Originally Posted by Dave Cutter

Happy New Years all.
Today I went for a ceremonial New Years Day bicycle ride. I must be acclimated to winter already as the 40 degrees seemed very pleasant. I left the road bike at home and rode my old steel mountain bike up the big hill covered in road salt. It was only a few miles.... but a very nice ride. We are all very lucky... to be a part of cycling.

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

… since I usually go into work on Holidays for a few hours…I rode into Norwood by about 7:30 AM to do a few things, and debated about riding home vs taking the Commuter Rail at 9:05 AM. Since we were going out to brunch at noon, I wanted to work up an appetite, so I rode back… The round trip ride of 28 miles was a nice start to a hopefully good year.

Just now I happened to recall a little ditty from a famous hiking and backpacking book from the 1970's, The Complete Walker by Colin Fletcher. It was on the frontspiece of the book:
"Now shall I walk or shall I ride? / 'Ride' said Pleasure / 'Walk' Joy replied."
which I would paraphrase as:
"Now shall I drive or shall I ride? / 'Drive' said Pleasure / 'Ride' Joy replied."
which explains why I was out on the road at 21° on New Years Day morning.

BTW, I am now riding just my beater winter bike even though the roads are nice and dry, because I don't want to expose my beautiful Specialized S-works to any salt. Am I being too fastidious? I even considered buying a cheaper road bike for the winter, but decided to stick with the Cannondale mountain bike.