Just Riding Along; A Brisk Walk in the Park

Late Saturday morning I was graciously afforded a window of opportunity in which I intended to play in the fresh snow with my bike. The SS was locked inside my car, which was buried under a Mazda sized snowbank. Fail.

With precious limited time, I had no intentions of digging it out. I'll save that task for Monday morning because I like to procrastinate before heading to my office. I pulled the Salsa down from it's perch above the workbench and cannibalized some bits to make it rideable once again.

(Muddied and incomplete... the lesser of two evils I guess.)

Rolling from the parking lot, there were was evidence of a few riders before me but I remained hopeful that I'd be able to make some fresh tracks. The scenery is typically censored by the darkness of night or the blur of tunnel vision. This morning my ride was unusually scenic... a welcome change.

(Gratuitous pics of our snow covered wedding venue.)

The usual scenery was passing by slowly enough to look around once in a while. I found no evidence of life on some of the more obscure, less ridden trails. The snow was a little crunchy, but mostly rideable. The climbs were a redline effort at roughly half a mile an hour.

(Score with some virgin snow)

Toward the end of the ride, my bike started acting up a bit. There was an occasional - but recognizable - pop coming from the drivetrain. The DT Swiss hubs tend to skip a tooth once in a while under load. No big deal. It happens once a ride, maybe. After a few times, I was starting to get nervous. Then on a false flat, the hub didn't engage. I tried once more and after a few yards, it happened again.

Hoofing it.

Disgusted, I dismounted my bike and started to fiddle with it like I was actually going to fix it trailside in the snow. In a superb effort to diagnose and remedy the problem, I turned the crank arm a few times and watched the wheel spin. Then, I made a rooster tail as I lowered the wheel into the snow. That was cool... So I did it again. The second time was much less entertaining, so I started walking. Sweaty and frustrated from my wrenching efforts, my comfort level was declining rapidly. Walking swiftly, wasn't swift enough. I started to run. When I'm just running , a snowy run is one of the few times that I find joy in it. Running while pushing a lame bicycle through the snow while cold and wet, however, is definitely not enjoyable at all.

Meh.