I rode tonight at the reservoir. While I think the temperature was mostly in the 35-40 range, the area by the dike near 44 was below freezing so the standing water, dew, and mud were getting crunchy. It's a great feeling. I hadn't encountered it yet this season. Sort of like Annie Lennox, I was riding on broken glass, but figuratively. Last night I was actually riding on broken glass on Brookfield and had to walk the last mile home from the Spigot.
Please pardon the Annie Lennox comment.
I do love the crunch. One night last week I took a shortcut through the athletic fields behind Sedgwick Middles School in West Hartford, and the initial, delightful crunch gave way to a slurping, sucking, mire of mud, in which I had to pedal madly just to stay upright and avoid sinking a shoe irremediably into the much. Properly, fully frozen mud would have been much nicer.
ReplyDeleteI don't mind a little bit of that stuff either. You gotta get some 2.35s on the xootr. Or buy yourself a Pugsley. Such a cool bike.
ReplyDeleteCame out of Kenny's last night to discover I had a flat as well. El Prez was nearly pleading with me to take his generous offer of his spare tube and fix it there, but I decided the comforts of my warm apartment 5 blocks away was a better environment to do the change than the sub-freezing sidewalk of Capitol Ave.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that due to the flat, I walked across the Capitol lawn and also enjoyed the light crunchiness.
Thats two flats! Knowing my tires ill get the third to complete the bunch, and watch it be from riding on frozen dew clinging to grass!
ReplyDeleteFat tires on the Xootr is a no-go, 'cause it makes me have to put the rear wheel farther back in the drops, which makes the chain rub the frame when I go to my highest gear (and being a muscular beast, I am always in my highest gear). Anyway, this mud-rambling experience was on the Special Tour de France, with its old-school, 3-speed 26" tires, and they don't really make wider tires in that size.
ReplyDeletewell, you could get a fold up version of this: http://www.hanebrink.net/
ReplyDeleteBrendan, that thing is redonculous and deserves its own post. But for $5500, I'd just hire contractors to pave a path across the muddy area I intended to traverse.
ReplyDeleteEh, The Hanebrink has been around forever. I remember reading about it in Mountain Bike Action when I was in middle school.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if anyone has ever bought one.
Maybe the one with the supped up Headshok (that I also remember from MBA back in the day).
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere about a guy who's riding to the South Pole with one.
ReplyDelete