You take the good, you take the bad...

The Good: After returning from a week in sunny Tucson, I was more than a little bummed to see the March snow earlier in the week. I "relaxed" for a couple of days, knowing that my base wouldn't erode that quick. But two days into relaxation, I knew that was BS. I don't care about the base eroding, that's just heresay. I just wanna ride my bike!

Braved some dodgy weather on Wednesday evening, snow and cold isn't fun now that I've had a taste of the sun. But the Saturday morning forecast was looking great.

With a flurry of ride planning emails coming from all angles late in the week, I was super happy to see that all turned out with about 30 riders meeting up on Saturday morning. Awesome! I really wish this could be more typical around Calgary. We headed west to Bragg Creek to loiter at the Cinnamon Spoon for a half hour. A large portion of the group then headed south at a pace that was faster than my bagel with peanut butter and jam really wanted, but I made do for the most part. Eventually we divided in half once more... those heading back and those searching for more. 5 of us went south near Millarville. By the time we were at the 130km mark, I felt in the mood to jam some of the hills. Really, what that means is I felt like trying to sort of keep up to the guys who were really jamming the hills (Jon Nutbrown, Shawn Bunnin, Craig Stappler, and Dave Ford put in a hard pace on at least one hill).

We made it into town on some rough pavement, and parted ways. Jon and I switched over to mountain bikes for the last errand of the day. His hadn't been touched by anything more than a hose since La Ruta, and it showed. I suspect Jon's "to do" list now has mountain bike maintenance featured more prominently here in the next few weeks.

All told, it was 100 miles on the day. Felt good, it didn't wipe me out too bad. Still had enough energy left to polish up my Cervelo that looked a little bit Paris-Roubaix-ish with all the mud, and picked up a giant couch from Tori's work at night with Dallas' assistance.

The Bad: I took it easy Sunday morning, doing some bike maintenance, organization. It was 1C all day on my home thermometer, and hadn't moved. I listed some stuff on eBay, still trying to "recycle" money into my bike exploits a little more this year rather than continually dumping "new" money into the game. Dropped by my parent's house briefly then started riding NW of the city. Good news is I got about 2.5 hours of decent base riding in. Bad news is it started to rain about 1.5 hours in, and the worst news is that the surface air temperature was like -7C. My jacket instantly had an ice glaze on it, as well as my pants, gloves and booties. I was actually still warm, everything froze so fast that I didn't even get wet. My bike looked ridiculous. It probably gained 10lbs in 10 minutes. Every spoke became quadrouple diameter with ice. Fenders caked, frame caked, fork caked, BB are a total mess. Cassette, other than gear I was using, was totally solid, you couldn't even see any cogs. Derailleur was frozen solid.

I actually didn't mind for a while... but I should have clued in sooner. I was climbing a small grade, and my rear wheel was slipping as I pedalled while in the saddle. That's some slippery pavement. But I tuned it out, I was warm and happy, and the weather was neat to see. Finally, on a descent right near the top of the Cochrane hill, I realized all was not well. I could feel the wind blowing me from the side, and watched my front wheel slide a few centimeters across the road... now that's NO TRACTION. I rode over to the gravel shoulder, and once I felt some grip, applied my brakes. That did absolutely nothing. I lean my bike up against a mailbox, feeling fairly warm when I was stopped, and pulled out my multitool. I spent 20 minutes chipping enough ice off my bike that my brakes sort of worked, and that I could pick at least 3 gears. I continued to ride cautiously toward home.

After I barely made it up a moderate hill due to lack of traction, I decided I couldn't ride home and phoned Tori. The roads were glazed with ice, it was hard to walk without slipping. I was concerned about crashing or being hit by a sliding car. Studded tires would have been much better than my road tires no doubt.

I walked and did a couple minutes of riding for a half hour before she got me. Interestingly enough, not a single one of a dozen cars even slowed or asked me if I was OK. I'm sure I could have flagged someone down, but it was worth noting that people certainly didn't seem to care. I'd suggest that with the weather, the crappy roads, and a guy walking his bike along the side that far from town, that maybe it would have crossed some do-gooder's mind to offer some assistance.

As I got closer to town, traffic increased. I started walking in the ditch. I was scared to walk on the road, since cars weren't slowing down, yet the road was so slippery I could hardly walk. Didn't seem like a good combo. People pulling onto the road off rural driveways would hit the gas and fishtail out of control all over both lanes.

It felt good to finally see my ride. All in, I saw 6 cars in the ditch, and 3 cars involved in a smash up. I'm sure there were and will be many more. Total crap weather is an understatement.

It sure is hard to get good training in at this time of year. I did some weights at home and called it quits for the day. We'll see what this week brings... looks like it'll be busy at work.