Sunday, December 30, 2012

Snow crashing

So yeah. I went out on my first legitimate snow ride today. It was fun, though for the 7-ish miles I rode, it was about as hard as a 20 mile mountain ride. It was fun and pretty. The only problem was I decided it would be a good idea to run platforms on Snowblind, so I could wear my nice warn snowboots.

This was a bad idea.

While my feet were warm, I had no connection to the bike. I didn't realize just how much I had learned to control the bike through my feet. Let alone I couldn't tell where my feet were on the pedals, as well as I had less power (couldn't pull up on the up stroke, I was just mashing.)

Despite that, I made the most of the ride, and next time, I'll be armed with clipless again. Besides, a quick search showed a lot of SPD compatible boots for winter riding. I'll have to look into that.
Winter kickstands are best kickstands.

Snow inside Pugsley rims does funny things when allowed to slowly melt.

The rear was not nearly as impressive.
I also put the GoPro on my head for this ride. Most of it is about as exciting as a trip to Pittsburgh,  and apparently I look down a lot as I'm riding. I think next time I'll put it on the handlebars.

But, it did catch the inevitable crashes.


Good times. I can't wait to do it again.
Mileage: 7.2

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Photo barrage number 42

Other post titles for today included:
Wherein Google makes a liar out of me
Please excuse my absence, I've been busy
Flag Pedals: I survived another apocalypse! edition
And on it goes...

So. I went to make a post a few weeks ago (maybe a month ago, I don't remember.) and Blogger yelled at me saying I had filled my Picasa account with pictures. One gigabyte, filled with pictures. Apparently I take a lot of pictures, and share them on the internets for you all to see. I had a lot going on, so I decided I'd deal with it later.

One gigabyte doesn't sound like much, but you should see all the pictures that don't get posted here. I have to empty the one gig card in my camera 3 or 4 times a year for all the stuff I take pictures of. Some of it is alternate shots of what does get posted, a lot of it is stuff unrelated to bikes. I think I have eight or nine gigabytes of uncategorized images in camera dumps, organized by date. I don't delete any of the pictures I take.

Well, later arrived, and I suddenly had 4 more gigabytes of space on my Picasa account. I don't know where it came from, but hey, I may as well fill it up.

So, starting where I left off:

Exegete and I made our annual pilgrimage to Tombstone for Thanksgiving. We didn't bring bikes this time, but I got to see a couple while I was there.

A tandem, I'd guess circa1890's. Check out the dual steering arrangement. 
 I also saw a penny farthing rolling around on Allen street. Pretty cool to see one in motion.

The tandem was in the old courthouse. Exe's dad and I walked through it. They had a lot of neat historical artifacts on display.
Bells from various courthouses, this one included. You could ring them with provided rubber mallets. Beautiful sounds.

Steam-powered drill, used in the mines. Impressive.
Later, back home, I was riding home from work one day, and got to see a sunset that just wouldn't quit.
Taken a few minutes away from work. 
 I rode all the way out to Fort Tuthill, and there was still color in the sky, so I finally stopped to take more pictures, this time playing with shutter times.
Car...

This one came out nicely.
It was about this time that I tried to post with all the pictures above, that Picasa wouldn't let me add them. I ended up going on a ride between then and now, right before our first actual big snowstorm of the season.

I'd had a craving for the singlespeed bliss that is Tri, so I hopped on and rode along the Loop Trail to the Rocky Ridge Trailhead, along Rocky Ridge to Elden Lookout Road, and then up Red Onion to Little Bear.
Tri and I taking a break at the bottom of Red Onion.  
 No turkeys were seen heading up Onion this time.
Looking east from near the top of Little Bear.

Northeast. It looks warm, but it was actually quite chilly.

See? I ran into snow!

Looking back at Little Bear, from more Little Bear.

Deer!

The further down I went, the more snow and ice I ran into in the north facing drainages. 
 It started getting sketchy with all the snow and ice, as well as cold, so I put the camera away and concentrated more on riding and getting home. I got to the bottom of Little Bear, took Little Elden up to  Schultz Pass, rolled down Schultz Creek (which was in great shape, no snow or mud) and even got to try the new big Schultz reroute, which pulled the trail out of the creek towards the bottom. It's not as technical, but it's fast and flowy, and plenty of stuff to keep you awake if you're moving fast enough. From there, it was the FUTS through town to home.

Now... the snow has fallen, more is on the way, and I've got Snowblind all ready to go do some riding in the snow.
Bi's looking quite... studly.
Oh yeah. Exe, TC and Tina at work teamed up and gave me a GoPro helmet camera.  This ought to be good. As Tina put it, either I'll finally catch that alien abduction, or nothing awesome will ever happen again. We'll see. I may become a video blogger. A Vlogger. Or something.

Mileage: I walked a few miles with Su...