Raining here, all the ice is gone. Probably should have pumped some more air into the tires. I'm still commuting on the mtb with studs, both because you never know what happens during the day, the ride home might be on ice and because it's my only bike with fenders. During the weekend I did however inflate the tires on one of the road fixies (700x23c). Man what a difference hard narrow tires make. I think I'll get some poser fenders for that thing and use it for a good weather commuter in summer.
The mtb got a speedometer and power grips over the weekend. The speedometer is there mostly to whip me on, if it's there I'll become obsessed with keeping the avg speed up. Today with the studs I made the trip in 22 minutes, avg speed of 19,5km/h (hilly terrain). That's almost up to last summers avg speed, but with studded tires. I think the hard trips during winter have paid off in better shape. Now I'm excited to put the slicks on and see what I can do on them. Better wait another month though, weather is bound to turn. The Power grips seemed nice on the first trip. I could feel that I was pulling the pedals up and I didn't feel trapped in them.
I realize what 19,5km/h does not seem like much, but it's what I'm doing these days. In my defence, the commute does include a fair bit of climbing and downhills where I can't really build up much speed. I do a bit better on the road bike, but without significant flats or fast downhills it's not a whole lot of difference. Now it sounds like I'm obsessed about this