A New GOAL! (or "Who Needs Snowshoes?")

It's snowing!

I always head into fall with a mixed bag of feelings. Strange, given that I don't really have any bad memories of winter. Narrowly avoiding broken bones as I sail off the edge of the ski slope directly between two large trees (due to end-of-day refrozen ice-crust and far too little actual skiing experience), barely sleeping in my best friend's makeshift log cabin built into the sandy side of a riverbank with nothing to heat the whole place but a small propane heater and my three-season sleeping bag (winter isn't one of the three, BTW), spinning 360 through oncoming highway traffic (between two vehicles, in fact)and ending up in the opposite ditch until help can arrive: all of these and more simply became great stories and aren't even what I think of when I start hating on winter. What do I actually dislike about winter?

Cold wind blowing icy shards into cold ears. Scraping car windows inside the fifteen minutes that already isn't long enough to get where I'm going. Guiltily idling a frozen car to a fog-free temperature. Sliding towards the intersection and just barely stopping short of the bumper in front of me while wondering if the car behind me will fare as well.

This year I have something exciting to distract me from the things I don't like: a new goal!

I am going to attempt to cycle every day from first snow to spring thaw. That means less of all that stuff above as I try to cycle more often than I drive. I thought about distance, but with the snow and ice, that might be tricky, so I'm going to track my success mostly in terms of number of trips. Of course, I'll be learning and tweaking as I go. Other things I hope to incorporate into this project:

Regular blog posts including one photo per day (maybe even per trip).
Comments on and conversations with other winter cyclists I encounter.
Description of the tips, tricks, and gear I find useful for biking in the snow, as well as an evolving list of items I've tried or would like to (like welder's gauntlets).
Building my own anticipation for Ice Cycle 2011.


Today's trip was a short (~6.5 blocks) errand to Calories restaurant for my bi-weekly compost pickup, and back.

I thought things went swimmingly, despite not yet having installed my studded tire.


Total trips: 1
Weather: mushy snow, -1 deg Celcius with cold wind (-9ish?)
Distance cycled: ~13 blocks
Bikecicles spotted: 3








Another stalwart cyclist.










And proof that










the others










are somewhere out here...