Blizzard: Day 2

Still snowing, but it has let up, quite a bit. The wind, around my neighborhood, has calmed down somewhat. But it is still nasty on the eastern plains, apparently.

I took the bike out, and rode/walked about a mile and a half. The snow is so deep I can't even ride in the tire tracks, in places, because there is so much unpacked snow below the little layer of packed stuff on which the car tires are floating. Plus, not a whole lot of cars have come through in the past 24 hours.

This is the scene about 1/4 mile from my House. The house in the background looked very "Swiss Alps" to me, with the drifts on the roof.

Before I left, I dug the dog pen out, and put a tarp down inide the pen so that Jack could stay dry. He has proven himself, um... "unreliable" in the house. So, I try to not leave him alone inside if I don't have to.

It's almost a snow-cave.

Ice Station Jackie

Every business I saw, while I was out, is closed. I was actually glad to see that. No need to have people risking their lives to sell hamburgers.

No Royal Burger, today.

Considering that Tyler and I built it, I'm very glad that the patio cover is holding up to the snow load.

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The Blizzard of Ought-Six

Well, we are certainly going to have a white Christmas around here! We are having a real, honest-to-God blizzard here in the Mile High City. (Heavy snow and 35 mph winds make an official blizzard.)

The snow started coming down at about 5:00 A.M., and the conditions got bad enough that even CDOT finally shut down and sent us home at 11:00.

I shoveled my walk, after I got home, at noon. I've shoveled it twice in the four hours since.

Jack was a little put out that the snow was too deep for him to run around, when I let him out. So, I dug him a run in the backyard, and gave him access to the area under my utility trailer.

Look closely and you can see Jack under the trailer.

He spent about ten minutes running around like a mad-dag ("Do you like dags?") Then we came in the house, and he has been asleep on the couch since.

Of course, I forgot to put the covers on my two motorbikes. Since they are under a roof, I tend to not cover them, so it's easier to get on and ride.

I don't think I'll be riding, any time soon.

The weather service says that the storm will continue to dump snow until mid-morning, tomorrow. So, we may have 23" of flat snow, and some pretty big drifts with the 35 mph winds piling it up.

Zoooooooooooom!

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Even More French Goodness

Yeah, I hate blogs where there's no new posts for two weeks, too.

Sorry. I was out of town for a week... and lazy for a week.

Anyway, in my never-ending quest to corner the market on orange Peugeots, I accepted receipt of this little gem from my friend Randy, this week.

It's a mid-seventies UO8 mixte, all set to join the Grinder Bikes Orange Crush. My friend Carol has laid claim to it, so I guess her white mixte will go up for sale on the site.

Man, I love these Frankish bikes!

And, having witnessed the 1970's ten-speed boom firsthand, I have to say that I associate this color with those times more than any other. It seems like every bike manufacturer copied Peugeot, and the orange color seemed to be the color of choice for road bikes, back then.

Stay tuned for further developments.

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Snow Means Snow!

We've had some interesting weather, here in Denver, the past week or so. Sub-zero temps (Farenheit), at night, and not too far above that during the day (although it did actually get up to about 30, yesterday). The same weather system wreaked havoc in the mid-west, yesterday, apparently.

So, I got up this morning, looked out the window, and saw that it was snowing. When I turned on the TV, the weather man told me it was 20 degrees, with a projected high of 23. I didn't need him, though, to know which way the wind blows.

Naturally, I decided to bust out the fixed-gear mountain bike and ride down to the coffee shop. It's only about 2-1/2 miles to Kaladi Brothers Coffee, so I figured I could have an enjoyable ride.

Out of the driveway, I made the first 100 feet or so of the trip, and promptly crashed my butt off. The "high" temps of yesterday had apparently melted some of the earlier snow, which then froze into a sheet of ice where it had puddled at the corner. The new snow, this morning, effectively camouflaged it, and caught me in a tiger trap.

I got up and continued on my merry way, with my annoying little blinking LED lights (hopefully) making me visible to the cars on the road. Luckily, traffic is light at 8:00 AM on a Saturday, through the Observatory Park neighborhood.

The observatory looked so picturesque in the snow, I just had to get this shot.

I made it down to the coffee shop with no additional drama. The roads were completely snow-packed, but not too icy. And, as I said, there wasn't a lot of traffic out. I did see one hardy D.U. student out on a multi-geared mountain bike. She was going even slower than I.

That's one advantage of the fixed-gear in snow: I don't have to hit the brakes to slow down or stop, so it keeps the falls to a minimum. (Except, of course, at the corner of my street!)

When I walked into Kaladi's, the crowd seemed split in their impressions of my ride. It was about 40% "hard-core" to 60% "crazy". Ah, well, they don't know what they're missing.

The view from inside Kaladi Bros.

I stayed at the coffee shop for quite a while. Brad stopped by, and spent a couple of hours, and I was working on finishing the final story for the comic book I've been working on. I have only to do the insides of the front and back covers and the outside of the back cover, now. I want to get it finished before I go out of town, this week (CDOT lab inspections).

Here's one of the panels I was working on:

It's all black and white, cut-and-paste published with the finest equipment available (at Kinko's).

By the time I headed home, the snow had stopped, the sun had come out, and the roads were clearing.

But, I did have to shovel the walk.

It's a pretty wet snow which sticks to semi-slick tires like that.

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