sherbornpeddler

Hi Kids! You are cool and your outlook cooler. Gently and slowly practicing a little bit of Jim's other sport gave me pause when I noticed a couple of leaves show up from this windy weather. If leaves are appearing and this is Fall, we are in for a heck of a Winter. Unlike the leaves, my bicycling has remained indoors and hidden. As you all have described, narrowed roads and noses of cars blindly poking out into traffic have kept me walking on dead end streets and slowly trying to stomp a snowshoe trail. I try to think about high boots, deep puddles, flooded rivers and mud when all this melts. I fail. I can't imagine it melting.

jimmuller 

sbp! I was thinking of dropping you a note to ask how your were surviving the weather. This is really sumpin', izz'nit?

Rod, JFG, your abodes and haunts look remarkably like ours. Keep digging.

rholland1951

Maybe a little ride on Saturday...

rod

Ghazmh

So desperate for a balmy 28 degree day with some sunshine. For the first time I am considering studded snow tires for my 29er.

mr_bill

Not a bicyclist commuting home.



-mr. bill

antimonysarah

Studded tires are really a lot of fun. 16" wheels fishtail...differently. Whee!

rholland1951

16" wheels? Say more...

agmetal

Hey, do any of you guys use the Wellington Greenway with any frequency? You might've noticed that it's been blocked by snow at one end. Some of my friends and I decided to do something about it...keep an eye on social media this afternoon for details!

antimonysarah

Brompton folding bike. It's my main city ride. They started making Schwalbe Marathon Winters for that size (ERTRO 349mm) fairly recently; I put a pair on the bike this winter. Until recently, they mostly slowed me down. Now they've shined.

The pivot points/center of gravity of the bike are different -- while it rides like a normal upright most of the time, in soft sand or snow or when throwing the bike around hard on a standing climb, the pivot around which it's going to move is a lot lower. I'm finding it fairly nice for bad-weather conditions, although I can't quite describe why. And I can move the seat height almost instantly -- in this stuff I run it just high enough that my knees don't hate me, most of the time.

sherbornpeddler

Mr. B, I was reminded of your photo last night.
Sherborn's Main St sidewalk is plowed and our roads are fashionably snow-narrowed. Narrow roads mean slower traffic (good), higher snowbanks(bad) and limitations on windshield washer fluid and patience (real bad). Based on a Fort Collins, CO. study, broadside collisions are the biggest threat to bicycling. Last night I saw a slow speed collision between two cars when a driver on a side street just pulled right out into traffic and was gently crunched. I speculate the guilty driver was just too frustrated by everything snow and decided to just take his chances. The driver with the right of way was alert so damage was limited to plastic car parts and paperwork. When I do get out on my bike I'm aiming quiet streets and the sidewalk.

berner

We are luckier than you folks in Boston and environs. We've had somewhat less snow and as Bristol is a small town, traffic is less congested and motorists are less agitated. I've been spending time at Colt State Park, adjoining town, on cross country skis. All this snow, in what is turning out to be an endless winter, has just been plain fun and very pretty. Narragansett Bay is full of slushy ice with snow on top. It looks as if the bay is frozen. Bristol Harbor is actually frozen and I had a good laugh returning home after skiing today watching some wild geese landing on the ice and skidding to a stop, eventually.

buzzman

I'm riding a Nokia Hakkepalitta front and Schwalbe rear.

agmetal

DanaA

Single track is now a term we use for those little paths made with snow blowers in the back yards around here!

rholland1951

Got out on the Minuteman up to Lexington Center today at noon, 10 miles, with temperatures in the relatively balmy upper 20s, this afternoon's snow showers only a disagreeable rumor that was still in doubt. The Minuteman was in good shape in the Arlington and Lexington segments I rode today, plowed down to a thin layer of snow or ice, more or less smooth. There were three or four point hazards along the way, snares for the unwary, spots where someone had variously created a frozen or loosely-packed speed bump on the Minuteman in the course of solving some other problem with a snow-blower or a plow, but in general things were as good as I've seen them since the Boston Winter Precipitation Festival started in earnest a few weeks ago. Today's snow, tomorrow's rain, and Monday's freeze will fix us up with some new fun, I'm sure.


The hydrant's loss is the Minuteman's gain: speed bump.


A band of loose snow: the fatbikes love it. I encountered perhaps a half-dozen fatbikes on the Minuteman today, all bombing along faster than anyone else, and realized that they occupy the ecological niche in this very snowy winter that is occupied by road bikes in the summer: the fastest critters on the trail. I'm mildly tempted, but a fatbike is probably n+2 or n+3 for me; we'll see if that ever happens.


Here and there, wind-sculpted drifts encroached on the trail.


This mess came flying off the Lowell Street bridge and onto the Minuteman at some point. Great work!


The Egg dangles a few inches over the snow that has risen up to meet it.


Somewhere under some of this snow is a layer of ice, and under that is the unfrozen and flowing water of Mill Brook: don't step in it.


The carbide studs and aggressive tread of the 559-47 Nokian W240s mounted on the old GT Karakoram were helpful today.


Turned around at Woburn Street. Discovered I'd had a friendly tailwind on the outbound leg; inbound was faster with the down-grade, and colder with the head-wind.


The way Winter transforms this little ride on the Minuteman is truly pleasing, provided you're not in a hurry.


rod

Jim from Boston

Hey Agmetal,

I just was listening to a nationally syndicated radio talk show, Red Eye Radio at about 5:30 AM, Monday, 2/23 (out of the Seattle-Tacoma affiliate), and they were talking about a guy in Boston who tunneled through a snowbank and was riding his bike through it. They thought it was cool. but how can you get traction on a bicycle in this weather?

Have you gone viral?

rholland1951

That was first-class direct action!

rod

Jim from Boston

Stepping away from discussions about the weather, and anticipating that in the spring my fancy will turn to thoughts of (pleasant) cycling, I recently posted to a Road Cycling thread:

Is this a common experience here in Metro Boston? I used to have a pretty effective way of handling dogs. I would ride at submaximal speed, and as the dog got close I would scream to startle them, and then speed up. They invariably gave up since they were startled and hesitated, and were already going full tilt.

mr_bill

Also some more spring planning.

(This will be the first February in many many years that I haven't been outside on a bicycle. My most recent ride was on January 30, and I'll be riding again next week. Sigh. That's just a quirk of a 28 day month I guess.)

MassDot has some good stuff coming btw. First, a regional transit map. Makes it easier to ride farther one way, and take transit on the flipside.

A new bicycle map is due mid march - first update in four years.

-mr. bill

rholland1951

Spent a good deal of the day visiting with my grown son in Somerville; in the course of that, had a walk on Highland Ave. and observed this tortured bicycle, one of several apparent victims of some kind of mechanized snow clearance on the sidewalk, its rear wheel reminiscent of Dali's melted clocks.


After the visit and miscellaneous errands, got an evening ride on the Minuteman, out to Lexington Center at sunset, back in the dark, 10 miles. Had the place to myself for long intervals, only encountered three other cyclists. It was definitely a good day for studded tires.


















rod

rholland1951

Thinking about it, I've never been chased by a dog in the Boston area, either... but I have been menaced by dogs who were restrained by their owners in some way, usually by a leash, a hand on the collar, or a voice command, occasionally by a fence or, somewhat unnervingly (two Rottweilers in Westford), an invisible fence. In one particularly nekulturny set up, an abutter of the Reformatory Branch Trail put an excitable German shepherd on a lead connected to an overhead cable just out of snapping range of the trail traffic. When the dogs are running frantically back and forth, highly agitated, I take it as Nature's way of telling me to move along.

rod

rholland1951

A brief month that seemed to last forever. Only managed 3 February rides myself, short rides on the MM that lasted, if not forever, then more than twice their usual duration. The frequently-discombobulated drivers, narrowed lanes, and compromised sight lines made riding on the roads somewhat less desirable than usual, increasing the relative attraction of the Minuteman bobsled run.


rod

rholland1951

Those of us who ride in, from, to, or through Arlington may be interested in attending the ABAC Winter Social, this Wednesday evening.

rod

mr_bill

Yesterday morning, quick ride out to the municipal pier and back.

52 degrees and gray skies.





It's easy to pick out tourists like me from the northeast - this is t-shirt weather. All the locals are wearing coats.



-mr. bill

Ghazmh

What's all that flat grey stuff? I can't imagine riding without a 7' pile of brown snow all around me and roads that are bumpier than a bombed out runway.