The studs of Omelas

Photo from January. That snow is gone now!

It's cold, but it's nice. There was sun yesterday and it looks like it may be sort of nice again today.

Every fall, I get all jittery about winter and put the studs on my bike way too early, assuring that winter and ice will take forever to come. Now as spring approaches, I am dying to take the studs off my winter bike. I want to turn it into the chilled street bike with 1.75" (non-tourguard) Pasalas. Bitchin.

But I know that as soon as I put the slick tires on it, we'll get dumped on. It's my duty to hold off the snow by keeping those confounded studs on my bike until May.

You're welcome.

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Fresh air

I’m not much of one to ride bicycles indoors. I understand for some people this is a great way to keep in shape in the “off season”, but for me it’s a non-starter. I ride bikes to get out of the house. If I was going to ride indoors I could have saved myself a lot of money and just bought an exercise bike.

My winter fitness plan

Plus, riding when the weather isn’t ideal makes it hard for me to rationalize not riding when the weather is nice.

I love this sound.

And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it when all the non-cyclists I know tell me I am out of my tree.

Snow

Yay. It finally snowed with some authority today. Looks to be sticking too. The last word I heard on weather was that it was now going to get very cold. Right now it's just over freezing, so we're getting a bit slushy. It should get down to about 25F tonight, so that will freeze everything up nicely for Monday morning. I'm happy that I ride a bike on days like tomorrow will be... but even happier that I work from home.


Here in the Speare/Mattana household we'll be running fixed gear bikes with studded tires this winter.

The picture above there is Liza getting her snow legs worked in. That miserable Fuji does well in the snow, even though it feels like it's just sucking away your energy at twice the rate of any other bike we own. What a dog.

I also hit the trails on the bluff after the snow had piled up for an hour or so. I was not the first cyclist to hit the trail with snow this year, as I followed some wide mountain bike tracks for a good portion of my ride.

We're running the Nokian Hakkapeliitta W106 studded tires on both the Quickbeam and the Fuji. The tread and stud pattern is optimized for city riding, with a row of carbide studs essentially down the middle of the tire. So, on trails, I wouldn't mind a few studs sticking out of the side of the tire to grip the side of the hill, but overall, these tires are great and I wouldn't want the extra studs on the road where I do the majority of my riding. Tires with carbide studs cost about twice as much as those with mild/normal steel studs. The carbide wears much longer. My neighbor, Dennis, is a year-round commuter, who has about a 20 mile round trip commute. Last year, he left his Nokian's on his bike for about 4 months, so these tires rode on a lot of non-snowy/icy pavement. Last time we chatted about these tires, he said he couldn't even tell the wear on them.

It's going to be a great winter.