Crashing is Okay

It's that time of year again when folks at work look at the bicycle commuter with a head tilt and ask, "You didn't ride in today, did you?"  I'm toying with escalating ridiculousness in my response.  "No.  Actually I decided to ice skate."  Or, "Riding a bicycle in the winter is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.  Do you think I'm an idiot?  I stole my neighbor's car today."  I'd be interested to hear responses from other year round commuters when this perennial question returns each winter.

As an experienced user of the bicycle, my own two feet, transit, and even the occasional car, I should be patient in my treatment of those that ask seasonal and weather related questions that can seem repetitive.  The asker of the question doesn't realize they aren't asking a novel question and therefore don't expect or deserve my impatience.  In truth the question is welcome.  If I can find a way to twist the answer in a way that catches the person's attention or makes them think, perhaps they too will look critically at their rampant single occupancy vehicle trips.   As a friend of mine likes to remind me, clever assholes don't change many minds.

On the topic of changing trends, I've seen several more winter bicycle commuters at Pratt & Whitney.  Studded tires even.  Tomorrow will be a good test of these hardy souls with the low teens and 2-4" of snow predicted.  I received several email from co-workers disappointed that the bicycle racks near their building had been removed.  Curious,  I've dropped a note to our Facilities department who may not have realized that bicycles work in cold weather too.

The CT DOT seems to forget each year that the bicycle and pedestrian crossings adjacent to the Connecticut River highway bridges also need to be cleared of snow and ice.  Eight lanes of highway can be bone dry the day after a storm, but the eight feet of multi-use path can be left for weeks unless pestering ensues.  The level of clearing doesn't match that of the highway lanes.  For example the Charter Oak Bridge was plowed, but a 1" deep layer of dense and icy remainder was left along the entire length of the crossing.  No salt or grit in sight.  There is a tight downhill turn on this crossing, and even with studs the ice can be tricky to navigate.

That brings me to my final topic.  Crashing.  I crash.  On Saturday I spent several hours riding with Salem on my Kona with studded 700x35 Nokians.  They are a bit slow and noisy, and klunky for handling on dry pavement, but they significantly reduce my crashing in the winter.  We hit the perfect level of snow on the ground, smoothing out the trails and quieting my tires.

Later in the afternoon I thought it would be fun to take my fixed gear Schwinn out for an in town trip.  It was fun, and I got to practice locking up the back tire.  Feeling pretty good about my traction and having leaned turns all morning I headed into an intersection.  The slick tires didn't do any good at all in a hard right turn on a 1/2" of packed street snow.  Sliding sideways on my hip, I sprung up and did a little "I'm okay.  Enjoy the show!" dance for the concerned onlookers.  A friendly fellow picked up my fractured rear reflector and made sure I wasn't injured.  Fortunately I've entirely given up on pride, so no other damage was sustained.  When crashing on snow you typically slide, a good way to bleed off the forward momentum.

Crashing is okay, and it can be fun.  If I didn't do it often, it would probably hurt more when it happened on rare occasion.  Falling down is part of the human condition.  It's how you get up that matters.

More hardy P&W bicycle commuters confusing their co-workers this year.

Salem leads the way

Hopefully South Windsor's Bissell Bridge will be cleared more regularly this winter 

This is what happens when you forget you're not on snow tires.

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Bike tour

I was looking for a good map of Nepaug last weekend and I stumbled upon this. Now, I pay for racing sometimes and sometimes I'll even pay for one of those charities ride, but I've never paid some dude to go for a ride. Nepaug might very slightly inscrutable with its majority ATV and truck trails, but there's really only like four trails there. If you look at the Bike Rag map, I don't think you'll get that lost, especially in the era of googling phones. As part of my desire to explore new mountain biking spots this Fall, I headed over there.

As if magically triggered by my reading of that guy's advertisement, I met this dude in the parking lot who offered to show me around on account of my not riding there in seven years. Steve from Benindorm was a great riding partner, though we eventually got separated and then somehow rejoined going opposite directions on the trail. I have to admit that's the first time someone in a parking lot wanted to ride together and like the second time someone offered to show me the way on unfamiliar trails. Even during the ride, the two other riders I encountered were super friendly. Two, no three! cheers for Nepaug.

Today I went for a ride at Penwood. It was really pretty, though it started super icy. This was a direct result of me talking trash about studded tires.

On the studded tire tip, do you need some studded tires? Mike from Wethersfield, who's moving to Texas, gave me two sets of studded tires because he wrongly believed that it doesn't snow it Texas (it just snowed in Texas). Drop me a line.

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Ski bus

People in New England were all "crazy weather" this weekend. It was justified, as Memorial Day snow is sort of weird. I had noticed that the Hartford DPW trucks and a few others still had their studded tires on passed the May 1 deadline. I don't know if that's the sort of thing anyone enforces, but apparently it was needed because they were preparing in sympathy for the snow in northern New England. Upstate New York apparently got 3 feet, but I only saw about three inches in Vermont at around 2000 feet.

I went for a bike ride down jeep trails on my road bike. Blah blah blah.

I also went for a very cool bike ride with this:

And made a cool video.

None of this kept me from mowing the lawn.

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Stay away!

I was reading on Doug's blog that his leg is better and he is back on the bike in the woods. That's cool. In reading what he wrote, I noticed that he had gone to the Reservoir and it looked pretty passable. After school on Tuesday, I ventured forth and it was miserable. Down low it wasn't so bad, but up high it was either muddy or four inch deep wet snow. I felt bad. I'm bad for the environment. Upon returning home, I checked the date of when he wrote what he wrote and noticed that quite a bit of time had passed. I mitigated  damages by getting out of there when I realized they were too wet.

So, anyway, the moral of the story is that much of the woods are still too wet to ride your bike. I know people can't wait, because I saw lots of tracks. I guess I'm part of that bad group.

At some point, I really need to write something interesting in here, but it's almost been 5 years and you can only say so much about riding bikes in greater Hartford. Read more!

Snowboarding

One time when I was 14, I went snowboarding. My parents got me a snowboard rental, lesson and lift ticket for my birthday. It was pretty cool. My friends were all better than me, also owned their equipment and had parents who would pay for them to go do those things. Between the ages of 8 and 10, I also went skiing a few times with my dad. One time, my mom and dad went to Sugarbush and it scared the hell out of me. Those Vermont mountains are huge! Their blue squares are like 10x black diamonds in Connecticut. When I was 20 or 21, someone took me skiing again. It was fun, but the bindings on the rental skis were really loose and one of the skis kept falling off.

A couple of years ago, back when I had more money to waste on eBay, I bought a snowboard for $86.52. I  think that's a good deal, though Static Snowboards seem to be an unknown quantity. Last year, I bought some snowboard boots, but we got no snow. Also, lift tickets are wicked expensive. I thought maybe I could start hiking up stuff and then snowboarding back down, but using cross country skis to do that is way preferable. So, the snowboard has just been sitting in my basement. Well, that's not entirely true. I took it to Vermont back in January when it was really warm and slushy and I rode it down the hill in Claire's parents' backyard.

I had a feeling that some place must be inexpensive to go snowboarding. I looked up Otis Ridge in Mass and it was cheap during the week, but closed Monday and Tuesday. I looked up Mowhawk and found that you can ski there during the week for four hours for $20 and it's open all week. That's only $5/hour. That's an awesome deal in the world of skiing. Sundown is never cheap, must be its proximity to the Farmington Valley.

Sunday night, I watched this. Monday, I rode up the lift without falling and rode down a green circle and sort of remembered how to connect turns. Then, I went down a couple of bigger green circles. Satisfied with that, I decided to go down the terrifying black diamonds of Connecticut's largest ski area. So, apparently I'm like 35 years late in discovering that snowboarding is fun. I couldn't figure out how to ride moguls and there's definitely a distinct lack of going uphill.

Perhaps I'll try this again next year.

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In search of winter

Can you catch the error in this photo?

I didn't know what to do with myself today. I went for a bike ride yesterday and it was pleasant, but it made my feet really cold. Today, I decided that I would do something else. Johanna is working on a thing for a conference, so I had no one to go to New Haven with and stare at art. I'm not really good at keeping friends anymore, so I don't really have any right now.

So, I decided I'd go up to Granville. It's nice there and I had a hunch it'd still be winter. I brought boots and skis and when I arrived, I was surprised to see that there's still like two feet of snow on the ground. It's not perfect snow, but you don't sink. It's pretty icy, but there's a scintilla of powder on top, so you can almost track straight. However, for a many miles, snowmobiles had "groomed" the trail and it was a lot of fun. It snowed all day and the temperature hovered around 30. Winter lives in Graville, Mass.

I feel like I didn't get enough snow time in this winter, even though we got that big storm. It turned to gross so quickly (or at least I thought it did).

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Ice event

It wasn't good for finishing my criminal procedure homework, but I decided to go ride around on the snow and ice, because it is finally possible. The Wethersfield Cove is nicely frozen over and I rode out on to it with the ice fishermen. It's great, except a gust of wind blew me over. Then, I rode through the ice-rut laden meadows, which was a lot of fun, too. I was surprised that while riding my chubby bike that I didn't see any fat bikes, because I thought they were everywhere now.

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New boots, bad snow

Johanna got me new hiking boots for Valentine's Day, because my heel has gone through the insoles (and below whatever the next layer is) in my old boots. They started giving me weird blisters and I was leaning back all the time. I went into the woods yesterday to see if the new boots worked and they do. While I was walking around and not sinking deeply into the snow, I thought maybe I should try to go skiing. It just so happened that I had brought skis with me. It appeared that there was a very thin layer of powder on top of very packed and icy snow. I remember conditions like that from a few years ago and the skiing was awesome.

I was wrong, generally. Or maybe, if I had metal edges I wouldn't have slid around so much. I think what I remembered from a few years ago had lot of more powder.

Well, anyway, as part of my new quantity, not quality philosophy for this blog, here's a post of skiing not working that well and new boots. Maybe I should start posting some new videos of commuting or something. Read more!

Pasta, back on the move

It's been awhile since I wrote a really interesting blog post about transporting pasta to work. The reason is not because I haven't been taking pasta places, but because I thought no one wanted to hear about it. I was incorrect, though. Hundreds of emails have been pouring in asking me to reprise taking pictures of pasta on the front rack of my bike, so I have obliged.

Also, a hearty shoutout to the use of Phil Wood's tenacious oil as chain lube when the conditions get nasty. When the weather gets nasty, the nasty get Wood.

I plan on selling that line to Phil Wood, so I can retire to the moon. Read more!

IceBike to Work and Stuff

I've been riding studded tires all week.  They sound funny and make me go slow.  I get over the slow going frustration by reasoning that I'm riding less over he winter and therefore my fitness level benefits from a little extra resistance.

Went out a couple times during and after the storm this weekend.  Was amazing.  Confused by neighbors who seem to have holed up in their apartments for the entire weekend.  When they tell the grandkids about the "Blizzard of '13", its going to be about how they sat on their butts and watched cable TV and spent endless hours posting pictures and commenting on Facebook photos of their hopelessly buried cars.  I just now whimsically wished it has snowed concrete.  That way we could start fresh.

On Friday, this Friday the 15th, there will be two IceBike to Work breakfast meetups in Hartford area.  One in East Hartford at Maddie's from 7-8AM, and the other in Hartford at JoJo's from 7:30-8:30AM.   It appears that some folks in cold places are trying to make February 15th the national day for promoting this sort of thing.  This month, let's talk about Bike to Work events.  Do they make a difference in the number of bicycle commuters?   Why doesn't Brendan like them?   

And if you haven't yet - you need to bother your state representative or senator to make sure this truly disheartening bill that requires single file riding doesn't go anywhere.  There is also a Vulnerable User bill that is goodness for pedestrians and cyclists.   Bike Walk CT has been pushing the Vulnerable User bill for several years now, and they think they will be able to get it through the wickets in 2013. 

The pictured bike is a 1971 Schwinn Traveler 3-Spd that I just built up.  Shiny.  All stock at this point although I'll probably replace the tires and saddle.  I just love getting my hands on old barn kept bikes in good condition.  Trying to decide if this become my daily beater, or if I sell it...

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Man, you should ride a bike

Unless you live like 50 miles from Hartford, you should probably ride a bike. There are universal complaints about traffic, because most streets in Hartford are no lanes wide. Intracity drives took like three hours and it was seven to West Hartford. The only change I noticed in my commute was that I had to ride in the middle of the road and I couldn't cut through Pope Park. Read more!

Lest you thought the snow could keep me from my love.

I got out on my bike today for a little while. The packed paths and sidewalks at Trinity were lots of fun. After tonight's ice rain, they're probably be even more fun. Sheets of ice are when studs are fun.

Also, I dug out a car yesterday to go get Johanna's from her mom's. That's where the title of this post comes from.

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Blizzow!

I spent the day shoveling, but before the immense snow fell. Wait. Strike that. While the immense snow was falling, I had a chance to take one last bike ride into the dirt. It was brief and it was fun. And, it yielded a pound of cheese and bottle of bourbon. I guess it also wasn't in the dirt, because the dirt was covered in snow.

I took some pictures and put them on Google+, because I really want Google+ to take off. It's not that I'm against the idea of having friends on the internet, I just never want to be on Facebook again. Two months in 2004 was enough. Read more!

Solitude

For some reason, those who ride the woods in the cold and snow, do so very early in the morning. So, afternoon riders like me never see anybody. It's nice and peaceful.

I still think we can have the ice race. The week of really cold temperatures still didn't really inspire confidence on the bodies of water. Near future perhaps?

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Phil

Johanna is usually mad when I leave bike parts in the kitchen. However, I bought a tube of Phil Wood waterproof grease the other day because it was on clearance at the store. I left it next to the microwave and out of the blue told me that she liked that the looks of it. Buying only Phil Wood components will be a high price to pay for being able to leave my bike parts in the kitchen, but it'll be worth it.

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Heavy bike with high gears

The other day, I was all like: Ski ski ski! But, it was warm today, so I was like: Bike bike bike! While I couldn't go ride on the dirt like I usually do, the roads were pretty good.

Take the day off tomorrow and go for a ride if you missed it today. Read more!

Ill prepared for the weather

I like winter riding and I like riding in the snow. I may not have a fat bike, but I've got fenders and I've even got studded tires. I've got some gloves, lights and a hat. Regardless of those things, I've been freezing my ass off the last few days because I can't remember how to dress. With the snow today, I think I finally had the right gloves and was adequately insulated. I can remember riding in tshirts in December last year or the year before last or something.

Today, there's a mild nor'easter. I went to Home Depot and the snow was the big flake, wet kind. The temperature has dropped like ten degrees and now the flakes are small. Maybe I'll go do something recreational later. Read more!

Vinegar shopping

 

Two inches of wet gross snow fell last night. I didn't want to let that deter me from having fun. So, I put a freewheel on my Colnago because I keep hitting my toes on the fender when turning with it fixed. I figured if I didn't have to pedal through tight corners, it wouldn't be a problem any more. I had a new 17t Dicta freewheel lying around, so I Romney'd (it's a flip flop hub, get it!!?) the wheel and rode off with the power of coasting. Things were going ok, but the steady drizzle and mid 30's made me abandon my original plan of riding out to that Arm and Hammer place in Collinsville for a beer. I was riding through Fisher Meadows in Avon, when suddenly the freewheel started slipping. At first I thought I broke the chain, but the chain looked just fine. I thought maybe it was a fluke, but every time go out of the saddle, it'd slip all the way through the down stroke. I flipped the wheel back over and went home fixed. Actually, I stopped to buy vinegar. I thought one usually started fixed, got tired and switch to free. I guess it's opposite day.

Speaking of opposite day, if your back up lights were messed up, maybe you'd try to avoid excessive driving in reverse, but not everyone feels that way. Coming up Ansonia just now, I watched a guy back a block and a half down the street on the wrong side of the road with his back up lights not working. He did have his hazards on, but still. Why not just do a u-turn?

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Ski free

True to form, I went skiing this weekend. There wasn't a ton of snow. Well, I guess there was way more than a ton of snow, but not a lot of snow. It wasn't enough for places with roots and rocks, but I tried going there anyway on Saturday. It was uncomfortable for me and the skis.

Today, Johanna and I went to a place with fewer rocks and roots and slightly more snow. It was great. It's supposed to rain and be warm this week, so perhaps we'll be mountain biking again by the end of the week. It was a really nice weekend for being outside, hopefully you were.

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First tracks

I cannot overstate how pretty it was! 

We got a little bit of snow and it was a beautiful day. So, I went to Case and Gay City. There's about 1-2" of snow, but it's been cold, so I feared that there was ice under neath. Also, I have these studded tires that don't get nearly enough use. They may have been free, but they say "deserve them" on the sidewall. I want to live up to the sidewall slogan, so I used them. They saved me from two crashes, but not a third. Other people got out, too, mostly hikers whom I didn't see, but I saw two other mountain bikers and two other sets of tracks. I really can't stress enough how pretty it was today.

Tomorrow, hopefully there'll be a post about xc skiing. I'm still not very good at it, but I look forward to it.

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