Ride for Saturday, 08 December

Nasty slushy day as the temperature hovered around the freezing point. I thought I'd try the fire trail on the way down to the farmer's market but found that I kept slipping off; there was about 3 inches of slush on top of an inch or so of partially melted rutted ice that I just couldn't get a decent purchase on, I ended up coming off one of the sidepaths and taking the road in - much easier avoiding the slush.

Stopped at IdealBikes on the way home and got Dave to replace my front derailleur cable. We discussed studded tyres, I'm toying with getting a Nokian when my rear Snow Stud wears down and swap it with the front, the other option is a Schwalbe Marathon which seems well thought of on Bike Forums - plus it has a few studs down the centre as well as along the outer rim, for better grip on ice.

Thought I'd give the fire trail another go on my way back to see if carrying 40 pounds of groceries would give me enough weight to crush through the slush. As it turned out... It didn't. Dropping the tyre pressure down to 20psi helped a little, but I ended up coming off early again - and riding home heavy loaded on low pressure tyres was interesting, I had to take the corners really easily to make sure the tyre wouldn't roll off and the rolling resistance was inordinately high!

Distance logged: 26.624km
Time: 97:30
Average speed: 16.4km/hr
Max speed: 50.8 km/hr
Temperature: 0C, cloudy
Cumulative distance: 4678.997km
Cumulative cost per km: $0.2
Monthly distance: 213.519km
Monthly cost per km: $0.1