This weekend was spent back home on the range, on familiar rides with familiar faces. I loved the scenery and the weather, and did my best to bring up the tail end of the group on our Saturday excursion. Something about the flurry of activity leading into Tucson, the hard efforts there, and the flurry of activity upon my return left little time for rest - left me feeling generally like a pile of junk out there on the roads, despite the recent round of favourable riding volumes and conditions down south.
Sunday was a different story all together. Keith, Craig, for a while Dallas, and myself rode around the city on as much pristine, acceptable, marginal, and downright sketchy snow/ice/mud/grass singletrack as we could. Edworthy to Fish Creek, plus everything in between, we sought out to roll our little 'cross tires all over.
It's interesting to see people's respective comparative advantages out on the roads. Dallas on Saturday brought out the horsepower for a few stretches. Keith is accelerating like an espoir. Craig was finding traction on technical snow and ice climbs with his 'cross tires like nobody's business in Fish Creek. Where does that leave a jesk jockey like me? Apparently sketchy ice and snow downhills are my thing. Of course this isn't fair without Nutbrown out as the gold standard, but there were more than a few pauses along the trail at the top of sections where the preference was to dismount to navigate down, that my eye didn't see any particular reason not to roll. Collectively, I think we surprised a few people walking about the various parks when they saw what, and how fast, we were riding on what would appear to them as entirely inadequate winter bicycles.
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