Wednesday 13 January 2010

Sno' cycling


There are braver soles than me out there, all wrapped up in their super warm cycling gear, or just bearing the freezing cold through their lycra, but I haven't cycled to work since 2009. I felt like I admitted defeat early by buying a week tube pass early last week but my bald fat tires were already prone to skidding a little in the wet so they definitely wouldn't be happy on ice.

My bike would quite like a new pair of tires with decent mountain bike tread, but I'm hoping these ones will hold out till I find it a new home in March. In the middle of last week's crazy snow days, I looked into how to make studded snow tyres, but seems its a fairly permanent DIY job which requires a spare set of wheels with decent tread to start with, and might not be so easy riding once I get out of the ice-lands of North West London to central London where there's still dry tarmac around.

We managed the ten minute ride to the supermarket on Sunday in a light snow blizzard but that's been the extent of my cycling efforts for more than two weeks.

This morning I was actually looking forward to riding into work. The roads were drying up nicely after a couple of snow free days and ice was all but melted. Yet again snow foiled my commuting plans, a few inches had stuck to the ground overnight and a fine mist of snow continued to drizzle until lunchtime. I'm not quite sick of the freezing cold / snow / craziness yet but much more of this and we'll have to invest in sleds...