There’s definitely some need for it. I have had a handful of “close calls” and generally ride very, very carefully and slowly to avoid serious issues. But I typically taste salt on my mouth after walking around outside after a few minutes because there is so much goddamn salt everywhere. The main roads are wet. However, MPLS doesn’t maintain any residential streets so they’ve been packed, icy snow for weeks now.
Here’s when you need studs:
It’s 40 and raining one day, and then 18 hours later the temperature drops to 10 degrees and it snows two inches. Holy shit. Add in darkness, rush hour dickheads, and gusty winds and I walked halfway home.
Had a pretty epic moment when I was cruising on the lake path when I hit a spot where the wind had blown all the snow off, leaving 25’ of bare ice. I immediately launched into a semi-panicked session where both wheels slipped independently of each other and I desperately wrenched the bike back and forth before hopping off the trail into a big snow drift where I was able to power through and keep upright.
Riding the be studded xtracycle in tomorrow. Planning some epic “burnouts” in the ice with the 1000 watt hub motor.
yeah, all major roads have been in fine shape. it’s the neighborhood streets that i take to get to work that are bad. i COULD take “real roads” the whole way but i’d still hit a few icy patches at intersections.
I started winter riding with studs. They made me feel safe. Then, when the season was over, I switched to regular knobbies. It was instantly noticeable how much energy I was wasting with the studs, and how much less effort it took.
Eventually I realized (as with the rest of the Midwest crew) that our cities blitz the streets with salt and the actual time spent putting studs to ice was maybe 0.01% of the time, so the energy to payoff ratio hardly seemed worth it. (Granted, you could argue that it may be the .01% that puts you in the hospital, but you could probably argue that about a lot of things.)
Now I’m riding Serfas Drifters, which is generally a bad idea, because those inverted treads pack in the snow and turn your tires into ice cubes, but again, I’m usually riding in maybe 2 snow storms/year, so it’s not worth swapping tires for the season.
tl;dr Studs are for babby winter riders and maybe areas with low salting, but generally not for seasoned riders.
We got 13in of snow last week, it was 60* and raining yesterday and all through the night, temps dropped from 60 this morning to 20 by 6pm. So expecting icetown on my evening commute I threw the shitbox studded tire on the front of the fat chance real fast before work. Guess I did a shit job, cause it was flat when I left work to get groceries and head home.
I didn’t think there was anything worse than riding a turdly studded tire, but riding a flat studded tire is infinitely worse.
Commuted with the spikes for the first time yesterday. It definitely turned what was a pretty marginal, effortful commute into something much easier. That said, any time the snow on the road got deep enough to cause the wheel to float above the pavement, things got squarely again.
I like to think I’m a pretty good rider, but at least in Minneapolis having a bike with studs is a good idea. The other night, after temps swung 45 degrees and a couple inches of snow fell, riding was basically impossible. Studs would have served me well. But now, the roads that get plowed are plowed, and that includes the bike trails. I could probably go back to my non-studded tires since the conditions are the similar to how they’ve been for the last month.
I’m curious if part of the difference is the fact that Minneapolis is a lot colder than Chicago or Milwaukee. Also, Minneapolis seems to only treat main roads with plows and salt. Bike trails get a plow and are clear. But anything outside of that is ignored. It gets pretty rough.
My first experience with a snowy city was Chicago, which completely spoiled me. I lived in another Great Lakes town a few years later, and was fucking INCENSED that they didn’t plow and salt side streets. I am now coming to understand that this is the norm, and Chicago just goes all in on road management.
Richmond, VA’s strategy is to wait about a day, plow and salt …some roads? And it will get warm soon? Probably?
My main discoveries this winter are that Castelli makes good neoprene cold weather gear, and that if you fishtail an Xtracycle on an icy downhill, the fucker stays fishtailed for a real long time. I think it might be possible to jacknife it
After wiping out twice on ice in Portland I bought studded tires, and I definitely haven’t regretted having them in the two snowpocalypses since then. I HATE falling on ice though. It is the worst, especially in traffic.
Yeah, the west coast snow events seem really great for studly tires, since there’s not really plowing and salting, we’re not great at riding in it, and it’s really slick, 30 degrees at night and 35 during the day. Slushy crap is worse than ice sometimes.
[quote=iwillbe]My first experience with a snowy city was Chicago, which completely spoiled me. I lived in another Great Lakes town a few years later, and was fucking INCENSED that they didn’t plow and salt side streets. I am now coming to understand that this is the norm, and Chicago just goes all in on road management.
[/quote]
Milwaukee may follow in Chicago’s salty footsteps since we’re always living in its shadow and actively trying to woo away their sodium nitrate-spoiled millenials.
mayoral races have been lost over snow plowing here.
wisconsin can have all the folks living off the brown and purple lines
with the exception of three days last week there’s been packed snow/ice on most suburban neighborhood streets here since christmas. i think i would probably be ok on a mud2 but i’ve already got the studs on and i’m too lazy to change them.
We had a couple days of snow, which meant 4 commutes in various types of snow, slush, and hard-pack. It’s fun careening down the streets, sliding out and floating around the pavement (especially when you keep it upright).
But then the plows came through and the salt kicked in and now it’s pretty much just pavement. Makes me wish they didn’t try so hard.
i am back on the coffee grinder and it’s extremely annoying having to kick the snow out of my fenders every time i ride down a side street
I put my sick hybrid away in the garage a day ago. Took it out the next morning to ride to class, and all the snow was frozen in the fenders. Took a while to kick it all out. Kinda annoying, but don’t really notice it while pedaling most of the time. Surprisingly the gt grade doesn’t have that much clearance at the chainstay bridge.
But did buy some $5 camo atv bar mitts. They are pretty ridiculous, don’t really stay up, and required me using the little styrofoam-like thing from the 45 nrth jawns that clamps on the bars to keep cold air out.
Get me into 5 dollar bar mitts.
https://www.amazon.com/Kwik-ATVM-MO-Protector-Mitts-Mossy/dp/B000OF72X4/ref=sr_1_1?s=sporting-goods&ie=UTF8&qid=1516452960&sr=1-1&keywords=atv+mitt I have these, they were $10 when I got them fall 2016, but at this price I’d go for the above. No complaints other than the mossy oak pattern.
Those are probably what I was looking for, but I got these. Purchase price was $4.50 from whatever retailer had them. Now it is at least 20.