Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1579:

At least 5" more snow fell last night. I'm not sure of the exact total, but I'm pretty sure we're north of 40" of snow already this winter, and our three snowiest months are yet to come. The news this morning said that with last night's snowfall that now puts us at the 7th snowiest winter on record. If February, March and April follow tradition we may hit the #1 spot.

Eastern South Dakota where I live isn't known for a ton of snow. We certainly receive plenty of snow most winters, but extremely heavy snowfall is usually more of a western South Dakota thing. The east side SD winters are known for their relentless winds and bitter sub-zero temps. While we've had about five sub-zero days so far this winter and plenty of wind, overall this has been more of a west river SD kind of winter for us.

Once again when I woke up the temp was 24°F. I'll take these warm winter temps without complaint. I moved snow off my driveway, and then loaded up the fat bike and hit the road. For some reason before I left I was a little apprehensive about riding through the unplowed snow. I'm not sure why I felt that way. I was really hoping that those feelings weren't a harbinger, and thankfully they were not.

Knowing the MUP wasn't going to be plowed yet, I didn't even try to go that direction. Instead I took a mostly back-street route. Schools were on a two-hour late start this morning due to the weather, so that made traffic a bit lighter which was nice. I took the fat bike and focused on trying to stay in the tire tracks left by other vehicles. Getting into virgin snow really slowed me down, and hopping from rut to rut between tire tracks tended to make the front tire slip out from under me. I never hit the ground, but I did have about a half dozen times where my front tire lost traction and brought me to a stop as I quickly put my feet down.

The headwind was about 20 mph, which really wasn't a big factor at the super low speeds I was riding through the snow. I purposefully stopped thinking about how fast I was riding, and instead just rode low gears and focused on keeping a steady momentum through the snow. When I arrived at the client's office I was surprised to learn that I rode the 4.6 miles in 50 minutes, which is about 15 minutes faster than my normal time for the same route through unplowed snow. I really don't know how or why I rode so much faster. It didn't seem like I was pushing myself any harder than normal. Although once I calculate it out, that's only about 1 mph faster on average, so maybe my increased speed just wasn't noticeable as I rode.

I really like that this client has bike parking in an underground heated area, and that they have a hose hooked up where I can spray the snow off the bike before moving to the rack. That's not the reason they have a hose hooked up, but nobody seems to care if I use it.