November Rides

[north woods gal]

Took a spill, yesterday, on the trail, thanks to a patch of weird ice on a turn. Rear tire on the fat bike flew out from under me, so landed on my back and got a sore left shoulder blade area for my troubles. My head skidded a bit on the frozen ground, but the helmet took that out of the injury equation. All in all, pretty minor spill as spills go and I do expect it, now and then, for my kind of riding. Goes with the territory.

Could have been avoided, though. Our snow cover is mostly gone, even on our trails, so rather than grab one of the fat bikes with studded tires and have to give up speed and handling that goes with those rigs, decided, instead, to go with a faster Norco fat bike with ordinary snow/dirt tires, no studs. The problem is that the thawing/freezing cycles we've been having is creating glare ice out out of the wet mud sections. Yep, just when I thought I'd seen it all, we now have not only black ice, but now we have black ice mud to deal with. Yup, looks just like ordinary frozen mud, but it is slick as snot from all the riding I've done on it.

The good news is that I went back to the house and exchanged that Norco with another Norco fat bike with studded tires and kept on riding. That took care of the problem and could turn and climb even on the black ice mud sections. Honestly, my trails, right now, are not safe to ride without studs. Crazy to think I would need studded tires to ride on what appears to be just an ordinary section of frozen dirt trails, but there you go. Who knew?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!