Sometimes dismounts just happen

Six days ago, we got our first "for reals" snow of the year, followed by days of thoroughly iced, utterly scary roads.

I was not hardcore enough to bike these roads. I saw other people biking these roads and I celebrated them in passing, thumbs-upping if we caught each others eyes.

Four days later I decided to try out the roads. I mounted up, made it two blocks, turned around, went right back home, and put my bike away. Still not hardcore enough.

Funnily enough, an Internet Cohort of mine successfully completed a ride that same morning, but he did declare it to be scary in the "holy crap" levels.

click through

So this morning I decided to try out the roads again.

And here, in an unsorted list, are some reasons that it was still too soon to brave the roads!

• I fell off my bike!
  
  It happened really fast. The road looked clear, but apparently there was a well placed patch of ice that kicked my bike right out from under me. I was instantly put down, gently, on my side on the road, and I think I even continued to pedal air for a second before I realized I was no longer upright, much less no longer on my bike, which lay about a foot to my left.


• A truck slid towards me on the ice!
  
  The truck approaching from my right was going slowly and only slid probably six inches, and successfully stopped at its stop sign as I continued through the intersection. Still, I think that's one of the most nerve-wracking things you can see while on a bike.


• The bike lanes were full of slush and unrideable!
  
  This was the first time I noticed how badly the city bus tears up the bike lane! At nearly every bus stop, a wide pile of slush and ice had been smeared and frozen across the lane where the bus had pulled back out into traffic.
  
  I eventually settled into a pattern of riding mostly in the traffic lane, and periodically sliding over into the odd patch of clear bike lane to let traffic pass.

Over all, the ride was manageable. I'll probably keep doing it and am glad I'll be able to get some riding in until the next time it snows and freezes. After two or three days in a row, I just get to feeling uncomfortable being boxed into having to use the car.

Icy roads ride report

I have belly ached and moaned this winter whenever road conditions got icy or slippery enough to prevent me from riding. That's because until about a month ago, I didn't have any tires available to me other than skinny road ones. And so I fell down a lot on the ice.

But, about a month ago, I adopted an abandoned mountain bike. It had been left unchained behind my place of employment, by the dumpsters. We brought it in and waited for about three weeks for somebody to come inquire about it, but nobody did, and now it's mine.

I got to take it out on the ice yesterday after it snowed the whole previous day long.



I had made it several blocks and was in a neighboring residential area when I had an encounter of the up-close and vehicular kind. Recapping it to a coworker in an email:

The car was some yellow thing. Maybe a Volkswagon? It was parked parallel to the street on my right, and the windows were COMPLETELY iced over. Hardly a peep hole to see through. So as I got close to it, it backed up suddenly, SLAMMING into the car behind it. Nothing shattered but there was a loud thunk. And then it pulled out into the street when I was right next to it. I had to swerve out of the way and almost wiped out in the process. I yelled at them to stop, but they sped off.

The car had Florida tags, so maybe they don't know much about things like Ice or Snow. Or Driving. Or Not Being A Miserable Human Being. While it may not be fair, I'm harboring some ill will towards all things Floridian today.

I have since let Florida off the hook.

I yelled at the driver to stop because I intended to instruct them to scrape the ice off their windows before continuing. In the moment, latching on to the fact that they had Florida tags, I really did think they might not know about ice scraping. I was prepared to show them how to do it with a credit card if they didn't have a scraper.

That all passed through my head in a split-second while the car spun its wheels and sped away.

A few houses further along, an older gentleman stood in his driveway where he had seen the whole thing. He look bewildered.

A quick thinking bystander was able to photograph the incident:



My ride continued towards, and into, Wash Park. The roads in Wash Park had not been cleared and it was just covered with ice. I got a bad case of the wobbles and nearly fell over. So I dismounted, portaged my bike through the ankle deep snow, and got back on the main road. As I was pedaling off again, a jogger acknowledged the fact that I was riding in the cold and slippery by hollering at me, "You're a brave man!" To which I assured him it was safer for me on the dry street than in the icy, more slippery, park.

I did not stop to show him the print-out of the photograph of my previous encounter with the yellow car.

I made it the rest of the way to work after stopping once to warm my hands.



Safe and sound, at my place of employment, I unclipped my helmet, swung my leg over the back of my bike to dismount, and tore my pants.



Between the new tear and the skunk stripe that comes from riding through wet stuff without fenders, these pants were trashed!

My boss looked concerned upon my arrival, and then looked visibly relieved when I emerged from the bathroom in a fresh, crisp change of clothes.

Eight hours of work ensued, and when it was time to return home, the sun had been out all day and the roads were completely clear. I wore just two t-shirts under my jacket instead of the two long-sleeve shirts from that morning. What a difference!

Between my weather gear and my work clothes, here is a list of all the clothing I carried with me.

• Buff. Worn like a balaclava in the morning and a head scarf in the afternoon. (My buff is my favorite piece of cycling gear. I use it all year long.)


• Two long-sleeve t-shirts. For the morning ride.


• T-shirt and button down shirt. For work.


• Another, heavy long sleeve shirt. For work.


• Tights and (currently trashed) khakis. For morning ride.


• Blue jeans. For work.


• One pair of wool socks, one pair of wool gloves.


• My reflective cycling jacket.

Shirt total: 5
Pants total: 3

That's roughly the amount of clothing I pack for a long weekend vacation!

Denver Country Club doesn't shovel its sidewalks.

It has been a cold and wet winter. One result of this is that I haven't been riding as much because the roads have been so icy. But another result of this is that is I have acquired a mountain bike! (Or "rescued" one, as they say.) So I don't have to be quite as skiddish on the ice as I am on the skinny little tires of my zippy little road bike.

One stretch of bike route that has made skiddish is the portion of D14 that runs east/west along 1st Avenue, north of the Denver Country Club.



This is also part of the Cherry Creek Trail, where it briefly comes above ground.

First of all, this is one of the more sketchy "Use the sidewalk" portions of bike route that I have seen in Denver. The sidewalk feels narrow. There's enough room for opposing foot/bike traffic to pass each other, but there have been several instances where I decided to stop and wait for the oncoming joggers or bikers to pass before continuing. Especially when portions of the sidewalk are lost to ice mounds.

Further more, this narrow little sidewalk is woefully unprotected from the 1st Avenue traffic. Here's what a well protected sidewalk looks like.



This sidewalk, an example from completestreets.org, protects users from street traffic with grass, trees, and a shoulder on the road. Actually, it looks a lot like the the west side of the same country club:



Compare the above sidewalks to the one in question, along 1st Avenue:





This sidewalk in no way protects its users from street traffic, which you can see is considerable.

Imagine once more that the sidewalk—as is often the case—is covered in ice. On this sidewalk, a slip or a spill could mean instantly entering the flow of traffic if you're not riding close to the hedge.

The hedge, incidentally, which is just tall enough to prevent any sunlight from hitting the sidewalk, leaving it caked in ice long after it has melted off elsewhere.

And so, although I might brave it now that I have this new mountain bike, I've taken to abjuring this little stretch of D14/Cherry Creek Trail/1st Avenue. I've marked it as a seasonal trail hazard on my map. And I'm going to call up the country club and suggest they raise their dues if they can't spare twenty dollars to outsource the shoveling of their sidewalks to a twelve year old from the neighborhood.

cold cold cold

Bikes and the City made (an ironic) reference to the "cold" 40 degree weather they're having in San Fransisco right now.

Which made me grumble.

We're experiencing a prolonged snap of "cold" 5 degree weather. Which is problematic in that the streets having un-frozen for a couple days now. Cold weather I can handle, but I don't enjoy riding on ice because I don't enjoy falling down.

Consequently, I've been off the bike for two days now and commuting by car feels strange.

ice bike

Especially my front tire. I was pretty much riding on the rim, and I have no idea how I didn't notice. I must have been focusing too hard on the ice and the traffic.

When I parked my bike, both tires were covered in a thin layer of water/snow, through which the escaping air bubbled and hissed and mini-gurgled. It's a weird noise and when you hear it, it's obvious that it's not good.

When I went to pull out the front tube to patch it, I noticed that it wasn't 100% flat as I had thought. It was more like 75% flat, but seemed to be holding air at that point. I was curious about whether the sealant goop had somehow gooped up and sealed the leak, so I just pumped both the tires up instead of pulling it all apart.

The front one held. So, yippee!

The rear one apparently has a slow leak, but slow enough to let me ride home on it after another pre-departure pump.

I'll have to find and patch that leak tomorrow.

On the way home, about four blocks from work, I wobbled on some ice and fell down. A Schwann's truck that was approaching me slowed, and the driver hollered out the window, "Whoa dude, are you okay?"

"Yeah, thanks!" I answered.

"That ice is hard," he called.

"Yup."

At that point we both continued along our original trajectories.

Tales from the commute

There were two seriously treacherous stretches on the ride home tonight!

One was heading west on 33rd, and the other was heading west through City Park. Both bits were buried in icy, mushy slosh. I was sliding and skidding and wobbling and teetering and tottering.

Didn't fall though.

I had two encounters in City Park. One was an older fella who saw me coming, grinned, and waved. I smiled and said, "Hi!" and he said, in a sing-song voice that was a dead ringer for Goofy, "Hi, Brian!"

The other encounter was a couple walking towards me. The lady said as I passed, with concern in her voice, "Skinny tires!"

The Pete Seeger lookin' fella said, "Brave man!"

drift

So I've experienced this thing a couple times during my commute.

Sometimes, you accidentally lean into a bit of ice, and you can feel your traction slipping. And so if you don't want to develop an all out skid-n-crash, you can't move. So you don't brake and you don't pedal, and you can't lean out of the ice. So you just kind of sail along for a few seconds in helpless limbo, hoping that if you just coast for a second, you'll get your traction back before the ice pulls you the rest of the way in.

That's scary.