Ice Storm

Friday (12/12) I checked my email and weather forecasts around 6AM and all looked clear for the bike commute in. It was raining pretty hard at home, but was supposed to clear by midday, and was around 34 degrees, so no real chance of ice along the way. In fact, I picked the summer bike (in its winter mode with fenders and wide tires) for the trip. But just before I left, A suggested there could possibly be some ice for the return trip out West where I work. So I switched to SlushBike for the first ride of the season on it with studded tires.

The first half of the ride demonstrated to me all the water leaks in my normal winter clothing. By the middle of the ride in, my gloves and boots had soaked through, and I wished I had picked a different jacket. A town later, in Acton, I saw light flooding, a nice distraction from my extremities getting cold. The rain tapered off, too. Then, very near the town line of Boxborough, the trees suddenly grew the beautiful shimmer of a layer of ice - a real ice storm! It was just pretty at first, but then branches appeared on the road. The first ones weren't very exciting in themselves, but they lay in fingers of loose ice granules they'd grown in the storm and which shattered loose in the fall. I was suddenly glad to have the studs. As I continued to my work building, the fallen branches got bigger, including whole trees by the end. At one point I heard a sound like a rifle shot, immediately followed by sh-sh-Sh-SH-sh-sh - sounding just like a big breaking ocean wave. It was a big pine branch breaking nearly above me, and the shock apparently kicked loose a lot of the whole tree's ice.

The finale of the ride in was a downed tree within sight of the door to my building. It blocked the whole road and had branches sticking up along it, in addition to the mess on the ground. But there was a large branch sticking up then bending back down again, creating a gap over the trunk, and I was able to ride over the trunk and through this gap without pausing. Fun! (SlushBike is based on a rigid mountain bike, and the studded tires are very like true mountain bike tires, so the bike felt at home hopping these trees.)

Seconds later, I found the sign declaring the building closed for the day, due to lack of power. (It turns out power was out in the whole town.) Luckily, I was able to enter briefly, to swap gloves and socks with spares I keep at work, and refill my water bottles, etc. Then it was back on the bike for the return trip. I took it easy, but by the time I got home I was quite tired. I need to rebuild a tolerance for the weight and slow rolling of the studded tires. (The tire is Nokian Hakkapelitta 26 x 1.9" - a whole different animal from the 700x35mm version I used years ago. The 26" (MTB) model is much wider, more than is suggested by the width in the model name, making it softer and less prone to sinking into a rut.)

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At home we never got any ice, so aside from the radio news, I mostly forgot about it. This morning I tried to mountain bike, but once again as soon as I entered my destination town the ice appeared. So instead of riding much, I spent most of the time clearing my favorite trail - still a lovely way to spend a morning.