I’m developing my own personal slang for various winter road conditions:
Bacon: the layer of compacted, rough snow that forms on untreated roads. Is relatively easy to ride on if you’re careful.
Grease: as bacon is “cooked” by traffic, it’s ground up and ends up as piles of dirty snow all over the road. Sometimes it’s easy to ride in, other times it builds up enough so it tries to slide your wheels out.
Pan: After a while both the bacon and grease is worn away, leaving the delightful road beneath it. Typically forms first in long strips on uphill grades (I ride down hills on the wrong side of the road all the time now). When the temperatures warm up to the high teens, most untreated roads will have broad sections of pan, but that condition is generally preceded by an uncomfortable quantity of grease everywhere.
i am sold. it’s a bacon day today here, we’ve gotten 1-2 inches of snow every day for the last five days.
i like to think there’s the equivalent of a word filter in that just adjusts the orientation of rusty’s photos at random…
I have some sympathy, but hell if I don’t burst out laughing every time I see one of your photos at a jaunty angle.
I have some sympathy, but hell if I don’t burst out laughing every time I see one of your photos at a jaunty angle.
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i went nordic skiing yesterday and it was 25F which is far from “babby it’s cold outside” temps, but i was so overheated i did 90% of the workout in a tshirt with my pants rolled up to just below the knee.
hell yeah
I’m currently enjoying med temps in New Mexico, but before I went on vacation I severely sprained my thumb after slipping on a benign (but very snowy/slippery) section of pavement and going down hard.
In this slop there have been half a dozen near-falls but I’ve managed to keep it upright, including slipping on the streetcar tracks for the first time and scrambling across the road. But this one dumb section, my bars turned suddenly and down I went.
When I was researching the difference between a sprained thumb and a broken one, I started to get light-headed and had to lay down. Never had to deal with that before, either.
Then I had to get up and shovel the walk.
Thumb has been enjoying relaxing in the NM air, but I still can’t do simple things without pain, like lift my bag, ride on the hoods on bumpy roads, or tie my shoes. It’ll probably be 6-8 weeks to heal.
-2 f this morning. i did not bike to work, because i dont have any pogeys and my hands are so sensitive to the cold that they get pretty cold when it’s like 20f out riding to work (its all downhill so its hard to warm up).
i wanted to though cuz it looked so damn purdy outside with the sun out and a thick coating of snow on everything.
Those $20 atv pogies are the best money you can spend on winter bike shit.
Yeah, but it’s only this cold like 2 days a year in Boulder… So i’m not in a rush to throw $20 at the problem. My lobster claws are pretty solid the rest of the time.
I’m just bummed because we’ve had nothing but mediocre snow, like 1-3 inches at a time and the roads and paths are plowed before i get on them. i just want some fun dorking around in the snow, but then when we finally got 6+ inches, i wussed out and didnt go outside and party.
Damn, Boulder got 6+ inches? I think we maayyybbbeee got 3.
I am such a baby, 29 deg F and no moisture but my hands were still frozen this morning. Need better gloves than these $6 things.
On bright side the puffy coat I brought for Coffee outside works well has a hand warmer for the straight, flat & MUP sections of my commute that don’t require brakes.
I definitely took a few extra hills this morning to stoke the fire
I think we got close to 8" in Superior/Louisville. The roads in my subdivision are like an ice rink (especially the corners/stop signs).
yeah, it absolutely dumped on monday evening, but just for like 3 hours… gonna be snowy up here for a while. not warming up for like a week either.
[quote=aerobear]-2 f this morning. i did not bike to work, because i dont have any pogeys and my hands are so sensitive to the cold that they get pretty cold when it’s like 20f out riding to work (its all downhill so its hard to warm up).
i wanted to though cuz it looked so damn purdy outside with the sun out and a thick coating of snow on everything.[/quote]
I cannot imagine a world where lobster claws are not warm enough. I mean, I can imagine it, I’ve lived it. But it was windchill of 36 here the other morning and I was dying. I wore pants to a road shift for the first time since I’ve moved to california.
acclimation is an incredible thing. riding in temps that used to be unbelievably frigid in Seattle is now comfortable, and even a bit hot feeling.
Boston was in the 70s yesterday, supposed to get a couple inches today. It was nice to bop around after work yesterday at least.
Being a babby and having terrible gloves are two totally different things.