Wednesday, April 3, 2013

The Winter that won't end, 2013...or is it still 2012?

Temps still chilly at night....melting a bit during the day. Tried a 75 miler.
Just for kicks thought about riding the snowmobile trails from home to in-laws house, about 75 miles. I knew it was going to get too warm to ride the whole way on snow, but still want to get in as much as possible.
Took off a bit after 8AM on Good Friday (day off for me)...Easter Weekend. My wife had to work so she was going to meet me at her folks place for dinner. I have all day to play.

 Came up on Scott, head mechanic at LBS. He rides in every day, adding a few miles to the route to give him a nice 10 mile roll into work. He modified recumbent some as a fat trike for winter use:


 Out along the trail.
 Drifts...west winds coming across open farm fields built up some nice ones.

After the shots above had to resort to the fatty being a road bike. Snow was too soft for riding. Nice sunny day with little wind the fatty still cruised at around 15 mph with average effort on the pavement or the frozen dirt roads.

After the weekend rains we still have cold nights and chilly days with plenty of sun. Some melted snow/ice covered local snowmobile trail made for some nice extended fat bike riding in the early morning pre-work hours. The trails are shutdown for the sleds, but I don't think the fat bikes are doing them any damage.

A bit of rain created a nice crust and with the still cold at night in the high teens, and low 30's during the day gave us a few more days of riding.

With Scott Cole, local rider, racer and Sales Manager at LBS. Didn't get a pic of us wiping out when we tried crossing an overflow that had a wide channel of run-off but only a slight crust of ice over it. We both dumped into a 6-8" deep crevasse and went sprawling across the ice....no harm no foul.




Scott got me on these. Now those are some BIG wheels!! (Thanks to the sun)
I stopped to mention I felt like we were on the set of "On Any Sunday" and Scott said he was just about to tell me the same thing!
For me is was the end of the movie in the sand, for Scott it was the beginning with the kids bombing on the bikes. Either way, it was interesting we both came to the same thought/movie.




3 comments:

Scoletrain said...

Great post Mark! I still have bruises from our pile-up... :-)

Anonymous said...

Oh Where Oh Where has Al Gore been hiding? His Global Warming hoax is showing it's slip.

mark scotch said...

as I'm trying to keep this blog non-political for the most part I won't comment on the Al Gore reference above except to add that it snowed another 3-5" in WI since this blog entry....why?? maybe some people's belief that man can significantly change the global environment has merit, or maybe we think too much of ourselves? http://www.marshfieldnewsherald.com/article/20130324/MNH0101/303240386/Late-winter-part-larger-weather-pattern