Dan Action

Snowed In February 5, 2009

  Well, Philly finally got covered in snow. I have to say that I was most definitely looking forward to the first substantial snowfall here. I love the quiet that a good storm brings. Some time in the evening is when it all started to really stick and accrue. I couldn’t help but to go out and play for a while. Advantageously, our street is really devoid of folks driving on it and is most definitely too narrow to get a plow down it, so we got the dogs out and started to frolic in earnest.  The dogs went crazy! It was little Batter’s first time in it ever. When the dogs got a bit tired and wanted to get back inside I decided to grab my bike and take a little ride around the neighborhood.

It’s such a great time to ride. Most people driving are going really slow, and are more or less helpless. Lots of folks were out just walking around or futilely shoveling for their ease of getting out the door in the following morning. I will say it’s a pretty benevolent time to be out riding around. Not to mention how fun it is to lay the bike sideways, skidding around every corner.

The next day, however, is dramatically different. Nothing gold can stay. As aformentioned, our street will never see a plow, salt, or sand, but that lays no comparison to the streets a bit more at large. Upon getting to the end of my street that morning, I was greeted roadways of browned and rapidly melting slush. Such is the way, but I still hate it. For one, with the sides of the streets lined with heaps of snow from plowing, there is little room for passing traffic. Drivers of cars, a little less helpless than the night before, are a little more irritable and just want you out of the way. They’re also a bit more reckless, drawing too deeply from that felling of marginally increased ability and tend to lose control or their cars around corners or slide through stop signs and traffic lights pretty often.

Another reason the degradation of once fluffy powder n the streets sucks, and this is kind of embarrasing to say, is that I don’t have a bike outfitted with fenders. Not only that, I don’t have a bike that even has eyelets for them. In the recent past I made due with one of those budget seatpost mounted spatula marketed as a fender or “mudguard”. I have come to abhor those things. They move around, they cover only half the wheel, and, on my bike at least, they sit so high over the rear wheel that water usually gets past it and all over your back still. All this and still nothing to do about the water and what-have-you soaking your feet from the front wheel. So yesterday I went and bought some full cover fenders. I got the Planet Bike kind that just clip to the seat stays and the fork blades. I still needed to make some changes to them as they were going on my track bike that has minimal clearance between the frame and wheels. So I switched the struts from the front fender to the rear and set the shorter front fender over the back wheel so the fender ends at the bridge, but covers the wheel closely, and then chopped the rear fender which now has the struts from the front, and set it so that the front of the fender ends at the fork crown and extends most of the way rearward around the wheel. Pretty full coverage.

Once protected from most elements, at least those on the ground,  I set out to test them out. I felt like a kid with new rainboots, hitting every puddle and snowpile I could find. Shoes stayed dry, as did my hindparts. Mission accomplished.

Now I just have to wait out the snow on the trainer, there’s no heading out on the roads in this state. Oh boy!