The Good, The Bad and the Snowy

I am going to get out of order, here, and address the "bad" first.  My flight was cancelled, and my sister and I agreed that it didn't make much sense for me to try and get there, tomorrow night, only to come home on Monday morning.  So, no trip to PA for me.

The good?  I got a snowy bike ride in, on the orange fat bike.  I rode down to Kaladi Brothers and had some coffee, then took off for a frosty cruise around the Washington Park area.

The city now contracts with private snow-removal companies to do a cursory plow down the center of neighborhood streets, when we have a "snow emergency".  So, the roads were perfect for the fat bike.  I dropped the tire pressure down, and it tracked fine.   (I don't know exactly what air pressure I was running.  I just lowered it until it felt good).

This was the snow in front of my drive.  I did a little experimenting, while I was out, and I confirmed what I had read about these bikes:  If you are post-holing through knee-deep snow, you won't be able to ride through it.  You need packed snow, such as tire tracks, snow mobile tracks or even cross-country ski tracks to give you a surface the big tires can "float" on.

The snowy?  Well, everything.  I did a little shoveling, before I left, but the new snow covered over it, pretty well, before I got back.

You can see how deep the snow was, on the drive, by looking at the scooped-out spot where the bike is parked.

I shoveled the walks, the drive, and the street in front of the drive, where the bike was standing in the snow drift in the earlier picture (the shovel is on my front walk).  That should make it easier to get in and out, in a couple of days.

That was a nice little workout, by the way.

My new bottom bracket for the Mukluk showed up in the mail, today.  So, as soon as the heater takes some of the chill out of the workshop, I will go out there and (hopefully) complete the build on that bike, barring any other complications.  Then, I will be able to test it and the knobbier  Origin8 Devist8tor tires on the snow, tomorrow.

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