bleckblog: musings of a community college english teacher

This is my Soma Double Cross after a ride in the snow. The bike is technically a cyclecross bike, which is a road bike ridden like a mountain bike for lack of a better way to describe it. I've been using this as my commuter and hope to make it a solid ranndoneuring bike as time goes one, but for now, it's getting me back and forth to campus while also being my bike to ride in lousy weather. There was only about an inch of new snow on the ground today and most of the major roads were fairly clear with dirty, yucky slushy snow. Although you can't  tell, the front has two lights, one a steady beam  that I can use to either see or be seen and another that can either flash or be a steady light, but it's only good for helping me to be seen. It throws very little light onto the road, but I rarely ride when it's that dark. The rear light can alternate between steady, flashing or funky strobe, which means it flashes one light at a time, up and down and up and down and up and down.  The flash is all four lights together.

I've been told that the steady light is better at dusk because drivers can better tell how far ahead I am, but that the flash is better when it's dark, dark, dark.  I've also been told that a German study shows the flashing light attracts drunks, so it may not be the best to use in the holiday season. The second picture is a close-up of my rear tire. Snow is covering some of the studs.  The studs are nice on ice, but don't much matter on the wet concrete, except to slow me down even more than the  low pressure and deep tread already slows me down. In order to get the studded tires to fit, I had to take off my rear fender and rack. The present rear fender, such as it is, is actually a fender designed to mount to a front bicycle shock. It keeps most of the mud and water off my back and butt, but not all of it.

Cycling in the snow is a bit of a challenge. Part of it is the roads can be slick, but these tires help with most of that. When the snow is soft, the front tire tends to want to pull in all directions, much like a car tire in slush and deep snow. On compact snow, in a straight line, I can move along pretty well, as can I in no more than a few inches of soft snow. Riding over snow with lots of foot prints is more of a challenge. The tires grip the compacted snow, but the ride is rough and bumpy going from soft to hard and back again over and over. Cycling in the snow is fun. I wish I could do more of it.