Wintry Riding

No coffee ride, this weekend, because on Friday the weather turned a little violent (very strong winds, temperatures down into the mid-30s, and regular snow and hail showers during which the winds got even stronger), and on Saturday it was still a little iffy. We could have gone, Saturday morning, but would almost certainly have run into a snow or hail shower or two, and the wind would still have been pretty fierce. I wasn't that eager anyway, because for a variety of reasons I managed to ride to the city and back last week on four consecutive days. Eight hours on the bike: not bad for mid-November. Today the Sunday group did its traditional mountainbike loop through Lage Vuursche (indeed, the old Vuursche Boer again--but their applie pie, and their service, really is always excellent, so why change?). In order to ride, I had to prepare the old tractor, my red Trek 920 which I bought used at the end of 1995 at Pittsburgh Pro Bicycles (then still on Murray) because in that December month I rather suddenly really needed a snow bike. I also took it on many epic mountainbike rides with Pittsburgh Masters Velo Club through two of Pittsburgh's great parks: Schenley and Frick, which both offer a great variety of challenging single track trails and easier, wider stuff. If we concluded these rides at the old slag heaps overlooking the Monongahela River (now sadly sacrificed to development projects), we got an original "triple crown" ride (of course still completed at the 61C on Murray). In 1996, during a semester in Leipzig, Germany, I took the Trek, newly fitted with slick tires, for my city bike. But on Sunday mornings, I'd use it for a 2-3 hour road ride, to the southeast of the city, through towns like Altenhain and Brandis. Barren, windy, rides. The past eight years, the Trek has exclusively served as snow bike, to get me to work when there was too much snow to ride the skinny tires. This past winter, Milwaukee's second snowiest on record, it saw more duty that its owner cared for, and there were days the snow really was too thick to ride through. On those days, my little 2 mile commute took me half an hour or so, and I'd usually fall off a couple of times (not a real problem in the thick snow). The other week, I remounted the slick tires for the first time since Leipzig, and today we had a fine, muddy ride through various woods and heathlands. Nothing that was difficult technically, but there were quite a few places where it was icy, even on the packed-down dirt trails in the woods. It took me about an hour altogether to clear bike, rider, and clothing, but it was worth it.