Luckily he was OK to ride and we continued at a moderately slow pace and kept chatting.

The big hills were fun downhill and challenging uphill. The road sections were (thankfully) uneventful.

All in all - a great ride.