The Fat Guy In The Back
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Sioux Falls, SD
Posts: 2,532
Bikes: '81 Panasonic Sport, '02 Giant Boulder SE, '08 Felt S32, '10 Diamondback Insight RS, '10 Windsor Clockwork, '15 Kestrel Evoke 3.0, '19 Salsa Mukluk
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Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1066:
15F this morning, with a light headwind. This was my first full-on winter commute of the season. Out came the balaclava, goggles and bar mitts.
We got 4" of snow yesterday. This morning the cold weather turned all the tire tracks and footprints into a rutted icy mess, so I got to jump right in to the thick of things. I took the fat bike. The main roads had been plowed, but the side streets and the MUP had not. It was slow going. There was lots of foot traffic in the snow on the MUP yesterday, so all the frozen tracks made it feel like I was riding across a field of boulders. Took me 40 minutes to ride the 4 miles to the client's office, and I was quite sweaty when I arrived.
Only supposed to get up to 23F today, so there won't be any significant melt-off and I'll probably have the same road conditions for the ride home. It's supposed to get back up into the 40s by this weekend, so I'm guessing the street department isn't going to worry about plowing the remaining roads and they'll just wait until it all melts off.
There were some sheets of ice here and there as well. At one point I felt my front wheel momentarily break traction, but I somehow managed to keep the bike upright. That's as rare as a Sasquach sighting. Usually if your front wheel breaks traction you're on the ground before you even realize it happened.