Fresh Snow

We had our first real snow of the year on Thursday. Someone at our office needed a gift certificate for Woodberry Kitchen (good food btw) but was too sketched out by the slippery roads to drive there. I hadn’t taken lunch yet so I said what the hey and volunteered to pick it up for them. The great thing about riding in fresh snow is that no matter how busy your surroundings are, the noise factor drops by 30% and a busy metropolis street becomes somewhat of a country back road. After running my errand I was less than 2 blocks from the back entrance to Druid Hill Park so I made an impromptu trip back to work through the park. As expected, no one was out…

NW corner of Druid Hill Lake

By the time I got back to the main roads traffic had been around enough to pack down tracks in the snow. It made the road surface irregular and less than ideal for my Schwalbes which are now effectively worn down to the point of being slicks. I was glad to get out and enjoy while I could because by 4:30 everything was a salty, soupy, trafficky mess.

Winter is here again so I prepped the blue commuter Thurs. night. The 1×7 is an annoyance to me right now. After I lost the back wheel last year to a broken spoke and severely worn rim I replaced it with one of my craptacular hand-me-down wheels. I rode that around for a few 100 miles this year until it started skipping in the smallest cog. After an hour of adjustments and observations I traced the problem to a bent axle. Not feeling like screwing with it any more I just adjusted the limit screw so I can’t get to the 11t cog which is the only one that is affected. Need to build a new wheel which I should be excited about after reading Brandt twice this summer, but right now I just don’t want to expend any effort on it, don’t feel like shelling out for a decent hub and rim, and don’t feel like buying something cheap-o that’s just going to break again in a few months. Maybe after the holidays I will. Until then I’ll just ride it like I stole it. Also wishing I went for a bigger front ring than 35 tooth last year. Like I said, annoyance.