Maiden Voyage

Between unseasonably warm weather, a thunder storm, sunshine, and gusts of wind, the roads were dry and clean on Friday. I was looking forward to my first road ride of the year this weekend. Clearly a gift from God. I woke up this morning to 5" of fresh snow. Clearly I am being punished for unrepentant sins.

I have been reading the the blogs of elite racers and had already determined I need to start riding outside so I decided to take my Inglis single speed out for the first time. I built the bike up in January so I haven't had a chance to ride it yet (except around the kitchen). I set it up just using a tape measure. The geometry was spot on. I should have spent a few minutes to put on appropriate tires and a bigger rear cog but it worked fine. I didn't want to take a chance riding on the main roads so I took the back road to Brighton Req Area. The plows have been out leaving 1" of snow over 1" of ice. I felt like a drunk on roller skates. And it was cold, very cold; the water in my Camelpack froze up right away. I fell into a rhythm and felt really good about riding outside. The trails had more snow than I was expecting; I was fine as long as I kept moving; as soon as I would slow down the bike would break through the frozen crust of snow and sink halfway to my hubs. I would get a running start and gently get on the bike and ride for about 100 yards until I would break through again. It was great to be on single track again...a month earlier than I had planned. I rode for almost 2 hours and didn't want to come home but I am taking the kids to see Camp Rock, again. It was a great ride, borderline epic. Maybe it was a gift, kind of hard to tell sometimes.