Snow is fun, I still have found memories of snow from my child hood. When it snows my wife and I are more apt to snuggle on the couch, sleep in or cook something wonderful.
But ice is the devil!
I submit my evidance, the Ice Devil, don't belive me, Google it -->
If you are not in the northeast, allow me to draw you a picture.
It snowed here last week,
then it rained,
then it snowed a little,
then it got warm,
then it froze.
Then some slack jawed nuckledragger drove down the bike paths around the city of Harrisburg. Typically this is a good, it creates lanes you can ride in when the snow is deep, and helps things melt, when its ice on the other hand, WOW that was sporty.
My front tire was chasing anything path it could find, my back was just trying to keep up, and most of the time doing it badly. After about 15 min of that seat clenching fun, I broke out of the path and decided to try ridding in the snow/ice mix.
Yea that was dumb, I have created a small diagram to describe the problems.
Position 1:Your riding along on TOP of the ice layer, its kind of like when you were a kid and just heavy enough to break through, you know your going to bust in, its just a matter of when.
Position 2:
OUFFFFFFF, you break through, now this is a dramatic and extremly exciting moment in cycling, its the moment when your back wheal is going much faster then your front wheal.
Position 3:
You have now peddled your back side off in a hope to stay upright, your back wheal may or may not have fallen into the same path as the front at this point. Now that you have plowed you want along for a few feet, there is enough of an ice damm built up in front of your tire that you are thrown rather violently back up on top the ice layer, to start all of this over again.
To your legs this is like ridding up hill on chunky goose pop. You cant stop peddling or you will stop, the faster you go, its almost better. You can hold a batter line when you have a little bit of speed. BUT you cant clip in for the impending fear that you will be thrown from you bike for an impact with the ground that would make the plane landing in the Hudson seem "Peaceful"
Added Problems...
1. I tuned my bike last night, and as a part of that I put on two newish tires.
A. Front Tire: Studded Snow Tire - Friction Coefficient equal to a cinder block.
B. Read Tire: A real mountain bike tire - Friction Coefficient equal to a rounded off cinder block.
Don't get me wrong, that studded snow tire ROCKS on ice, snow, slush, or that crappy gravel along the side of the road. Dave H. is the man of the week for letting me borrow it, but its heavy, I mean really heavy, the only nice thing about all of that weight is once you get it rolling it does not want to slow down. You have to love conservation of momentum.
The rear tire has never been on this frame in the back before, and now I know that it will never be again. It runs fine, till you stand up to peddle, then on every other stroke as the bike is landed over, it hits on the chain stay. CRAP!
The crazy thing is that when ridding the bike seated, there is no problem. No rubbing what so ever, seems that the back tire flexes quite a bit when you stand and peddle.
2. The lock out on my Monute axle front shocks lock out mechanism has decided to call into work sick. Most of the time I was far to worried about getting flung from the bike like a ground hog in a trebuchet to notice. Till I this a hill, stand up, peddle, and BOING, BOING, BOING. After looking into a home fix, and replacing the lock out cylinder. Both either cant be done, or cost just about as much as the fork its self. It seems that I'm just going to have to deal with it.
Other then that I got to work just fine...
Days Tech...
Thank goodness, finally a way to cut a pizza...
How is this really a problem? I would love to know the number of people that MAKE their own pizza at home. I mean, you really should make your own pizza, its easy, will taste better, LOTS better, and you can control the nutritional set up. But really, other then frozen mega mart cardboard with cheese, aide from those that either have a pizza stone, or a couple of yard pavers in the oven needs a pizza cutter, let along an electronic pizza cutter.
US is the best at wind...
That's right boys and girls, the good old US is at the top of the chart when it comes to wind power. As a country we produced 25GW of power by wind last year making up 42% of the US's total new power-producing capacity in 2008.
Google Latitude...
Put in your friends and find them on Google maps on your cell phone in REAL TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!
From Gizmodo:
Laptops and cellphones (when not using GPS) can locate to a fair level of accuracy using geotagged Wi-Fi and cellular tower points in a database that Google's collected on its own, perhaps while doing Streetview photography. Or you can set your location manually. Google told me that there's no set standard for how often the map updates your location. Rather, they have an algorithm that depends on how often the device has moved, historically, and how much battery your device has left. You can also sign out of the service entirely, and set per user preferences on whether or not certain friends can see your location at all, or if only on city-levels of accuracy.
Why helmets don't suck...
Today I almost had a real live version of why helmets don't suck, as I was ridding down a street to avoid more of the for mentioned bike trails, a car was pulling out onto the street I was on. As they gunned the gas to pull out in front the of the car that was about to pass me they decided better on it and locked up the breaks. SCREEEECCCCHHHHHHH. Luckily they stopped with plenty of room for me and the passing car to get by.
Cute pet of the day...
I have made it very clear in the past that I dislike pet costumes, but this is funny.
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