Do You Wanna Build A Snowman

There wasn't a whole lot in the way of snow last night but what it lacked in white stuff, it more than made up for in temperature. With the actual temps being in the lower 20° range and the feels like temps hovering around 11° it certainly was frozen even if not perfect for building an Olaf.



Why in the world would anyone go ride in that you might ask? Well, the cold really isn't all that bad once you get moving if you dress properly and it's not often that I get to ride with a group a mere two miles from my front door since most of my group rides anymore are down in Lincoln. So, I bundled up and high tailed it down to the meetup spot just outside of Tranquility Park to meet up with the WestEZ fellas.




Despite the stiff winds, once we got into the trees it wasn't too bad at all and the trail was in prime frozen shape. Nobody was breaking any land speed records for sure but we did manage a fairly respectable 9 miles in just a tad over an hour of moving time and just a tad under 2 hours of total time.


Pictures don't do it justice but the full moon was putting on quite a show last night as well, even thought that if there was more snow on the trail we probably could have ridden without lights on and just followed the white ribbon through the woods.


In places that the moon didn't reach, like under a bridge out of the wind, it was pretty dark. Ever try to figure out why your cleat won't clip in by handlebar lights? That was a fun time.


Since I rode down and my light had already been flashing an angry red at me for a half hour, I opted to skip Boondocker's bar on the way back and just head home. Someone else had some flashing red lights, accompanied by blue flashing lights, as well. Not sure what was going on here but it didn't look like a disabled vehicle but it was odd that they would sit in the middle of a high traffic lane like that and risk and accident. Oh well, none of my concern and I had places to be. Great night for a ride all in all and a good test of the cold weather resolve and gear for the upcoming winter that is coming sooner rather than later this year it seems.

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.

Two To Tango, Three To Salsa

 Salsa demo was yesterday morning out at Tranquility Park in Omaha, of course just to make things interesting we had a little rain roll through over night Friday night into Saturday morning. I showed up a little bit early to do a little prospecting to make sure that the trails would be OK to ride on and as it turned out so did Brian from Salsa.  This was a blessing as I didn't bring a bike with me and was just planning on walking some of the trail, luckily Brian had a whole van full of bicycles so that we could go out a little farther and test more of the trail, which ended up being in really good shape despite Mother Nature's attempt to literally rain on our parade.


Unfortunately for me the bike nearest the back of the Salsa van was the brand new 27.5+ Pony Rustler, so I was forced to ride it for the prospecting lap. I can see a lot of these bikes being sold this year for Salsa, it's almost identical to their longer travel 29er, the Horsethief except with a different tire size. Although because they both run the new Boost hub standard front and rear and have identical geometry, it is my understanding that you can run 27.5+ on the Horsethief or run 29er wheels on the Pony Rustler... you could buy either bike and have two options just by buying a second set of wheels. My only question would be, since they are identical and can run either wheel size, I wonder how long it will be before one of the bike lines is absorbed by the other. For example they could have just offered the Horsethief in a 27.5+ option and wouldn't have needed a newly named bicycle model. I guess only time will tell but I can tell you one thing for sure, it was an awesome bike to ride.


I tried to convince Brian to just let me take this one home and say that it must have fallen off the back of the van but as you can see, he wasn't buying it.



Once it was determined that the trails were good to ride it was time to unload and setup bikes, tents and tables in preparation for the masses looking to ride. It's pretty amazing the amount of bikes they can fit into one of these vans, it was a good solid hour of unloading and assembling bicycles.


Align handlebars, secure front wheels, pump tires, check suspension, install pedals and repeat; Rick showing us how it's done.


Thankfully I stopped on the way to the demo and picked up some cream filled, glazed and frosted energy pills.




10 o'clock sharp and bicycles started rolling out of the tents and down the trails.



Of the bikes that Salsa brought out the Blackborow got my nod for best colorway, that green up close is even better than the pictures on the site... but they couldn't come up with some catch name other than just green? For 2016 the Mukluk and the Blackborow share the same frame geometry, making them virtually the same bike except the Mukluk will still run 4" tires and the Blackborow keeps the 5" behemoths allowing you to chose the best tire size for your personal application.


And they are super light weight?!? I don't think this is exactly what they mean when they say that the big tires offer lots of flotation but what do I know, I'm not a bike manufacturer.


I've ridden the aluminum Bucksaw and it's a blast, the carbon one is just as fun but seems to be much, much faster when he rubber hits the dirt. If I had carbon Bucksaw kind of money I'd love to make one of these mine, still my all time favorite Fat Bike. I also love the fact that while there seems to be a trend toward 5" tires, Salsa has stuck to the 4" on this bike, 5" might look better on paper but in my experience the 4" tire seems to be better on the trail where it matters, especially if you are trying to use your Fat Bike year round. Maybe I need to setup a GoFundMe and see if the kind folks of America wouldn't mind chipping in a few dollars for my Bucksaw fund.



While I was out riding the Bucksaw the clouds opened up and starting dousing us in liquid sunshine, chasing both people and bikes under the tents.


The rain might not have lasted long but it was long enough to bring an end to the demo ride, thankfully we were able to get quite a few people out on the trails during the fist three-ish hours of the demo.

Being the first demo I've ever worked at, it gave me a whole new perspective about what it takes to put one of these things on and that's only from the bike shop side and doesn't even touch on how much work and sacrifice guys like Brian make delivering bicycle happiness to countless numbers of people over the course of a year. On the surface it sounds like it'd be a great job but I'm not sure I could do it, I know one thing, I'll never be able to just show up to a demo ride again without having a better appreciation for what it takes to get it up and running.

Thanks to all those who came out and sorry to those who didn't make it before we got rained out, there's always next time though.