wow. i'm with you on the sidewalk after today. it's been snowing heavy wet snow all day here, and i took my bike out once we had an inch or two to practice a bit. it's the kind of snow that just packs down into half an inch of clear, solid ice as soon as you put any pressure on it. in a couple of places i got off to walk the bike on a sidewalk or across a street, and it was only then that i realised how insanely slippery everything was. i was using the bike to hold myself up

my neighbourhood has a lot of very short but pretty steep grades. you can't go a two blocks in any direction without finding one that's level or just a slight grade for the first six houses, and then takes a sudden upwards turn for the last three or four at anything up to 25%. lots of traffic all day, steady snow, and temperatures just above freezing, so the roads were very messy by about 4pm. i went out when it was still daylight and rode the worst section of my ride a couple of times looking for trouble, did some errands, came home with about 15 pounds of groceries; unpacked, went out again in heavier show and colder air and played around for a while. then rode up the steeper, less-marked roads; drank some coffee somewhere and kept going with wetter snow. came home in the dark along the same most-troublesome patch with more groceries. i didn't do the whole ride, but i tried to at least duplicate how long i'm usually out on a ride, and cover some of the same kinds of ground plus whatever i could find that looked like the closest cognate to the bridge part.

so fwiw, here's what i found out:

- turning is where i did start to lose it a bit. took me by surprise because in a straight line the bike's been so misleadingly stable. it was just strolling up and down grades that didn't look like they had any traction surface at all. when i looked back on my own tracks in clean snow i could see that i hadn't hit pavement at any point - i was leaving the packed-slush ruts behind me, but you'd never know it from how it felt. same complete lack of trouble on the almost-clear grey ice sections where cars had been. then i'd go to turn a simple corner and come unglued. i'm glad to know that - at first i assumed the up/down would be the worst part, and it set me up with assumptions that turning would be no problem at all. it seems like you can only fight the bike's own momentum so much, and 'so much' is much, MUCH less than it is on dry ground.

- i did get quite a lot of movement in (up to) two inches of snow, but i was surprised by how easy it was NOT to fall off a bike that's squirming and wiggling. it seems like the bike itself has a lot of self-correction to it, so there's a certain amount of loosey-gooseyness i got to feeling i could just roll with. it's a very very neat feeling, actually - feels like surfing, or standing up in a bus. i saw a road bike go by on the sidewalk while i was drinking coffee, and followed their tracks (looked like slicks) uphill afterwards, btw - i didn't see any wiggle or skidmarks there either.

- it seems like my bike self-corrects for those little wiggles, so long as i don't panic myself. ruts in the snow, little clumps of ice - any kind of texture change seemed like it would set one off. by the time i'd fully registered it was doing them, it was okay again. the main thing i'm thinking about personally is reminding myself to not even think about speed. i also found it surprisingly easy to just keep a steady pace all the time. i guess there was more resistance, but it all had a kind of creamy feeling to it. the bike feels all flexible and forgiving.

- this is a time when i'd be very very glad of a rear-view mirror. those skinny little roads with the cars coming up and down them on those stupid steep slopes. . . i found out i had to watch my own road very carefully, so it didn't leave me as much attention for 360 awareness as i'm used to. really, i'd like to just get out of the way when i'm on one of those slopes and a car goes into the same slope behind me - especially since i found out that i'm most likely to go down myself when i try to change direction at even a moderate pace. if theyr'e counting on me to evade them in trouble, we're both in trouble. the drivers out there just don't seem to be aware of their own abilities and they don't seem anywhere near as manoeuvreable as my bike. i got to see a few of those drifty slow-motion rotational skids happening. don't want to be in front of one.

- front-end braking was a mistake. that did skid me, and losing the front wheel felt different from losing the back one. back wheel, the bike seems to lay down a bit more so you have room to get a foot down without sacking yourself. doesn't seem to be true of the front wheel. i'm probably going to try and use my back brake as much as i can tomorrow

- learned to bounce my bike, front and rear, whenever i got off it, to shake the snow loose from the brakes.

i'm hoping tomorrow will go well if i'm careful, and allow for extra time. sorry for the long post, but i guess i also just partly wanted to yammer about my play-in-the-snow day.