When Will I Know That I Really Can't Go

Saturday was another bitterly cold day but unlike the last one, this one included a nice layer of snow and ice as the cherry on top of the poop sundae.




I'm not sure what the snow totals were but the forecast had said we could get up to 3" of snow with maybe a 5th to 10th of an inch of ice on top of that. Not sure we got the 3" of snow but we got enough and the ice covering it made the residential streets pure ice better suited for skating than riding a bicycle on. Even those with studs were slipping a little so decided that about all we were going to get in was a short breakfast ride. We took advantage of sidewalks and open grass areas as much as possible to avoid the worst of the ice, breaking new tracks in the snow should count as "Dog Miles" as OmaTodd suggested because for every mile you pedal it feel more like 4.





A short, butt puckering ride later and we managed to safely make it to Cultiva for a little breakfast and coffee. The East Campus location is always a little bit more crowded with it being right next to, you guessed it, the East Campus of UNL but it's a little bit less of a ride and has more grassy spaces between it and the shop.



After successfully navigating the ice flow back to Cycle Works a few of us opted for a regroup at Method, they even had a new bouncer at the door and our own reserved table just for us.


No Saturday ride next Saturday as we will all be testing our fat biking skills at the 2nd annual Fat Bike Frozen Ididaride, still time to sign up if you want to come play in the snow. Team Sad Pandas will be there defending our 3rd place finish from last year.

Sign up HERE.

Snow Wrong

If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes and it will change. That is a saying that is heard around here often and it's one with more than a little truth to it. Earlier in the week it was supposed to snow around these parts, it was supposed to snow a lot. Up until Friday morning it was supposed to snow 3-5 or 4-6 inches and be blowing and drifting to beat the band depending on which source you wanted to religiously check.


The snow was supposed to be so bad that things got cancelled before the snow even happened, there was supposed to be a board member meeting for the Great Plains Bicycle Club that I was going to attend on Saturday morning that never happened. But because it was supposed to happen, the SMNDFBR was never scheduled for this week and that left me on a Saturday morning without a normal ride to do. While it didn't snow, it did do a fair amount of freezing drizzle on Friday which meant that driving to Lincoln was probably not the best idea, so instead I hit up the local trails. In all actuality we could have used a good inch or two of snow, would have improved the tread immensely as it wasn't even enough to cover the previous tracks and it was down right icy and slick in more than a few spots.


Would have been bad coming across this rut buried beneath the snow, was slick enough knowing it was there but would have been crash worth if you didn't see it.


It was still cold, really cold as the feel like temp was a single degree. It looked like there was one other bicycle out there today but I didn't see a single person while riding around, the sun helped to keep me warm but all the battery operated devices didn't much care for the extreme cold. GPS battery went down to 60% in an hour, camera was telling me it was about to die and even though I had the iPhone in a Ziplock in my jersey pocket, underneath my jacket, it was still cold enough to drain it from 85% to 1% by the time I got back to the car.


An oddly amazing thing about the ride today was that, despite the single digit temps, there were a few places that must have some sort of underground heat source near them as they were still muddy and not at all frozen like they should have been. Hoping we can either get some additional snow on the ground here soon or some much warmer temps to stick around. As it is now a little sun and then refreeze overnight isn't going to do the trail any favors, likely to get real slick without another inch or two of fresh snow on top of it soon.