Snow Good In The Park

You just SNOW it's going to be a perfect day for fat biking when the car and the bike are both covered before you even start riding. SNOWMAN, ICY that the first line was a little cheesy, I should stop before this thing SNOWBALLS out of control and DRIFTS into the absurd, I mean once you start it's just a FLURRY of puns and one liners until your whole blog post becomes a little FLAKY and your audience gets a little SALTY with you. SNO-MY-GOD I can't stop...


Ok, I'll stop now. As everyone who lives in Lincoln knows, there was a fair amount of snow on the ground Saturday morning, which meant perfect Fat Bike conditions. The drive down from the Big O wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, until I hit the Lancaster county line. It's like there is this invisible barrier around the county where roads are maintained outside of the barrier but not inside the barrier, literally went from decent Interstate to ice covered in seconds but I made it and was pretty pumped for the SMNDFBR.


I even managed to get there at about the normal time, somewhat funny was that the two guys from Omaha and the guy from Council Bluffs were among the first people to get to Cycle Works, we had to push the ride back a half hour so that the Lincoln folks could make it!


With snow still falling and temps mildly sticking right around the freezing point, 10 of us (Pat not pictured) set off at 10 am headed to Wilderness.







HUGE props to the folks at Lincoln Parks and Rec (who I believe are responsible for clearing the multi use and bike trails) who were already out clearing the way. In fact the trails were in better shape than the roads in most cases, believe me when I say, you work does not go unnoticed.





Once we got to Jamaica the story was different as we beat the crews to the trail. Breaking new trail in the wet, heavy snow was tough going and the pace slowed to almost a fast crawl. Your best bet in these scenarios is to either head for untouched snow and plow your own trail or get behind someone else and tightrope in their path, depending on your skill set. Riding in another persons track is definitely the easier way in terms of effort to pedal but it requires a pretty good mastery of one's balancing skills since your margin for error is only 4-5 inches wide. Regroups were fairly often on a section of trail that we normally wouldn't need to regroup.







With the going slow and arduous, a hydration and re-layering stop was necessary before we even dipped a tire into Wilderness.






Once in the park, the heavier, wetter snow stuck to everything and it truly was a winter wonderland in there on Saturday. And as a bonus the branches meant that there was slightly less snow on the ground, the going when breaking trails was still a tough job but a little bit easier than the exposed Jamaican Trail.


We even ran into Schmidty and his newly acquired Fat Bike and we joined forces to ride around a bit more.







If you want a better appreciation for winter, get a Fat Bike and take a spin through Wilderness Park after a snow like this, it's almost magical in there after such a snow. As magical as it was, it was time to end the ride and get on with the rest of the day. Even though the total distance for the ride was a tad under 12, it felt more like 30 with the extra effort with the heavy snow. If you can't ride slow, Fat Biking might not be for you, we were our there for over 3 hours and only managed a 5.6 mph average, not winning any speed contest there but man was it worth the effort.





The ride ended back on the Jamaican Trail, which was plowed by the time we finished up in the Park, and those who had things to do headed home, those that still had a little more time made a B-line for Blue Blood Brewing and a much needed refuel.



Food and drink were good, as always, at Blue Blood but we couldn't stay there forever, so the remaining 5 made the final push back to Cycle Works and the end of the extended SMNDFBR. Thanks to everyone who made it out, this one was a top 10 ride.