Conditions can change so much from hour to hour in the winter. Sometimes the snow is hard and iced over in the morning, then by afternoon it has softened and the going is really slow.
I ride my bike to work in the winter. Last winter it was a combination of a mountain bike with spiked tires on some days, and my Quickbeam on others. I don’t find plain ice to be too much of a challenge, if it is flat. The bike tends to keep going in a straight line if you let it. I can ride on flat ice on my Marathon Supremes. The difficult stuff is snow that has been walked on, and then frozen over. It is very rough and hard as concrete, the front end bounces around, you have to wrestle the bike and be ready to hop off at any time. Also, heavy soft snow that has been churned up by cars is not much fun. At first you think you can’t go ten feet, then you go ten feet, then you start to get a feel for it and eventually you finish the trip. It demands so much concentration, you have to steer constantly just to keep the front end going in the right direction. I think these conditions make you a better cyclist, you learn to steer by applying some torque to the rear wheel at just the right time. The experienced mountain bikers would probably feel right at home. But I do agree with the comments about drivers in winter, you have to be ultra-defensive, allowing for the fact that cars now can skid through a turn, and you have to constantly anticipate their potential path and position yourself out of that zone. I have learned a strategy of avoidance in all seasons, I ride on streets that have hardly any traffic, I avoid confrontations with cars, and try to avoid doing anything that challenges them or causes them inconvenience. I even avoid talking about how bad car drivers are, because most of them are hopeless. I think the biggest change in winter is the concentration that must be on the whole time. It is not relaxing, but at the same time it allows no other thoughts to intrude. When you do get the occasional calm moment, like riding home in the evening when it is dark and quiet, it can be really beautiful. I am putting 40 mm Marathon Winter spiked tires on my Quickbeam this winter, and fenders, which will let me ride on almost all days if I want to. I will use the big chainring for mild days, of which there are a lot here, and the small one for days with heavier snow. I will post pictures once the bad weather is here. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
