Riding the zipper at Case

I spent the week cooped up in a conference center in Florida, sometimes those things are OK for a break from work, but its quite another story when you're one of the presenters. I did seven presentations in 4 days and countless meetings. By the time departure time rolled around last night I was sleep deprived, protein deficient (I'm a vegetarian and while there was plenty of food without meat there was very little with protein!) and bloated. Free beer is great, until its not, I'm not much of a drinker so even having 2 or 3 beers for four nights in a row is radically different than my normal intake. 

I took Friday off, and pretty quickly got crabby at my wife, it didn't take long for her to insist I get outside and get the cure for my surliness. 

I have this new Fatboy and it was time for a proper ride. 

I had heard via various social media that conditions were getting really good, so I was psyched to get out on the trail and see for myself. We have about 8" of hard, compact and frozen snow on the ground, you can ride just about anywhere, even where no one has packed it down. In fact most of the packed down trails are so post-holed that riding them is a filling loosening experience. 

I did 11 miles of goodness today - about 80% of it was off trail, today the woods were my skate park.


There were a few places that were just plain ice, but not many and it was pretty easy to spot them (I only went down twice). This was one icy spot, but with a straight on approach it wasn't bad at all. For reference in the summer this is a pretty intense roller - less than half the riders I ride with will ride it. The snow makes it a lot more benign, though the ice added a little difficulty to it. 


A little shadow play


I had planned on taking a lot more pictures, but I forgot to charge the camera and with half charged batteries, it didn't last long in the cold temps. 


I'm getting more medicine tomorrow morning, I can only remember 3 or 4 times in the last 25 years of riding where we have snow you can ride on top like this, its really fun. About 30% of the time I was zippering through the top layer, meaning a regular bike probably wouldn't be able to sit on top at all. I only spun through the top layer 3 or 4 times in 11 miles of riding.